Bathsheba – a poetry preview

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Greetings.

Today I am bringing to you a piece which some of the readers from my previous blog may recall. It is only a little piece of the first part, edited slightly for grammar and presentation. The work is 23 parts long so far, written in August of 2013, telling the story of a lone warrioress in the desert. It is called Bathsheba – Queen of the Desert.

It is a strange style, kind of alternate rhyming couplets, nothing formal, little of my work ever is, but it remains an interesting record of a narrative poem series from myself as a different man to who I am now, who I have become. I have changed much in the past 7 months and I turn to Bathsheba with a different mind, a new perspective. I am planning to edit the whole of this narrative poem series and publish it as an ebook

I hope that you enjoy this small preview.

Raviera.

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Goldset in late summer

As the desert guitar calls over

The dunes woven by winds

Caressing baked sands.

*

A masked wanderer makes tread

With rough shod feet,

Crests a dune without dread,

Though not as others before her felt.

*

Sunshine coming down,

Falling all around

And its weight is a tome unbound.

*

Weary with the long trek directionless,

The wanderer saw the board,

A long while ago in time fathomless

And has set out with at her back a sword.

*

Her hips bear a revolver each,

Solid grips of dark crystal rock,

Weapons of her far reach

While the blade is her close lock.

*

If she finds the one she would beseech

Before the desert clock

Ticks night-time over the breach

Then she is sure that no others do there flock.

*

Face a masked thing,

Hair all silver under a hood

Atop the cream colour robes bringing

A lighter top to the light flood.

*

Heat, heat, heat all around,

And nary a less inviting sight

Is there to be found

Than the crows in flight.

Insect Uprising – a poetic excerpt

This is a world where insects seek

To overthrow their Queen,

*
Millions in the hundreds

Of years have made fuel

That we burn, the dead

Bones of lost creatures,

Fossilised and Petrified

To make our world of smog.

*
Hundreds of millions of years

Have made fuel for a few

Hundred, single digit billions

Of people swarms roaming, eating.

*

We have smoked toads without thought

Of the sins accrued by waste,

Those bright shades swallowed

By the concrete Molochian philosophy…

The Chairmaker’s Soul – part 2

A Red the lurid shade of rotten roses dyes

Bloody the sun’s sinking skies above wind swept dock streets,

Dreaming lazedly about curious shoppes along lanes twistingly followed,

And what rode in on strange winds brought from sleepy seas.
Amongst their draughty alleys he made

Enquiries of all craft purveyors wizened

Or young, with their secret sigils

Or those particular altar finneals.
No joy there among those odd stores

Of needful things and biscuits buttered,

By knives far sharper than want sheepish spirits

Of mortality, grown and mortally breeding.

Death of a Star – a novel excerpt

Greetings from the aether.

(yes, I have a picture at last :p)

To go with the more regular posting I want to endeavour to post more of my prose work. The item below was written all the way back in May of this year. Much has happened in the novel since that time however there is far more to go!!

In the extract we see a new character, soon to be central to the plot, be transformed and not necessarily by choice. Later in the novel it will be a part of the sobriquets that the lead characters are often known by: Star Eaters.

Enjoy.

Please provide feedback if you have any thoughts! 😀

*

Diablo Ex Machina

Part 4 – Playtime

Chapter 75 – Death of a Star

…Blood and power both, feeding him, nourishing the empty hole where he had once held a reservoir for food and drink. It filled to maximal capacity and then kept increasing. More, more, more, more….MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE.

It was too much. Raviz looked out of his hellish isolation within the burgeoning apotheosis that he was fearing would cast him astray from the dimensions of logical space. He met Lordan’s eyes again, saw his ragged jaw and sharp, animal teeth forming a litany of unholy smooth noises that washed over him. He bent over, groaning, tried to close his eyes.

It made no difference.

