Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Roz Kaveney's LiveJournal:

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Monday, October 10th, 2011
12:44 am	Nocturne The whispers of the night – the sound of rain, cars on wet streets, that hiss as they go by. A growl of breeze, and something in the sky that throbs and passes. Streets away, a train. And in the flat things creak with no-one there to touch them. In the kitchen, it's a plate that shifts and makes a sound. It's very late but outside someone's shuffling on the stair. They slam a gate; it's on another floor. A bird. A cat. A switch turns on and off. Perhaps downstairs. A sudden brutal cough - someone's unwell. Soon, fast asleep, I'll snore. Gentle mysterious noises that we hear awake asleep. It's silence that we fear. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 8th, 2011
10:59 am	Parting They leave. You let them go. For death or fame have called them. And you cannot hold them back. The ache that cracks your bones is that you lack their presence. When all partings seem the same it means you dreamed that they'd become a part of your flesh and your story. They have theirs not yours - to live or die in. What repairs the wounds you've made in your own selfish heart is letting go. Perhaps they will return- the famous for a visit, and the dead in dreams, perhaps. But when all's done or said what happens to them is not your concern. Love chooses to let go of what we hold, for selfish warmth. Love chooses to be cold. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 3rd, 2011
2:07 pm	Is there anyone London-based who is competent to fix monitors? I have a power-supply problem. (19 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
11:28 pm	Rehearsal Not broken music, music still half-built, its girders and its scaffolding on view. Each repetition shows us something new that we half-heard before, but with a tilt that brings it ever closer to the best. Perfect because imperfect, not yet fixed, a growing thing with flaws and fineness mixed. And after some few hours they take a rest Eat chocolate, gossip, joke and flirt and tease. Be human in the time between the notes that sound as if they came from other throats than human, sounds of gods, or brass, or trees. Gold webs of sound are woven on this loom ten people working in a little room. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
1:43 am	Utopia Greenhouse that grows raspberries for our tea and several kinds of salad when we dine. We live in this vast home that was once mine and I've asked you to come share it with me. Sixteen long shelves full of the world's great books most in translation. Music while we read from hidden speakers. Everything we need is here. And we all dust, and each one cooks. Our rooms adjoin. We wander round at night sharing our beds, most usually to chat. Our bodies trim. Our diet has no fat. We know that how we choose to live is right. Servants enough to move around our chairs and men with guns to save us from the bears. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 18th, 2011
7:13 pm	This was a challenge poem... Cecelia Tan challenged for a short poem about love and magic here and I couldn't resist because I haven't written a villanelle for months. Love is the spell that changes everything It makes us better or it makes us worse whether we're beggar girl or soldier king. It writes the songs that all musicians sing and sits beside their chair when they rehearse Love is the spell that changes everything. To do without it was to forge the ring that wrecked the world – the Nibelung's bleak curse. Whether we're beggar girl or soldier king It fans our sleep with its all-caring wing. And for the dying it's the kindest nurse Love is the spell that changes everything It is our greatest joy and suffering It is the source of all our greatest verse whether we're beggar girl of soldier king villain's destruction, pure saint's hallowing It rocks our cradle and it pulls our hearse Love is the spell that changes everything whether we're beggar girl or soldier king. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 17th, 2011
5:09 pm	Hard to know whom this poem will offend most Valediction I still have most of you. They changed your shape Carved you and stitched you. Threw away my balls but when – as happens – someone hostile calls what I chose mutilation, madness, rape, I think unfondly of you. You'd go hard when I was feeling tender, and would squirt grey gunge like an eruption of wet dirt. With you love sex and gentleness were marred. Yet now your strength gives tightness to each fuck. Your thrilling nerves are rolled into a bud that throbs. You still draw in a tide of blood I hear it roar and ebb and feel it suck gentle and overwhelming as the sea. You're gone, but are still there, a part of me (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 16th, 2011
10:05 pm	Countryside - For Elaine O'Neill Open the carriage doors, take one step down. Feel light frost on cement beneath your foot Doors beep and close. An electronic hoot The train departs. It's going back to town. And when it's gone, the silence gathers round. No cars or bird call. Just the hum of power along the wires. It is the cold dark hour of night – your breathing is the loudest sound as you walk down the lane, into the night. Darkness like chocolate bitter on your tongue yet soothing as it did when you were young and fell asleep into it. You'll sleep tight In half an hour. Secure, you make your way see less, know more, than on the brightest day. (Comment on this)
