Against Jealousy, Demi-Gods Themselves Have Scant Defense...
Sally and Des spent countless hours
Stretching the limits of their newfound powers.
Des already knew firsthand of the tenfold increase in strength
But wondrous was the speed they traveled super-measurable length.
They fed each other facts about their new selves from short and long distances,
Mostly about their immunity to diseases and other super-human resistances.
Later, they found that assuming animal form was enthrallingly exciting,
But feeding too sparsely dizzied and doubled them over, for life's breath fighting.
For Des and Sally, it's now been a score of years and weeks,
But calendars remain useless for anyone who seeks
Life's spark through the veinspill of a victim of the night.
But alas, Sally was forbidden even a peek at poisonous natural light.
Much worse than Des, Sally found that any ray of light began a bodily decompose.
But slaking the blood red thirst, postponed any onset of the throes.
Sally hid by day and accumulated her appetite for human beasts.
Separated by differing daylight, and brutality, tolerances, Des quit the tandem hunts and feasts.
At the end of those years of partnered hunting, Des, forsaking ages of violence, abandoned Sally to take up a more refined life's aim.
Appreciating her power, and her sense of being scorned, he remotely monitored her newest enlarging thirst, a murderous night quest for dayworld fame.
Sally chose to assume brutal mastery of the weaker mortal world, but Des rather patiently planned to inherit power by virtue of patient, parlayed time.
Their headline gambits blazed across continents. Des from financial stealth, and Sally the route of bloody crime.
It seemed that compounding quickly and nicely routed all poverty's dread.
The trick was to be subtle about where it was kept and to where it progressively spread.
For his daywork, Des found the competent and quiet who worked by the new electronic message.
While Sally puppeteered her daylight thugs to headline patterns of carnage.
Des tried to warn Sally about public cry, but there's no business like show business it seems.
As Sally laid bloody claim to her extorted riches and silver screen dreams.
She scaled corporate ladders of sudden death and major studio horrors.
Sally was a ferocious monster when it came to creating new Hollywood lores.
When necessary, Des'd done some mental manipulations with the easier sorts of men of less merit.
But Sally used her black powers to bludgeon, and then inherit.
Des watched as Sally reaped the wild gains.
By night, she literally ripped uncooperative moguls apart and assumed their corporate reins.
While Des was still self-interested and very content to philosophize,
The world of mortal men went on the edge of imminent nuclear demise.
He couldn't allow them to include himself in a holocaust fray.
Mere mortals would not flush the world against his own powerful say.
He had no choice but to build a counter-political fashion
And deal the warmongers the darkest side of a winged assassin.
While Sally gained her own sort of media stewardship,
And her largesse became the philanthropic entity sought for political party leadership.
Thus it came to pass that Sally's war candidates went against Des',
Squared off in a puppet game--a supremely final game of human chess.
But Sally couldn't resist a nocturnal visit to Des' top candidate.
Which preceded a warning to Des, with the details of his man's death to relate.
Sally told him of his man's terrible death.
Des let it be known that this interference would cost her her own candidate's last breath.
She said, no matter, there were plenty more.
And she'd eventually love to even double, or triple the score.
That meeting for the world's fate was heated and dire.
He scolded her and threatened that she was playing with fire.
Couldn't she understand that any radioactive firestorm would catch both of them, even at the helm?
Des said immortals with their special appetites didn't eat in a holocaust wasted realm.
It took Des little time to conclude that Sally wasn't ever playing so much with them,
As it was his power she tested by advancing mortal pawns for him to condemn.
As the larger drama emerged on which her power play depended,
Des vowed to stop her and, watchfully, to keep the food chain defended.
Due to a conspiracy outbreak, the world came to the brink that day.
It was Des to stop her game, and the world from ending that way.
But when the back rows of their teams met face to face,
Des had kept a few pieces multiply protected, and after some humanly disastrous trades had the game checked in place.
Des shuddered, imagined that perhaps in a hundred more years she'd learn,
To steer that immortal boredom away from the homicidal yearn.
While still enhancing her power,
Sally became enchanted by another test that grew more interesting by the hour.
Sally loved the size of any contest with her Des.
She admired his counter-moves as if in a gameboard finesse.
And felt the bitter feelings intensified by the need for one who understands from the start:
Decades of intimacy grow twining ivy which pulls only painfully apart.
Sally's vow of revenge grew cold in time for humanity's good.
But she was still the gaudy queen of pawns and bishops from where she stood.
While Des retreated from the headlines and political bind,
To revive his internal study of the power of an accomplished, strategic mind.
Sally came to Des one night very late.
She spoke of the new days without the strain of queenly hate.
He basked in her beauty which never needed restoring to mind.
She'd become even more beautiful from a feeding of unknown kind.
They sat on a ledge over the Tower of London curve.
It still was an uneasy meeting for their wary nerve.
Like ex-lovers meeting on a private garden bench--
Looking down on the Thames shimmering like rainbows flowing down a trench.
