The Compleat 'Thorn Forest' (A Gift for AW)

William Haskins

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..THORN FOREST
.............a poem in thirty parts
written and posted in erratic installments
.......between May 2014 and May 2015
..................................by

.......................William Haskins
...as a gift of gratitude to Absolute Write



I.
Jacob is Not Home

If he could have
he would have
begged his mother
with his newborn
mouth to strangle
him then and there
soft shimmering naked
on her belly
and already old.

This song would then
be short and over
and you would be home
and Jacob would be home.

Jacob is not home.

Instead he drew breath
and suckled and cried
and learned like
any animal learns—
ears nipped and angry

until supplication like
gray waves of time
washed over him
making long his bones
and teeth

and memory.

II. A Boy and His Dog

When he was human
Jacob ran on hind legs
through untended orchards
sick-sweet with rotting fruit

chasing thoughts that cut
before him a path that
never led far enough away
from the house

...... that leaned into
...... the setting sun
...... with the roof
...... that leaked
...... into a bucket at his
...... father's calloused feet.

There he was
a crouching beast
hungry-thin and beaten

most often found beneath
the porch where
one mosquito-bit evening

he uncovered in a
crushed dust-grave
the skull of a dog
bared teeth and bleached

but no skeleton.


III. Family Life

The air hung dead
beneath the boards and
Jacob's sweat dripped
and beaded into mudpie
buttons in the dust.

But the curses
were muffled there
the violence vague
percussion of a
hostile tribe

until that night
in the dying light
the savage shriek
and two sharp pops:

Surely it was
books or knick
knacks knocked
to the floor.

Surely it was
firecrackers
a prank
nothing more.

Surely it was not

a mother dead
by a father's hand
a father's head
by a father's hand

and a boy alone
cleaved to the skull of a dog.

IV. It Could Have Been Moments, or Hours

Sleep blends
into weeping
when it's
...dark outside
...dark inside.

Dirt has a way
of swallowing tears
but fears take root
and wind

into a poison
strangling vine.

V. Protective Custody

P
lucked from his haunches
to the posture of a boy
but still with animal eyes;

past his and hers body bags
Jacob waded paraded through
a flood of flashing lights
and unctuous eyes.

Marked and measured
ledgered like livestock

he brooked the
distant sympathies of

white jackets
and dark suits

badges with numbers
and photos younger

than faces he faced
in places flourescent
and steel

bricked-in
and breathing.

VI. The Interview (or a reasonable facsimile thereof)

Where'd your mama go, boy?
Where's your mama been?

Why you think your daddy
put a bullet through her chin?

Ever see her makin' time
with Bobby Wayne McGinn?

Where'd your mama go, boy?
What's your mama's sin?

What'd your daddy know, boy?
What'd your daddy do?

Why'd he kill your mama but
then not come after you?

Do you think the rumors
about Bobby Wayne were true?

'Cause ain't nobody seen him
since last Saturday at two.

VII. Jacob's Interlude

How many years could
Jacob trace back?
Six, maybe seven;
further than that

were murky half-memories
obscurely drawn,
lurking like shapeless
shadows at dawn.

But in
recollections
.....illuminated

when sweet
simulacra
.....cascaded

Jacob
could almost be
.....persuaded

that he would turn
and she'd be there -

freckled cheeks
and flaxen hair

and somehow she
could spare them both

from the man with
eyes like his own.

VIII. Placed

She called herself Miss Mindy
and spoke too close to Jacob's face.

Her lips the color of turnips
fixed on words that referred to grace.

But Jacob sleeps
behind open eyes
as cold as a cadaver,

while Mindy sighs
through as many lies
as her turnip mouth can slaver.


Thus an orphan was delivered
from a wicked life of sloth
and processed into bondage to
a creature of the cloth.

IX. The Virtues of Work

So preached the preacher:

"Tomorrow is a garden
which must be tended by
a sturdy back
a steady hand
.....and
a sober eye;

that which does not eat shall die.

Fruits of labor are sweetest
and from the dirt they call
the fallen saint
the sinning wench
.....and
the meager thrall;

what does not take root shall fall."

But Jacob,
unshackled as
a tumbleweed,
would not heed
the lesson
and spoke
instead of
drought and
famine and
poison soil
and did not take
to righteous toil.

The preacher did not spare the rod
but Jacob held his tongue,

for it was by the hand of God
that the strap was swung.

X. About Anna

She too is a beast of burden
bound under the preacher's yoke.

