Rough Medley: Tales from the Orcish Fronts     (FILLER/LONG)

***WARNING: Some Offensive Religious Content and Human Flesh Eating***


Cragnon ponders
at his resin caked club,
licks clean the sandy human blood
clogging the reptile wrinkles of his palm.


"Why am I better?"


Cragnon sniffs the air,
bent over and ready in the dry bushes,
rubs the deep-fold muscle of his brow,
the sun peaks through, the wind behaves.


"A pack of ten, to the right, hardly moving"


Why?


"Because I hunt, I eat,
I build great fires,
I strive for shade and shelter"


That's why.


"They?  They gather without swords,
Sit still and seek transcendence"


Cragnon grunts,


"Dinner time"


and proceeds to advance.


------------



Jathul asks a question,
“Why are we better than them?”


Father and his son sit crosslegged
By their fire in the parched afternoon tinderlands

A few disempowered limbs scattered, muddy about,
Clouds of blackfly condense at each waxing end

Father picks at a shoulder blade,
Son digs in with a far and silver claw
The scalp bowl resting between his green weathered knees,
Proceeds to straw the bits in with his cold scraping nails


Father replies,
“I once smashed a priest to the ground,
Cooked him, ate him, tasted like any other”

Son lifts an eye still chewing

“Just shows that a title in the name of Christ
Doesn't change the flavour of the meat”


Son asks,
“How come we don't have a Christ?”


Father pauses,
A horizon survives his scalding stare,
Speculates the gray moss-muffed trunks,

Then begins,
“We adapt to the dark and thus see always,
They are led by light, and light does fade
At the end of day in our thick forest shade,
And they go blind, stumble and see nothing”


“This brain could use some seasoning”
Son scrapes on.

--------------



Young dog and his goblin arm bone

Stare each other down
At the dusty crossing of two footpaths
In the dandelion fields before the church.

Bone stands its ground,
Dog paws the dry threadbare dirt back,
Growls, proceeds, screeches to a halt,
Plants his brown scraggy legs,
Golden as tree-like pillars, petrified

Dusty twig brown tail stirs,
Wishes back and forth,
Ears drawn to their peak

And patience cognisizes
Oils to a shine each dark shepherd twine

And then lowering,
Hind rounds poised back
Arching that head
With still centered eyes
And tricky canine grin

Pauses

Drops some dry dog spit
Perplexes those dark shellfish lips
Exposing hard bent molten gums
And fractured ice white teeth

And lets loose
Fires away with a flaming seesaw tongue
Several razor yelps of warning

Silence

Curls that head
Retreats a few feet back

Goblin arm bone hangs still, completely resolved
Residing in its finite corners and unnatural jagged edges

A being ghostless on the ground


And then
A harmony picks itself up
Emerges from the nearby mud-dried church

The voices of singing boys
A non-combusting warmth, a gold brimmed aura
Radiates through dank wall and pale window

Glory to the singing words of Eternal Joy!


Young dog ignores, keeps his challenge
Starts pawing now
Dragging that arm bone through the arid earth
Kicks about and then clears back
Waiting

Dusty arm bone stubborn still
In its degenerating brick-red corpse


Dog projects,
“If you won't move, I will move you”


Arm bone suggests,
“I will not move”


Young dog barks
Swings his sound as an axe
Blasting the roots of air

Praise to the unhallowed silence


Each archer watching over in the trees
Their perception remains unmoved
By the young dog's battle below
They do not leak a sweat

A swordsman sitting on a rock
His gaze is not eroded

A breeze is thrown
The young dog catches and obeys
Collaborates with a pounding high-held nose


“Ogres, hundreds of them, fully mated and inebriated,
Descending from the hills, ready to eat anything”


Young dog lowers, continues pawing
Yelping on and on

Even though a hapless sense of fate resides
A warning arises in those young dog eyes:

A dog won't leave his bone
And a bone won't leave its dog.