The banshee’s wail… And she’s fell –
her hands grieve, frail. Th’fraught death-knell
taught ‘n told; hailed th’barren cold
t’harrow ‘n to hell uphold!
How the harbour hears ‘n quakes!
Harder peals th’thunder, its strikes
of ‘lectric charge light the dirge!
Bright blaze th’rain-tears which submerge!
Cloudwisps, her hairstorm – fire-red!
There torn; in shroud; defeated.
Crash th’waves ‘gainst the hulk, de-sailed!
Th’gaol ship lurks. The banshees wail.
Like the bellow of the thrashing bull,
the night foams fury…
Ratscurrysounds on scum-damp wood; creakhingeiron, rust-ragged – the viscera of a disembowelled prison, putrid ‘pon the water. Tethered to the reaches of the bay (Howth-cliffs swerve jagged-green against the wind!), where th’Muir Éireann calls crashing to Eryri’s peaks that England does not stand between them, the ship floats – battered – ‘breast the sandy cove, a-carrying the carrion of freedom.
“Skulkly vermin o’mine – yer coal-hold escape? Tis fair too fine, if fine were slight… Fright! Ah, see – yer mini-at-chur hulking forms a-break ‘n run! Sure, me hand might grasp but here it holds (Grand! Great!) the biscuit crumbs to fit ya firra meal. You’ll dare? Ask – would I feed ya if I meant ya harm?”
She, shaven-headed, watches as they scatterexit.
“Scurry off, then, ya flake-compan’yuns. I’d if I could. Stale-solid crumbs for yer host the more!”
She looks to you; she sees your eyes envelope her.
“I am bound for the oblivion o’transportated souls, borne upon the whims o’the tyrant trait, traded firra guarantee with Death… They’ll ship me fair in space ‘n time to devastate the homeland of another! We are moved – rooted out by fork ‘n spade, savaged from the soilground ‘n torture-torn to be instruments o’genocide afar a-field as they rape the culture-cradles that they empty! Starve ya til ya steal some food then chain ya down to ship ya off to famine-fuck some others!”
She, then, stands.
“I’ll bite the hand so long as I have teeth to tear at it!”
Rags, wretched-ragged; wretch, wretched-worn – her fightback ‘gainst the use of her by th’ship-gaol guards did earn her this, the coal-hold, for a cell. Free, floating brothel, populated by the women ‘n the girls they gathered… cleansed from the colony ‘n destined for the cleansing of another. Dim-lit dark shadowshade – the cracks ‘n holes let light to show her corners, heaps, ‘n silhouettes. Heavy on the mind’s the infinity of the spaces that she cannot see, edges that – unending; chasmic – crush her with their closeness.
She, broken, weeps.
She falls to silence, hearing now the coming of her keepers.
Snortgrunts of grotesque gutterlaughs careencrash, violent, ‘pon the door, drenched darkly in deep arrogance ‘n ominous omnipotence, unchecked by any limit, hand, or law. They break against ‘n burst into the room – not beasts but humankind; boys brought unto adulthood arrested.
Dishevelled.
Drunk.
Bitten.
Scratched.
Dirty.
Naked.
Slobbering.
Appointed.
One of them wears, like scalps, the underwear of those displaced, abducted, torn; invaded.
One of them holds his erection, brandished like a weapon or a flag at warcry, dripping with infection; driven by the blood rage-rushing from the soul-starved heart.
The third, he salivates, great, gluttonessly gaping mouth o’erflowing with the thick, coagulated, blood-drenched soil he vomits up; re-chews; re-swallows.
Finally, the fourth – the fourth is a child, no more than ten ‘n led by leash. Eternally he’s dragged along, his eyelids cut-away; his hands bound back. Shaped by the horrors of his older selves, he stands, trapped in their shadow.
She looks to you; she sees your eyes abandon her.
Th’rats, writhing, wriggle in a mass – one breaks ‘n finds its way up, out, ‘n skywatched. Gazing at the ghostfire of unimaginably distant suns, it shudders through its microscopic-settler bearing frame as it faces the expanse yet to be travelled to.
The ship that ferries men who ferry notions ferries rats who ferry germs that ferry feelingless commandments to be heeded.
All th’way down to the selfish gene, the drive is – Spread.
The rat bristles at the scope of sheer colonial potential.
Breaking through the topside of the bone about the brain, quick canines, cat-controlled, come killing through the cosmos-contemplating rodent life.
Th’rat hanging from its bloodied mouth, the cat moves onward.
