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The Neglected Number Sixteen Hundred Forty-Three

The orchids blanched on the mantle, bereft of care and moisture. One would scarcely believe the room was inhabited by a creature of wealth and presumable sophistication, the air dry like the tired jokes professionals use for longer than they would keep a spouse, a lingering scent of the borax the owner used equally on his person and his clothes, the furniture quite tasteful for twenty years past, and not cleaned or even much used since the last time the house changed hands. Wealth created no love of luxury in Warren van Martin; only a sense of absolute security that his work would stay funded and his mouth full of the bland mush he subsisted on. His arid pragmatism extended even to the poor orchids on his mantle, sent by one of the few people who still sent him anything save collections notices. They were beautiful, accidentally set towards the west where they caught long rays of reddish sunset through the leaded windows, creating a vision of natural beauty which no human would ever appreciate.

Warren was infinitely qualified to save those flowers. He could have made them flourish, designed without difficulty a hydroponic habitat and amalgamated the proper minerals to keep them alive for the season. Unfortunately, they became just one more victim of his aesthetic indifference, finally landing in a trash can long after they died as the great botanist looked about for a vial he had brought upstairs and then lost. Dr. Martin had been a physician in his past, until patenting a new surgical clamp proffered him the means to focus on his real obsession. Warren insisted that exotic plants, from the Indies, from Australia, from Brazil, from anywhere that lacked a pine tree or a shrubbery, were the cure for the one disease his medical training was fond of anymore. Among the bromeliads and swiss cheese rhododendrons lay a modest plant containing some compound which Dr. Martin maintained would annihilate the common sniffles, which Warren likewise insisted, with tuberculosis and diphtheria begging for cures around him, was the source of the most critical weakness in human bodies and left people ‘predisposed’ for the true killers. He was content, though not in the way indicating a measured decision reasonably filled with doubts and conscious sacrifices, to spend his remaining years losing vials and growing the ugliest, most beautiful, and most bizarre plants of the tropics in perfect detachment from their magnificence.

Hibiscus had occasionally been in town before, imported from the pacific on a chartered ship for a baron’s wedding; Martin snatched some when the ceremony ended, ruled them out, and promptly forgot everything he knew about the tiny yellow blossoms. Similar mundane dealings eliminated rubber sap, redwood bark, and all derivatives of the coffee plant. He moved on to scaring up whatever he could, promising anyone who made that long journey around the Americas a ransom for plants he hadn’t seen before. On their arrival he would try to coax seeds from them to cultivate, or if he was very lucky nurture still living specimens. Most of the plants ended up the same, thrown away upon revealing shamelessly their lack of medicinal utility. Any plant he didn’t outright forget might garner a ‘perhaps’ vote, the seeds tossed in an appropriated humidor labeled with the same until he could devise a better way of growing it or a testing method to account for it’s peculiarities. None of them garnered the thoughtful respect given to millions of blossoms by thousands of horticulturalists across the isle, and Warren van Martin would never be caught examining a plant with a fond eye, even if there were ever someone else in his drafty basement to catch him.

Gas lamps flared precariously in that basement every moment, threatening if Warren’s laziness with his person ever extended over his work to set the entire house flaming. The lamps made heat for the more tropical plants, which he moved away from windows after dark to work on them in greater convenience, while his own barren quarters upstairs were never kept warmer than the English winter saw fit to make them.

Neighbors wondered about Warren at first, in their idle time. He certainly wasn’t fearsome, and in fact during the few moments they could ever hold his attention he was every bit as pleasant as a favorite uncle. He did his own shopping, although nothing more interesting than spare flasks and various salts ever came into the house past their curious eyes. Over diligently hounded snatches of conversation, spanning nearly two months, the old couple living next to him determined the basic nature of his work, and the story spread out like a lazy ivy to the rest. They concluded in shifting groups of two and three that he must have his reasons for the strange occupation, and they all lauded a humanitarian obsession as the best thing smart, wealthy hands could be about. The scolds made the idle attempt at putting dungeons and fleshly appetites in his name, but found themselves unable to continue the game for sheer lack of gratification; how could they scandalize a man who didn’t care, and had no others to defend him?