Behind the third door
down the hall, she sleeps
beneath a photograph
of some beloved matriarch
long-dead and looming.

He imagines the slumber-swell
of her breasts as she breathes
the breath of the dreamer.

Jacob does not dream.

He draws his blanket,
growing warmer -

Jacob the farmer makes seed.

XI. The Folly of Sloth

As the preacher oppressed
and blistered his back,
so the tormenting sun
vultured his shoulders.

Jacob defied two masters
and from the field
made good his escape
past a bending stream
into crooked trees
with branches ancient
and low

and hid with his sin
in the shadows.

Like his namesake, he
rested his head
on a pillow of stone,
praying himself to sleep,
imploring the Lord
to lower His ladder,
teeming with angels,
that he might ascend
and crest at the feet
of the Father.

He woke instead
to a scorpion
scaling his belly,
tail curled
and dripping,

beneath an empty sky.

XII. The Wretched Sing the Song God Wants to Hear

Was cold
was rain
brought Jacob again

to the door
of the preacher

to trade his hunger
for the lash
and the Word.

But Jacob's was the prayer
of the mockingbird.

XIII. Anna, Adjacent

He was kept away
from her by day
by dirt
by deed
and distance
between house
and field
.....where his mind lay fallow
.....and his heart unhealed.

But by night
in the light
that bathed the preacher
in his babbling madness
a secret language
of glances danced
between them in
the flickering fugue
of prayer and despair.

They fell into each other's arms
before they ever touched.

XIV. With Winter Come The Grippe

Two seasons hence,
from the bed beneath
the load-bearing beam
the preacher cried
like Christ:
I thirst!

It was Anna
who tended him
in the throes
of delirium,

when imaginal
demons swooped
like buzzards
at his fevered brow.

She sang him to sleep;
he called her an angel.

Anna politely disagreed.

XV. Whispered Through a Cracked Oak Door

Run with me, Jacob!

Let us be swallowed
by shadows, entangled
in darkness to writhe

under skies that brandish
the moon like a scythe.

XVI. Into the Small Hours

Guided by that
sliver of moon,

hand in trembling
hand they ran

through frozen
fields and canebrakes

into the
snarling brambles -

whose thorns
like concertina wire
guarded the
forest edge.

Down the ever-
narrowing path,

through the crumbling
brush beneath

naked trees that
clawed the sky

onto the
frigid train tracks -

their breath
like locomotive steam
gilded the
trestle ledge.

XVII. The Transmutation of Jacob

At the far end
of the bridge
breaks a path
that doubles back
beneath the ancient
timber beams,
into a jagged
staircase that
descends the
bayou bank.

It was here
that Anna, so
sure of foot
and wicked,
led him to
the water's edge,
where the thinnest
hint of frost encased
the leaves
the reeds
the weeds.

She made for him a fire
and made him fire beside it, thus:

Jacob the Beast was made Man.

XVIII. What Anna Said in the Afterglow Beneath a Creaking Bridge

As the flames withdrew into embers,
so Anna shrank into Jacob's embrace,
and turning her face to the shadows,
she spoke so as not to be heard:

A foundling ripped
from Providence, I was
passed around
and peddled,
unloved and
unsettled,
desolate,
defiled.

Treachery did
follow me.

Lechery did
hollow me.

But never did it
swallow me -

never did I wallow.

Instead I made myself so small
I stalked the world invisible
and perfectly obscured myself
from even my own eye.


At which she wept in silence
as Jacob salted his lips
at her cheek.

XIX. Jacob's Reply in His Sleeping Love's Ear

From first I held you in my eye,
never have you vanished.

When those monsters
banished you
to this low estate,
closed the gate
behind you
so that pleasure could
not find you,

you cultivated a garden
and plucked me from the earth.

Your blood ran through me,
a compass to true me -

this was the day of my birth.

XX. The Plea With Which He Stirred Her Awake

Run with me, Anna!

Let us go feral
in forests, unconquered
unbridled and wise

beneath trees that shelter
we beasts from His eyes.


XXI. Her Answer, Over Ashes Scattered

Nowhere I've been,
nowhere I am
is free of the
grasp of that
goddamn man
and his god,
shaming and sharing
my sin.

Walk with me
out of the woods, my love—
fall in among the fallen,

into wickedness,
bricked, electric,
forged by the
fallible hand of man,

where night lies dappled
in pools of light

and darkness
crouches in alleys.

This is true creation, love,
the garden we deserve.

