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Fiction:
13 Stories, 78 Words
Martinet
Song of False Starts
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Song of False Starts
O Muse, you goddess of good beginnings, you sing and I listen. Your voice so clear, you know I’m grateful for your talent. Gifts upon gifts you’ve shone on me, gravel from your golden wheels. See my agony. Why must you sing to me in the shower? My hands wet, my thoughts won’t wait for them to dry. Paper, which you have obviously rarely touched, holds ink not water. Should I break my pens and let their ink run out? It’s where your words go, down the drain.
Or the train station. Fine, sing to me on the platform, but why – why! – race away in the bustle of the train’s approach? I forswear seats, you know that, to stand instead away from that battle and crush for comfort. At least in rush hour. But off you rush, as if afraid of crowds, and leave me frustrated. Immortal one, your status is secure. What do you care for our jockeying?
Then, worst of all, you come at bedtime. Fully undressed, the lights out, suddenly enlightenment dawns on me. You tempt me to sit naked, scratching out what you say with an addlepated mind, or wait for morning and trust memory to dreams. Think of this, too often my pens sleepwalk from my night table.
See what all your sleeping in and late arrivals have left me:
Two eggs hopped together in a pot, married by physics to jump in unison on a slow boil. This doesn’t exactly describe how Josip and his neighbour got along but is close considering what happened after breakfast.
[…]
Saturday Christmas shopping at the mall, time circles the drain.
[…]
The sniper missed and Napoleon Bonaparte fled into the snow.
[…]
All the czars of Russia looked out on Earth from the Other Side and asked, is this all we were worth? Clues for crosswords?
[…]
Upon hitting the water, Carstiel’s first act was to call his lawyer, who had managed to remain on board the boat.
[…]
Harold threw his face towards heaven, shot in the head by a mugger. God, at long last, after a lifetime of prayer, then came to him and demanded, “Is this how you want to go out? Like a chump? Get up and walk!”
[…]
Lonely for the jungle and the noise of their ancestors, the human race invented and refined the police siren. Wallace, his scalp split open, hoped they were now coming for him and his neighbour, still standing over him with the tree branch.
[…]
As Gerhard stood under the water, he boggled to think of the cumulative hours – days! – he and other men spend chasing hair off soap in the shower.
[…]
Scout had a deadline, so what was he doing in the bush?
[…]
[What was it again, something starting with foundation repair or construction and ending with] and fell out his bathroom window.
[…]
Though they’d grown up together, and Jacob now his doctor, Jonah realized his brother knew nothing [well, you said “of the harsh business of life” but you don’t really mean that, do you?]
[…]
[Sometimes you come with a single word, like] super-attenuated [from which I’m meant to glean what? Some story or another? One word and I can’t be rid of it!]
[…]
Thank God! Granddad was finally dead and his house settled for the last time, [a comma! What more?]
[…]
Balfour’s war with the busker continued.
[…]
Solid starts, worthy of attention, and where do you leave me? On the precipice. Give me a push, trip me up, surprise me. Instead you spin these out, get distracted, and desert me, abandoning your parlance to the typography of translators. Aloft in your chariot, day and night you take me to your gates. Thanks for locking me out.
I’ve brought this before to your attention, and what do you do? Answer with a question: Am I going to suddenly stop thinking? No. Then what does it matter when you come and how long you stay? Well, if I have to tell you…
You count for much, eternal one, save some steady working hours. So leave counting the minutes to me. Let’s make the best of our time together. Small talk is all I ask. As small as Infinity.
Make a business of me. My profit your reward, your profession my success? Profess, then, profess! Spiel, brand and sell. I want your company. Say, eight hours every day and not eight minutes? You’ll find I’m at my best most mornings, or after lunch and sometimes during dinner, if I may eat one-handed. Or in the evening, or overnight, and if you find I’m otherwise engaged, stroke my ear more gently. Whisper some sweet nothing and lead me on, like the glutton by the nose or lecher by the eye. Preludes, though, to long discourse. Not snippets you make me wait the evening for. I can’t write long pauses. But true, true; holding your breath does create suspense. But, hereon, let’s try for better highs. I sit, you sing and joy returns.
It comes down to this: “long-lasting” versus “at long last”. The first is the phrase you want. Deny the second. Why come at all if it’s not for long? Why be long in coming if it’s for small effort? It’s been this way for years. Is this our rut? I know I’m not your only stooge. Is this how you treat your others? Truly democratic are you and your sisters. You bully many into endeavours of hasty scribbling. Why keep secret what can be shared? Democracy is Greek for mob rule.