Having purchased the house in that out of the way neighborhood, near his suppliers and far from well-trod streets, Dr. Warren van Martin proceeded with his work for a decade and a half. The furniture passed far out of fashion, as any one save him would not fail to notice acutely were they entertained in his living room, which of course they weren’t. The parliament changed repeatedly, and he noticed that no more than the swaying fads of furnishings and hair styles. His aunt sent him some romantic bauble weekly, which he rarely tributed any concern. It was a smoking jacket, tickets to some show which he invariably forgot even on the occasions he would have gone to please her, and three weeks ago the Brazilian marvels the search for his vial finally put to rest. She worried about him, but she knew no more about his reasons than the neighborhood gossips. One couldn’t get close enough to understand, even to ask the question, and it was doubtful even he kept it ready in his mind. The decision was made, he never looked back, and he never consciously made the sacrifices which defined his life as clearly as the stream of botanical corpses issuing from his back door.

Dr. Martin never conquered his ambition, and in fact the only discoveries he made after that surgical tool were the idle cataloguing of odd mechanisms in a few plants which inhibited his experiments on them, and later helped a few of her majesties scientists pick specimens for a themed garden at a country palace. In the year 1872, after discarding no less than sixteen hundred forty-two plants and with twenty-one currently growing in his lab, the messenger of his aunt’s latest gift found him cold in a chair, a plate of his mush before him, so unappetizing he could have stayed there a month and the bugs never fouled it. Martin naturally didn’t subscribe to newspapers, but in the street before his house, deposited in the unpainted gate by a teasing breeze, was one double sheet from London’s paper mills, just two pages from the news of February 24. One might conceive, though there was no way of knowing, that they had been published on the very day of Martin’s death, though again no one can be any more certain than their love of irony compels them. On the lower left hand corner of that sheet, slightly less important than new taxes but more important than classifieds and columnists, was the one headline: “Orchid petals yield cure for common cold, Dr. Twila Fensterbrook of Liverpool credited with astounding discovery.”

A Hopeful Postulation
The Color Of Stars
The Sightless Prisoner
The Tortured Seraph
The Seraph's Answer
Silent Questions
A Terrible Thing To Waste?

Grey Fallacy

With sex okay, but drugs no way
and violence worst of all
The changes run high while the ethics go dry
as the world heeds another call

If over the world this method unfurled
and everyone took his place
Would I go along a slave to the song,
or bitterly stagnate my pace?

I'd have school in the day, a beer before play
and a beautiful wench to enjoy
and it makes me blink that this would link
to a world of gainful employ

But it seems to be known; once your labor in loaned
they care not at all past that point
So feel free to play, they'll look the wrong way
while you finish nursing a joint

But they'll never stop, the dealer nor cop
despite being on the same side
But what does it matter if your wallet grows fatter
and science is making quick stride?

There's nothing to fear, go back to your beer
enjoy your lifes little frills
and I'll continue to pray some value will stay
but logic just don't pay the bills.

Top

A Hopeful Postulation

A look in her eyes and my heart always cries
to be cut from the ties to the hell where it lies
and somehow I'm one of the fools

Because others before have shaken my core
like Poes Lenore and I feel sore
to know that the globe isn't round

Semblence is gone economics not drawn
like ghouls on the lawn they leave by the dawn
but ever I'm looking for rules

My mind seems to play the words I could say
but whatever I may utter on the dread day
she casts her eyes to the ground

And I may cry but it feels like a lie
because I'll always try when one catches my eye
unless I have found the one

Who can love what she sees and laugh on the breeze
and play through the trees till we fall to our knees
happy as we've never been more

While wading through brine in search of a sign
I think all the time that across the line
she'll do the same ton after ton

But despite the tough price, like the catching of mice
I will take the advice and when I'm enticed
I'll love like I've never before

