Dark Pools

Excerpt, slipped out of print:

"Charming were the thoughts that pierced my heart. My mind had bred them. Apparelled so becomingly, they danced along and scarcely touched the ground. A ball, a fashionable ball. In pairs they went gliding through the moonlight. Cowardice with Courage, Lies with Uprightness, Wretchedness with Strength, Malice with Valour. Only Reason and Understanding did not join in the dance. Reason and Understanding were wretchedly drunk. They had lost their virtue. But the dance went on, and I listened to the music.

A song of the streets - the song of filth.

According to language, race and nation, we set ourselves apart, and each pile up our filth to overtower the other's.

Filth - for manure - for the earth, so that something may grow. Not flowers, but rather bread. Yes! But do not worship it - the filth of which you've eaten. "

Heat

When I was seven, I stared at my fair and fleshy palms, red

and today turned towards the kitchen, flooded with light - the satiety box - and from within the cavernous depths of the cupboard directly below the sink, sprawled a grand, rotund belly, Black. I hovered over, still staring at my palms, red in the sun. He was beyond comprehension, Old Brain, wisdom that transcends books - the kind his young daughter of a second wife, does not have - jabbering away. Bolts, washers, and a torch littered the cheap tile floor. He's let himself go, volumes of fat spill over his belt buckle as he turns the screw. Reebok basketball shoes, old, flail in the sunlight. I stand over, staring at the black pepper grinder.

Mr. C was fixing the faucet, when his digestive tract got caught, the heat lulled the great gut: an extension of the kitchen pipings it became. I bent over the sink, and turned on the tap. Behold, his breakfast gushed out first, then his innards, running red and black. I gasped in excitement, biting my tongue.

Now, I am cloaked in a white apron. Hovering, floating over, as the gut-pipe, convulses in spasms of fear, four hundred years, blood wells up and over, covering my face, like a triumphant warrior, I bring down my foot on his body, stamping out his dignity. Forever a slave.

"How long will the trial last?"

Pinchas was a good Zealot

Zealotry, must be wielded to destroy the sin. You can not, and shall not attempt to destroy the sinners - the sin shall rise again, as the sun upon the eastern shore - and the harlots gaze is ever-vengeful, when it falls upon her assailants, whom yesterday shared her insidious bed.

But,

stand upright in the assembly, Pinchas, your righteous spear shall drive into the heart of this licentious cavorting that is debasing your tribe.

Raise your arm up in antiquated pathos! Higher! Strike, and turn the tide of my wrath that would undoubtedly consume your people.

This fille de joie shall make a ripe sacrifice.

Your tenure on this earth has been granted a new lease.

"Therefore say: behold, I have given him my covenant of peace."