The Seven Days of Wander

the cause, that is the criminal journeys to punishment in his theft, the guard to follow in his desire for a sword.Neither are eternal, both released when the husk is shrivelled and bled to a dry pale of bleached chafe. When lips are frail, too thin for doing horn. But their directions of will distinguish their small candles.

  In a world stoned in slime, oozing of forgotten, the scurries of remorse unnoticed, these criminals do not forget. There is no repent, no death of spirit. The eyes never case their peck at the chinks and splits of a body enslavement. The spirit remains its fist of innocence, yes, innocent even onto the err, the fool take of the man. For the punishment, the justice is only something of men, it has little to do with the spirit.

  For the spirit does not conceive failure, only attempt. It does not know surrender, only struggle. It does not know justice, only succeed. The spirit can accept a fall, cannot deny death in the wrong change, the wrong step on a mountain cling but it is abhorrent to men causing that death, causing that fall, holding that delay as retribution for a faltered or misjudged step.

  The spirit of a man speaks no language of condemn; that is the howl of men, the rumble of dirt in a plunge of the masses turning back.

  But the palace guard, the directed warrior; the marched soldier is not the same.

  This bodily courage is no match, it is a shield before all accusation. Any who look upon them are shamed to speak idle, for who dare speak ill of the dead? And dead, they have given already their bodies to the ready teeth of war. Being of bodily discard, courage is never left hesitant at the battle's front for all those warriors are now dead, only that each battle's end gives a new life, a new birth just as a man, any man, should envision dawn.

  Is this not a more noble art than the wretched chain of crime and hide? That one man's spirit lingers long before years of stone block yet does not the guard's soar in the flight of seconds before arrows?

  Alas, my king, it is a lie, or at least a dream and a philosophers's courage to say thus. Or at least the feeble

  tone of a beggar's tongue.

  For did we not say before that what was of bodily harm is not that of spirit's harm? Then what is of bodily courage is not that of spirit's courage!

  Seldom will one see a spirituous coward but the cause must be known more than its effect. Spirit will yield courage but courage of the body is not the sole effect. Nor is it the cause of spirit.

  The well trained vicious dog is courageous but there is nothing of the spirit of man in it. Neither is it truly the spirit of men or of kings. It is the spirit of death, in its rejection of life. It fights to the death, not to life. Look upon it. Is it not an idle unthinking beast between kills. Does it not lie or sit or stand all in a slump of worldly discard or in rigours between the doors of life and death. Death must first click its bony digits on them only then, does the dogged spirit snap to attention, its ears long to the further lunge.

  Thus our path has tripped upon a paradox: that spirit is of life as the fullness of a man and a man is only full when saturated with a living spirit.

  Spirit, man and life become the three pegged stool to bear upright. Man with life yet no spirit is a topping thing. Man and spirit without life is death, a journey of other worlds.

  And spirit with life cannot be without man.

  For this we stand a palace guard of lower place than the caged criminal. For the prisoner has not lost his expectation of life; has not lost his vision of unwalled journeys, unhaltered by rigid wills. He dreams freedom in life, the guard only worships release

  through death.

  From cage to barrack to poverty to slave, spirit dies under the gravestone thrown upon a resurrection of corpse. These stones the will or wills of others who wish no marring of the dark gleem of their evil even if it be light flickering from the red coal eyes of their torn victims.

  King Hindus: No, my beggar cup, you are prophet of day but blanket the night in your hope. You deny a king's need, the hubs crown. For you look upon the wretched and spin a fine tale of who has done this to them! Like all dusty seers you must sing 'shame' for your deaden lips to crack into living wing.

  If as you say man is but a curled ball weighted with an air of hinder about his folded ears, why then does he not stand?

  Why are the wretched starved if hands can grasp the much of the less?

  Why are the prisons held full with so little terror?

  Why are the palace swords held bloodless before the king's bounty, the king's harem? Why does a stool hold and not kick?

  The why is answered amongst men. That all men have a place in their nightmare of half sleep you pretend is a dream of giants.

  Dreamer, ragged and tossed in your lie of wishes, call it what you will but this eternal night men are thrust to is not a point of argument.