6:32 pm	The story of Gallus Mag As my friends know, one of my particular bugbears is the transphobic radfem blog called GenderTrender and run by someone who goes - as she is perfectly entitled to do - by the pseudonym Gallus Mag. As often happens when someone particularly irritates me, I do a little bit of research and came up with the origin of her name. Wikipedia states :'Gallus Mag (real name unknown) was a 6-foot-tall female bouncer at a New York City Water St. bar called The Hole in the Wall in the early 19th century, who figures prominently in New York City folklore. Herbert Asbury's book The Gangs of New York thus describes her: "It was her custom, after she’d felled an obstreperous customer with her club, to clutch his ear between her teeth and so drag him to the door, amid the frenzied cheers of the onlookers. If her victim protested she bit his ear off, and having cast the fellow into the street she carefully deposited the detached member in a jar of alcohol behind the bar…. She was one of the most feared denizens on the waterfront and the police of the period shudderingly described her as the most savage female they’d ever encountered." [1] A composite female street gangster character based on her, Sadie the Goat, and Hellcat Maggie, is played by Cara Seymour in the Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York.' It is, of course, interesting that the original went by the cognomen Gallus, given that the Galli were the cross-dressed self-castrated priests of Cybele in Classical Rome. (Roman citizens were originally forbidden to become Galli, but it was legalized under Claudius.) There is a poem by Catullus on this theme, and the legend of Attis, which I really must translate sometime. (It's also interesting that Gallus is also the word for a cockerel, and that the goddess Bahuchara Mata, worshipped by many self-castrated woman-identified hijra in South Asia, rides on a cockerel. But heaven forfend that anyone suggest that it is not only in C21 that trans people have had an international culture.) Anyway, I find myself speculating that the Hole in the Wall's Gallus was a trans woman - six foot is a very great height for a cis woman in the early C19 - and it would explain the possible classical reference of her name, wouldn't it? An educated trans woman reduced to being a bouncer in a bar by bigotry and finding in the criminal underworld the acceptance denied her elsewhere in mid-C19 society. And yes, this is something I shall probably write a long narrative poem about at some point. In the mean time, I think it desperately funny to speculate that through sheer cluelessness and failure of imagination, a major transphobe is unironically dressing herself up in a trans woman's name. Poor silly person. (18 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
6:07 pm	I've been getting a white screen on startup, sometimes the moment I turn things on, and after the machine has been resting. So far I've been able to work around this by pressing F12 or by the three-fingered salute followed by going cancel on green screen. I have run virus and malware and rootkit checks, including a boot virus scan. The machine is about a year old, the monitor about two. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
11:50 pm	CN Lester tweeted about having to leave parties early for morning rehearsals On leaving early You go up to the bedroom, get your coat. People are making love; reach, stroke your thigh, say you should join them. Hesitate, and sigh, and wrap your scarf tightly around your throat. In the front garden, someone pours champagne and sausages char on a barbecue. You walk through the front gate, and push it to, if you walk briskly, you'll still catch the train. They'll be up half the night, you'll be asleep, Hard bright clear notes cascade within your head. You wake – the score's still open on your bed. You practice – smile when your voice makes a leap and hangs suspended, perfect in the air. No party favours ever quite compare. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
11:37 am	Ballad 11 The Ballad of the Second Thief Her mother dead of chancre, pox or grippe. He picked her up to smash against a wall. Pimps grow so tired of hearing orphans bawl No profit in them. But a whore let slip she'd heard the beggars and the thieves would buy small children, feed them at their own expense. He doubted it. She told him an old fence who fucked her, told her. So he thought he'd try. It was all true. Nine farthings for the brat! He drank it all in gin. Later that night A cardsharp gouged his eyes out in a fight They festered, and he died, and that was that. A milk-soaked rag to suck, and stop her noise. A heap of straw to sleep, changed every day. A corner of the midden heap to play. Her and two other girls and four small boys. The beggars fed them apples, day-old bread, pease broth with bacon in it.As they grew. They made them fight for food, and clean straw too, but gave the girls clean rags, for when they bled. The beggar-master thought he'd break her leg and set it badly, so it would not heal. She asked instead to be allowed to steal. She said her stammer made it hard to beg -the stammer she'd put on for several days with this in mind. And though this did not fool the ruthless men who ran the beggars' school the thieves academy, it did amaze that one so young had shown a ready wit. She got to