HAIKU BLOGFEST_PART II_ZOMBIE HAIKU_GHOST OF A CHANCE Interlude

Haiku to you from me,

ghost of Samuel Clemens.

http://hatshepsutnovel.blogspot.com/2010/08/announcing-haiku-blogfest.html

For part II of this shingdig, I thought I'd give you four more of Roland's haiku's

which are written in the Word Lune style (the split is 3/5/3 words not syllables) :

Meilori quotes three haiku poems at different times when she believes Samuel dead in RITES OF PASSAGE :

1.)

"Black moon watches,
Questions bleed from my heart,
Stars keep silent."

{Ghost of Samuel Clemens here. I think the Word Lune style is plumb looney. The bejiggered thing would sound much better like this :

"Black Moon watches,
Questions bleed from my heart,
The stars have no answers."}

2.)

"Night seas murmur,
My arms are empty, cold,
You are gone."

{Yep, it's me again, ghost of Samuel Clemens. This Looney style is killing me. Wouldn't this sound better?

"The sea kisses the night,
My arms are empty,
You are gone."

{All right, I was never one for following the rules of anything. But being as I'm the beloved literary genius here, I declare my Zombie Haiku's to be better. (I call them Zombie Haiku's 'cause they've got more brass than brains.) So there!

But even I couldn't improve on Roland's last one.}

3.)

Whispers of wind
Sigh in the listening sky,
Love has died.

Here is one Samuel McCord writes to his love, Meilori Shinseen, in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM

(understand that being a Texas Ranger, poor Samuel writes terrible poetry and doesn't follow the rules any better than me -- but he is in love -- and well, you know how that goes.) :

4.)

"Your eyes drink mine,
The sea drifts by,
Both the same green."

***
Now to something truly horrendous : Zombie Haiku's. We ghosts get so bored, we'll read anything -- even comic books.

I found a great one published by Marvel Comics and written by Ryan Mecum :

THE LIGHT BEYOND THE TEARS

Donna suggested in a comment here yesterday to publish a chapter a day of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. A nice compliment.

But if I do that, I won't be able to sell first publication rights to a publisher. Ouch. Other friends have emailed me, asking to read of McCord's first meeting with the mysterious Meilori Shinseen.

I thought I might give everyone a bit of what they wanted and show a scene that occurs in the third chapter of RITES OF PASSAGE :

CHAPTER THREE

THE TEARS OF A PHOENIX

"Dreams drift like clouds,

I reach to touch the moon,

I grasp but empty night."

- Lady Meilori Shinseen.



Tugging down the Stetson low over my eyes, I walked out of the cabin. As if to prove I still had some skill after the fiasco of the bathtub, I wrapped the threads of night around me. Crewmen, passengers, stewards, all failed to spot me as I moved silent among them. But the victory was too little, too late.

I felt empty, lost. Instead of going to where I heard the strains of classical music, I found myself heading up to the main deck. The night was calling to me. And something else within the darkness pulled at me :

An utter sadness so deep it was actual pain.

Someone was crying bitter tears up there. I felt its hot ripples like waves of acid breaking upon my spirit. Though a pitiful excuse for one, I was still what the Apaches called a diyi -- and something both less and more than human.

The Demeter was the most luxurious steamer upon which I had ever traveled, not anything like the cramped quarters of the Great Western. Aboard that vessel, I had shared twelve wearisome days in the close berth with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. When the man in the next cabin died, I had quickly switched to it.

The pain up on deck stabbed at me with increased strength. Moving along the wide, shadowed deck, I followed the faint sounds of barely suppressed sobs. I walked cat-quiet along the empty promenade deck. I noticed that besides the three smoke stacks, there were two huges masts with billowing sails.

The Demeter it seemed was a hybrid -- like me.

I slowed as I spotted a woman, sitting right on the wooden deck by the railing. She was huddled over something. I wrapped the threads of night tighter about me and stepped closer. The faint smell of jasmine tickled my nose. She was in a long, flowing scarlet and black Victorian gown.

I stiffened as the fog thinned enough for me to make out her slanted eyes, not quite Japanese, not quite Chinese, but a beautiful blend of the two. Another hybrid.

Her long black hair was styled up; her eyes were cast down. She was stroking a dead seagull, its slender neck bent awkward. I guessed that it hit the rigging in the fog, killing itself and tumbling to the deck.

The woman spoke, and it was as if her vocal chords were velvet. Her accent. It sent shivers through me. It was like human speech itself was a foreign language to her. What was I getting myself into?

