Sinister Syntax (the):

a drifted tense,
easy to miss in an
Orwellian empire drowning in irony,
only grasped when one
corrects
their objective perspective.

example: the war on terror IS the terror.

provocatively present,
in its deflected sense,
in the evasive intent
lurking in all the "wars"
the zombie army of corporate operatives
launch with their
Alice's looking glass,
media projected,
inverse-inflected
slight of hand.

(i.e. the wars "on" drugs & crime & poverty
& tyranny & the absence of freedom.)

the subject is always
the concealed causative clause,
as surely as the sun sets
on our "starless midnight of racism and war."*

for war,
by definition,
is the crime in any sentence,

invariably inflicting
its cancerous damage
on its hapless eternal object,

humanity itself.

* the starless midnight of racism and war" was first uttered by Martin Luther King, in his
speech accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace, back before it, too, was reverse engineered.

What Happened Next (an excerpt from my novella-poem, "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons")

Sludge White was sailing a subliminal sea,

gliding on a surface that glinted like glass.

her memories were ranged like sleeping mountains,

their colors cascading in a slumbering pass.

she was vaguely aware of all that transpired

seen through a cloistering filter of crepe,

and tried to decipher what could have prompted

misfortune to open its snarling gape.

her fur-clad familiars found her fallen.

a dubious heartbeat convinced them she was dead.

though ashen pallor bedimmed her glimmer,

a pink glow illumined the roses on her head.

as the deer nudged her with their probing noses,

an eerie wailing was let loose by a loon.

then a chorus of keening fused with the storm

in a howling lament that beckoned the moon.

it rose in the midst of turbulent flashes,

in shafts of fluorescence and gleam-tinted cloud.

and the fell fog was pummelled by pelting rains,

forging wispy tatters out of steaming shroud.

the skittish fire that Sappy had set

crackling in the shelter of prehistoric stones,

was encouraged by the flickering moonlight

fostering warmth in their chilled and dampened bones.

as he rocked Mock in a cradle of compassion

the skies spilled out their spurting, silver sheets,

and he lulled the delirious ramblings

of anxious adolescence roaming lonely streets.

Mock closed his eyes when the winds subsided,

and the deluge dwindled to intermittent drip.

as the moon traipsed off in search of perspective

Sappy hunkered down for a cursory kip.

Sleazy came to in a foul smelling cavern

steeped in the silence that saturates night,

wrestling with his wrapping and scuffing the scrapes

he'd acquired from the spider's frantic flight.

he'd barely discerned the subtlest shuffle

when a presence emerged an inch from his face.

for a heart-stopping moment he felt it musing.

then it ripped apart his slithery case.

already running as his feet touched down

they kept on kicking when he found he'd been lifted.

but sharp, spindly limbs simply spun him around

and placed him in a spot where starlight drifted.

he embraced the bathed air like a stifled child

imbibing the breezes that bring in spring,

and hardly held on to the side of the cliff

skipping and slipping and nearly taking wing.

in a nearby nook a pair of plump pigeons

snickered together as they watched him flit by.

and having made certain he hadn't been followed

one of them mounted the star-dappled sky.

Promethean pilgrims crossed the frozen expanse

transcending time from their fiery birth,

ferrying sparks of elemental essence

to the evanescent residents of earth.

and the harpy scowled and brandished her fist

irked at these heavens and their meddlesome rains

for making short work of banishing enchantments,

dispelling the mist she'd swelled with such pains.

she pressed the edge of a crumbling tombstone

and vanished beneath the cemetery grounds,

slinking down a subterranean passage

that echoed with crunches and gurgling sounds.

the snooping rat waited with the royal raiments

in the blaze of a torch that scorched the stone.

he smirked as she donned her crinkled crinolines

tickled by the gilding of a wrinkled crone.

pausing on the threshold of a caved-in temple

she tossed a bone to a pale, hulking brute,

ensconced in the stench of previous suppers

stiffening in piles, rotting with their loot.

his lopsided face seemed to come unhinged,

as he strived for a wink with his single, crazed eye.

wrenching her foot from a trail of slime, she said

"try and be more tidy, this place is a sty."

his muttered response had a whiny, cringing tone,

too shrill and unnerving to closely heed.

in any case Her Grace hastened away,

unable to process another creature's need.

while the snitch raced after his merciless mistress,

skirting rivulets of travelling blood;

the ghoul yanked a morsel from his stacked up stiffs,

relishing the squish and the sickening thud.

when the queen laid her head on her pillow

she had fully restored her avaricious gleam;

repacking her bags, unfolding her furrows,

and easing her creases with vanishing cream.

the restless impatience in her withering stare

regained its callous, imperious bite.

and the scathing disdain chiseled on her visage

waxed incandescent, transcendent with spite.

