Good One, robot.

Setting: Classic fantasy setting with a logical framework. It’s a detailed textured land where fantasy tropes make a kind of sense and isn’t just some stuff thrown together for flavor. The setting needs to be weighty. It needs to feel real. It needs to be a situation where it needs to have some semblance of history; Not all reflective but definitely allegorical. It needs to feel like a place. The way Gotham feels like a place. The way Westeros feels like a place.

So where do I star? Let’s start with the beginning.


The World
Iyr is the third planet in the solar system, orbiting a mid-sized yellow star named Moonson. It is orbited by one one-half moons, Salitte and Loun. It is nearest celestial neighbor is Orbatian. It is composed mostly of iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminium (1.4%); with the remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other elements. Due to mass segregation, the core region is believed to be primarily composed of iron (88.8%), with smaller amounts of nickel (5.8%), sulfur (4.5%), and less than 1% trace elements.

About 70.8% of the surface is covered by water, with much of the continental shelf below sea level. The submerged surface has mountainous features, including a globe-spanning mid-ocean ridge system, as well as undersea volcanoes, oceanic trenches, submarine canyons, oceanic plateaus and abyssal plains. The remaining 29.2% not covered by water consists of mountains, deserts, plains, plateaus, and other geomorphologies.

There are three central continents ranging east to west: Roole, Kanth and Pai’Mekan. The three continents are divided into a range of diverse climates, topographys and indenious plants and animals of all shapes and sizes.

The Four Kingdoms take place in the eastern continent of Roole on the southeast portion of the northern hemisphere, past the World’s End Mountain range.


The Land
The continent of Roole is found in the eastern hermisphere, running north toward the North Pole and southeast past the equator. Roole is a continent marked by different topographies, climates and peoples-- ranging from the frosted tundra of the Frostcaps to the arid desert of Shambole.

The Four Kingdoms are found in the southeastern portion of the continent, separated by the rest of the landmass by a great chain of mountain known as the World’s End.

The southwestern portion of the kingdom is covered by a lush forest connected by inland rivers and swamplands down to the equator. The rainy low-lands attaching the forest to a land-bridge is uncharted and unknown

The East and South are home to rolling hills and fertile planes that are crossed by two large rivers, the Euclid and the Frond (The Westgate and the Donorans Vein in middlespeak)

The northeast is home to craggy rough terrain beneath the shadow of the Hood mountains. These stone plateaus, knotted hills and towering landscapes are known as the Raidlands.

Beyond the shores of the southeastern coasts are a cluster of islands collectively known as the Dragon's Bones. To the north are the islands of the Frostfathers and the Sitter. The forbidden land of Kanth sits across the great Marinius Oceans, as of yet undiscovered.

I Came To Hold You

This is an unfinished story. I think I threw out the books for this that hand the ending, but I can pretty much tell you that it involves the reveal that he's a stalker. Enjoy:



He presses his hand against the frame of the door and gently guides it shut. It makes a satisfying click as it closes and when the deadbolt’s affixed he hardly makes a sound. He is an expert of so many nights in the dark. He knows just how to move across the living room into the bedroom, silent like a shadow crossing the floor.

He takes his shoes off next, leaving them behind the door. He knows where everything is even in the pitch blackness. He travels his path, the sounds of her breathing waltzing out of the bedroom. Merrily, he marches in time with the rhythm of her dreams, in thorough the mouth and out through the nose.

She worked hard and sleeps heavy now. A retail job takes her morning. A security job cannibalizes her afternoons. Her evenings are given over to short hours of serene unconsciousness in a tiny boxy room.

It’s this peace he fears to disturb, so slowly he moves, slowly he walks, and slowly he slips noiselessly into her bed.

He doesn’t need to undress, a rare talent of his being able to find comfort anyway and anywhere. In this bed there are two goose-downs pillows, twins without symmetry. The right side pillow is pristine, all smooth lines and placid coolness. The left most, her side, is angry and bunched, jagged lines punched into oblivion, molded to the shape of her in profile. It is “her” pillow. Capital H.E.R. The way that the splotches on her nose are “her freckles” or the brand of citrus she shampoos with smells like “her hair”.

God, his pillow is cold. It is like an ice bath against his cheek. His neck cranes down. He slips his shoulder under the edges and props the pillow under the back of his chin, holding it between his shoulder and crook of the neck. He gets settles in, sinking into a groove above the sheets. He corresponds to her shape, fitting himself like an adjunct piece of a puzzle board. Their forms become whole before his arms around her. He closes his eyes and feels her breath under him.

Wreath

Joan

And as I take my first step
Launch myself across the parapet
Take sword in hand and fill my bones
With a cry that turns my hand to stone
Where now I go to meet her
And though I long to lay her low
A part of me whispers...no.

Later I awake from the dark
She is pleading like a supplicant
Begging me to give my sins
And thanks me for my diligence
So that I may now find piece
As I cross beyond this veil
I have never known such love in life
But I now know it, here in hell.

Owl Head

The Lump In My Throat

Small and round
About the size of a lozenge
Shaped well to fill

A ball of muscle
Surprisingly firms
Tampers down

Your scent triggers
And when you make eyes
I am stopped

By you, and your mouth
And your lips
And your smile.

All You Rounders Take A Whiff On Me

Conversations Had Between Songs

(At A Wilco Concert, 2004)

And I say
"Where from?"
And I hear you say
"Heaven"
And I say
"Sounds nice. What like?"
and a cymbal crashes
I think you say over (the general noise of the crowd)
"It's okay."
And I reply
"That cool"
And you look at me
Or maybe past me
and the bassists tunes a string
And I go
"Want you drink?"
But Jeff Tweedy starts counting off


And plays I Am Trying to Break You Heart

Smoked Meats and Fishes

Piecegoods For a Man Named Epstein 

I Make
Coats, Hats, Scarves
Aprons, Dresses, Garments
Slacks, Frocks, Socks
Undergarments and Petticoat
For all seasons
and all sizes

I use
The Finest Woolite
The Smoothest Silks
The Thinnest Lace
The Thickest Codoroys
The Most Breathable Cotton
And my stitching is just Divine

Come see my Wares
At my New Store
On the Garment District
Behind the delicatessen

Okinawa Dream

Two poems for the price of one!

Sleep in Motion
(or I occasionally fall asleep on the train from time to time)

Sleep in motion
Dream in movements
I fade into the car
Steam filling my lungs

To close my eyes
Wake closer to
And farther from my destination
A straight line where to where time suspends

Swept away imagines
Under the tunnels
Inside the ventricles of my dear city
Steady on to home

A voice says
This is...and says the stations name
Always a platform away
At the purposed hour

***

You Have To Read This To Susie

In math I stare at
The back of your head
Waiting for a glimpse of your face
in profile

I think of you

And when we share a desk
In Home Ec.
Your knee bumps into mine
I shutter

How can I tell you this?

True, I am awkward
Not like the other boys who
Are much better at
Swim class

I know I don't talk much, I am
Scared of my own high mousey
Voice, I clam up when you're
Around

I hope you can forgive this

Were I to write this down on a
Piece of scrap paper using
Words I think I know
Will you be impressed?

Or will you just look at me like a
Man looks at a confused
Dog who has spent the day barking at
Himself in the mirror

Recess is starting soon. I'll see you then.