XXII. The Journey Out of Forest

Akin to a dream,
Jacob ran after her—
not as prey, but
as one might chase
a firefly, or
pursue a tonic
to soothe the
unmistakable ache
of deepest yearning,
burning cold
in the throat
like winter wind.

First to the house, she said,
to gather their things
and pilfer, perhaps,
some others.

Then the road,
the thumb,
the ride.

To wander is
to wonder, not
to squander,

she said.

XXIII. A Man Must Rise Before the Sun

The preacher from his fever rose,
less than Lazarus,
but close,

cracked tongue clicking in
the roof of his mouth
as he called for

the wench
and the dullard.

But the floor
don't creak
and the walls
don't shiver

and even a man
with hell
in his head
can cipher:

if two are gone,
the gone are one.


He gripped his cane
he brewed his blood
he clacked:

"Lord make me the
vessel of Thy wrath."

XXIV. Beware the Hour of Long Shadows

Through thorn and field
Anna and Jacob race
against the break of day,

risking it all
for one small
final larceny
to set them on
their way

by way
of one small
final visit
to their prison
and their misery

(she knows where the
cash will be and he
will nick provisions).

Softly fall their footsteps
and shallow is their breath.

XXV. Commence the Caper

Once inside,
their whispers
hiss and glide
like serpents
slithering

across cold
hardwood floors,
peeling open doors,
slinking through a
chest of drawers,

an enterprise
best shrouded in
the lesser eye
of night.

But daylight's
come a-callin',
Jacob,

crawling up
the hillside.

XXVI. The Curtain from Top to Bottom Torn

"Whore!"

The preacher
madly spat his
rattling phlegm and
bile

in the face
of his qedesha
turned dissolute and
vile.

But was that smile
that insolent,
impudent hint of
guile,

those knowing, profane
curls in the corners
of lips too red
for morning—

that urged the
back of his hand
to strike it forever
from her face.

She withered and delighted
in the taste of her own blood.

"Dog!"

The preacher's
fury drove the
whistling hickory
cane

at the skull
that quartered carnal
lust and vexed a mongrel
brain.

But was his pain
those helpless,
yelping cries in
vain,

those craven, faithless
scurrilous pleas
of curs not fit
for breeding—

that spurred the
punishing crack
of cartilage splitting
under flesh.

He cowered and he suffered
in atonement for his sin.

But then, Anna

.....bracing herself on a table,
.....landed her hand on a pair of scissors
.....and, setting upon the preacher,
.....plunged them true into his temple
.....and, with sacred satisfaction,
.....dispatched him to his maker.

XXVII. He Bled for What Felt Like Forever

Jacob does not pray
but studies
the preacher's
vacant gaze,
fixed in a
mix of fear
and sickness,
framed by
trickling,
thickening blood.

Anna resumes,
moves room
to room, collects
a gold watch,
a bit of cash,
the very necklace
that from the neck
dangles in the
portrait of the
woman that hangs
on her wall;
this is her haul.

She whispers,
"We should go."
Jacob says no.

He pulls from
the preacher's skull
the scissors,
wipes away the
invisible traces
of Anna's
desperate sin

and presses instead
his own.

He says, "You'll have to go alone."

XXVIII. A Scene of Singular Despair

INT. AN ANCIENT FARMHOUSE - MORNING

Two children of God stand broken over
a holy man's pallid corpse.


..........................ANNA
What monster more deserves to rot
while vermin pick his bones
and drag his carcass to the creek
to splay on jagged stones?

What martyrs more deserve to run
a wild and unbound path
than we who suffered for so long
the venom of his wrath?

Jacob searches her cheek with his hand
gently for a tear.


..........................JACOB
No distance will be far enough
away to shed your shame
with judgment stalking every step
and whispering your name.

The tyrant's poison blood must show
as stains upon my hands,
that you may chase your reckless lust
into the wicked lands.

Now it is her pleading tears that find
his trembling hand.

..........................
..........................ANNA
I took his life that you could live
not trade your life for mine!
We'll disappear and brook no fear
of mortal nor divine!

..........................JACOB
I'll give my neck into the noose
and with my last breath pray
that as you slipped out of the house
God looked the other way.

Jacob opens the door and on both sin
and sinner turns his back.


..........................ANNA
And when they ask you why you've done
this thing you have not done?

..........................JACOB
I'll look them in the eye and say
I am my father's son.

Anna steps through the doorway. A solitary leaf
curls on the breeze at her feet.


XXIX. The Lamentation

He blinked into the sun
as the horizon swallowed her.

