Archive for the ‘Jonathan Wood’ Category
On The Nature of War
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
When the Elephantmen came they brought war on their heels. Their tusks tore through men. They wielded cannons like toys, fired shot that ripped through Kevlar like tissue. They understood guerrilla tactics, their skin color natural camouflage in the urban jungle man had made for himself.
But the Elephantmen were few, and men were many. Through sheer weight of numbers mankind forced a stalemate. Both sides were diminished, bloody, tattered. And so went forth the leaders of each force, the man O’Connell and the Elephantman Atok. They were battle-scarred and proud, walking into no-man’s land in the cold white sun of the day.
Hard-liners on both sides did not want the deal to pass. Hard-liners on both sides sent squads to dispatch the leaders. But the O’Connell and Atok had not attained their positions without merit. Together they fought back, the two acting as one. O’Connell’s machine gun rattling, Atok’s great arm cannon destroying the cover their attackers hid behind. In the blood of their enemies, O’Connell and Atok found what they might otherwise have never located, brotherhood, understanding.
At the ceasefire declaration, Atok told mankind, “You will see that though we can never forget, we can forgive.”
And the Elephantmen did forgive, and they opened their borders, and gave beleagured mankind all the aid they could muster. They turned their great strength from destruction to building.
However, Atok saw that his people’s largess was not met in kind. So he went to O’Connell and said, “I believe we are friends, but now it seems our friendship is one-sided. My people will not be exploited once more.” And O’Connell assured him all was well, but time proved his promises empty and once more Atok returned. But where O’Connell may have expected anger he found only sadness, for Atok had forgiven man. And O’Connell knew he held back his hand, and the sadness in Atok’s stance only angered him.
O’Connell sent trucks into the Elephantmen camps. They promised aid, but held only men with guns, only death. And the men burst from the trucks, and they caught their ally unaware, and they killed, and they slaughtered, and they butchered. And man stood victorious in a war one side had not known it still fought. For O’Connell had not forgiven, and instead had lived in fear of the day he might forget to hate.
The Demonologist’s Love Song
Friday, February 27th, 2009
The blood spills across the floor. Butcher-bought, it smells of the slaughterhouse, the pheromones of animal fear. I sketch the pentagram, light the candles. In the center I place the small vellum package. Stitched shut with the veins of things long gone. I whisper the words. And she comes.
She uncoils from blood. She–the color of porcelain and teeth gone sour on the taste of worship staled. Blood long dried and flaking. She uncoils, spreading herself, unfolding bones intestine strung. Flesh for blind eyes.
She was loved once. She was worshiped. They sacrificed to her. Young things. Loved things. Needed things. Such was their love for her it overcame familial ties, overcame the essentials of life. She was essential, her favor, her desire, her love. Oh how they contorted for her.
She uncoils me, undoes me. My soul is a blood-sodden homage to her formless stench of brothels and bloodbaths.
And then, like every lover, she was one day jilted. A new love came and she was cast aside. No longer was she brought gifts, signs of tenderness, twitching warm things. No longer was the dance blood-stained and wild for her pleasure. And she grew angry, and her former lovers grew afraid, and she was locked away,
She uncoils and stitches burst, things sewn to be sealed evermore, undone in this moment of sacrilege and sanctity
Slither, my love. Become. Undo yourself, and reknit fever dreams and sex stains into your multiplying skins–tattooed and beautiful.
Rising, rising,
coming
up
to me out of
pentagrams and-
She uncoils herself, bidden hither from nether. I give to her. Blood, and body, and soul. I give her love, and it wracks my body like a quake. Bone shattering, blood-spilling. And in this moment of broken-finger beckoning she emerges, unfolds, uncoils and gratefully she worships me.