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Mist

Mouseover here for the music

pale green of the grasses filters through the mist
the mist on the mountains, rising through the soft warm air
find a piece of your heart lying cold in a stone gray field
and ask yourself “how long was it lying there?”

the team sinks into shore, heave dragging out their rotted seine
muscle-torn and weary, but then it’s all in vain; there’ll be no draw today
grandfathers fathers sons all toil the sea
after a thousand years of plenty now there’s nothing here to eat
nothing but the sand upon their feet

a whispered prayer beneath the trees
the rocks cut sharp against your knees
you pray forgiveness for the sins you never knew
lost inside the shame you feel
while winter birds crowd in to steal
lapping up the blood that’s pooled among the stones

farmer lifts his head up looks into the bursting sky
catch a drop of the long-sought rain in his earthy eye, can you hear him cry?
“why did the gods of fate spare this land,
keep it free from the mill of Time only to crush it in their hands
bury it beneath the desert sands?”

will You burn the world like You did my desire?
i need someone to love me, i need someone to help me fight the dark
i need a town of friends who understand
how Time in his infinite grinding pauses
He pauses to blow mist into my eyes

Pieces of Xenes, More Ligan

I’m up to Chapter V of The Ligan of the Disomus now, and I’ve polished up and posted a few pieces of a science fiction story called Xenes.  As soon as I have my scanner set up properly (I scatter my energy over too many projects, I know) I will upload some complete short stories, and perhaps a map for the world of Ligan.

Enjoy!

Temporarily on WordPress

I’m storing my writings here while I work out some web hosting issues on my domain.  Enjoy!

More of the Ligan of the Disomus

The un-named Observer continues his investigation into the case of the Reiders, seeking clues throughout Lemaigne and the nearby waters.  In the chapters published lately, he finally learns what was in the ligan that Reider dumped on the sea floor.

Counterpoint

A flute 
  peeps in Creation’s orchestra:
     the deep drum thunder of a billion grinding dust clouds
     the cymbal crash of countless bursting stars
     the sweep of whirling galaxies
         all sound God’s glory
           in raw, naked,
               untranslated praise.

And yet, the piccolo whistles its own name.
    Its dissonance, the ears of Angels rile:

“Spy: this whispered dewspeck of a world
    –clinging as to a flimsy undertone of moss
       in one slight, shadowed nook
          of the vast Garden of Creation–
notes the image of the unseen God
     and from a hush, squeaks out a troppo forte shrill!
        Given one humble sheet
           they arrogate the whole ensemble.”

The trumpets turn.
     Brass, flames, and sound
         a vulcan bellows roar.

“O CLAY,
You boast these penal codes and poems 
         warbled in the mouths of shepherd-kings
         and culled by waves of tone-deaf priests
       make you the maestros of Creation,
          privy to the deepest arts of Angels?

Know:
One stray and fragile barbicel
   from a spare edge of one down feather’s fray
      loosed from the blazing wing
          of but the least and lowest of our Host
would strum the orbits of your galaxy
   brush clean of life your cities
   and, con fuoco, leave this pompous dewspeck
       modest, gentle, still,
            and mute.”

©2007 J. Nelson Leith

Kýpros

A clan beached on the shores of Kýpros 
    –innocent of Iron or fired clay–
 slew the little river horses there
   to make clear pastures for their sheep
       and wallows for their swine

Twice longer than the Crucial sect has thrived
   they lived in round stone homes on Kýpros
then, as those who would become the Jews and Arabs
   Indians and Europeans, bound in dark ancestral wombs
      were just then crawling out of ethnic infancy
three thousand years before Nile knew a Pharaoh
   the shepherd folk of Kýpros were erased

Not one forensic whisper to explain

A thousand plus five hundred years
   White breakers tapped in vain against unpeopled shores
before a second clan to Kýpros came
  to find a land of pigs and sheep
the little river horses
    and their slayers
         gone

©2007 J. Nelson Leith

Down To The Stem

in predatory privacy i weep
right round the circuit of this desert heath

   –a brier’d and thorny chaparral within–
   of quarantine: a barren, spiny wreath
     prick and poison, rash the unthick skin

awaken cellared dragons from the deep
   the shadow-mounted cavalry of Lent
   Los Caballeros del Cerebelo
to turn a lizard eye to sentiment
   to fast, to feed, yet to suffice, to slow

the grey-scaled Templars to heart’s quarters beat
   –Aseige, the scrubland-city.  Cleared, the knoll–
set their archaic hooves upon the dry, unsuppered street
  a salient into the crucial sole

©2007 J. Nelson Leith

Welcome to my writing…

Welcome to my fiction homepage.  There’s not much yet here (only the first two chapters of Ligan of the Disomus) but I plan to post more chapters and short stories soon.

[ratings]

Winter River

A thin but opaque face of ice
  glitters sunlight in a smooth, unbroken texture
    still and quiet, stable to the shores
Alike one moment to the next

But, underneath,
   the river, darkened by the face above
and sealed from the evaporating sky
     churns and rushes, grumbles in the dark,
        presses up against the face (the face which must not crack)
     and chews into its bed
Hidden,
   hushed,
       and destined for the falls

©2007 J. Nelson Leith