Two Prose Fiction/Short Stories by Greg Patrick

 Lioness Pride

 

“When the stars threw down their spears And watered heaven with their tears: Did he smile His work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee? Tiger Tiger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”-William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience

 

Eyes brandish a fury of Gemini golden fire, a dormant flame reignited at the onlookers as the lioness stirs. Stare bores into their own as if from the vantage point of the stars looking down and they recoil instinctively. A vision of primal splendour behind the burning golden eyes, exuding strength and grace…enshrined in languid repose upon a dais like a Sumerian Empress enthroned.

But it is a deceptive languidity for every fibre of her being like a bowstring drawn taught, craves and strains for the chase and hunt. Ever the huntress, Never the prisoner at heart, when the darkening barren hillsides are cast in shadow. The moonbeams ignite my brooding stare.

Neither a shorn mane and a cageless stride makes a lion anymore than a cage unmakes a rebel’s heart nor a crown makes a High Queen. No less a lion even more so for a fire of suppressed rage was ignited for one who looked for the stars of the plains and saw only the circus tent. Beyond the bars…the first sight of the stars like postcards from a distant land…Bars like dark sunrays. My fangs bare in mute roar to the moon…like a nocturnal battle cry…My heart’s blood-chant pulsations like a Masai drumbeat of war quicken in tempo and urgency.

            I sense the loathsome hyena, the bane of my kind in its adjacent enclosure, like a member of a rival rebel band confined in uneasy proximity in a neighboring cell. “Mere scavenger” I think contemptuously. His insufferable leer fades at a mere look. I will not suffer the insolence of  his kind while these claws have strength yet...Like an unrefined barbarian warlord in an enemy camp on eve of battle he is Its vocals are like a maniacal chuckle and its leering maw again mocks my baritoned purr. Its presence is maddening but my eyes that transcend darkness where man stumbles through it to the clarity of midday glaze over, like the inebriate’s eyes over the rim of an empty cup craving fulfillment. I flex my claws like dull scimitar blades.

My eyes blaze a daydream of red of getting at that intolerable hyena, whose gloating chuckle through the bars play scavenger to my spirit and roaring over my kill, eyes as if ignited by the moon in microcosm of spectral flame like two wounds overflowing in maledictioned gaze like two Gemini blood diamonds cut from the same heart of stone. Eves that are a vision of red death agleam with shining depth of fire as ever leered from an idol’s baleful shrine and the lidded glare of my eyes like portals to hell ajar.

It is as instinctive to defend daydreams and to raise fists against nightmares visions as it is to defend oneself in waking hours. I pace the confines of the cage in the way of my kind, eyes cast yearningly at the hills, as if nomad’s eyes to where oasis spills.

I feel the shadow of a circling raptor of these lands and my eyes reflective as a nomad elder by a night fire my gaze swims with distant memory of other lionesses encircling a fallen impala, with shrill aerial cries of birds waiting till we disperse, our ravenousness sated and the insufferable hyenas straying dangerously close, till we flash them a forbidding glance like a cast spear, a Zulu’s assegai striking home into its quarry.

The gaze of earthbound and aerial hunters meet with a sparking recognition, like eye of the storm and red horizon. Like metallic arachnid chords the linked bars seem. A dreamcatcher’s strands to those beyond my reach, barely holding a nightmare at bay yet to me barriers to a dream-differed as I behold the magnetic allure of the hillsides. With a sororal commiseration I meet eyes with the kindred lioness, a native one of this exotic land, dwelling adjacent...a solitary huntress I sense though, not of a pride of the night tribe like mine. The hyena’s chimeric misshapen silhouette is perceived against the ascending splendour of the moon’s spectral orb. The beams fall in a resplendent lavishment, a tribute of pale gold lending my groomed pelt it’s glacial sheen like a mantle of starlight, the moonbeams caress with an almost tangible sensation like a ghostly waterfall in the sultry night and I but close my eyes to behold.

The bars seemed to melt away or transform lycanthropically under some Endorian maleficence of moonlight into the boughs of a grove of Acacia trees arrayed against the far hills and moon or becoming steaming mangroves. I savour in profound homesickness the dreamscape’s mirage, cast by the bright spell of the moon.

Like a sleepless or ghost artist’s shadow-hued brushstrokes painting a surrealist masterpiece through the night only for the canvas’ phantasmagorical image to dissolve into nothingness with daylight’s harsh crimson dawning. I preside over that moment as a moonbeam like an apparitional spotlight lends me its celestial splendour, like a soloist by a street lamp in an urban jungle.