Her words were almost lost in the night. "Poor little creature of air. Like last month, I came upon you too late. Too late."

She spoke as if the two words were a summing up of her whole life. She was one of those haunted-eyed women you attached your own hidden fears and silent sorrows to. Close-up her eyes weren't cold jade as they had seemed farther away.

They were filled with echoes of regret. The coldness had just been a bold front to hide the fact that they'd lost their way a long time ago. Maybe mine looked the same.

There were disturbing depths of sadness in those eyes. Depths in whose darkness swam the monsters which drive us or haunt us or both. Those depths whispered of age more ancient than the Aztecs, more dangerous than even my past. They both called and warned at the same time.

She kept on stroking the dead bird. "Whyever did I listen to Inari and come to this accursed vessel in the first place? I had foresworn vengeance and death long ago. Now, look where breaking my vow has led me."

She stroked the bird's head tenderly as if afraid of waking it. "Oh, to be able to go back to that world of wonder I had before I became wise and unhappy."

She held the limp bird up to her breast and sighed,

"Dreams drift like clouds,

I reach to touch the moon,

I grasp but empty night."

I felt like I was intruding, but I couldn't force myself to step away as she placed the bird back down to her lap and whispered in an accent even stranger than the one before, "Little creature of air, I came upon thee just in time to see thee die. Thou art a symbol of my life, a symbol of the futility of all my days."

I couldn’t take her pain any more and dropped the threads of night to step forward. "Not futility, ma'am."

She hushed in a breath as if to scream, stared at me for long silent seconds, then forced out, "I - I did not see you -- Westerner."

"I'm a Texas Ranger, ma'am. We don't learn to move quiet, we don't live very long. I mean you no harm."

Her face became twisted with self-loathing. "You could not harm me any more, mortal."

"You're right there, ma'am. I couldn't bring myself to muss a hair on your head - which is why I couldn't just walk away back into the night before I told you the truth."

Her lips curled bitter. "And just what is this truth?"

"That you came just in time to give that little bird a precious gift."

She sneered, "And what gift would that be?"

"It got to die in the arms of one who cared and cried over its passing. How many of us get to die that loved?"

Her face flinched as if I had slapped it. "Not ... very ... many."

I tugged down on the brim of my Stetson. "Yes, ma'am, not very many at all. You weren't futile. You were a blessing."

I turned to go, and she called out to me. "What is your name, Ranger?"

Something told me to keep on walking, but I turned back around, my loneliness overcoming my caution. "Samuel, ma'am. Samuel McCord."

Her face grew haunted. "Samuel, from the Hebrew Shemu'el, 'God Has Heard'."

Her eyes searched mine. "Is your coming a portent that He heard me last month?"

"He always hears you, ma'am. The trick is are you listening?"

Her smile flashed briefly like the gleam of a knife slashing from out of the darkness. "And do you listen, Samuel?"

The way she said my name was like no other way it had ever been said. Her voice sent tingles along the scalp at the back of my neck. I rubbed it self-consciously.

"Me, ma'am? No, I'm too stiff-necked for that."

"Please stop calling me ma'am. It makes me feel my age."

"Well, ma-, Miss, what is your first name?"

She stiffened like I had stepped across a taboo. And most likely, I had. I cursed myself. Of course, she was a fine lady of some Oriental court or some such, and here I was just a weathered, landless lawman.

Her face closed like a fist. "Those, who are permitted, call me Meilori."

Pain flickered in her green eyes. "Meilori, Beautiful Laurel. Did you know, Samuel, that laurel leaves were used in Ancient Rome to fashion victors' garlands?"

Her full lips twisted in bitterness. "Even my name is a cruel jest on the emptiness my life has become."

"Or maybe -- Miss, it's just a promise pointing to the victory your life could become if you don't give up."

Her eyes became hot jade. "And have you never wanted to give up?"

The knife of remembered despairs rammed home into my heart. “Too often.”

I shrugged. "But I could never find the place where you could go to do it."

She stiffened, and so did I, expecting a harsh comeback. But she just sputtered in a burst of sad laughter, born of pent-up tension and pain. It sounded like a rippling brook given life.

"Oh, Samuel, it is you who are the blessing. A Trojan Horse that held more than the death and shame I had first supposed. And ... call me Meilori."

A voice both silky and dangerous spoke from the darkness to my right. "Laughter, Meilori? I have not heard that from you in so long I believed I never would a--"

The tall woman in the green and gold Victorian gown stepped out of the fog and stopped in mid-sentence. Her fingers went to the odd necklace of tiny, elegant mirrors about her neck.