You talk and talk when I’m not ready. You speak and pause and leave, feeling bored. You shrug and I’m meant to be moved.
But your cruelest show of force? This, me pleading my case, took days.
I look to heaven, rolling my eyes.
Or the train station. Fine, sing to me on the platform, but why – why! – race away in the bustle of the train’s approach? I forswear seats, you know that, to stand instead away from that battle and crush for comfort. At least in rush hour. But off you rush, as if afraid of crowds, and leave me frustrated. Immortal one, your status is secure. What do you care for our jockeying?
Then, worst of all, you come at bedtime. Fully undressed, the lights out, suddenly enlightenment dawns on me. You tempt me to sit naked, scratching out what you say with an addlepated mind, or wait for morning and trust memory to dreams. Think of this, too often my pens sleepwalk from my night table.
See what all your sleeping in and late arrivals have left me:
Two eggs hopped together in a pot, married by physics to jump in unison on a slow boil. This doesn’t exactly describe how Josip and his neighbour got along but is close considering what happened after breakfast.
[…]
Saturday Christmas shopping at the mall, time circles the drain.
[…]
The sniper missed and Napoleon Bonaparte fled into the snow.
[…]
All the czars of Russia looked out on Earth from the Other Side and asked, is this all we were worth? Clues for crosswords?
[…]
Upon hitting the water, Carstiel’s first act was to call his lawyer, who had managed to remain on board the boat.
[…]
Harold threw his face towards heaven, shot in the head by a mugger. God, at long last, after a lifetime of prayer, then came to him and demanded, “Is this how you want to go out? Like a chump? Get up and walk!”
[…]
Lonely for the jungle and the noise of their ancestors, the human race invented and refined the police siren. Wallace, his scalp split open, hoped they were now coming for him and his neighbour, still standing over him with the tree branch.
[…]
As Gerhard stood under the water, he boggled to think of the cumulative hours – days! – he and other men spend chasing hair off soap in the shower.
[…]
Scout had a deadline, so what was he doing in the bush?
[…]
[What was it again, something starting with foundation repair or construction and ending with] and fell out his bathroom window.
[…]
Though they’d grown up together, and Jacob now his doctor, Jonah realized his brother knew nothing [well, you said “of the harsh business of life” but you don’t really mean that, do you?]
[…]
[Sometimes you come with a single word, like] super-attenuated [from which I’m meant to glean what? Some story or another? One word and I can’t be rid of it!]
[…]
Thank God! Granddad was finally dead and his house settled for the last time, [a comma! What more?]
[…]
Balfour’s war with the busker continued.
[…]
Solid starts, worthy of attention, and where do you leave me? On the precipice. Give me a push, trip me up, surprise me. Instead you spin these out, get distracted, and desert me, abandoning your parlance to the typography of translators. Aloft in your chariot, day and night you take me to your gates. Thanks for locking me out.
I’ve brought this before to your attention, and what do you do? Answer with a question: Am I going to suddenly stop thinking? No. Then what does it matter when you come and how long you stay? Well, if I have to tell you…
You count for much, eternal one, save some steady working hours. So leave counting the minutes to me. Let’s make the best of our time together. Small talk is all I ask. As small as Infinity.
Make a business of me. My profit your reward, your profession my success? Profess, then, profess! Spiel, brand and sell. I want your company. Say, eight hours every day and not eight minutes? You’ll find I’m at my best most mornings, or after lunch and sometimes during dinner, if I may eat one-handed. Or in the evening, or overnight, and if you find I’m otherwise engaged, stroke my ear more gently. Whisper some sweet nothing and lead me on, like the glutton by the nose or lecher by the eye. Preludes, though, to long discourse. Not snippets you make me wait the evening for. I can’t write long pauses. But true, true; holding your breath does create suspense. But, hereon, let’s try for better highs. I sit, you sing and joy returns.
It comes down to this: “long-lasting” versus “at long last”. The first is the phrase you want. Deny the second. Why come at all if it’s not for long? Why be long in coming if it’s for small effort? It’s been this way for years. Is this our rut? I know I’m not your only stooge. Is this how you treat your others? Truly democratic are you and your sisters. You bully many into endeavours of hasty scribbling. Why keep secret what can be shared? Democracy is Greek for mob rule.
You talk and talk when I’m not ready. You speak and pause and leave, feeling bored. You shrug and I’m meant to be moved.
But your cruelest show of force? This, me pleading my case, took days.
I look to heaven, rolling my eyes.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Martinet
Duisburg rang with gunshots and some fell Martinet, Inspector General to Louis XIV. Advancing on the city, the French army fought on and rushed ahead to fire again. Most shots went astray with the wind, never as straight as the bayonets held under the barrel.