Above the oceanic roar of metallic herds passage in a strange land..though usually silent..but moved…I roar…a heraldry in challenge to the hill and the roar of their human machines. Eyes up lifted behold the stars like the reflections of two circular mirrors held to a lofty beauty. Like a huntress over its kill…I roar thrice and the night itself roars.

Trailing away in a satiated if not contented sigh, like a tempest subsiding and my head sinks like a sprawled nomad’s parched lips to a moon-lit oasis weary of far desert passages, drinking the waters like a sanguine pool left by the sky…seeking but the solace of shadows like a shaman’s healing hand. My kindred have come far and a long way. My predecessors were taken across the sea in chains to be trained and scourged and baited before crowds until human indignation were added to our own roars by the lion-hearted…

That is not my fate.

The Nomad Comes Home

“The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

 

Like a pilgrim of storm-swept roads, knelt Yeats with an offering of dream...
He met the muse’s eyes after a wordless but entreating glance to the skies that were the bard’s sighs, conscious of a land where for the light of a vision the rebel dies.
Under the wavering symphonic shadows of a murmur of starling birds calling for aid to a shepherd of men but not of herds…
And like the trembling hand of a sceptical pilgrim accepting the awaiting touch of a faith healer’s he asks for the dance with hand extended a song requested and in its touch is a restoring that needs no song.

City at threshold of dark sea, where dreams and nightmare mingle indistinguishably, like guests in a masque dance. None will take off their mask at the midnight hour, the witching hour that is every moment of desire and mystery, and time means nothing, but bardic rhyme means it all…the moment of bewitchment that belongs to the enchantress alone, in a land and heart with an empty throne.

A pang of solitude befalls all in crowded room, spell holding sway over rebel’s heart on eve of battle and the last dance of the night becomes a rite in which good faces off against evil, and as one crosses the room to request from one forbidden by station the last dance, the one knight who doesn’t run from battle calls for another lance and the best dreams are a Cinderella story retold… like a ball gown or suit of hidden rebel mail to unfold, donned to restore what is rightful to be seen for what they are…So many stars in the skies but only one to follow by a Traveller’s eyes, the mirage promise of the horizon, a vision of beauty behind green eyes.

A man so separated from his dreams that is as lifeless as before the banshee screams, like waves at the wake, as mirrored they were in Gemini microcosm in those eyes, yet he never finds the fathomless voluminous wonder of that blue’s equal though the pain of exiles knows naught but sequel. It is that hour that does not expose nor humble princess or belong to the prince left looking after her wondering…the hour belongs to desire fostered by usurped princess, for betrayal is stepsister to honour and rightful princess dispossessed is embodiment of broken dreams ill-fostered with visions of greatness.

Yet the prince’s sight is liberated from disenchantment by the spell of two eyes at the last dance in two counter spells of a duet of yearning. One can all but feel in the waltz’s turns the world’s turning. And of the velvet-gloved hand and eyes, so light to the touch like a faith healer’s hand restoring, gaze so fathomless in their depth that one never sees their end. And he always looks for them in the blue of as many oceans crossed, a face looking into the waves at the wake, as mirrored they were in Gemini microcosm in those eyes. Yet he never finds the fathomless voluminous wonder of that blue’s equal though the pain of exiles knows naught but sequel.

Exiled for stealing bread? No...I stole forbidden promethean fires at a glance.
The green fire of daydreams envisioned in a vision of glamour behind green eyes as startlingly and impossibly green as daydreams that strayed free of their dreamer to walk the paths through mist and rain...of the kissed and pain…the stories read so long that they became my own and words like the way back home known by heart alone ..and head-raised high over a landscape built over brave men’s bones.


Each leaves after the last dance saved like a rebel’s redemption by a princess’s hand yet each leaves with their own song for the lightless walk home…no matter what the band plays that passion is a soloist song betrayed by an expressive yearning in a “wall flower’s” eyes.
And the sigh after her like the echo of every song played and cynicism not chivalry dies.
Where the last dance belongs to the rebel, and though divided by the bell of life and death there is nothing so inseparable that cannot be reunited and so coltish step becomes stride, colleen in red dress becomes bride.


No tyrant’s hand
can humble that pride. In defiance of custom a traveller lad astride a horse.
asks the settled muse...the twilight burns in the skies but has not the red of your hair nor the land
the green of your eyes.


Shall we ride...?


And in the sigh of wind seemed battle cried…dreams dared with every stride.

 

 

A dual citizen of Ireland and the states, Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian traveler poet and the son of a Navy enlisted man.  He is also a former Humanitarian aid worker who worked with great horses for years and loves the wilds of Connemara and Galway in the rain where he's written many stories. Greg spent his youth in the South Pacific and Europe and currently resides in Galway, Ireland and sometimes the states.