keep her leg.They trained her hand to dipping. Taught precisely how to stand on corners, so your shoulder has to hit men rushing past. You curse them, cry in pain and while they blush, try and apologize, your thieving hand is quicker than their eyes. She was, they found, an easy girl to train. Too good at stealing to be made a whore. Pretty enough, but with a vicious eye. She cut the one man fool enough to try. He ran a fever. Died within the week. She'd larceny embedded in her mind. Fingers so apt for crime that they could feel through thick cloth all the worthwhile things to steal even before she touched them. She would find grandfather's watch treasured for many years, the best man carrying the bridegroom's ring. Sometimes she'd stand, and sometimes she would sing old ballads that reduced grown men to tears even before they found their money gone. And lesser thieves grew jealous of her skill. Envy's a deadly sin, it makes men kill. At sixteen, she'd blonde hair bright as the sun and eyes like sky. Could sing, or stab, or steal better than any. So they lay in wait, six other thieves, but that night she was late or so they thought. It took them weeks to heal. She guessed their plan, climbed up along the line of roofs and listened. Watched them from above, found some loose tiles up there, gave them a shove. And was at home in bed at half-past nine. The bosses smiled. She was too good a thief for them to mind that she watched her own back and punished enemies. They cut her slack As for the plotters, they gave those fools grief Their bosses made them beg out in the street They were too sick to steal, had dues to pay. With broken limbs, smashed faces, they all lay groaning. And she threw pennies at their feet. She never fell in love. He fell for her, the boss's son. The tall one with the curl, not used to being turned down by some girl his father owned. Wanted to be called sir even when fucking. She laughed in his face. His father said to leave the girl in peace. He grew obsessed. An agent of the police he drank with told him it was a disgrace His father took her side. And so he grassed and broke his father's heart. Two Runners came. Knew all about her. Asked for her by name and took her up for banknotes that she'd passed that had been marked. They said they'd hang her high. They offered her her life if she would squeal She smiled, refusing any sort of deal. She'd sworn no man would ever see her cry Though wept a little in her darkened cell. Bosses thought of her as sacrifice Who'd made them a huge profit on her price. They wrote her off and took her stash as well. The father killed his son, and sobbed aloud. Informers die. But he still cursed her name and felt that she was more or less to blame. His son had lived if she had not been proud. She'd nothing left to use except her cunt Glad she'd reserved it for some rainy day, smiled at a warder, asked him in to play. Heavy, he held her down. She felt affront. This sweaty pain's the thing men fuss about She doesn't quicken; tried it twice again with guard and convict. What's the use of men? She wondered when they came and took her out to Tyburn on a wet and windy day And on the gallows she began her song Thin on the cold air. She did not have long and sang 'over the hills and far away.' Her voice was clear. The hangman could not kill while she was singing. Murmurs in the crowd but still no rescue. No one shouted loud a Royal Pardon! And she stands there still. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 28th, 2011
1:12 pm	The Ballad of the Charlatan's Sister THE BALLAD OF THE CHARLATAN'S SISTER The first thing that you notice is the smell. Cinnamon, ginger, smoke of fine cigar, flaked leather of old books, and bubbling tar heating over a flame. And beasts as well, living and dead, a great stuffed crocodile hanging above his desk. Cages of birds, a parrot that knows fifteen thousand words in twenty languages, most of them vile. Two slobbering mastiffs guard him, at his feet, they lie, or pace the room. He strokes their ears, absently watching you, then disappears into the next room, comes back, gives them meat. And all the while is talking of his plan to make the stone, or take men to the moon. You hope he'll go on, will not end too soon. There is a charming magic to the man a velvet in his voice that soothes your brain down into folly. And she brings the tea and takes your coat and offers sympathy when all you plan with him has failed again. Mostly she is his drudge, takes dogs for walks, dusts all those books, hair tied up in a rag, and listens to her brother's endless brag about the djinns with whom he often talks. She keeps his rooms so neat; he'll sometimes claim that spirits do it, or some magic slave. And you believe, or do at least behave As if you think he knows the thousandth name of Solomon his Key to djinns and sprites. She brings in coffee, brews it strong and black It keeps the marks excited, so they lack all sense, as happens after sleepless nights. And when you think you meet your spirit guide the one who'll make you rich, that stunning girl who sets your senses reeling in a whirl seducer, succubus, bitch whore and bride. It's always her, but you don't recognize because you think her such a dowdy mouse you hardly notice working round the house. You really never look deep in her eyes. You see the dirty smudge high on her cheek, the shawl around her shoulders, think her age three decades more. Her brother is no mage she changes