She stared at me. I stared back. It might have been impolite, but it wasn't every day you saw a lady whose shadow told the truth behind the illusion.

Behind her head was a shadow, not of a woman’s long hair, but the wrinkling muzzle of a fox. I forced the shock and fear from my face. She wasn't the first Animal Person I had met in my travels. But Elu had taught me in the Pajarito Mountains that the fastest way to get dead was to show weakness or fear in front of them.

I sighed. Elu had tried to warn me this hunt was different. But I never listened - until it was too late.

The fox-woman pulled herself up stiff and bristled, "And what do you think you are looking at?"

Obviously, she had woven some spell that disguised her from humans. Unfortunately for her, I wasn't human ... not anymore.

But there was no point in letting on I could see through her disguise, though her look said she had guessed I could. Best to keep her guessing.

"Reckon I'm looking at the Lady Inari your friend mentioned."

I saw her feral eyes narrow. I sighed as I looked deeply into them. Though they glittered with the promise of violence, they held depths hollowed out by pain and grief.

She cocked her head at me, her eyes opening in more ways than one. "Compassion from a human?"

"Has that really been so rare, ma'am?"

"Yes."

I nodded. "For me, too, for what it's worth."

Lady Inari husked, "And how have you handled it, fleshling?"

"Badly. Got tired of being hurt, of being let down by hope. So I've retreated deep inside myself. Deep down where my spirit can't be destroyed completely."

Meilori asked low, "And does it work?"

"Not really. I got what I wanted but not what I needed. My blood-brother warned me if I keep on staying deep inside myself I’ll go blind."

Lady Inari frowned, "How blind?"

"Blind to all the things that make life worth living."

Meilori said, "I would like to meet this blood-brother of yours."

"He ... passed on."

She whispered, "Then, you, too, are alone."

Inari's head jerked up at that, and to keep things from getting out of hand, I said, "He's always with me."

Meilori nodded and looked tenderly at Lady Inari. "As with me as well."

That looked like it pacified Inari some, and Meilori turned to me. "It ought to be different for beings such as we."

"There is no ought," I smiled sad, "Life just is. You often time will find that things don't turn out the way you had planned."

The two women looked at each other. The twilight grew darker around them, closing me out. They seemed to be born to live in the night. "Twilight Women" Elu called them. He warned me to stay away from such.

Inari twirled the mirror-necklace around her slim, too long fingers, and Meilori sighed, "When will you ever put on another necklace? You have worn that dreary thing for thirty years now."

"A mere heartbeat for such as we, sister. But I must say you look better than when we parted but a moment ago."

Meilori flickered her eyes towards me briefly and blushed slightly. "I do?"

The Fox-woman smiled cruel, "So, Meilori, have you changed your mind about this cruise then?"

Meilori's eyes became chips of cold jade. "No, I still find no pleasure at the thought of killing fenced cattle."

It was my turn to frown. Meilori ignored me and rose gracefully to her feet, making a swam seem clumsy in comparison. Still holding the dead seagull, she walked to the railing, held out the dead bird, and dropped it into the ocean.

"May your spirit fly free and happy, little creature of air."

"Amen," I whispered.

She turned to me, smiling sadly, "You are a strange man, Samuel. Where one would expect roughness, there is a strong gentleness. And your eyes hold such sad wisdom. What brings you to this accursed vessel?"

I felt Lady Inari's feral eyes on me as I said, "Long ago, I ... lost my sister. Some years back, I delivered a tiny baby in a home being attacked by Comanches. The dying mother had me name her daughter."

Meilori's eyes seemed to bore into me as I continued, "I named her after my sister. Watched her grow into a fine young woman . Then, last month some monster killed her and sliced off her face. I've trailed the murderers to this ship."

Meilori went pale and husked, "Do you plan to kill them?"

"That depends on them. But I mean to get her face back. Set her spirit to rest. That much at least."

Meilori walked slowly to me and pressed her slender hand against my chest. "No, Samuel. You do not know what this ship is. Leave at the next port. You must. If this Rachel loved you, she would not want you to die."

I went cold. I hadn't mentioned my sister's name.

****************
And the song that reminds me most of Sam's and Meilori's love is this one from the Japanese animation GHOST IN THE SHELL 2 : INNOCENCE. And a phrase is mistranslated in the lyrics. It's "follies of the night" not "fun years of the night."