  

while the glittering tresses nestling her brow

securely stashed her thatch of hoary bristles,

her careless caress lost its resemblance

to catching a cat in a thicket of thistles.

a sneer paved over her gravelly cackle,

thus smothering the rattling gates of hell.

and she'd managed to ditch the whiff of corpses

that raised up hackles with its mouldering smell.

as she sorted her fleeting perceptions

splicing her reels of selective recollection,

a pesky image refused to flip past

obstructing this nearest approach to reflection.

a casual glimpse of the hidden chamber

imprinted while primping her ribbons and lace,

reared up to pose a compelling question

for a valued possession was not in its place.

she passed at last with her drifting impressions

to the plundered landscape of overmined seams,

never quite sating her expectations

the recurring resort of her ravenous dreams.

when the answer came suddenly upon her

she loosed her link to the ethereal lair.

and vaulting across the breach of becoming

she sat up and gasped "the mirror wasn't there!"
*** * *** * *** * *** * ***
- Evan Hawthorn, the 23^rd of April, 2016

Earth Day, 2016

"i have no country to fight for. my country is the Earth,
and i am a citizen of the world." - Eugene Debs

today is the one day set aside to nourish an inclusive, 

humane patriotism, not blinded by artificial boundaries,

not severed by self-focused, competitive mindsets.

i celebrate our common homeland

with all my unique and resilient siblings,

the boundless, OpenHearted Children
of this, our infinite ImagiNation.

Yikes! (an excerpt from my novella-poem "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons"

"it's got Sleazy!" Sappy managed to gasp

collapsing on the rim of the smoky ravine,

in a trembling frenzy to swallow air

unable to imagine how they'd intervene.

Mock, looking haunted, was utterly speechless

like a zombie or some other bloodless saint,

the ruddy and only pink-skinned Curmudgeon

gone beyond the pale and passing for a haint.

Nate pulled a chisel from his ruptured knapsack

and shakily attained his unsteady feet.

then he kissed Mock's forehead and started off,

as valiant a hero as one could hope to meet.

"where are you going?" Mock breathlessly asked,

toppling again from his bark-encrusted crutches.

"to have a go at saving our Sleazy.

i can't just leave him in that horrid thing's clutches."

as Nate descended into the gully,

Sappy sat up, and surveyed the scene with wonder.

"i have the impression we've been here before.

something to do with a housekeeping blunder.

why, this is the spot where we salvaged the sack,

with the watchrug and battlerack, remember?"

"me 'ead's in an awful muddle, Sappy.

i've a notion that beastie gave me distemper."

"surely not, silly old bean.  but come sit down.

i want to inspect those clotted bandages."

Mock winced while he warily lowered himself,

casting aside his knotted appendages.

Sappy visibly flinched from what he uncovered,

a ground up mash of puce and livid red;

the missing kneecap, several severed toes,

and the seeping, shredded skin, hanging by a thread.

his fingers were singed by a blistering fever

inflaming the tainted, shivering frame.

he was far from certain he'd ever recover

but harboured no doubts he'd been rendered lame.

"well, what do you think?" Mock placidly inquired,

gazing obscurely into the mire.

"i think i'll gather some fallen kindling.

it's high time we lighted a night-biding fire."

the titanic arachnid was rushing now

no longer constrained by the stealthy attack,

with Sleazy swaddled in a sticky wrapper

enthralled and strung aloft on a pincered rack.

as she hurtled forward on six of her legs

her banged up bounty holding fast in its glue,

Pasty's winged posse launched a frantic relay

scattering feathers but keeping her in view.

Nate's weary muscles were no match for this race

and he lost his footing on wandering roots,

stumbling in a slide of skating pebbles

letting go of the chisel and both tangled boots.

his spirit plunged ahead of his body,

railing at the clumsiness that caused his demise.

next to jettison was trust in himself,

bereft of the caress that lived in Pally's eyes.                                        

it was then that he noticed the strange, stinging nips

plaguing his limbs with myriad pinches,

like sustained bites from relentless insects

concurrently occurring every few inches.

it soon sunk in that he wasn't sinking

but heading instead toward a scrubby scrap of land,

clenched in the claws of Sludge White's familiars

uplifted by the grace of her avian band.

they tucked him in a secluded crevice

overlooking the chasm on a craggy ledge,

in the gnarled branches of a tree that twisted

inquisitive tendrils over the edge.

from there he observed the spider's progress

as his allies commenced an aerial assault,

pelting her eyes with formidable fury

till she sidled inside a shadowy fault.

and a squealing cacophony exploded

from the depths of a rather sizable cave,

to judge by the numberless fleeing bats

that swept from their sanctum in a dizzying wave.

the birds encircled the precarious entry

posting sentries for its keen-eyed tending,

and busied themselves selecting the perches

they'd need for a night spent preening and mending.

