~Come Weigh the Night~

By WordWulf, 22nd Apr 2011 | Follow this author | RSS Feed | Short URL http://nut.bz/12sf0f5b/
Posted in Wikinut>Writing>Short Stories

~ poor folks aspire to the common ~ just out of reach ~ hunger & failure wear them down ~ they snarl at their children ~ quit bitching ~ you’re alive, aren’t you ~ the answer to that question ~ yes, the one deeper sadness ~ ready to go ~ never begun ~

~Come~
~Weigh~
~The Night~

~Come~

We were born gathering stones, piling them into burlap bags, hefting the bags onto our backs, toiling up steep inclines past lilacs and hummingbirds to the tops of modern day pyramids where masons wait impatiently to place stones in the wall. Down we go through the streambed, dammed up and damned down, stone whistle, holding our water.

~Weigh~

Our fathers before us knew the empirical weight of masters, hollow rewards and always the whip and the threat of the whip biting into flesh, mind and spirit. Now the masters’ masters’ children are the new royalty, their hands soft and born to wield the whip. We are dispatched to slay whomever they say and to be slain past fields of butterflies and katydids.

~The Night~

A man feels it happening that feeling, “I can’t lift the bag no more”. The sly ones carry half-bags, fooling themselves, “The bosses won’t notice”. The not-so-sly fall down, literally break under the load. Everybody knows what happens to the sly and the not-so-sly. You dig that damned hole, take a rock out of the bag, use a two-fisted grip, smash it into your face. Past the ant-lions and head-lice you fall yourself down. Your brothers and sons cover you up, sisters and daughters come weigh the night.

~Tom (WordWulf) Sterner~
~The Last Violin~
~An Other~
~Esplanade~

Meet the author

WordWulf
Tom Sterner lives in Redding, California and Arvada, Colorado with wife Kathy. He has been published in numerous magazines and on the internet, including Howling Dog Press/Omega, Skyline Literary Review, The Storyteller, and Flashquake. His interne...(more)

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Comments

johnnydod
22nd Apr 2011 (#)

Excellent

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WordWulf
23rd Apr 2011 (#)

Thank-you, sir!

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Denise O
24th Apr 2011 (#)

I think Johnny summed it all up, in one word...Excellent!
I hope you and yours are having a great Easter. As always, thank you for sharing.:)

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rama devi nina
26th Apr 2011 (#)

Potent-- and yes, excellent!

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Robert Run
22nd May 2011 (#)

So far, much of what I read from you has references to several different types of birds and there is a butterfly, the sky is referenced alot.

A lot of sky and flight oriented metaphor.

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