though some five times in a week more than by magic. She has equal power to work deceits, offers herself to you but never gives a single thing that's true, or if it is, is only for an hour. You're all the same to her – not him, and so are nothing. She stares at adoring eyes and does not see there anything to prize. He's always in her life. You come and go. She loves the fact that he believes his lies. Whatever scheme or spell he tries to sell to foolish rich men, she can always tell it is not all a trick in his bright eyes that shines excitement. Miracles may come if money stirs the crucible a while. And there is something touching in his smile she thinks, remembering how he sucked his thumb when he was three and she was only five. And when he claims long life, or angel friends, it is the means to vague well-meaning ends as well as how he keeps them both alive. He really thinks the world a wondrous place where angels walk and you can summon gold, where you'll find secrets out if you are bold. She loves the simple wonder in his face. And his rich patrons, you can spare the wealth he makes you spend on sharing in his dreams. It's not half the chicanery it seems, she thinks, you'll only spend it on yourself. You get your money's worth in sweet deceit. You feel included in a brotherhood knowing all truths, and feeling strong and good. And we eat baker's bread and butcher's meat. After a while, good things come to an end You wake from dreams of magic, love and gold. Alone in bed, you shiver from the cold and understand he never was your friend So disillusioned, your love turns to hate You charge him as a fraud and charlatan, he'll take the blame, because he is the man. She'll stand for hours outside the prison gate. Just for a minute with him in his cell. You'll give her alms. It's not her fault, poor dear, The girl you lust for will just disappear and take your money off with her as well. Beyond all tracing. Buy your day in court and get hot iron burn LIAR on his hand. She'll pour the acid to erase the brand. She'll weep over his pain. That he was caught teaches her lessons. Learning them, they'll thrive. Teach marks no fantasies; tell them they're scum Learn your mark's every weakness and defect Strip him of all his wealth and self-respect. It's a harsh business. Spit on marks, they'll come. This above all. Don't leave the mark alive. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
1:05 am	The Ballad of the Model and her Painter When she is twelve, her mother burns to death, a moment's inattention by the fire - a muslin gown. For years, her one desire is to see fire and not be short of breath, her chest so tight she chokes, but does not die. Her father gives her rooms where naked flame is never seen, the dining room the same, all of the heating hidden from the eye ingenious pipes within the skirting board. She hardly leaves the house. Suitors may call, ask if they could persuade her to a ball. She will not go, not even with a Lord, for fear of burning. Winter is her time when father buys her castles made of ice, carved crudely, melted, then gone over twice with chisel and with brush loaded with lime that sears fake stonework, pointed traceries. Wrapped in thick furs, she'll sit upon a chair receive her suitors. They all shiver there burning with love and yet compelled to freeze. She hardly eats; her spirit in her flesh lies light as if she waits for Heaven's call is packed, with her valises in the hall, yet stays, her father's love a binding mesh. She is so pale, her burning cough bleeds red. Doctors are called to listen to her chest with the new stethoscope. He buys the best, her father, does not know, if she were dead, how he'd continue. Takes her to the South to heal her lungs, lands where the sky js blue and has no clouds. Her suitors follow too obsessed with eyes and hair and skin and mouth. And even in fierce summer she is cold though she coughs less, her skin is still as white, she sometimes burns with fevers in the night. A servant gives her tea made with the mould that grows in black bread. And her cheeks grow red not just from blushing. She can skip to town her father following. He starts to frown. She is a woman now; he knows she bled This month and last month. She will leave him soon and so he hires a painter that her face will watch him still when she's gone from this place. She sits each day from breakfast time to noon. The painter talks to her, does not just stare, dumbstruck by beauty. Hears her sharp reply and answers it. Reckons with brush and eye the fine proportions of her face and hair and puts them on the canvas stroke by stroke and shade by shade. And every single line his brush makes says 'love, I will make you mine'. He does not know how painting her awoke these feelings in him. He is stricken dumb but passes her a note, and names a day when if she wants his love, they'll run away. He waits for her for hours. She does not come. Her father's servants break his deft right hand with clogs and boots, tell him he'll never paint again. The artist lies there in a faint and leaves town just as soon as he can stand. She saves the canvas. It was almost done. She's locked into her rooms. Although from fear she told papa, she wishes he were here to paint and love. Perhaps they should have run and not looked back. Her health now disappears, she coughs again, is faint. Her father frets nor understands that this is what he gets from jealousy. The girl dies of her tears in pools of coughed up blood, sputum and sighs. Her father follows. Breaks into her rooms and finds the canvas. Hangs it so it looms over his bed, stares at it, weeps and dies. The painter though survives. As does his art,; he learns to paint again learns to take pains work slowly with what little skill remains in his distorted claw. Paints from the heart. She lives forever. Generations burn with passion at her picture; cold and dead she has her suitors still. And it is said she is the patron saint of those who yearn. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011
12:11 am	The Ballad of the Lord and His Thief He buys her when she is a child of four, small, hungry, agile, fingers long and thin. He takes her to a window, shoves her in the tiny gap. It's what he bought her for. He is a lord, who battles with ennui. Some race their horses; he commissions crime. It's a diverting way to pass his time, Arrange a theft, then ring the bell for tea. He is her master and she loves him so and brings him necklaces, snuffboxes, gold, as many shiny things as she can hold in the large leather bag, tied with a bow, that he has given her to hold the swag. It is amazing she can even lift, or that the fence down in St Giles can shift. All of the loot she places in that bag. He had a theory if he trained them young he could produce some kind of perfect thief. She is the proof; he feels a kind of grief that one day she'll be caught, and tried, and hung. He's used to have her there to light his pipe and pour his gin and bring him cheese and bread. It saddens him to think she'll soon be dead. He's had her for ten years, she'll soon be ripe. Perhaps he'll sell her on. A death from pox is surely better than a strangling rope. Then she and some young boy she's found elope and take with them the contents of the box in which he's kept the finest things she stole. She learned to pay attention; stole herself that he had thought he owned. All of the wealth she takes, he'll do without, but not her soul. And so he hires a strangler with a noose, a poisoner who's good at dosing drinks, two men with knives. That is enough, he thinks. She thinks she's won. He really hates to lose. The dagger-men are torn apart by cuts from their own knives. The poisoner's face is black from her own poison. Taken from the back, the strangler's choked, a poker in his guts and he died hard. But first he killed her man and so it's war. He takes a gun to bed and pulls the eiderdown over his head and warm and scared thinks out his battle plan. Tells the thief-takers to watch out for her. Describes her hands, and sketches them her face. Avoids the slums, and purchases a brace of hunting cats. He strokes them till they purr trained to his hand, and will tear out the throat of any who come near him. Moves from town to a remote estate, house falling down, but usefully protected by a moat. And sits at home two years and does not leave and grows complacent. Maybe she is dead, perhaps revenge has vanished from her head. Black melancholic bile kills girls who grieve She's dead and gone, simply from being sad. He smiles again, and in St James Park, is seen walking his cats. And after dark investigates new ways of being bad. Debauches merchants' wives. Breaks into schools to burn their grammar books. Breeds giant rats so there's beasts mad enough to fight his cats. There's one big rat with biting teeth, that drools in ropes of spit that he calls by her name watches it torn apart. Drinks, plays piquet all night, and wins at cards, until one day some young man calls him cheat after a game. He asks for satisfaction. Yes indeed the young man says. Pistols will surely do. At twenty paces. If his aim is true, he'll kill this upstart boy who'll fall and bleed. And he is not the fiddler at this dance. They mark the field of battle, pace by pace. She tears the false moustache off from her face. Shoots him, astounded, dead. Escapes to France. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 22nd, 2011
12:36 am	The Ballad of the Heiress She grew up discontented with the men who hung around her simpering at balls. And being told you're beautiful soon palls when people say it time and time again and never change the words the slightest bit to indicate they'd noticed her new gown or that her hair was up, chignonned or down. They loved her for her beauty, not her wit And mostly loved her for her father's wealth the London house, the Gloucestershire estate. Resentment poisoned everything she ate She brooded on it, and it wrecked her health. And if they laughed at the smart things she said, it wasn't that they cared or even heard she could be poignant, charming or absurd. She often kept her best lines in her head rather than waste them on these silly fops. She thought of all the ennui that she felt as ice around her that would one day melt and flood away, that now just drips, and drops. Like water torture but from the inside driving her mad, until it drives her sane. She knows that she can leave behind the pain and so writes vicious novels that deride the tiresome dances, and the dinners grim, proposals born from sheer financial greed, adulterous lust flourishing like a weed, and love destroyed by one mad moment's whim. Writing changed little in her boring life. No one suspected that she wrote those books None of her suitors gives her funny looks -each one eviscerated by her knife and left a bleeding shell upon her page is far too dim ever to recognize their character seen through