Perhaps he could have followed her,
let the rapture blind him,
pray they'd never find him;
....instead he wept
....and turned away
and shut the door behind him. Then

into the preacher's stiffening grip,
he slipped The Book.

Anguish settled over his head
like a veil. He fell
into tormented sleep,
dread-dreams creeping round
torchlit corners to invade
his waking mind.

And so he lay
for a day,
a night,
another day,
.....and prayed
.....and raged
against a god
who refused to take his call.

In the end, was the sheriff
took his call.

By and by, the sirens,
the martial thump of boot heels,
the ritual of justice
righteously inflicted,
kicked into his skull.

Dully did he crumble
to submission and obey
his master's cold commands:
.....Kneel.
.....Lie down.
.....Heel.

Thus was he bled,
vanquished and tamed
and led into
captivity.


XXIX. So What, Then? (An Epilogue of Sorts)

It is human,
at the very least,
to pity the beast
chained, contained
by circumstance and steel—
..........a vantage
..........best managed
..........by imagining
..........a view exists
..........from the
..........outside in.

So what, then?
A life staggers to its sorry end.

Orphaned by
the father’s hand,
the son himself
now stands
accused,
confused,
abused
alone,

a stack
of letters
perfumed,
unopened
and growing.

So what, then?
A world crooked on its axis spins.

While Anna roams the land of Nod,
a preacher sleeps beneath the sod,
no one’s seen nor heard from God,
and Jacob is not home.

So be it.
(Amen)




..................-The End -






Image: "Two People. The Lonely Ones." by Edvard Munch.

Original introductory note from May 23, 2014:


all,

originally, some of the following poems individually were being cross-posted in poetry critique, which is password-protected in the interests of poets seeking to polish work for publication.

while this allowed me a valued venue for getting feedback from other poets (often useful and enlightening), i am not seeking publication and thus have no need for password-protection. i just want them to be read by poets and non-poets alike.

for years now, AW has been a welcoming and welcome home for my poetry, something i very much appreciate.

so it is my hope that the mods will allow me to post these here, where they are accessible without the additional log-in to the critique sub-forum (which people really should do anyway, by the way; you would be surprised at some of the treasures there, but alas human nature being what it is and the perception of poetry being what it is, it just isn't going to happen on any large scale.)

anyway, if it is allowed to stay, i appreciate it greatly. if not, no hard feelings.

-william



_________________________
 
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Perks

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I hope this gets to stay here. It's wonderful. I mean, awful, but wonderful. You know what I mean.
 

Ambrosia

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William, this is superb work.

If my vote counts for anything, I also hope it gets to stay. It is generous of you to share this work with the world. Thank you.
 

Sarita

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Been waiting patiently for parts 4 and 5. Now that I have them, I want 6-10.

My mother told me of a time when she witnessed a murder, she was 7. I can almost hear her describing the days and moments in Part IV. It feels so tangible, so terrible. But the line that strikes me most of all is "When he was human". A thousand pictures in those words.
 

poetinahat

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Jesus Christ.
 

Perks

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One of my favorite things about this series is how each part is very different in specific structure and cadence, but they all go together so beautifully, I mean horribly.

This is wonderful and terrible. And I want to know what happens, but for two reasons, I don't want it to two be over. I'm peeking through my fingers.
 

zarada

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stunning and heart-wrenching. the meter change in Part 6 suits perfectly. look forward to more, thanks for posting.
 

William Haskins

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by the way, thank you all for your comments of support.

this is an odd process for me, so i really appreciate it.
 

poetinahat

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I'm fascinated by the way you switch between iambic meter with less structured line to convey different voices. It's very effective, and an exceedingly clever idea.

And the last four lines of IX typify the beautiful terror of this saga: an object lesson in how poetry differs from prose.
 

Magdalen

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Groovin n diggin this with great terror, joy & other strange emotions. Really appreciate the on-going process, so thank you!!!
 

Sarita

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So much emotion in such concise delivery of words. Please don't stop.
 
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Cranky

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This is heart-wrenching and horrible and wonderful all at once. I don't know how I've missed it, since it's NOT password protected. Thank you for sharing...and now that I got to gobble the first parts all at once, I'll have to be patient and wait for the rest.
 

Stew21

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This is incredible work. Not only emotionally touching, but crisp, real, captivating, and suspenseful. And still that says nothing of the precision of the words, the crafting of them. The form and the function hand in hand is something i always associate with your poetry. This work showcases that beautifully. I am so pleased you are sharing it with us.

You are a real treasure, William; we are so lucky to have you here with us.

Thanks for this.