But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for ...
The vibrations he felt in his sleep had nothing to do with his soul easing out of his body as he dreamily thought; they came solely from the weight and motion of the freight train rolling north to deliver fuel, furniture and other items having no rel...
One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / the waiting non-arms of a snake, / its tan beaded-bag s...
Is it love to worship a saint in heaven, whom you dare not touch, who hovers above you like a cloud, which floats away from you even as you gaze? To love is to feel one being in the world at one with us, our equal in sin as well as in virtue. To love...
I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams many-coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the stormy--dreams where, amidst unusual scenes, charged with adventure, with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still again and again me...
How strange, Royce thought, that, after emerging victorious from more than a hundred real battles, the greatest moment of triumph he had ever known had come to him on a mock battlefield where he'd stood alone, unhorsed, and defeated. This morning, hi...
But you're so easy to sneak up on." He crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. "You should be honored that I bother, since there's no challenge to it." "Right," I said dryly. Tybalt has never made a secret of his contempt for changelings in ...
I may bring other women here, to this place, and I may tell them I love them, and make love to them. But they will be impostors. And I will be a ghost. Because it means I will have lost you. My body, my brain, my lungs, my stomach, my guts, legs, arm...
My head is in another dimension. My feet are talking to their soles. My nose is detecting a hint of sweaty, overpumped poon. There's a spider corpse perpetually hanging on the wall next to my pillow that I don't have any desire to correct. My breath ...
They all seemed hungry, happy, and healthy enough in their buzzing—oh the days were hot, and the noise of bees filled the air that was dusty with pollen and sun haze, and there were tiny black flies stuck to one another crowded by the creek and a c...
God what an outfield,' he says. 'What a left field.' He looks up at me, and I look down at him. 'This must be heaven,' he says. No. It's Iowa,' I reply automatically. But then I feel the night rubbing softly against my face like cherry blossoms; look...
You have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad (jihad alakbar).” His followers asked him what that greater jihad was. “The struggle against your passionate soul,”2 he replied. ‘So what does this greater jihad entail?’ I asked ...
His noise is getting quieter, but I can still see it there still- See how he feels the skin of my hand against his, see how he wants to take it and press it against his mouth, how he wants to breathe in the smell of me and how beautiful I look to him...
We were in such good moods, we even decided to hit Todd's house for candy. Sam rang the doorbell, and when it opened, this hideous, rubber monster face roared at us. Sam screamed. Todd started laughing and took off the mask. I yelled, "Put it back on...
That done, I sank into an uneasy sleep wherein I dreamed of an assembly line of pale, bloodless girls walking down an endless dark street and moaning softly for help. Somewhere, toward the edge of my inner vision, a shadowy figure pursued them with l...
At other times, at the edge of a wood, especially at dusk, the trees themselves would assume strange shapes: sometimes they were arms rising heavenwards, , or else the trunk would twist and turn like a body being bent by the wind. At night, when I wo...
A lover of comfort might shrug after looking at the whole apparent jumble of furniture, old paintings, statues with missing arms and legs, engravings that were sometimes bad but precious in memory, and bric-a-brac. Only the eye of a connoisseur would...
She was not at the concert any more. She looked around the rustic room, blinking. What the hell? The singer had her in his arms still. There was no balcony between them now. His hands slid into her hair, keeping her head still. "Not yet," he begged, ...
These Moments Cascade Upon One Another "Here at shepherd's dusk, in a valley without echo, I listen for you. With a frayed longing, I hear your shadow voice whispering within me from far away. I grasp at what is left of this husky sun lying golden up...
One day, when I thought I was alone, I prayed in church. While making this offering before the cross, a parishioner came up to me, put her arm around my shoulder and prayed, ‘Dear God, please heal Father Jim. And give me his cancer.’ I was incred...
Getting up, Luc finished his beer and set the empty bottle on the small outdoor table. The sooner he apologised for his outburst, the better. Walking into the house, he heard a thud. Panic filled him as he ran towards the back of the house. He rounde...