another's eyes. She is the finest writer of the age but does not take the credit for her work for fear of father who might disapprove. She cares not for his money, but his love. The man's as big a tyrant as a Turk but yet is her dear parent.Then he dies. And so her name's embossed in fine gold leaf on each of her six books. Such a relief that people know, though there is no surprise, they say, and people guessed it all the time. The King is pleased to ask her round to tea, suggests she'd care to write a history of his great house, perhaps do it in rhyme. She bars the avid suitors from her door avoids the season, doesn't find it hard to sit at home to write. Then gets a card from some young girl she's never met before. Who's an admirer.When she comes to dine the girl has read each novel twice at least despises all their heroes. 'He's a beast' she says of each, and she can quote each line the author gave the character to show his worthless character and lack of charm the chances that he means some awful harm to her narrator, who will just say no when he proposes, and reject his suit. She asks the girl to stay another day, which stretches out. She never goes away. In fact the pair of them never set foot outside of the estate for several years of mutual attention and respect for beauty, wit, kindness and intellect. A life of laughter hardly mixed with tears She writes just one more book. Her happiness is its great subject and the girl she's found. You'll find the book in fifteen volumes bound reissued just last year by Women's Press. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, August 15th, 2011
11:17 pm	Another Ballad The Captain's Ballad Somewhere beyond the edges of the chart in lands debatable by Serb and Turk her father died. Inheriting his work she also had his stern unbending heart A sniper got her father. Up the hill she rode, not caring that she might be shot and rode the marksman down. Her blood was hot. The man took twelve hard sabre blows to kill. She wore her father's greatcoat, rich with smell of sweat and powder. She would breath it in and feel him say above the battle's din 'charge that way, and you'll lead your men to Hell. Charge that way – take their right wing from the rear then grab their baggage train, and all its loot.' She never wasted time on the pursuit. Once troops had fled, she put them from her mind. Had not her father's temper, had cold blood, would kill but never did it in a rage. She'd win the fight, then sigh, and turn the page. And wipe her boots clean of the shit and blood. Her men had known her since she had been a child. And pity made them follow her at first. She made them fight her. When they would not, cursed their mothers who had brought them up so mild. Then laid two flat with sharp blows to the throat. Said 'If you follow me, I'll make you rich. My father was the Wolf. And I'm the bitch.' They cheered her and she won without a vote. When other soldiers mocked them, they were proud they followed her and not some useless fop. One called her whore. He bled out, every drop. After which none insulted her aloud. In winter quarters, she would make them train at sword-play, stratagems and cyphers too. And got each man to tell her what he knew that she could work with on their next campaign. She would stand by while each of them got laid make sure no whore gave one of them the pox. Swore her own chastity was sealed with locks, knew they would follow while she was a maid. But lust would tear their loyalty to shreds. She'd rather lead than lie upon her back delighted more in battle, victory, sack than any exercise she'd find in beds. Some of her soldiers died, and some grew old, maimed, sick or mad. She missed them, but found more men who would follow her torn flag to war. Youths whom she'd have to whip or curse or scold Before they'd learn to do all things her way. She'd take no contract that would waste the lives of her trained band. The company survives long enough that her hair starts to go gray She sees in mirrors harsh lines on her face lines cut by all the duties of command She tries to smooth them with her callused hand then laughs aloud when each deep wrinkle stays. It was a cannon shot that took her leg took it off clean, inches below the knee. Her surgeon cleaned it up quite handily while she sat stoic, on a brandy keg and took a glass or two, and joked a while and sent out orders. 'Men, fight on. I'm fine. Wounded or not, I'll lead. I'll not resign command while life is in me. Will still smile at your brave deeds, although I cannot stand to lead you in the charge or take the breach. You give your blood to swords, I to a leech. At least my wound can not leave me unmanned.' At the fight's end, she slept. When she awoke, her men had taken all her arms away. All captains die or fail. This was her day. They stood, saluted her. She thought she'd choke with rage at their betrayal, pity too. Kindness would kill her, Gently, without force. They placed her side-saddle upon her horse and led her from the field. Brought her one shoe for her remaining foot. Brought her a dress who'd lived in britches. One youth brushed her hair free of its elflocks, did it with such care she wept. And knew the worst of this distress was that her men had seen it, seen her cry and would no longer follow her to fights. She might no longer be alone at nights. That would not comfort her. She'd rather die. But did not. Made a life though it was hard. She'd sent her gold away for years by stealth. Now doubled it and tripled it. The wealth of battles past now turned upon a card on a roulette wheel or a throw of dice. She had her nerve still, had three limbs beside. Laughed, was embarrassed at the time she'd cried. Had lived for victories once. Would do it twice. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 13th, 2011