Nate's pendulous roost was rattled by a stork

letting slip from its beak a plump, leafy sling.

but finding the feathered folk fetching his boots

he divined they'd taken him under their wing.

he dined al fresco at a portable feast

served a la carte by a delicate sparrow,

as an omen formed in the misty distance

a single crow flying straight as an arrow.

in the regions above the vice-ridden vapors

the sky was suffused with orange and pink.

lament for the sun's repetitive orbit

had kindled the clouds that huddled on the brink.

the forest beneath was brooding in silence

sifting sediments and sighing in the shade,

as though it longed for the cover of sunset

and bided its time for the frail light to fade.

'i should never have trusted that creature.

there's not a sweeter web than spins from honeyed lies.

and what has she done?  how will they know me?

they'll never comprehend this improbable size.

the biclops brutals didn't have them.  that's clear.

ooh!  those tangles of tendrils!  that spongy skin!

plus the sharpened harpies splintered my vision,

so now i'm more helpless than i've ever been.

it's hard to believe they'd snatch my hatchlings.

i'd feel it in my spinnerets if it were true.

spite isn't skulking in their scant, frightened eyes.

this one's deceptive, but hasn't got a clue.

i see no reason to keep it trussed up

for the stink overpowers this miserable hole.

i'd fain unload it, yet still i wonder

if as well as the smell, it's saddled with a soul.'

the sun bled into the sizzling abyss

and celestial lava spilled out of its wake

firing the edges of lavender clouds,

a dazzling illusion of a vast burning lake.

encumbered below in an eddy of eagles,

billowing smudges and dark purple streaks

a bleary-eyed king glowered at the bleakness,

dodging the logic he'd eluded for weeks.

yet a novel notion distracted him

as he glanced from his aerie, adrift in the dusk.

an urgency encroached on his facile thoughts

making them uneasy in their crown-capped husk.

a consequential question had not been resolved

or he'd overlooked some critical thing.

and this feeling unflaggingly nagged him,

forever intruding like the itch from his ring.

these reveries receded with the sunlight

stranding conjecture on an ominous slope.

shadows seeped into regions of reason

ridding dimming prospects of unrequited hope.
***** * ***** * ***** * ***** * *****
- Evan Hawthorn, the 18^th of April, 2016

interlude (an excerpt from my novella-poem "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons")

Sylvana took her leave early that evening

as a blushing sun flooded the earth with rust,

and the frayed shadows of unattained desires

shifted about in the unsettled dust.

they bade their farewells amidst sighing thrushes

in the drift of cooing doves, plaintive and hushed.

yet somehow Sludge White simply failed to fathom

why her heartbeat fluttered and her cheeks felt flushed.

faint stars made their flickering appearance

while a parcel of ponies scampered in a field.

for the very first time in their hemmed in lives

they weren't reined, restrained, or required to yield.

eternal yearning revolved in the sky

as the planets revelled in their ponderous dance.

unleashing kindred overridden wishes,

the ponies frolicked in a freewheeling prance.

the stellar procession was elsewhere observed

with the red-rimmed eyes of a crestfallen king,

the reign of His Grace disgraced and encumbered

by a withered conscience and a tarnished ring.

the misery that His Majesty meted

nearly disabled the subjects of his realm.

but alas! they'd likely have fared no better

if another elite was conning the helm.

in the days since his daughter's disappearance

he'd held his disquieting notions at bay,

slantedly glancing through his latticed windows

raptly surveying the swirling birds of prey.

but when night descended his hard heart darkened

and he hearkened to the summons of his youth,

to the time his indifference hadn't seasoned

and his reason still sought resonance in truth.

***** * *** * ***** * *** * *****

- Evan Hawthorn, the 17^th of April, 2016

the first stanzas of my novella-poem "Sludge White and the Seven Curmudgeons"

while waiting on the queen of need to muster her forces for her final assault on my beloved Curmudgeons, my muse spent a good part of the week resting up, and i revisited the first pages of my story, which had gotten scant attention in the two years since i wrote them, having at the time no idea of what i'd embarked upon.  here then, are the first, freshly spruced stanzas, seeing my amply-hearted heroine safely through her first night in the forest.