  Beggar, in your dreams and much would a Beggar dream I would think, whether ecstasy of king's delight or the terrored sweat of wolves' prey, you cannot cease the dreams and demand another. No one steps to his dream as if a judicial conscious and demands a more pleasant fair.

  So in life, men lay, stand, fall, lie side by side in half numb stupor being their dreams; or flailing their terror. That I am sweetly calm to the vision of king and you are jerking to the hunger of a beggarly phantom,

  we cannot blame the dreamers but rather the night of living existence.

  Men proportioned to the night as blades of grass to the black goat, the bell of destiny loose on its neck.

  I would not curse you if you dreamed of a king's pleasure in your sleep; neither can I be blamed that you sleep a beggar's twitch in your life.

  Beggar: In a sense, Great King, this dream of life is true. For a lack of fullness, a drench of spirit has truth in yes left closed. For it was seen that when the crime of spirit had drenched others, the others were tricked or cajoled or driven by nightly scratchings to crowd the outer hole of the crime's spirit.

  But surely memory can linger warm like coals.

  Gathered below damp ash. The corpse is washed but not yet dead. Arms are limp not stiffened. The eyes, your highness, there must be fire behind the lids that curtain their scent from the wolfish one.

  This below for fullness, what holds it? What constriction of throat gags a man's resurgence of single clarion?

  There are things outside him, we have dragged them enough. And yes, your highness, your king's height gives a mount of judgement. You see many who could but won't.

  For the prisoner can be full in cage, the guard high spirited under oppressive command, the poor a man, though hungry as men and the slave, a lion masquerading in the wool of servitude.But caution, my King, for we must remember a new truth their status has wrought: None will now be resigned to their fate! Why? Because their spirit comes from the will to challenge their fate. Before fate, a man of spirit has will and challenge as inseparable limbs.

  So why such unspirited many to unchallenge their fate? What would a blind man fear to open his eyes? What would a cold man tremble to strike a new flame?

  Fear and responsibility. For the wretch who would yet restrike his flame, see the sputtering endeavour and then begin lick their way home, its own heated hands rebirth and caress his tilted brow, touch his lips blued with night's pinch. The man rises, parallel to his own spirit gathering height, intimate to its full embrace of orange yellow heat. The dance in revolve of a great moth before the petals of flame.

  But what else flocks to this torch? Others, still darkened, of his kind. The brothers, the sisters on the vast bed of embraced trembling, they gather to the scent of innocence's flare. Wide eyed they look to this courage of strike which they had not dared. To ears finally opening from a closure to howls, the whispers of hops, of 'he is the one to lead, to help' come crashing down upon the first like an enormous destiny uprooted.

  At that one of the first, first spark, first flame, first torch kindling the oil black sky in a burst of new religions, he has not years, or days, or minutes. He has only seconds.

  Seconds to pass the spark, teac
h the parables of strike, spread the molten desire formed solid in trebling cups. For the mass of blind engulf will snuff his flame as surely as drenching evils. This is no army of terrorized bees but rather the descend of starve drones; driven in lust for the altar of their existence; they come worship the religion of their being; its multitudes enlightened by their prophet. Around this new Queen of the nigh's catacombs, they will breed a race overflowed in honey and spice.

  But their swamp will tilt the fire to spill helpless, their wings singed with flood the flame's breath with grey ash. And first spark die fruitless in a close of womb.

  In this bears the responsibility, the task of the first herald of light. As his blind neighbours trample to his fire in the barks and bellows and squeals of forgotten pigs rescued to a trough, he must fight for his life as assuredly as he gambles for theirs.

  Reaching of bared hand into the searing lick of coals, he must grasp a handful of the living rubys.

  Then he must snatch the first throat that bellows wide upon him and with his blistering stench of brand pour the coals down his throat. This he is compelled to do over and over till either his hand is of useless char or the danger is thinned in that many fires of spirit glow around the plain.

  Oh that some will die is true. In the convulse and squirm of this godly bite! With the snakes and bile and loathsome things erupting from their unpure smoulders of carcass.

  But many