12:06 am	Another Ballad The Ballad of the Madwoman and her Maid 'She was so lovely then,' said the old cook. 'She'd step out of her shoes on to her hair. Red as a coxcomb. Yet her skin was fair No-one could see a freckle. And they'd look.' The new maid rose and brought the cook some tea made thriftfully from the last two nights' leaves. 'The mistress gave her love to rogues and thieves who broke her and her heart repeatedly. She might have had a Baronet or Earl Was rich enough she could have had a Prince But suitors ceased to call on her long since. She was a silly wicked wilful girl. , She's still the mistress and she's still as rich though maggots go a-dancing through her brain. You keep her safe. I'll die, and you'll remain; she freed your pa, though he was black as pitch. He loved your ma, the butler's youngest child. Once he was free, they married, but she died when she had you, and your dead twins beside. He mourned, coughed, bled and died here, sad and mild. She paid the funerals, walked by the hearse. She's a good mistress, in her own strange way. Don't listen to the trash the tradesmen say. There is no pox, no taint, no spell, no curse. She's sad and solitary. Out of town She lives, who once lived just for masquerades and cards and suppers. Once had sixteen maids ten footmen, but she cut her servants down She didn't want her friends to see her age She's forty now, though you would never know. Take up her chocolate now and don't be slow. You do not want to see her in a rage.' The kitchen maid took chocolate on a tray, she knocked three times upon the bedroom door, went in and curtsied, nearly to the floor. 'You'll do, I think. You started when? Today? You know just what to do. Bring me a brush. Let down my hair. Give it five hundred strokes. And do it silently. I want no jokes. Just quiet steady service. Please don't rush. The young girl carried out every request. That night, and every other, went to bed with all her mistress' fancies in her head. And how her long hair lay upon her breast so beautiful, so lordly and so sad. One day the maid woke, found the old cook dead and told the mistress. And the mistress said 'you'll have to manage' proving she was mad The maid, though, managed, rose before the dawn, swept, cleaned the kitchen range, brought up a rose. With morning tea. And darned her mistress' hose. Ordered food from the inn. Stifled a yawn when told her mistress could not rise that day, her megrim was too bad, or ague shook her frame. Or she just lay, reading a book. She had the maid act her a Shakespeare play. One sunday, when a rainstorm harshly beat against the window. This went on for years. The servant's pay was never in arrears. The mistress smiled at her; her heart would beat an extra time. And then he came to call a second cousin, keen to be the heir, thought that her mistress' long life was not fair, had two mad doctors waiting in the hall. Her mistress screamed 'they'll take me off to lie to some dark room where madmen rot and scream I saw myself there howling in a dream. I will not go there. I would rather die.' Her servant knew her mistress will, her task. And brought her poppy in a long tall glass to help her rest and sleep and gently pass from life. 'My love, you didn't have to ask'. She said, and pressed a pillow to her face. 'I did not kill her, I just set her free' she said in court. 'Now do the same for me'. And heard 'You will be taken from this place and taken where they'll hang you' said some Lord in wig robes and black cap. Her love was dead. It really did not matter what he said. Long service, and then death, was her reward. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 11th, 2011
12:28 am	These Ballads are songs for Polly in my novel, I think A Ballad of Vengeance Her father never came back from the war he had been marched to, with his wrists in chains. A carriage struck her sister, spilled her brains into the dust. Her mother tried to whore had not the trick of it. He cut her face for treading on his patch; rust on his knife poisoned her blood, and so he took her life. He tried to take the girl – she made him chase her up an alley. Where she spilled his guts with an old scythe she'd found. She took his blade and swore for spite that she'd remain a maid. She cut his ear off. It took four slow cuts and he was howling. Took his coat and boots and left him in his shirt. She took his purse- two silver coins, one gold – to reimburse her for her mother's death. Such are the fruits of crossing me, she told his mourning girls. Mind that you never do that. One whore said that with their lord and master lying dead they needed someone. Twisting ginger curls she said 'it could be you'. 'I am no pimp but I'll employ you all. I have a taste for blood, I find; it should not go to waste. We'll find the sergeant first, who sought to crimp my father with drugged ale; then swore in court he'd taken the king's shilling. He's around. Go seek him, don't come back until you've found him in some ale-house.' She cut her hair short and oiled it like a dandy; bought him drink and switched it on him. Fed him his own dose. When he passed out, snot dripping from his nose, she sold him to the press. 