The Institution and 4 more

by Scot Walker (July 2023)

Rest Me on a Cuckoo Clock, Yuri Martinez Ramos, 2020

 

The Institution

“Cuckoo,”
went the old yellow clock.
“Cuckoo,”
said the bird.

And the house
was filled with
emptiness
after those sane words.

 

 

Earth’s Repose

The gray moon
lifted up
her face
and smiled
into the purple black abyss.

The still Earth
yawned;
her noisy seas
belched,
until all was quiet
once again.

And then
the little boy
fell
asleep.

 

 

Children Sleep Below

Heaven’s skies stand silently above.
Children sleep below.
Snow colored clouds climbing up, skittering down treeless mountains,
Children sleep below.
Breaking, then reforming, five clouds becoming one, one: five;
Children sleep below.
Water dropping from sky, inundating rivers;
Children sleep below.
Struggling, fish swim upstream, spawning, die;
Children sleep below.
Fishermen puling fish from rivers; farmers cultivating fields;
Children sleep below.
Chickens roosting, ducks waddling, horses trotting;
Children sleep below.
Gods in heaven hovering over me; waiting, everyone just waiting, as
Children
Sleep
Below.

Written in Beijing China

 

 

Chengdu Panda Reserve

I held you in my arms today
Rubbing your Panda ears and head
As if you were my first born son
Immortal in your strength.

I held you in my arms today
Feeding you pungent leaves of green
As if you could ever fill your belly
As deeply as you had filled my soul.

I held you in my arms today
Aware that your life and mine
Were now longer by one brief moment
Immortal in your strength.

I held you in my arms today
Knowing both our hours are short
Feeling you could sense my joy
As deeply as you had filled my soul.

 

 

The Guardians

Written in Xi’an China after leaving the Terra Cotta Warriors

A thousand times two for years we stood,
watching, waiting for Qin’s return。
Unlike the engineers, the artisans, the slaves
we were . We are the faithful fighters.
Headless now, broken, chopped, and burned,
we stand in rows and ranks, disembodied warriors

A thousand times two for years, we watched
Waiting for our lord Qin Shi Huangdi
Guarding his rivers of Mercury, his eternal
lake of fire, his casket basked in jade
Unable to speak or blink or raise a finger
to scratch our itchy noses

A thousand times two for years, we watched
Waiting for our lord Qin Shi Huangdi
Guarding his rivers of Mercury, his eternal
lake of fire, his casket basked in jade
Unable to speak or blink or raise a finger
to scratch our itchy noses.

A thousand times two for years, we watched
Waiting for our lord Qin Shi Huangdi
Guarding his rivers of Mercury, his eternal
lake of fire, his casket basked in jade
Unable to speak or blink or raise a finger
to scratch our itchy noses

A thousand times two for years, we stood
And watched
Before the farmers , who discovered us, broke
Our fingers, trampled our toes and sold our souls for silver.
And now our broken pieces lie scattered,
Disintegrating into our own dust

A thousand times two for years have passed,
But our emperor still lies sleeping in his jaded tomb
And, though we, his scouts, have been discovered,
Destroyed, defeated.
We know a thousand archers
Ten thousand horsemen

And a thousand thousand clay brothers

Hunker in the pits nearby
And we laugh
we laugh,
And, like the rubble and the dust we have become,
We wait
we wait.

 

Table of Contents

 

Scot Walker, who is too poor to afford the second “T” and drinks a lot of coffee to compensate, is celebrating his 67h year as a paid author. He began as a 10-year old when Santa gave him a small printing press and Scot composed, printed and sold twenty copies of his newspapers for a penny apiece. Subsequently he has seen over 400 of his poems, short stories, novels, non-fiction works, letters, plays, essays, and reviews published. Mr. Walker has won a Flannery O’Connor Award for A Slow Bus Ride to a Shallow Grave; a Thomas Wolfe Short Story Contest award for Earsounds; a New Century Writer Ray Bradbury Fellowship award for Watched; a Kernodle New Play award for Kenu Hear the Wild Birds Sing?; A McLaren Memorial Comedy Play Writing award for, Screeches from the Zoo; an L. Ron Hubbard award for The Ruler of the Elves, and he has twice won awards in the Writer’s Digest Competitions, once in the Stage Play Category for Abide with Me, and again in short story competition for La Mer. He’s a lifetime member of the Dramatists Guild and his plays have been performed throughout the USA and Europe. Amazing Stories, his latest collection of short stories is available at Smashwords. You can email him at [email protected].

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast