In Riyadh drivers are a fact of life.
Domestics, Ubers, taxi men—they steer
the expat hordes and every mother, wife,
and daughter to their destinations here.
They come in droves from countries down the scale,
from Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Nepal,
and India—impoverished men who trail
the highways at another’s beck and call.
Each time I walk, I hear the taxi horns,
each plaintive beep, “Please white man, share your wealth
with me.” For fourteen hours, from early morns
and through each night they spend their life—and health.
I sit in back, while they the front are given.
My conscience knows who drives and who is driven.
Tag Archives: Originals
Character Vignette: Fantasy Ranger
Note: I started this in Notes on my iPhone in October of 2016; it was last edited in December of 2017. Tolkien has influenced the language, and Dungeons and Dragons has influenced the characterization. I think of him as half orc. (DL, Sept. 18, 2021)
He moved through the deep woods like one long acquainted with dark places, for so he was. As always, he carried with him the same sort of kit he had carried in the armies of Dar Sheiling, although time and experience had taught him the best substitions to make in keeping with his current life.
The pair of Dar Sheiling javelins–short, heavy, cruelly barbed, and cast in the hundreds by the front ranks to break the shock of enemy assaults–he had replaced with a single, long spear. The hard, heavy, iron-soled boots so apt for wearing out many leagues on imperial roads and for treading down the fallen he had replaced with supple doe-hide boots for more nimble footing and greater stealth in dangerous places. “Besides,” he said, “If they fail me in battle, better to lose my feet all at once than to grind them to stubs day after day.”
Continue readingWhat is a Star?
What is a star?
The gleam above me in the night?
It isn’t really in the sky.
It is in fact behind my eye,
triggered by a beam of light
that struck a nerve and touched my brain.
A wave of such and such a height
has stroked the synapses of sight—
a process I cannot explain.
But nonetheless the star I see
rotating on the neural plane
by memory can be called again.
(It’s shining still inside of me.)
If eye and brain are not a star,
and neither is a memory,
then neither can the gleaming be.
—David Lohnes
July, 2014
Winter Love
That winter night when snow upon the ground
lay thick, we joined our hands, exchanging vows.
And now five winters gone the sixth comes round,
and winter’s snow begins to gather on our brows.
The winter wind that froze Big Cedar Creek
beside the church five years ago still blows,
but now its creeping fingers try to sneak
and snuff the love that warm within us glows.
It’s bitter cold, that wind that blows without;
more bitter still with cold our hearts become
when gusts blow through the chinks and swirl about.
But still I will rejoice; for fingers numb
from cold will ever thaw before the fire,
and He who lit and keeps our flame will never tire.
Quantitative Metrical Experinment
Note: I wrote some time in October during the semester I took LATN 504: Horace at Carolina. Poetic meters in English are typically qualitative. That is, they establish a rhythm by arranging syllables based on their quality (stressed or unstressed). They do this because stress accent is a primary characteristic of all English syllables. (Compare “hunger” and “afloat”; both are two syllable words, but they have opposite stress accent.) Classical Greek and Latin poetic meters by contract are typically quantitative. They establish a rhythm by arranging syllables based on their length in time–how long they take to say. They can do this because their long vowels literally take twice as long to say as their short ones. Because quantitative meter is time-based, it’s much more a proper, music-like rhythm than quantitative meter. Many poets have tried to replicate quantitative meter in English, but because there’s no true time-based distinction between our long and short syllables, it’s hard to do. This is in an Alcaic stanza. (DL, Dec. 10, 2022)
Boy, sound your hornsong clearly across the field.
Man, raise your swordblade high and your brilliant shield.
Fix fast your bright helms; fierce your might wield.
Stand in the breech for your homes and don’t yield.
The Primary Consideration?
The bearded craftsman smiled wide and ran
his hand across a burnished silver bowl
enriched with many gems a wealthy man
might never buy. A member of a guild
applauded for its art, he held a brand-
new, nearly finished, piece. (So skilled
was all its workmanship, that many new
apprentices would study it with care.)
Selecting from a dirty pouch a few
anemic leaves of grass, he placed them with
fraternal care into the empty pan;
on top of grass he added earth and then
opossum hair. His work complete, he cried,
“Let’s celebrate!”, and gloried in his can.
I Do Love
You know, I know a guy who doesn’t like
his wife at all. He gets home Monday night
from making cars; she greets him. “Hello, Mike—”
He sort of nods at her and settles right
into his Laz-E-Boy to watch the game.
While Denver loses twenty-four to six
he heaves a sigh and places all the blame
for his unhappiness on her. A mix
of dirty shirts and unwashed pants is all
she really gets to see of him. She knows
he’d rather have some twenty-something (tall
and wrinkle-free) with fingers on his clothes.
Her husband trapped her on her wedding day.
She always folds his laundry anyway.
Their Motto
Commissioned warrior saints within a world
that groans and wails beneath a tyrant’s boot
sit idly with their battle banners furled,
and watch the tyrant’s minions rape and loot.
Their shining King has bid them boldly stand
against the hardened strength of all their woe,
but they in fearful sloth dodge his command,
avoiding confrontation with the foe.
Yet on their smooth and shiny shields, inscribed
in fiery letters all inlaid with gold,
there gleams a motto to them all ascribed,
an excerpt from the Law they’re to uphold:
“The wicked man will praise those like to him,
but such as keep the Law contend with them.”