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SENTRY THE HORIZON

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By Bruce Merritt

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Bruce Merritt
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-4709-2

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Chapter One

      IN SONG


    All at once bird-song breaks and the sky
    Brightens into lofty accord
    With the sun bubbling to rise.
    The awful aubade of the birds
    Plays the sound-track for an odd event,

    An event that most deem normal,
    Yet odd in that it occurs at all
    With consistency, as it may not,
    As its oddness is always coupled
    With luck, by which we are redeemed.

    But one day will come without luck,
    When the sun refuses to recur,
    Perishing the thought of day outright;
    The loadstone of what we know of life
    And time off schedule ends them.

    Moves of supernal spies will do it,
    Destroy the routine; the moves of assassins
    Will proceed from the precept of zero,
    The nodes of negation, misplaced
    Outside of the mind, behind a dumpster.

    Illumined, a killer lurks in a doorway,
    Under a sputtering light-fixture,
    In an occluded back alley, who wields
    A wicked ice-pick, and against whom
    Is no ally, no hand to join the fight.

    The killer engages his nemesis,
    A mirror-image, also engulfed
    In life's blood, however cold-blooded
    And beholden unto the sun,
    In whose company secrets lay bundled.

    These two parties, verjuiced, are on vigil,
    Aware of one another's deceits.
    It is demonstrable, their unity;
    Both display their colossal thematic,
    Linked in every way, ad infinitum.

    They only act the part of adversaries.
    The sun is in sync with its millennial trend,
    Replete with the oddity
    That makes it so,
    Blisters in its wrangle with the vacuum,

    The device of the overlord forms
    Of vacancy and its increase,
    Now come rapidly, building into the habitual
    And, as with most habits, hosts misery.
    Or not. Or not on its own level,

    But on the level
    Of a foisted conceit that endows
    This or maybe that sphere with sentience,
    Warps them into predictability,
    A random motion pie-sliced by a clock,

    An attempt made to excise the lack of cause ...
    The birds trill in excess as they foresee
    The radical factor,
    That the sun may one day fail to rise,
    So that all aubades are sung
    In celebration of luck.


      RAILROAD TIES

    The tracks are tactless networks, root-systems,
    In a realm devoid of normal dimensions
    Beneath the mass scrutiny of windows,
    Sky-hooked, like the watery pools of eyes
    That engird the facade of the station.

    The abnormal dimensions allow the tracks
    To dangle in the pools near the roots of trees;
    The roots are pearled with necklaces of eggs
    Laid in their maze to confound scavengers,
    By fish or frogs that steward their survival.

    The ruse may work in normal dimensions.
    Here, the train is an amphibious being,
    Deft and slender enough to slither and weave
    Among the confused mesh, consume on schedule
    The spongy grains as it grinds into stations,

    Which it does like a vacuum-hose on the rails,
    With greater ease between the station stops.
    In normal dimensions, this feast would signal
    Death, would decimate a species—not here,
    The headache is but a harbinger, really;
    The engine throbs, the cars pulse in accord,

    The rush-hour involves tension,
    Held ransom to the insistence of a time-slot.
    The pools guarantee a constant reflection
    And the gelatinous eggs are nothing more
    Than commuters, for whom train rides are a staple.

    Instead of hunters, the trains act as nannies,
    After their wards slough through aquatic days
    Where they tread water to earn a paycheck,
    And will likely drown, or get eaten like prey-fish—
    Which is why the train is a safe-haven,

    As they are slurped into the steady maw
    With what seems like infanticide-the usurped gods
    Dined on their child-rivals this way,
    To have them issue from a stomach complaint,
    Headaches, to emerge as warriors and wise.