Sally was resplendent in a gown of lace and wool.
Which gave her look a softened edge despite her powerful pull.
He couldn't, and wouldn't see that part--
As Des was captivated by a force from some remembered depth in his heart.
They spoke of a need
For someone to intercede…
A go-between of mortal servitude…
A gentle soul of peaceful attitude.
Eventually they settled on an old hermit.
The only one to know both of them that they would permit.
The terms of their agreement were for him to arbitrate
That which they couldn't decide by war or debate.
Des would rather the man had been deaf, dumb and blind.
Anything, but mortal and to life inclined.
For fear of death brings out the weakness and betrayal in most any man--
And Sally figured that she'd creatively bend this one to her next plan.
But Des knew this mortal man was a friend of no one, most totally alone.
And occasionally he'd privately publish from his remote castle of stone.
Des had learned of him through rare threads of news from Oriental sources.
This person had been a rich man, but an eccentric turn had taken him from business and put him in touch with paranormal forces.
His name was Lin Doh
And he was still as rich as they go.
Some said wise, too,
Only more said his ravings were mad as any they knew.
Sally and Des resolved to approach Lin Doh that eve…
Des was convinced Sally hadn't started out to deceive
But that practiced guile born of decades took its course,
And Sally came off pure as a spring from a saintly source.
Des and Lin heard her say that she'd turned a new leaf.
That her ambitions to destroy were dead as her own self-godhood belief.
She was beautiful, young as ever, in the candle light framed.
They listened to her tale and all she claimed.
No sooner had Des fell under that masterly woven spell
Than life turned from joyous solitude to another warfare hell.
Sally had rounded up all her forces of sin…
And after much searching, found Lin Doh hanging alive by a rope of his own skin.
Des thought him strangely calm for a man in his condition,
But Lin said he knew Des was coming and preferred him to see this aggravating position.
Des learned that Doh had powers of recuperation that rendered his bloody condition simple to alleviate
As Doh climbed down, and said he'd always known that Sally was a liar and a deviate.
Then he sat Des down, at his age, no less-just man to man,
And told Des of waiting for him to show his hand.
It wasn't easy for Des to believe all his ranting abstraction,
Until he saw Doh's clipping traces of the immortals' global interaction.
Before Des' eyes, his demeanor changed from angry rant
To a parental, almost brotherly cant.
And he changed his flayed condition better than Des' immortal tries…
To a healthy but leathery old man of equal Des' size.
Any and all subtle subterfuge was laid before Des to behold.
His banks and stocks and certificates of gold.
Lin Doh talked of a powerful monster's birth.
Which took Des by surprise; and he admitted it wasn't just a fortune-teller's story.
Doh showed Des what he knew of Sally's immediate dominance,
And then he revealed the forces of his own potential prominence.
He said it was time for partnership and consolidation of faction.
Sally had forces beyond Des' knowledge, and there needed to be a swift counteraction.
Des was astounded at the intricacies of this man's web of influence.
And no less confounded at Doh's disdain for his reserve of affluence.
Doh told Des to plan on centering a wedge of action
To force a diversionary crack in Sally's media attraction.
First action was a small piece of murder in Sally's movie store.
Which brought her spitting and hissing thoughts to fore.
Des and Doh had strategically killed a mortal friend of hers in such a trauma
As to force her to extricate herself from a public courtroom drama.
For Sally was into many dimensional sex and became extremely enraged
When her lover of the moment was beheaded while actively engaged
In a midnight sexual scenario so like Sally, and so extreme,
That it looked as if Sally herself had done the crime supreme.
It was simple for her to make the witnesses disappear,
But the energy used in cursing Des delighted Lin Doh's ear.
He said that next Des himself had to take on the strict point of the lady's ire.
And endure the coming mental bolt of fire.
Doh hopped around the globe leapfrogging from haven to haven,
While Sally trampled lair after lair looking for Des in manner graven.
She wasn't given an opportunity to believe
What Lin Doh had fashioned up his Oriental sleeve.
Sally had always reveled in her own Snow White queenly beauty illusion,
And hadn't thought it expendable in any artificial light profusion.
Des didn't know Lin Doh had fixed just such a snare
In the next place Sally thought to be her antagonist's lair.
Doh had a publicized appearance for Des in Eastern Europe.
He had Des throw a Hollywood type party for a remote location film company called Long Climb Up.
They knew it was a branch of a branch of a holding umbrella of Sally's.
It, however, didn't know that both its owner and host were used to feeding in alleys.
As the crew and stars came to the designated domicile
Lin Doh inserted special swivel kliegs around the grounds and carpeted aisle.
Des greeted all the guests with enthusiastic handshakes proffered,
And warily awaited the trademark, longest limousine any local agency could have offered.
If the vehicle showed, it was Sally's angry last vestige.
And if it didn't show, it was Sally with a different kind of message.
She was smarter than assumed, and Des could go on with a party short one guest.
Choosing only to meet head-on, she'd never bothered to fathom the test.