There was no salvation in the void behind his eyelids, the fear kept on building, building, fears upon fears upon fears, and the star pulsed on. He thought that he could hear it, the forces at work within the giant ball of hydrogen tearing, the flow of particles splitting from their normal process of activity, that penumbra so huge that it was eclipsing all he could take in with his eyes. The corona was lost to that black, that surrounding darkness having grown till it had become the world, everything he knew, the colour of fear and how often our fears are realised, becoming true in silence and screaming together, the juxtaposition of horrors come true in the melting pots of our minds.

Orange, flaring madly, poured from the star in huge gouts that could have swallowed entire planets in illogical jets, ruptures that were sending magnetic energy and radiation far out from the star system. The star was dying, and its system of 4 worlds would die with it. The nova which would result from this sorcery would be contained, channelled, fed into Raviziel.

He started to scream then, feeling as if he couldn’t take anymore, knowing that he couldn’t. Raviziel reached out a hand palsied by uncontrollable tremors to the robot as he waved his staff, was ignored. Lordan whirled the staff like a devilish conductor of some ungodly orchestra.

When he felt his shoulder blades break the skin and muscles on his back Raviziel’s brain broke.

At last he passed into unconsciousness from the world as he had known it…

*

Peace y’all.

Raviera.

An Agent of Fear – excerpt

Following is an excerpt from the novel I am working on, Diablo Ex Machina.

It has a modular style, each part being wholly different from that which went before, allowing me to work on and explore a variety of styles covering hundreds of years.

Yesterday, after speaking with a lady at work, I had confirmation that the title I had chosen does, in fact, mean Devil Machine in Latin. Having this information from someone who actually studied the dead language helps a great deal, given that I was guessing.

I hope that you enjoy.

Any feedback/criticisms etc are welcome.

Raviera.

 

Diablo Ex Machina

Part 4 – Playtime

Chapter 74 – An Agent of Fear

 

“By saying yes to the sorcerer Raviziel had not gained any perspective.

Instead he had lost it and his life back on Naples seemed very, very far away. Family, friends, the warriors with whom he’d served under Marco Galiente, were they all lost to him now?

He dared to think that they were, although hope wanted to spring up in his panicked heart. Hope? What hope? Suppressed horror was fighting to rise up and into the cold of space where he floated, cross legged and trying to maintain a composure that he did not feel.

Promises, platitudes, telling his woman that he loved her, the swell of a breeze through the trees of his home, the glitter of swords on the practice field overlooked by his former master… All gone. What did they mean since he’d sworn his allegiance to the robot? Nothing, in fact. Nothing at all. Hell, he’d suspected that Viarana had been seeing someone else anyway. Better that he get away, especially after the bloody death of Marco Galiente. He wondered at the magic which had been used to kill the man he’d served for over 7 years, since a young adult of 24 years. Lordan had not appeared to be casting his spell with any vindictive purpose, indeed had said that he did not have time to tarry further. The result? A swollen and bloody head on the floor of the court hall where Galiente had carried out his council meetings…

The panic was back and it brooked none of his madly scrambling attempts to quieten it. He began to squirm, to thrash, shadows of himself dancing on the hull of the beweaponed frigate some distance behind him from the light source of the orange star. He tried to swim, could not tell if he was making any distance at all. There was only one direction to go in and so he made for the ship, hoping against hope that he could make it before his air ran out…

Fear was the reigning emotion of the hour and it rang up along all the vertebrae of his spine, running sharp nails up his back…

A wet crunching sound drew his attention sharply behind. He tried to turn as if he were in water, failed, started thrashing and screaming.

“What are you doing, man?” Lordan asked, grasping his wrist and pulling him around. Raviziel’s heaving face stared incredulously at him, the robot without his beastly ice mask and munching upon a bright green apple.

“What do you mean??” Raviziel barked. “You ask me if I like your bird’s wings, I say yes, and you leave me! I come to here, no sense of time passing, and is it any wonder that I’m freaking the hell out?!??!?!?”

Lordan stood on nothing, not hovering but just still, ankles crossed as if he were atop some high and tiny pillar, a dangerous balancing act. The bites he was taking from the apple looked huge…”