The Seven Days of Wander

by Broken Walls Publishing

men of all ungodly, unnatural of the broken cycle.

  For as the day is new so shall the Man be new. So shall the Woman glorify. Tearing asunder what they were that the day will mold fine into them, their cavities unplugged with the bone and ash of pre-histories."

  She looked again upon the Ball and shook her head in slow and repeat "No one can drink fresh from the Mother with this seed of unchanging lodged in their throat."

  She turned back to the Beggar, placing full palms on his face "And what of you, Begging-God? You have now witnessed the ever disease chiselled into a heart's last hope, where are your days to bleed away now?"

  Turning from her, he sat squat, looking out from the hills across plain towards the city.

  "I entered these days without hope and leave the end of these days with nothing less. I sought wisdom. I sought word as one would seek an edible root in the dust. From end to end of this Time’s garden's I burrowed yet found nothing of what the hearts of men could sustain upon.

  Yet sustain, they do and more miraculous only half a mad swallow. For perhaps the jackals, the horses, the wind have no memory, no prophecy. Thus the day's grovel or terror or flee is only in the moment and a moment is forgotten in the pass of a shadow.

  No man has such luxury. One wonders why they are not endless in froth.

  You called it Believe. Even a little in some insignificance of clutch holds a man's grasp from endless foam. Yet Believe brings it curse too like a saltwater drink."

  He pointed at the Stone. "For there is belief which holds a few to less than being, yet turns the hammer from raving on skulls."

  He looked at her. "Perhaps it is again as you say. That so many believe in so little. Few have worship. Few are wild eyed drunk to the power of purpose or simple destiny. A little belief sustains the soul's yawings in the manner of meagre corn to the fowl of a better's dine.

  For they have enough knowledge to rise their bread but not enough to understand its swallow. Knowledge gives a life but no meaning of living.

  I understand now your place of uncomprehending. A place of dark empty where each object entered no matter the trivial or plain, is elevated to awe by the fierce light of its unique intrusion.

  Could it not be that when one's self finally enters this altar, that it is elevated to a radiant stature of a god?

  Being god what is its task, its duty? As a god of no knowledge of men.

  That men only 'see' is true. Gods 'do'; there is your worship. The dying 'acts' of men are but a mockery thrown a blind faith. As different as blood to stone.

  In the days left it is not then what I do but why I do that treads a giant footfall or darker pit.

  Lost of all knowledge, I cannot see. What shall my God 'do'? As living act yet without blind act?

  You declared that after understanding comes wisdom without knowledge, in the way of a heart migrating winged to its unborn beginnings; in the way the calf rises out of its birth blood and hobbles to its suckle; in the way a river turns to its valley breath descends from the wind to a waiting lung.

  So I do not see a history but must live forth a history.

  That this god has belief but has no means to gather that cause upon its back. That blind it is limbless in mirror to a reach or a stride cannot return what it did not give. Yet cannot pass by the empty bowl.

  Can a god be abused into a proper usage or tempered by the draw of eyes?

  What is of greater poverty than a god with an ampulate of reach in its soul? Is it not the lowest form that it cannot lead even its own destiny?

  What a thing it is to be above law but to have no lawlessness, that by its blindness to the man-need it remains an immobile rigid signing all laws.

  The god of this worship is indeed blind as the flame. It is by the palm of man which it journeys; creates. Thus the god and the man anneal. At the burning palm.

  The god must give all to the man to become the god man. Men exist as the means of this giving. The same as your blood creation. It is not death that cycles. But the sacrifice of your mother to your blood. Your blood on their stone. My father on thin cross. My god to their palms.

  We do not sacrifice to fulfill an intention of dying. Nay. We sacrifice to fulfil an intent to the living. The man living.

  Man bleeds through man to become godly.

  Yet remains not of men but stands instead more manly.

  Like the worm burrowed to a grave seek, he bears all the world on his squirming spine.

  Wisdom calls then the god a hoof, the man astride. The living act of precious care. Yet much is the slaughter of gods and man, though they win fall no farther then the full height of a proudfull reach. Death levels the attempt but history marks all high waters! To be as one godly and manly they must be. Annealed only by a love of unwinded dignity.

  And then gauge the mirror to go and do likewise.