None would argue, the bayonet made them better soldiers. The pike and its carrier, once the musketeer’s premier line of defense, had firmly lost their ground. The bayonet made a pike of each man’s musket and each man his own force, the defensive offending line. One iron wedge moved the army into highly mobile efficiency, pointing the way to the enemy as even the bullet could not, hard-edged and unwavering -- and for those genuflecting to reload, to where Martinet preceded them.
The defenders clashed with the opposing advance, enemy falling upon enemy. Cavalry sabre on infantry musket, gun battles mixed, in a way no pikeman could ever muster, with knife fights. Martinet’s men had drilled on the hard groundwork of occupation as a single body of men -- soldiers not mercenaries, as many once were. A body of force recognizable as the king’s army. Hiring guns had always been risky, money buys desertion as much as victory.
But even as the French charged off their spits, Belgian Duisburg was spared their looting. When at rest, this army marched in line to the storehouse. Depots along the French campaign route fed them. Field and town could remain unscourged and the army on the chase, ever moving, ever fighting, ever in formation from the chow line to the front line.
Strategy and execution sat with the boots on the ground. Sat best with men trained to soldier as a standing army – and the man who drilled them was Martinet.
He’d seen the bayonet used by hunters in Bayonne, where from he’d taken the name. He’d seen the waste of rummaging for food after hours of fighting, a bit like building the oven only after the goose is ready for cooking, and conceived the depot. Houses and knives, their forms bespeak their function.
Self-reliance set the army moving, killing for country above all profit save the profit of pride, hammered by discipline to do so. Martinet made soldiers poor. Muskets firing, shoulder-to-shoulder, looking to their formation to guide them through the moment of truth, they bespoke the beginning of the modern army. Belgian Duisburg was first to see the tide change.
The morning of the siege, Martinet stood by his tent and was pleased to see his soldiers fed and their muskets clean. He’d stirred the air, and the favourable wind, he noted, was with France. It blew against Duisburg’s walls and would be at his back on the charge.
He’d been the hammer, tempering mettle into a long, sharp blade on the fire of his morning reveille. The smallest spark of his wrath was enough to burn a man. He never let them off the flame, never their iron cool. A strict eye on the hearth’s condition made for fine students. France would not want for nails. He’d planed the wood in preparation for them and built a fine house, fortified and furnished it, for France.
As the battle began and the smoke of truth grew with the smell of grapeshot, he led and men followed into the fog. Bayonne had never so many sons. They fell and marched in ranks, and fired in close volleys. The best of the enemy responded. On went Martinet, the eve of his legacy approaching, the city before him, this model for every hard-hearted sergeant yet-to-come – and got it, perhaps in the head or stomach or heart. The heart most likely, shot through the back. A French soldier killed by French fire; a quick and sour end to a man of long and savoured vision. Whether by murder or accident of war is unknown but murder is suspected.
Once the siege ended some mourned him, others did not. Louis XIV did but the king did not control what rested with history. Those soldiers who remembered would speak of his heavy hands and skills in swinging them. War for him was not occasional. It was an everyday tutorial, a soldier’s work for a soldier’s life. Home was where the depot sat and where you laid your fist.
His star brightened and dimmed all at once. Many spoke of him, encyclopaedias wrote about him. His name, etymologically a cousin to both a hammer and a scourge, lost its capital and became often paired with “strutting”. Applied to dictators and men of lesser vision, Martinet became synonymous with his opposite: the uninspiring who enforce obedience even to rules that defy sense and common purpose -- incompetents who, blind with high, unfocused tempers, destroy what instead should be built stronger. Soon, when one thought of him, one thought of them. Not his devotion to purpose but his swift and frenzied hands.
A man once prized for his efficiency, who turned armies of fortune into one force of country, shot by weapons he improved, fell to the lower ranks. Though Duisburg did not burn, Martinet surely did. The body turns to ash and lifts high on the wind, while the mind is consumed in an instant. The worst of a man is remembered while the best, trampled and buried, haunts.
None would argue, the bayonet made them better soldiers. The pike and its carrier, once the musketeer’s premier line of defense, had firmly lost their ground. The bayonet made a pike of each man’s musket and each man his own force, the defensive offending line. One iron wedge moved the army into highly mobile efficiency, pointing the way to the enemy as even the bullet could not, hard-edged and unwavering -- and for those genuflecting to reload, to where Martinet preceded them.
The defenders clashed with the opposing advance, enemy falling upon enemy. Cavalry sabre on infantry musket, gun battles mixed, in a way no pikeman could ever muster, with knife fights. Martinet’s men had drilled on the hard groundwork of occupation as a single body of men -- soldiers not mercenaries, as many once were. A body of force recognizable as the king’s army. Hiring guns had always been risky, money buys desertion as much as victory.