*** * *** * *** * *** * *** * ***

a tale is told of an unresponsive king

of the sort often surfacing in fiction,

whose second wife was a vain and haughty thing

much given to concocting contradiction.

now he wasn't a benevolent monarch

but proponents of exception seldom are.

as privileged patrons of plutocracy go

his malevolence was rather under par.

his overlooked daughter of an unfulfilled heart

gazing at the world through diffident eyes

wore singular skin of an uncanny hue,

very like mayonnaise just after it dies.

in the dark it emitted an eerie glow

and though genetics might have played a factor,

most likely it came from eating the produce

grown downwind from a nuclear reactor.

it's said her lips were red as royal rubies,

since her overbite was always drawing blood.

and the bloom in her cheeks was likened to a rose

that an early frost has nipped in the bud.

when the powers handed out attributes

the bestowers of beauty must have bypassed her.

for her countenance was compared frequently

with the prospect of impending disaster.

she was prone to pacing the ramparts at night,

a muddied snow pallor lighting up her face;

looming like a phantom or will-o'-the-wisp,

solacing the sadness that haunted the place.

the sentries attended her sweeping glances.

in her glimmer dozing children flouted fear.

she was christened Sludge White by the town criers,

Princess Pasty by those friends that held her dear.

but the queen could not be counted among them

for she was nursing an astonishing spite

and constantly plotted against the princess

in the disconsolate hours of the night.

poor Pasty seemed to stimulate her envy

though why this was the case was hard to answer.

yet the queen had conjured the green-eyed monster

and it swallowed up her soul like a cancer.

her most treasured possession was a mirror

hosting a waggish, irreverent essence,

partial to bouts of ironic reflection,

slinging remarks, and concealing his presence.

obscenely obsessed with smiting competition

she kept him unremittingly on call,

to pry on her peers and relentlessly tell her

that she was rated fairest overall.

as this dull repetition grew wearisome

the mischievous mirror had devised a prank.

and when next his thoughts were sought on the standings

Sludge White was ensconced in preeminent rank.

but this thrust Her Highness into a frenzy

for her hubris could tolerate no equal.

and reviewing her notes on Medea's exploits

she set her sights on mounting a sequel.

when the mirror glimpsed this grisly ambition

his sheen glazed over with a shocked pink regret.

for he was loathe to see harm befall Pasty,

thus augmenting his prodigious karmic debt.

but alas! his fear of rebuke was too great

for recanting the rashly planted rumour.

while the queen showed scanty sense of proportion,

she was entirely bereft of humour.

hence he observed an ambivalent silence

when a woodcutter was summoned to the throne,

and compelled to grovel in the pitiless dust

of jarring remorselessness set in stone.

he appeared not to heed the deep-seated need

to fill such a stark, uninhabited part

that triggered the barter of the woodsman's life

for a casket embellished with Sludge White's heart.

and the carpenter was stricken speechless,

but dared not disobey an overlord's demands.

for cruelty is ever the first resort

in Christendom's clique of self-preserving lands.

so he blindly stumbled into the forest,

a condemned accomplice, untethered from hope

shrinking from the trusting hand of the princess

as though he was shying from the hangman's rope.

  

racking his brain in a bruising torment,

reeling from instructions he couldn't even say

he searched for a miracle to save both their hearts

from this brutal, unendurable day.

it was then that unseen powers stepped in,

altering events in their elemental guise.

for Pasty caught wind of unexpressed death

twisted in the panic that was fleeing his eyes.

the forest hushed, as if gathering breath.

then it raised a lament like a reticent sigh.

and she took to her heels with all of her might,

skimming the surface and appearing to fly.

and the trees clasped branches once she passed them.

and shadows descended to cloak her path from sight.

and the trembling woodsman fell to his knees,

sobbing whilst abandon settled in with the night.

Sludge White touched down in a patch of mushrooms

of psychedelic hue and a staggering size

just as the dusk secured her seclusion,

draping its veil over periwinkle skies.

cedars and willows were rallied around her

in an endless caress of gently linked arms.

and silvery vines dangled sapphire bells,

jingling in the breezes like musical charms.

a medley of mammals soon flocked to her side

bringing comfort to the palisaded keep.

and they mounted a vigil to fend off harm

while serenading crickets lulled her to sleep.

when morning came and streaked the sky with amber

inquisitive nudgings brushed against her cheek.

and she breakfasted on pine nuts and berries

harvested by paws, and carried in a beak.

following a dazzle to a babbling brook

she imbibed its joyful effervescence

enfolding herself in the roots of an oak,

in the shade of its penetrating presence.

insightful impressions welled up to the surface

as she fathomed her lamentable plight,

pondering the queen's fell machinations

and the hazy dynamics of magical flight.

  

that Her Grace's hatred had sprouted arms and legs

was a painful development to face.

yet the singular help from the elements

cast a novel ray of light upon the case.

returning to her father's frosty castle

was without a doubt an injudicious course.

so she opted for staying right where she was,

throwing in her lot with the mystical force.

*** * *** * *** * *** * *** * *** * ***

- Evan Hawthorn, the 16^th of April, 2016