Top

The Sightless Prisoner

Who will help the blind man see
through ever present lunacy?
Always thinking it can't be
but from his prison never free
He scarcely knows a long dead time
when he had reason, joy, and rhyme
but now they fade or mix and match
and he never breaks the catch
to his mind or bolted door
always walls a ceiling floor
But only in the strictest sense
there are no two sides to the fence
all feels the same, there isn't sound
the floor is such just cause it's down
So why is it he always takes
the food he smells when he awakes?
This thought always through his head
as he lays on concave bed
He was trapped by cell and fears
but the world got on in years
So one day they popped the latch
his egg shaped prison finally hatched
and they gave him back his eyes
by some technique that they'd devised
They gave him back his uniform
his knife, his gun, that he had worn
what rightly felt so long ago
marching through the din and snow
His crimes were void by stroke of pen
made, they said, by gracious men
and so some guards, a tiny band
drove him through the hinterland
Two hours till dawn and he'd be free
they left him to wait patiently
The troops would come and then he'd fly
back to home and glory high
After an hour and a half
by his ancient chronograph
he stood and still yet saw no sun
but he knew the time was soon to come
He idly reached beside his heel
there found his knife of alloy steel
He thought how well he'd served his cause
with that blade to back just laws
and he watched the moon and stars cascade
down it's happy, lethal blade
And he took that trusty blade
and with greatest care he laid
it's edge upon his pale wrist
one sharp slash, no chance to miss
He saw his men, and heard their cries
as the life bled from his eyes

Top

The Tortured Seraph

In my mind I see a martyr
but with my eyes a demons heart
how could in the same man lay
two ideals, so far apart?

When he reaches out to warmth and beauty
his hands close round a block of ice
as his body stings and suffers
his heart is crushed by unknown vice

It all swirls, flips, and bounds
he cannot tell where it might lead
are his desires sane and good
or a few from countless forms of greed?

As his hand once more outstretches
fear shakes him to the very core
will he find it's not delusion
or again be mind and body sore?

Top

The Seraph's Answer

It never was a block of ice
that I was watching with dread eyes
but a crystal, sharp and clear
that inspired such great fear
I want to to take it in my hand
but no matter how I plan
I can't see what I should do
without the old becomming new
without my hell of long ago
rising up from dead and low
my hand be sliced upon it's plane
or all the gemstone split in twain?
there seems no choice, I've got to see
only then will I be free
for if I don't a deeper hell
awaits me for much longer spell
If I shut myself away
some day awake in bed I'll lay
and see the choices, good and bad
I never took, and wish I had

Top

Silent Questions

In Memory of RP Feynman

Something absent, something missing
of truth and lies I've found a few
But not enough, I'm always wishing
for some wisdom clear and blue

It all swirls, through my mind
all these things that I have found
does my cloud come silver-lined?
all I do not know abounds

Is it purpose or intent?
Is it wrong to just get laid?
Is he mad or just hell bent?
Is moral fiber tough, or frayed?

What is this fabled mist called love
with which, they say, a man is saved?
is it white like feathers dove?
or is it black as satan's grave?

What are the twins called right and wrong?
are they the same for all mans days?
or is there just some magic gong
sounding ethics and mores?

Does one mans killer get to live?
who should decide what's meant by just?
should one begrudge or just forgive?
are law and order one true must?

And there is another thought,
what of me is there to say?
am I god or devil wrought?
Master, or am I protegee?

In me and the world my answers lay
there is no wondrous magi flask
to let me all the answers say
But one more question: why do I ask?

Top

A Terrible Thing To Waste?

They say that I should publish, even write a book
but with that million dollars, I think I'd still be rooked
for if all my own problems, those same words cannot mend
No matter all the aphorisms, metaphor I blend
What good is it to me?

To have you call me genius, and as oracle be seen
you think I'm very gifted, but from here the gift seem lean
For if these countless stanzas can't a pretty girl enamour
or intercede, with eloquence, to stay Apollo's hammer
What good is it to me?

It seems that I'll end up so much like Socrates
as other sleep before the hearth, I contemplate and freeze
but through it all, the writing, thinking, what do I really know?
Rarely answers, always questions, all that seems to grow
What good is it to me?

If they're really right to say that I'm so baly smart
why does it always seem to hold me still so far apart?
If with its revelation only misery it brings
and my heart it crushes when that hearts begun to sing
What good is it to me?

If I am tortured, ever poisoned, by life, myself, and hell
and introspections prisoner for ever greater spell
if bitterness and valid woe cannot be told apart
And deserts, desires can't be seen of my enigmatic heart
What good can come from me?