But even as the French charged off their spits, Belgian Duisburg was spared their looting. When at rest, this army marched in line to the storehouse. Depots along the French campaign route fed them. Field and town could remain unscourged and the army on the chase, ever moving, ever fighting, ever in formation from the chow line to the front line.
Strategy and execution sat with the boots on the ground. Sat best with men trained to soldier as a standing army – and the man who drilled them was Martinet.
He’d seen the bayonet used by hunters in Bayonne, where from he’d taken the name. He’d seen the waste of rummaging for food after hours of fighting, a bit like building the oven only after the goose is ready for cooking, and conceived the depot. Houses and knives, their forms bespeak their function.
Self-reliance set the army moving, killing for country above all profit save the profit of pride, hammered by discipline to do so. Martinet made soldiers poor. Muskets firing, shoulder-to-shoulder, looking to their formation to guide them through the moment of truth, they bespoke the beginning of the modern army. Belgian Duisburg was first to see the tide change.
The morning of the siege, Martinet stood by his tent and was pleased to see his soldiers fed and their muskets clean. He’d stirred the air, and the favourable wind, he noted, was with France. It blew against Duisburg’s walls and would be at his back on the charge.
He’d been the hammer, tempering mettle into a long, sharp blade on the fire of his morning reveille. The smallest spark of his wrath was enough to burn a man. He never let them off the flame, never their iron cool. A strict eye on the hearth’s condition made for fine students. France would not want for nails. He’d planed the wood in preparation for them and built a fine house, fortified and furnished it, for France.
As the battle began and the smoke of truth grew with the smell of grapeshot, he led and men followed into the fog. Bayonne had never so many sons. They fell and marched in ranks, and fired in close volleys. The best of the enemy responded. On went Martinet, the eve of his legacy approaching, the city before him, this model for every hard-hearted sergeant yet-to-come – and got it, perhaps in the head or stomach or heart. The heart most likely, shot through the back. A French soldier killed by French fire; a quick and sour end to a man of long and savoured vision. Whether by murder or accident of war is unknown but murder is suspected.
Once the siege ended some mourned him, others did not. Louis XIV did but the king did not control what rested with history. Those soldiers who remembered would speak of his heavy hands and skills in swinging them. War for him was not occasional. It was an everyday tutorial, a soldier’s work for a soldier’s life. Home was where the depot sat and where you laid your fist.
His star brightened and dimmed all at once. Many spoke of him, encyclopaedias wrote about him. His name, etymologically a cousin to both a hammer and a scourge, lost its capital and became often paired with “strutting”. Applied to dictators and men of lesser vision, Martinet became synonymous with his opposite: the uninspiring who enforce obedience even to rules that defy sense and common purpose -- incompetents who, blind with high, unfocused tempers, destroy what instead should be built stronger. Soon, when one thought of him, one thought of them. Not his devotion to purpose but his swift and frenzied hands.
A man once prized for his efficiency, who turned armies of fortune into one force of country, shot by weapons he improved, fell to the lower ranks. Though Duisburg did not burn, Martinet surely did. The body turns to ash and lifts high on the wind, while the mind is consumed in an instant. The worst of a man is remembered while the best, trampled and buried, haunts.
13 stories, 78 words
One slap, she shut up forever.
*
Midnight, raining; broke, he caved in.
*
Her champion: money, adoration, promises forgotten.
*
Misery shouted whispers under keen ears.
*
Unseemly? Half my age? My daughter!
*
No ring, I see. Remove mine.
*
Family habit. Whiskey sours. Sour sons.
*
Done lyin’. Debt, foreclosure: other wife.
*
Never said you were my child.
*
Just got mad. Moses, Cain, myself.
*
Finally, lakeside peace. Dad frenzies bottom-feeders.
*
How could I? Whiskey, son, whiskey.
*
Six-word story’s what did him in.
*
Midnight, raining; broke, he caved in.
*
Her champion: money, adoration, promises forgotten.
*
Misery shouted whispers under keen ears.
*
Unseemly? Half my age? My daughter!
*
No ring, I see. Remove mine.
*
Family habit. Whiskey sours. Sour sons.
*
Done lyin’. Debt, foreclosure: other wife.
*
Never said you were my child.
*
Just got mad. Moses, Cain, myself.
*
Finally, lakeside peace. Dad frenzies bottom-feeders.
*
How could I? Whiskey, son, whiskey.
*
Six-word story’s what did him in.
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