    This train's issue has no skill or wisdom,
    Nor splashes in vomit that preserves the next king;
    Rather the helpless fry are like candy drops
    Jostled gingerly by the floppy tongues on board,
    Refuge and play-pen, they tickle the aisle's

    Gag-reflex to gain egress, dry-heaved on platforms.
    In a normal dimension, they would be feed,
    Destroyed to stymie a contending blood-line;
    Here the custom serves as baroque health-care,
    Self-effacing dotage, to be proud of,

    Except that it becomes a matter of money,
    As any abrogated public-service does.
    The root-systems are extensively mapped out
    And, the only predator is the threat
    Of being late, a beast biology scarce controls.

    The stop is announced, a bumptious voice,
    The pounce—eggs hatch as the commuters disembark,
    Breach the lipid fibers, the membranes of doors
    And silence of their assizes, they squiggle-stroll
    Homeward where they will swallow flies.


      II.

    In younger days the disused tracts,
    The desolate overpass that spanned
    The side street, host to foot-traffic,
    Posed an excuse for our cruel mischief
    Towards the unsuspecting below.

    More so in an encroaching gloam,
    When we hid, heckled, dropped small, sharp stones
    On those people, like socio-paths;
    Our deranged meanness thought playful,
    At least in our unthinking minds.

    Passing cars enthralled us the most.
    A good-sized rock shatters a windshield,
    Causes accidents, calls the police.
    Drivers were dazed by the senselessness,
    Many would have hurt us in return:

    Memory may contain abscessed worries.
    Remorse, even far gone, can torment the memory,
    Flicker in its nimbus
    Through the ganglia that obscures the faces
    Of the figures that approach with verdicts,

    Like the three that visited Abraham
    Who annihilated a city that lacked civitas,
    As I now apply the myth.
    We may be stalked by the mischief we have wrought
    By a stalker with an elephantine memory,
    Bent on petty, neurotic lusts, revenge,
    Whose attitude may be justified.

    The train can easily be a dragon,
    A drake that devours passengers, as an eel does jellied eggs;
    It slides along its tract, like a snake in its stygian labyrinth,
    And roars with the fiery, noetic force of its air-horn,
    Mostly to warn one out of its path.
    I stand below the trap-rock ramparts,
    Rumble-buffer of the tracts, slack behind a row
    Of houses in an alley of trash-strewn squalor, rats,
    And observe the dragons on their singular route.
    The high-rise towers glower like castles

    Where the bedraggled work-crews reside, dispatched
    Post-haste to preserve the lines; ready knights
    And men-at-arms, all vassals to imperious dragons,
    As this dimension curtails oaths sworn
    To slay them—the knights here are care-takers.

    I applaud the men as they work and think.
    Fear and loathing and aggression are replaced
    By the treaties and tributes and the upkeep,
    All a ploy to keep the peace—and they do a lousy job!
    They plague the dragons with frequent prat-falls,

    Short change, harass their progress
    With perfect acts of God, apologized for later on
    In the high-dudgeon of humility ...
    I applaud those workers—I hate to work, to scheme,
    Even if it can prevent my undoing.


      CAMPUS CUSTODIANS

    The storm is multi-media.
    The rain assumes its avatars,
    Fog and spritz and torrent and hail
    Carried on in a Wild Hunt;
    The rain heaves, as from a stomach,
    Come in waves, short, gagging breaths,

    Upset by a virus of ions.
    An intrusive grumble, the thunder
    Also cracks through trees, seizures
    Of lightning then baffle the sight,
    Eject the stress-worn memory.
    You are close to the crux of things.

    In the thunder the dead man speaks.
    A stable blob far from the eye,
    His words are always consoling:
    "To counteract a storm you use
    The storm, the way gargoyles guard
    A church perched on its highest ledge."

    The dead man, shaped like an egg, prays:
    "All that I will ask, ever anon,
    Is a calm gut and three good eyes."
    The rain relents for his words, resumes
    As we resume our candid talk,
    Our walk on the lawn-mowered grounds.