  For the bodily man.

  Wisdom declares then a man is as much a mule as any mule.

  To the city the god returns. With no knowledge. With no word but a faint fragrance of believe, of love, of sacrifice of wise intent. Something of the word is of all these. And something of a mule. In the city lays an unlimbed boy who has as much a need for an empty mule as any man.

  I shall return to that altar of myself and await his word; the man below the boy mirrors the god below the man. Perhaps in that worship, a dignity is found."

  She spoke to him with a nod of approval, "If indeed it is the wisdom of your worship it is itself dignified for are not worship and dignity the right and left limbs of the moving, living act?

  Thus you gather all that you are into the first breath and discard it into the first step. What is necessary for journey will linger along. Take only that to the City."

  A gruff voice turned their direction from sun back to the stone. "No one sees the stone and is permitted to leave with that knowledge!"

  About ten of the villagers had come up the gulley's throat, a few women; more of the men. Scattered in size and height shaven, haired or bold, then were dissimilar to each other but for leaned frames and their hands hung in fists by their sides. Each had a pair of reddish, roughened almost oversize in their swell of sinew and muscled grip. A lifetime task reforms the means, curved to the ball, the body spilling into the rim of there unfilled bowls which cupped a heavy meal of granite daily.

  The man who had spoken was tall with a half beard wild and unkempt on his face, an almost unsettling effect compared to the shaved upper jaw and cheeks. His hair was thin rooted in a deep tan skull. One eye was a fierce deep blue, the other buried in a fold of scar borne by a flying chip: a zealous cut. His hands were the largest.

  She spat. "Exas! (for that was the man's name) What is this new sentence: That a man trips over pebble, he will ease to walk?"

  Exas glared at her, his eyes fixated though he flinched his head towards the Beggar "You know my mean. The Stone's cause is too perilous to all. Whether carved upon or simply seen, the Stone binds all. He is now one of us. If he leaves and tells its tale its purpose will surely die with a hundred swords at our throats. Till its destiny is unrolled, he is as bound to it as we are."

  Her eyes opened wider, fiercer, the sun behind her like its concentrate of force, as if her mind a prism of the flame.

  "Hammer handed fools! Away from his path, you are but the chips under his calloused feet. Precious stone! More like a grave marker of dead wills, your fear rules your rules indeed with all the nobility of piling crumble! You worship this bloodless beast as if it were a man saviour. Well a thing does as it is. How can that which denies one man's true road, miraculously open ten thousand bolted gates? It cannot!

  Hold it forever as the vision of your own death shadow, if they cringe but do not roll such obscenities, such a testicle of impotent before a man!"

  Exas visibly shook as rage stirred like hooves pawing his gall. "Old woman, your bile spits like a viper but I TELL YOU NOW THAT YOUR DAYS OF HERDING SHEEP BY A FIRE EYE AND A DANCE OF RATTLE ARE OVER!" His fists lifted, switched si
des, bringing a fold of arms crossed. "The village has voted. All agree. We are not ungrateful of your bearing in our early wanderings but the yoke of this new Stone is too heavy to grind upon aged shoulder. You are no longer our leader, though of course, you remain the revered mother."

  Her eyes remained in their bowls of ferocity, though for a moment her features grayed to a saddened fall. She replied "And an Exas of chiselled Stone will now replace the blood fire's wind?"

  "No. That has not be as yet decided. The haste was for departure not arrival, much like the frogs with a snake amongst them. Now lies a time for singing, not counting."

  She spat. "More like a time for rabbits to get lost in the night now that the wolve's howl is driven from the gate."

  Exas returned: "Blood was spewed from the Mother but has a natural cooling; a solidification to purpose as it journeys into higher horizons. For it is the way of each new man to carve above the last man, each child takes from the mother: Blood to mold new history. It lies the mother's duty to applaud, not hinder; for the uprising is a thing of future, she has no belong to it being part of past. Having issued the living destiny, she should bury herself in the dead, singing no laments for her noble givings.”

  One arm of Exas stretched out, a finger at her face; the other arm kept its fist tight at his side. "THIS YOU HAVE NOT DONE! What mother rages foul lipped upon her child's fragile skin? What leader leads then roars obscene for full circle?

  What savour begs her flesh remain ever