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an excerpt from SCARECROW ANGEL.

March 29, 2017 by Exangel

by Benjamin B. White.

 

16.

0237 hours.

 

  • We are the hollow men.

 

Dug into a circle of wasteland holes

Protecting a line in the jungle

Against a stealth enemy

Protecting the same line

In the same jungle,

But for different reasons.

 

And the line keeps moving –

Keeps patrolling

The politics of decisions being made

Too far off to be effective

On either side,

Letting a horrific war trudge on

Through the protests,

Death and obscurity

Without purpose.

 

Power fighting

Against poverty

And losing

To the promise

 

Of unity – reunification,

Freedom and independence,

And the erasing of invisible lines.

 

  • We are the hollow men

Sustained by the Old Lie.

 

 

17.

“Don’t think about that.”

  • You know what I’m thinking?

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

 

He was a mechanic in Korea

Combatting winter’s cold and summer’s heat

Fixing Jeep engines – changing oil and air filters

While the infantry sat stagnant

Along the front against Chinese Communist Forces

 

Until the day he was wounded

In a roadside explosion driving through

The countryside – turned over and ripped open

By shrapnel – most likely medicated

Back to health by morphine,

 

But that’s where Blake

Had to let imagination take over

To fill in the gaps about his father’s past –

The father who was overseas when Blake was born

Never to really return home –

Unable to make a home –

 

Instead filling the empty

Cold space

Of a Kentucky hillside house.

 

  • I’m just trying to understand

Where I came from.

“Just understand where you are –

That will be enough.”

 

18.

“Think about me.

When you first saw me,

When you first put me together,

When your imagination needed me most      .”

 

The jungle holds its secrets,

And an army full of American soldiers

Marching through the ancient vines

And roots and layers of seasons

Can never understand.

 

Soldiers are sent out to search and destroy,

But really they go out, make contact,

Get shot at, and send in the coordinates

So air support and artillery will have a purpose

And know where to napalm and bomb the countryside.

 

But if not for the infantry –

The troops patrolling the remote areas –

No-one would know where the enemy even was.

 

I can’t be distracted.

 

19.

0244 hours.

 

A cloud covers the moon,

Too high above to be concerned

With any human endeavors on the ground

Darkened by its journey

Of peaceful navigation

Above the jungle.

 

Gaps in the canopy are shadowed

By the natural silent-wake passage

Of individual elements

Gathering and condensing moisture –

 

A random shower

 

Is spilled in thick drops

On the upper leaves of dark trees,

And the water weighs heavy

To roll and splash

 

On the M16,

The soldier,

The scene

Unnaturally locked and loaded

And swearing at the weathers’

Oblivious tendency

To not cooperate

Just to make the duty

Miserable.

 

(excerpted from the poem SCARECROW ANGEL…)

 

 

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Now., Spring 2017: If Not Then

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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