    * * *

    The Council of Night gathers
    On a hillock above campus, the storm
    Fits them with helmets of metal scales.
    Custodians now—they are Maroons,
    Who legislate with thunderbolts
    From their redoubts on the mountain,

    Obscured by mops as once by jungle.
    They work for the college, showered
    In the deluge of multi-media.
    The storm vomits like a drunk student.
    Reason spills onto wet pavement
    As nature cleanses prior exploits

    With the long sweep of its regalia.
    The rain assumes it avatars
    And reveals with quirky pauses
    That you are so close to the event
    You are integral to its process,
    As dust and vapor blend into rain.


      ABOVE THE GAME

    Aspects of the chyroned river
    Sweat into the brewing cross-breeze,
    As its wry news informs my nose,
    Raised dog-like, alert to sport, spasmed
    With beads of evaporation.
    The exchange between the elements

    Came as whispers forecasting rain,
    Caught up and rolled in the thermols,
    Like pearls on the tongues of oysters,
    Strewn about, like soft-balls emptied
    From a duffle-bag for the game,
    When I heard the first invective

    Phrased as advice for the umpire.
    The volatility that is bounced
    Off of the trap-wired back-stop,
    Off the rubber warning-tract curled
    Around the high lamps lighting the field,
    Rallied for a run into the stands.

    The trestle of the Tappan Zee Bridge
    Is strung in the alluvial trench
    And pulses like a glob of webs
    With snarled gridlock above the game;
    In the heat of rounding the bases,
    A squirrel competes with the traffic.

    Baseball bats, in some arcane order,
    Lean against the dug-outs that divide
    The teams from the lurid fans kept
    In immanent danger from foul-balls,
    Catapulted in swift, back-sloping arcs,
    The sour offered as the sweet spot.

    A windshield can field a fly-ball:
    Like a miniature of the bridge,
    A sibling web spins to encompass
    The blunt impression of the ball
    On impact, a diamond-net symmetry,
    With not a spider in its hub,

    But a souvenir lodged in glass ...

    The game is locked like lives may be—
    The players shout, break balls and cheer;
    Hit with a pitch, a base is secured.
    A runner may score on an error,
    The succeeding batter strikes out;
    One pitch softball is a fast game.

    Up on the bridge is a collision.
    All those involved are scorched in flame.
    The sole survivor, on fire, leaped
    From mid-span, saved from cremation
    By a free-fall into the dowsing flow.
    The runner is tagged on a throw home.

    The bridge recedes, the hazy dusk
    Kicks clay onto the plate in disgust;
    The bleachers spit their fans like chaw.
    Final runs, the long innings finish.
    A game is won by the better team,
    The unity of action prevails.


      BOOMERANG

    Which do we choose this fall, bacteria
    Or bad tempers? Birds on the fence-rungs scamper
    As the ball-game, rife with hysteria,

    Commences in final effigy. We heard
    A niggling screech, blamed Canada for the cold
    And pitched, hit and fouled, sliding home undeterred.

    Remorse is what I feel, rocks, dirt. I self-scold
    And brood on the bat I threw at my brother
    On the pitcher's mound—he was six years old:

    I spring-wound, shot the bat forth, the wood whirred,
    Spin-hovered like a boomerang above
    His head, which he dodged with a deft maneuver;

    A better athlete, he pre-judged my move.
    We blame Canada for the cold, pure rage
    We own up to, so hard to fully reprove

    Due to its subtlety, or in error gauge
    As part of the game. The leaves change pell-mell,
    Prolong their crisis; the empathy of age

    Begins to show in faces, like cracked bells,
    As the other players are struck, if not shocked.
    I stare at the chalk, the ruddy clay, ground-swell;

    I feel fingers point—you made him a vegetable!
    The one whose pitches embarrassed your swing ...
    After I flung the bat, the players flocked
    To the mound, where my brother was crouching.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from SENTRY THE HORIZON by Bruce Merritt Copyright © 2012 by Bruce Merritt. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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