Perpetually Untitled

Loving you was disease
a pathetic pathology
a devoted self-destruction
where intellectual suicide
unthinking unwavering agreement
could
conceivably
make you mine.

Loving you was the wound
that never healed
that scars and scabs over
that oozes and weeps
tears of septic blood
where new flesh will not grow
to supplant
what you left behind.

Loving you was toxic territory
pollution
parasitic
destined to die with nowhere to root
and nothing to draw from
and nobody worth loving
on either side of an equal equation.

Loving you was buried alive
choking
suffocating
clawing at the grave
to escape
until
the bombshell that broke your back
and the shockwave of silence
nuclear winter.

Loving you went dormant
into remission
a cancerous growth halted
but
for how long?
herpes and hiroshima
a vicious virus
that never goes away
just changes
to infect each new relationship.

Loving you is disease.

Could you plant your heart
here
in this
toxic waste garden
thrust your roots
in muddied waters
and
suck the poison in

Could a healthy passion
bloom
inside the confines
of this plot
columbines and caskets
geraniums and graves
hyacinths and headstones
roses and remains
memories and marigolds
deep-seeded
all the same

Could you light a spark
here
and then
weather the explosion
could you bear
the devastation
when
you make love to me

Could a lasting love
blossom
in the flames
of the inferno
violet and virgins
lavender and lust
irises and innocence
so quick to trust
faithfulness and flowers
fragile, trembling
in the heat

Could your heart remain here
could it bear to beat
thriving on the toxic past
could it love me

And could my virulent affection
my complete intoxication
in the power of your presence
and the presence of your passion
withstand you?

Sorry! I’ve taken them down from this site for now. Not to worry, though–the reason I’ve taken them down is because I’m starting a new website specifically geared towards helping people with their writing–Scribe Help! There’s nothing there yet, but there will be soon!

Malcolm Hall and the Selkie of Mirror Lake
by J. R. Earlbecke

This story originally appeared in Myths edited by Rob Knight, published by Torquere Press in October 2004.

The water was slate-gray where it met the stormy sky, stretching out of sight several miles west where it terminated on the opposite shore. Despite the rarity of occasion when such a picturesque location matched the quaint fabrication erected by the title it had been given to distinguish itself from one hundred other, similar settings, Mirror Lake was a place uncommon, and the quality of the water within did not belie the designation and all that it implied. The shimmering surface of the water showed all the lake’s surroundings in perfect detail, the mountains ranging round it and the sky, the lines of pine and aspen closely mimicking the rippled rim. It was for the beauty of the water, for its unusual depth and clarity, that Aleister Hall had purchased the property when he was young; it was for the solitude of the quiet mountain cabin that his son Malcolm moved there and stayed.

Calling the Hall estate a “cabin” was simply distinguishing it from their flat in the city and their other summer-home on the sun-ripened beaches of California. It had been a fantastic building in Malcolm’s youth, a curious, Victorian manor hiding deep within the cover of the trees, well-kept and strong enough to withstand the test of time and forces of nature. Now, the wood was fading and the paint was peeling back, all the windows wrapped in cobwebs and every surface covered with a fluffy layer of dust that, if disturbed, rose in gentle puffs, making patterns in the watery light of the sun as it came down through the glass.

Malcolm himself was a curious kind of half-hermit, lurking in the monstrously empty house all alone, driving into town in a clunky old pickup truck doomed to fall to pieces Any Day Now, to shop for the necessities and to teach English at the only school in the district, in classes of students from grades four all the way to ten. He would then retire to his lakefront abode, furiously grading papers late into the night, with nothing else to do in his periods of insatiable insomnia, and finally collapsing at his desk with his head in his arms, until the sun rose and he woke again.
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Druidawn Volume II is now available for purchase at Druidawn.org! I was one of the editors of this volume, in addition to having a story and some art in the book, as well. Of course, Volume I is available as a free download if you want to know what the project is all about before buying the new book. This book has a great collection of stories by some talented teen authors, with everything from zany humor to drama to high adventure — sometimes all at once.

Please buy the book! By doing so you are supporting young authors, allowing them to be published and paid professional rates, not to mention supporting independent publishers. With your continued support the Druidawn project can continue in the future and we can continue to publish new volumes, maybe even get the book out in hardcopy again. Druidawn is a unique project and really one of the few pro markets out there for child/teen writers. If young adult fiction doesn’t interest you, we’re working on an “adult” version (that is, aimed at grown ups, not pornographic…necessarily) that will hopefully be released in the future.

Invisible History
by J. R. Earlbecke

From the cradle of civilization
whence, antiquity tells us, all human society sprung
and flourished, for the first time,
beginning with a certain
legendary garden,
a region we like to call confused,
even its name,
trapped between the East and West–
an arbitrary division loosely based on the shifting, erratic,
relative distribution of one small and isolated planet’s
magnetic polarity–
from here is where our current demons come,
this romantic, savage region
which is, to the Western mind,
either entirely fantastic
or far too real
to contemplate objectively.
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The Excavation
by J. R. Earlbecke

It lay dormant for one thousand years,
living still, breathing still, beating softly and undetectably;
red and stoic and stony and solid it was.
The excavation began in the spring,
and Math tried to quantify it,
and Science tried to explain it,
and Art tried to capture it,
and Literature tried to describe it,
and Man tried to experience it for what it was,
and only one of them succeeded.
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The Degradation of Memory
by J. R. Earlbecke

How fast faces fade from memory
should be a travesty, truly,
and if love could be said to be real and true
(which may well be, I believe)
and if this imperfect world could be, if not complete,
then simply a just world,
this tragedy should never be allowed
to occur:
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The Persistence of Memory
by J. R. Earlbecke

There is no time but the present,
which means, of course, that there is no time at all,
for what is now but a lack of before and after,
past and future,
here and there,
then and now and then,
a point, no breadth, no width, no depth
upon which the intricate axis turns,
a balance between forward and backward,
positive and negative sums,
an emptiness
barren of all actions done and undone
and waiting?
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Speak Symptoms to the Cure
By J. R. Earlbecke

And when the singular eye of the insect kaleidoscope turns,
the fractured focus on me, only on me, in unending and eternal glory,
when the cunning mosquito eye sets sight on me to bleed me dry with a glance,
when the ants march right up my fleshy roots with intent to consume me,
when the beasts of Hel gnaw them raw and bleeding and suckle, secure, there,
when the locusts descend from the skies with no sea-faring providence in sight,
intent to eat me up from the scalp and the ends of my hair down,
when the dust rises in their furious and terrible wake,
oh, oh, it’s wonderful; I burst into a million separate points of light,
I glow in a billion whirling, glorious particles,
atomic and sub-atomic and transcending in individual indivisible portions
composing a whole that is, on the whole, unassuming and unremarkable to the eye.
And thank you, oh, thank you for that, sincerely.