Adam's Beanstalk

A daily adventure-bag of insights and old bones from an unknown poet in Manitoba's south. Caveat: Not everything is to be taken literally. Things are often shaded with poetic crayons; be the owl. Also, not all these bones are collected from different fields. Find themes that run througout each post and the journal as a whole; the most insignificant event may be part of an ear.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

All To change, All To destruction

Dark is the dragon
that sticks in his tongue
that sticks his tongue into the wound.
~AVTK

And I am: that dragon, that vile wyrm - built of scales bronzed in the kiln of ancient suns, & wings stretched from the flesh of those infants whom were thrown over the walls when I approached the castle. Mother's hoped they could be saved. Yet I around the castle looped, sliding upon my burlap belly until I found my other end. Between my own teeth I held my tail and then pulled back, contracting, the walls of the castle crumbling, then, with my labour, fell.
~
Thursday: deep underground a gas line fissures. Women run screaming from their stations and police men divert the traffic down Brandon Ave. My home. Some say the cloud of gas is spreading, and I sit, trapped inside the house labouring on a presentation due tomorrow, planning for house church, and reading Atwood's "Hairball". When it is time to leave I think nothing of the fact that the gas may still be leaking, the road to Confusion Corner still closed, knowing I can always go down Jubilee.

Jubilee is a drain completely clogged with hair. My car, having troubles at low speeds recently, stalls every time I come to a stop. People are honking, waving, wondering why I would want to stop in the middle of the street during rush hour. But there is no way to communicate with them. We are all mimes trapped in glass cubes of our own design. When I finally get to Stafford, I stall just as I turn the corner. An angry van revs up behind me. Not wanting to ruin the day of any more people, I decide to take the punishment myself, cranking the unpowered steering wheel like a butter churner in order to turn into a parking lot. Once I restart my car I realize that the way out is a one way street that leads back to Pembina, down to Confusion Corner. After half an hour of horrid toiling in the car, I arrive at a place a minute from my house. By the time I reach Jeremy's house I am frustrated and exhausted: destruction is inevetable. For a while I forget about the troubles ~ there is spaghetti with cheese sauce and good coffee. I sing some of my favorite songs and the bible study is interesting. There is drawing on a cup. I forget until tomorrow when I wake up in fear of a terrible presentation, when in my haste I park along the Markham road in the muddy snow, when I struggle to print handouts on the old fashioned printers in St. Paul's, the ones with the dotted stripe down the side that you have to tear off, when, returning to the car I find a parking ticket for more than I can afford after four months of having money eaten away by moths and rent payments, and no work to help out.
~
There is nothing left of the outer wall now. The rubble has fallen on those inside; their legs stick out of it like pins from a pincushion. I slither over to the courtyard, where I still find life. Underneath the boughs of a giant tree sit the prince and his lady, seemingly unawares of the collapse of the walls. Sweet apple blossoms cover them ~ statues in the snow. I am content to watch for a while. Watch. Watch. But the game gets old. In a second I burst down from the tree, snatching the poor girl up between my teeth while the prince stands by, silently. Is he dumbfounded or relieved? And there in front of him I eat her, let the juicy marrow trickle down, a shower.
I am reminded of things beyond this when I hear screaming. The castle has taken fire! Great clouds of smoke billow forth from the ruins, cooking those pinned below. The mighty castle has fallen, and a dragon shall be crowned king. Soon the giant tree is burning, burning blossoms now fill the air. There are darts of fire, then blazing bales: meteors from above! And sure - the ground is burning ~ all the grass and sheep and even dragons! I have caught fire! First on the paper-thin wings and then tail and then soft underbelly ~ now too the eyes burst forth and the crown melts. And then, falling backwards into the burning tree, I expire!
~
Tomorrow night after the walls have fallen, I will find myself sitting in a hottub in the country, with soft lights from a red and white painted barn before me, the white frozen wind around me, and the country stars above me. But today fly the snowballs, and we are utterly untrenched. We run around as scavengers, trying to stave off the inevitable defeat. Down drops one, then down drops another, then I drop down to look at something reflecting on the pavement underneath the giant billboard and city sky: a small pile of bronze scales. I drop my change in a bowl and go home.

2 Comments:

At 10:41 a.m., Blogger Adam Kroeker said...

just to say that this might be my favorite post

 
At 11:16 p.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good post, but it sounds like you had a bad day. This is not an attempt to let the air out of your tires; rather, to explode them. (What?!)

 

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