That true to form, Sally's long limousine arrived, purposefully uninvited.
She emerged in a resplendence that immediately got the whole crowd excited.
As the cameras whirred and clicked,
The signal came from Doh to have the klieg lights kicked.
Sally couldn't resist a very low pendant bow at the photographers' sign.
Then the lights swiveled, aimed and intersected on Sally by Doh's design.
Des had turned away because of a light even he couldn't bear.
Then he heard Sally's screaming build to a superhuman blare.
Then she stared, coldly trapped, angrily looking at Des' back in disbelief.
Sally's eyes melted to maddened begging for darkness' relief
It was only seconds before the shrieking cries turned to mortal groans
From a formal dress hanging from mottled, wrinkled skin and dry, brittle bones
The muted, disbelieving screams of the horrified spectators
Deterred not in the least the aims of the perpetrators.
Sally grabbed a peasant in reflexive moment of dread
And ripped a gaping hole in the woman's neck from which she fed.
Now Des had to watch in concert with the rest
As Sally drank from the woman until she realized the test…
Romania's a place that had witnessed worse,
Not forgetting or shrinking from handling a cult's reborn curse.
Lin Doh intervened with a prearranged rescue before the klaxons of the police sounded.
Which also were only slightly more contrived than the events by which they were surrounded.
But the scheming Doh had his blackmail film footage shot.
In case Sally decided to revive the death-game for an escalated pot.
With a resigned, surrendered and compliant Sally admitting Des had won.
And with its convoluted course successfully run…
Des thanked Lin Doh with an offer of immortality Doh could not condone.
Preferring hermitage for his last days in his Chinese castle of stone.
Des and Sally retired to an existence more refined.
Sally drove him to hunt the night with her, which Des didn't mind.
With Sally close by and mostly in sight,
Des could sense the loss of heat of their struggle's dying light.
When it came to pass that by both Des and Sally, immortality's curse was understood,
They retreated to using their time and fortunes for humane, common good.
Immortal peace could never be given that long-lived a chance--
Forever now, a far subtler collector's contest would be their never-ending dance.
For the actors who stride its range
The world is just too small a stage,
Michael Martin West
March, 1997
Copyright @MMW (no, not the pictures I sampled from
Pandora. Just the words and bkgrd)
Bonus Poem........don't say I don't give
value...
Just because, there's the family that preys together...
Dark city bar cave
I saw them slow motion
Gathering
One,
Two
Three, four, more,
Side glances at us
From the pack--
Tall slender
Pale
Eyes dull fire
Unmistakable
Candlepower in the dimness,
Fresh ancients-to-be,
In clothes of the day
Moving to encircle
Closing
One way out of the
Coming tableau de sangre
I excused and backed away laughing
Out the smallest open restroom window
A man could fit
But had already attracted
The ones who hunted
Steps echoing on alley pavement
Swooshing sounds imagined?
Voices above?
Around?
Twittering squeaks
I imagined what was
Going on back inside there
Tableau, tableau de sangre
For myself
Twinge of escape guilt mixed in the thrill of the fear
Short lived
Purchase of talons, pinpricks
The biting
A dazing, flapping hit directly in the face
Taste of my own
Blood
Feeling very angry
Clinging, fish-hooking talons
Legs feeling warmth of blood dripping punctures
Don't fall
Don't go down
Flesh razors incise
Don't go down
Please, don't make me angry
Light headed
Too light headed for anger
Loss of coordination
Waited too long to turn
Arms heavier by the moment
Pushing and pulling, dimly felt
Being reeled in?
Toward the shadows
Dulled, shaking
Fighting a settling fatigue
It comes to me that civilization
Is nothing more
Than foreplay and killing
before feeding
And the light
That isn't light
Comes
They feed and fall back
Last raging kick
Jerking toss of the heaviness that is my head
The laughing is the worst of
it
God, No!
They're fresh get
I can only watch
As they drag me
Youth, heh, I can't go in two directions at once
Funny
A face turns toward mine
Away from lapping at a puddle of…
Of me
The tiny piranhas glint streetlight off foamy red teeth
And the light in the darkness explodes
Over me
I feel myself lifted as if weightless
Separated from the filthy alley paving
Carried
Bemused
They're taking me home
The drag of it all
What am I Swanson's or refillable Coke…
Neither
I'm a fucking trophy
I'm going home with them
Not a problem
Yes
I'll go with you
Oh, will you let me live
And that bloody laughter
again
Will you
Will you
Yes
Distant thoughts and bemusements
Miles and miles
Continents roll beneath us
Fast motion landmark movie
Us?
Slowing, alighting now
And the castle looms
So tired
Mind wide with the marvel of the ease of their flight
Yet, not tired to death
Anymore
OK, put me down now
Home
Haven't been here in decades
Des looked around,
Shook the walls with a stare,
And stood under a portrait of himself.
A fresh one lamented...
Great grandsire
We didn't know it was you
***
Delta of Venus
Davis, CA
February 14,
'97
