"The Dead Pushing the Dead" (Part two, to: "In a Birdless Sky) (After the French, Trenches, 1914 a Soldier of the Great War: WWI)) Chapter One - Corporal Anton They were still huddled at the cemetery (several family members) when the sun had barely set, the cold face of the moon showing, it was winter in the Midwest of the United States, the year 1914: the old man, Corporal Anton's father, inside his head, he heard bugles, they rang and then ceased, the sounds of guns reverberated, then ceased, as if bouncing from one lob to the other inside his skull.
He, like his son, had been in war; his was the Civil War, unlike WWI, where they had to live in trenches throughout the war: it had almost faded from his memory, now brought back by the funeral.
Tomorrow there would be a parade for the deceased solders of the Great War, of the county.
No one did a thing but become more still, as the coffin was lowered, even the dogs that chased one another across the graveyard meadows, stood at attention for a moment, curious.
The old man, sixty-four in October of the previous year, now it was January of the next, stood still in the half frozen drizzling rain (in old, Oakland Cemetery).
The silence was unbearable, a pitched silence that the human ear was not used to, a dead silence, with eyes closed, and mouth shut (a tongueless, eyeless silence): on the hard frozen grass-no motion at all, thus, came a gigantic uproar, like the blast of a volcano, hitting his heart, likened to a wave-crashing all around his sides, tides' overflowing his heart valves; a windless flame dried up his mouth.
He held an unknown glare in his eyes, as if they had received an electric shock, immobility prevailed, and here and there eyes looked at him.
His face revealing-death! Chapter Two - The Light He knew perhaps-at this juncture-tomorrow's parade was out of the question, he'd most likely miss it, but it didn't matter.
Then the old man tumbled to his knees, akin to an old factory building, dropping to the ground.
The people around him faded, completely faded into a dusty dark night (one eternal night to be): he could only see shapes and a mass of huddled shadows, he knew now he'd miss tomorrow's parade for sure.
Next, he saw a lighted window, and the motionless silhouette of his son, he was standing clean and decorous, in his infantry uniform, the one he died in.
Then the old man began to push forward to get a better look (the dead pushing the dead); his previous life, was like a dim lit bulb, now turned off, for within a blink of an eye, a new and gratifying sensation had filled him, completely...
Written 10-22-2008, inv Huancayo, Peru, at the Mia Mamma Café, in El Tambo: somewhat inspirited by my Grandfather, who was in WWI, Anton Siluk, born 1891, died, 1974, dedicated to his memory, and his war.
The story was originally called, "The Cold Face of the Moon.
" Clark A.
Smith's Lost Poem (Meerschaum) Unbecoming it read, the dead poet's poem, the one found on October 7, 2008, found on the back of a sketch he did, called "Nightmare," this, once famous horror writer for the magazine "Weird Tales," friend of George Sterling, Lovecraft, and Jack London, the poem called, "Meerschaum.
" Not an ingenious or even bold poem, for the most part, more prose than poetic (free verse for the most part, with stanza form and a slight rhyme schema), more nightmarish than reality, a poem-quite honestly, by a personage who wished it to be discovered, after his death: and so it was.
After reading it, the discoverer placed it safely in a bank vault, his safe deposit that is, not because it was priceless, no, rather simply because it was the only one of its kind, and a lost poem found, perhaps the last to be brought into being, I presume.
Here was a poem of a man not wanting to escape the depths of hell, but more fascinated with what he saw, when he visited it for a moment in time; and perhaps it wasn't really Hell he visited but a room above the infamous resort itself, or somewhere near by.
I know for a fact, the reader had first read it, in an ordinary manner, to speak of, and then reread it for its content and imagery, its originality.
It had none of his older style to it, nor was even its intensity of imagery, rendering the complexities of those far-off days (thus, the reader proposed it was written prior to his death, hastily perchance); but what it did have was his desire to re-examine the nature and function of his most basic assumption, unequivocally to his second world: that hell was hell, and a home to be (in a way, he was chasing, a longing, if not yearning, and got a glimpse of it, or perhaps he got a glimpse of the more boring, if not better part of that world).
Perhaps the poem was taken while in a trance, or taken from a dream, or else a vision, an illusion will even do, conceivably, a nightmare, one where the walls burned and the cellar was like a furnace, as one might expect from him, but it wasn't like that, it was that he found himself in private company, this was the foundation of his poem, and perhaps after he wrote it, puff, puff, he was gone, employed by the counsel of Hell itself, or deceived by it, and brought to those so called burning walls and allied furnace, I just mentioned.
But enough of this guessing, I shall now provide the poem (and let me add to this brief, I assume it is his poem, since it was written on the back of his sketch, and faded it was, and I shall bring it to life as I see it, and the sketch is beyond dispute, that he was the artist-and the owner of the sketch-oh well, we shall leave that to posterity to unwind): Meerschaum They sleep at a distance of the Master's bed, realism made drunk: the great in power, the rightful owner of the dead, the first of the three- personages, Satan.
They sleep at a distance of the Master's bed, renegades, henchmen, the attentive dead, clay tobacco pipe in hand, as if, to keep occupied-as Satan rests! He, the Ten Winged Beast, inspects, even anticipates-I saw him, and witnessed no disturbances, nor did I fail to detect it.
Yes, oh yes, Satan does rest!