'I really think that's fair', she said, standing upon the quay. 'Dad was no soldier. Played a little flute. You never could have found a worse recruit. The sergeant took him. Now he's all at sea.' She laughed, and in her mind the sergeant fell down from the rigging smash against the deck or died of thirst, on planks torn from some wreck. Burned black by sun first, then he'd burn in Hell. Meanwhile they needed money; down the street would come some gentleman. The girl would flirt him down an alley. Then pull from her skirt her long sharp knife. He'd go home in bare feet with coarse brown paper wracked around his dick tied tight with string.Just one or two a week and only kill them if they start to shriek when you cut off their clothes, or if they're sick and spoil the moment.So she'd killed two men. The driver next. They took him miles from town in his own carriage. Then they ran him down under his own red wheels. Did it again to hear his bones crack. He died slow and hard crying out Mother! And he gave the name the man who'd hired the carriage. 'He's to blame' he shouted dying. Gave the girls a card some pampered lord, who'd drive too fast for sport and thought he'd do so with impunity. The courts and law were his for a small fee. They took their time. No point in being caught too soon. One of them got hired as a maid and soon the housekeeper was fast asleep laudanum in her tea. The maid would weep in corridors, and act as if afraid when the lord spoke to her. And made him wait thinking her chaste a spiced dish for his lust. He'd watch her mop and wipe and sweep and dust Thought himself master sleepwalking to fate. He thought it his idea to be tied down face-forward in his own fourposter bed. They dropped four carriage wheels down on his head. And pressed the man to death. They left that town. 'This has been fun. Learning that men can bleed' she said to her young friends. They cried Again! Since then they've murdered many wicked men so lechers, frauds, bad drivers, all take heed! (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 7th, 2011
11:27 pm	And while London burns... The Ballad of the Raising Her governess had coughed herself to death. She kept the handkerchief red with her blood knew even as a child that nothing good would come of this. And she would hold her breath and almost faint to keep the memory clear. While she could dream her, see her in her mind the woman was not dead. If words could bind her back, closer to life, there'd be no fear in raising her like that she might forget a single smile, a single lock of hair. She thought of her all day, and held her there and would not let her go. At least not yet. She studied Latin, Greek and Hebrew too; her father feared she'd never find a man but was too sensible to try to ban her studies. In her books she found a clue spirits are raised by blood. She'd lots of that. Blood on the kerchief. Eight pints of her own. She searched the attic – found a knife of bone and tried its edge. She tried to kill the cat. It scratched her and ran off. She took a rock rough-sided; rubbed the knife against it, round and round. She finished with a belt she'd found holding the dead girl's trunk tight. And the clock ticked in the room as she worked with the strop then rock then belt. Her hands began to cramp. It grew dark and she worked on with no lamp to see by, just by feel. A single drop of blood came when she tried against her wrist the new and perfect edge. She licked it clean carefully. To bring back the dead might mean danger, and she sat down and made a list of things that could go wrong, and thought them through. Zombies will bite your throat down to the spine, vampires will drain your heart like claret wine. The dead are hungry. She was hungry too to see the woman live that she'd seen die and smell the petal fragrance of her hair and hear her soft strict voice. She could not bear that these would fade, as gently goes a sigh out of the world. She dug into the grave for coffin splinters and the body's dust, with the bone knife she scraped what looked like rust off of the kerchief. She had thought to save hair from a brush and clippings from a nail. She'd saved no tears; her own would take their place. A pencil drawing of the woman's face she'd made from life. With these she could not fail to bring her back. She pulled the shutters down rolled up the rugs, pushed chairs against the wall. And cut the bell pull so she could not call servants for help. Her father was in town. One circle of dry things. And one of wet. Herself stripped naked, and her eyes bound shut with the dead woman's scarf. She slowly cut her wrist with the bone knife. The fire she'd set in a small burner flared bright with each drop that she dripped in. She saw it through the scarf heard whisper without words and then a laugh. A finger stroked her thigh and did not stop for decency. Lips touched her neck, so cold but dry as bone and dust. No hint of breath. To raise the dead is always to bring death into your life, and choke on coffin mould. She breathed it in, choked on it. Pushed away the flame, the flask of tears, the bloody knife, the picture. Broke the circles. And her life was dull thereafter, and her hair was gray when she was twenty. She had made a choice to look where dead love followed her behind on white bone feet, and put it from her mind. Soon, she had quite forgot the woman's voice. (1 Comment |Comment on this)