The Way Of The White Cow runs deep-red through the sky as it falls into the sea. The unfathomable depths of the water swallowed by the impossible endlessness of night…
Like scorched earth, her fertility bleeds out, broken by the brutalising father. Simmering, a naked flame, white-hot, yet furies at the affront of extinction.
Through the gaol-ship they drag her; hellish is the soundstench reeking ‘bout the closeness! Cell after cell after cell fullwrithing, radiating passion-pleas for justice! Oh, the earth-sprung, gathered from their lands by the lumbering metastasis that is man-empire… this root of us, embedded like an axe within a tree, that will not let us free from violence!
Somewhere, ridden with testosteronic rage, a chimpanzee stands above a fallen foe. Face crushed by hand ‘n jaw, the other’s lifeless.
Somewhere a lion tears into the offspring of another – the red bloodletting of her cubs that causes the lioness to ovulate anew.
Deep, driving demonsoul…
The anger…
The violent anger…
How does one continue writing?
One continues.
And so she is put back in her place.
She, naked, shivers – yet she refuses not to stand. She looks at you as the rivering blood flows around the sloping of her ankles, pooling at the soul-base of her calloused heels, taking root within the floorboards.
The rage of man that cries for his mother bellows as it weeps in its lashing out to tear at the loving life that will not hold it, fearful of the gnashing of his teeth.
The tragedy of man is that he strangles when he means to cry.
The tragedy of man is man, ‘n he’s the death of others.
She tells you this – but do you listen?
The bull stands – saliva on its lips; gore about its heavy horns.
Semen drips from its sheath, falling down corrosively upon the earth.
Its hooves are sunk into the rushreed fen, peatland pulling at its limbs.
The cow becomes the lioness ‘n the she-wolves gather…
Bellow.
Brought down.
Broken.
Bared.
From the bloody corpse, a bullock rises.
Leaving with the mother cow, he treads her hoofprints.
She tells you this – but do you listen?
There is a bloody axe buried in her lower abdomen, the handle jagged. Her womb has encompassed it, grown about its metal – perversely does the wood that long once was life stick out from the death it carries; perversely do the minerals of earth-rock gleam their solid blade-pain form. And the roots of bloody spirit grasp the flooring of her cell, pulling on th’structures beneath established.
The keepers slumber, th’grotesqueness of their out yet infinitely less wretched than their in. The boy, that fourth, huddles shiv’ring ‘gainst a wall in a waking shut-down sleep he cannot weather.
Roll, thunderitualised heart-percussion…
Only the boy’s unclosing eyes will bear their witness.
Outbreaking, bearing the tale within their cells of the unjust ‘n the righteous ‘n the violence ‘n the peace, they bare their teeth in tearing down the rusted locks ‘n rotten wood to leave their cells, their spiritselves unbound ‘n running!
Like the leaching of the poisoned earth, the women ‘n the girls within the gaol-ship kept now flow fearlessly in a torrent of unbridled force, draining out their keepers ‘n their rapists! Cramped corridors ‘n laddered-hatches, swept swift, swelling with the ruin of the power-given man; painted with the ending of the rearing of the boys to waiting seats on assumed thrones gilded with arrogance!
Shed layers – only now their naked truthforms, free from chain or grasp or gaze or settler, bloom fierce hardfeminine softsolid brazenstrong! Bodies, soul-proud singing, move inviolate!
They find their way unto the cell that glows ‘n thrums ‘n beats in fire…
In they step – untouched; unscorched!
They step exhilarated!
Vital in the centre of the raging room, she is standing like the yew tree in its soil – glory in her absolute, undying life which weaves its raw resistance into power!
Wild women, wolfsoul drumming, gather all around her at her passion! The merrows of the sea dance true to their music, travelling the depths upto the surface! They summon, from the coasts of Cymru, their seal-skin sisters, fast returning to the water! The passion of the Earth-Sprung is the passion of the Earth is the passion of the Feminine is Life!
Ghosts of the Lenape dead dance, gloriously moving ‘bout her flow’ring form! Spirits of the future martyred Filasṭīnī footstep in their rhythmic fury, singing to the burning of her righteous heart that gathers up the corridor in flames!
And as the ship sinks, torn apart by the pulsing roots of all that power, the inevitable ending of all indigenous peoples, by the ruinous immortal rise of empire, is swallowed by the sea that nurtures primordial life, dying to the calling of their names.
Image credit – Cork Shipwrecks
william altoft 