T'WIXT WING AND WIND

First, since some of you liked my haiku's. Here is one Samuel writes in ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM :

"Your eyes drink mine,

The sea drifts by,

Both the same green."

Meilori quotes a haiku when she believes Samuel dead in RITES OF PASSAGE :

"The moon kisses the night,

My lips are cold,

You are gone."

Now to the subject of this post : Dream.

Dream is the love affair t'wixt wing and wind, between longing and reality.

I had the most unusual dream last night. Don't groan. No revolving doors into my unconscious. At least I hope not.

It will probably appear in my Samuel McCord novel, AN ARIA FOR HITLER. Dream is often the ink my page has been needing. So when my muse whispers to me in my sleep, I listen.

As is the custom of dream, the story begins in full bloom. Samuel McCord, in a western-cut tuxedo, is dancing like the wind given life with Meilori in a long, flowing gown of scarlet. It glitters under a night club's lights as if woven with the blood of gods. It is Venice in the year 1926. Cole Porter is playing the piano. Alanis Morissette is singing, "Let's Do It." {Hey, in the land of dream, you're lucky it wasn't Kirsten Dunst (have you heard her sing?)}

Alongside Sam dances Father Renfield, so skinny you can almost smell his bones. He is dancing with his former wife, Sister Magda, a woman with the kind of face that has saints stealing from orphanages and pacifists starting wars. And beside them dance two women : the tiny bird of a woman, Ada Byron, who inherited her father's love of scandal, and tall, elegant Margaret Fuller, whose existential soul sneers at convention. At the tables bordering the dance floor, heads are bowed in outraged gossip. Sam is oblivious to them. His beaming face says it all. Meilori is in his arms and convention be damned.

Meilori, her shoulders the white of mountain peaks, her arms slender as birch branches, looks up at Sam and whispers, "Life is not a hunt, Samuel. It is a dance. And in some ballrooms, they turn out the lights. Come, let us close our eyes and dance, feeling our bodies move under each other's fingers."

Trusting to his memory of the floor, Sam smiles and closes his eyes. Meilori does not. The veil is lifted from her jade eyes, suddenly cruel and sparkling windows into her past. Eyes that smiled at the burning of Rome, that caressed the blossoms of extinct flowers in Babylon's Gardens, and that stonily regarded the screams of sacrifices under Aztec stars, now watches as Nazi revenants slip onto the dance floor from all four directions.

Renfield notices them at the same time Magda does. He spins on Meilori, "What have you done? Innocent by-standers will be hurt!"

"No flesh is innocent."

Sam opens his eyes, sees the revenants, and looks hurt. "Why?"

"These dogs task me, beloved. They task me. And death is a dance as well. Let us show them the steps."

And that is all I remember of the dream. I awakened with the memory that Cole Porter had served with the French Foreign Legion during World War I. What can I say? I have a hodgepodge of an unconscious.

But I scribbled the fragment onto a notebook I keep by my bed just for that purpose. You might think of doing that as well. If for nothing else than not losing a snippet of dialogue you would forget otherwise.

And so now I share that fragment with all of you. I have thought about it all day. Now, that I have finally written it down formally maybe it will give me some peace. Some dreams are whispers that the mind warehouses as shouts. Oh, well, it is a hope.

What would Samuel say? "He who lives in hope dances without music."

And no, I'm not as old as Samuel, but I like all sorts or music from all eras. If you might be wondering how Alanis Morissette sounds singing "Let's Do It," here is a music video of it. And, no, again, I don't look as old as the aged Cole Porter at the beginning of the video. I look just like Tom Selleck in his 40's. Ah, don't believe that, huh? Neither does my mirror. Anyway, I must have heard Alanis last night on http://www.pandora.com/ before I went to sleep without realizing it.

HAIKU? GESUNDHEIT.

April is National Poetry Month.

So I thought I would offer up two haiku's I wrote for two of my fantasies : RITES OF PASSAGE and THE MOON & SUN AS HIS BRIDES.

The first is the lament of Lady Meilori, the one great love of my hero, Samuel McCord. She speaks it to the depths of the endless night as she reflects upon the emptiness of her life :

"Dreams drift like clouds,
I reach to touch the moon,
I grasp but empty night."

The second is the mumuring sigh of Kirika, a drinker of souls, who has fallen hopelessly in love with a fifteen year old boy whom she knows she will destroy if she follows her heart :

"Lonely Moon, Winter Winds,
My hungry love is
But shadows of Night."

Hope you enjoyed one or both of them. And here is a video haiku from a Zen Master :