A Suicide of Crows (Ch1)

Chapter One

I

The sun, moving over the edge
of the world, a cool suffuses
upon my skin, verging on a chill.

Kind of like the chill I got
the moment I heard.

They were successful.

Successful in their endeavor:

To the Stars.

One newspaper called it “a
grotesque scene of
suicide and strange beliefs.”

Another paper, a national
print, had a front page
headline that read:

A Suicide of Crows.

Picture the scene.

A group of poets that all met
online, laying dead in the
woods.

Like a scene out of The
Blair Witch Project.

II

I joined the site a few years
before it shut down.

There certainly was a strange
energy.

Something that drew you in.

Despite any protest or appeal.

Made you wanna write your
ass off.  

Spill ink.

All over the place.

The poets there were super serious
about their craft, in a way bordering
on obsession.

But  the works of art which arose
were…

Extraordinary.

The best unknown poets in the
world.  But I don’t know that
they cared about that.

These were entities beyond
art for art’s sake.

They were like aliens with
their own agenda.

Like thieves who steal as much
for sport as for glory.

Those grizzled, old school surfers
on a secret break paradises, keen
on keeping it a secret.

On every wave looking for the
perfect ride, the perfect interaction
with the force.

III

They traveled there, to the site
of the event, from all around
the world.

Twenty people in total.

Twenty hard core
members, all from various
time periods in the twenty
year history of the site.

Poets of all ages.

All shapes and sizes.

All types and kinds.

All with one thing in common.

The Writing.

IV

My wife, the only person I
have spoken about this with,
wondered how a website
could have this effect on
folks.

“It’s the Game of Poems
Babe.”  I told her.

The Game of Poems.

Spilling so much ink together,
so many holographic fragments
of soul, absorbed by the hearts
and eyes.

From soul to soul.

Energy flowing where attention
is going.

But, also, more than this.

Something on level beyond
the photons at the base of
reality.

Something akin to the
discovery of quantum
entanglement.

Maybe it was a form of
quantum entanglement.

V

Belonging.

It seems so simple and
basic, yet, complex and
complicated.

How much more so then
to poets, who are typically
outcasts, outsiders, freaks,
dopers, dropouts.

These sort of things.

Oh, those bonds weren’t
gonna be broken very
easily.

Poetry is magic.

Each poem is like a living
page of a grimoire of
high magic.

And magic.

Once deployed into the
stratosphere, can have
a mind of it’s own.

Taking on a life of
it’s own.

Releasing an independent
destiny.

The butterfly wings that
create hurricanes.

They say to chain your
wagon to a star.

Well…

These poets were chaining
themselves to stars.

In order to sever the
chains and soar

They also say every man
and every woman is
a star.

These poets were severing
all chains of existence, in
order to create a new order,
one in a Seventh Heaven.

Ascending behind shaman
and Pharaoh alike.

To the stars.

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NAPO.
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