The Beginning: Breath of War

I recently did a beta-read exchange with Rashed. He was very helpful and even wrote a review for the novel I'm currently work on. Check out the preview to his dystopian fantasy novel here.


https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Breath-War-R-Malak-ebook/dp/B072WHTXCH/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499093985&sr=8-1&keywords=the%20beginning%20r%20malak

The Divine Director

He looked again at the text message glaring across the screen and he felt the rage and wrath rising in him. “Yahweh!” the text message screamed. “ I give you a singularity with enough power to create an immense amount of time and space and a 13.5 billion year deadline and this is all you got? Call me back pronto. The producers are screaming for a meeting.”

When he got to the office they were already waiting for him in the conference room: Maggie the assistant director, immortal name Athena, Anderson the producer, immortal name Odin, and Larry, his agent, immortal name Mephistopheles (they had all adopted human names after Yaweh had first pitched the idea to them for some reason) all had worried looks on their faces. Shaking his heavy mange of hair and beard twice he gave each one a cold stare before sitting down.

“I think it needs more yellow. Don’t you think it needs more yellow?” Maggie the assistant producer piped up as soon as he was in his chair.

“And Yaw, baby, what’s with all the time spent on that little blue rock in some galactic backwater shit hole? And then it turns out that a bunch of the hairless super monkeys all worship you? I mean, directors are naturally a bit narcissistic, but I think you went a bit overboard here. Am I right?” Anderson, the producer asked.

“Loved the opening explosion though. But I don’t know, several billion years of hazy opaque energetic clouds before we even get to the first nebula? It just doesn’t grab me. Does it grab any of you? And where’s the dialog? We gotta wait how many billions of years was it again before we even get a grunt? Come on Yaw. This isn’t like you. You’re the king of holographic universe shows, no one is questioning that, but we can’t ride out another bomb again,” his agent Larry said.

He left the studio in a ferocious mood. A few lighting bolts had escaped from his fingertips and scarred the table top before he had stormed out of the conference room. As he walked towards the parking lot he pulled up the entire database on his phone, the script, shots filmed, budget info, the entire quantum conversion matrix, everything and viciously stabbed the delete tab with his right index finger.

Mt. Horaiji Hike

You explained during our hike that Ieyasu Tokugawa’s
mother had prayed for a boy here. I was still breathless
from the climbing and stinging from the old Shinto priest’s
glare. Black and green moss followed a tiny creek down a jagged ravine. At the bottom of the ancient wooden stairs a stone basin awaited our hand washing.

Purified, we climb the steps to the cedar building that
holds the shrine’s altar. Beside the altar a frayed hemp rope
a foot thick encircles a massive Japanese oak. Kami, or
spirits, are said to reside here. It is peaceful despite the
bitterness in my mouth.

cold mountain temple
pine trees grow precariously
snow on iced winter peaks

The Destruction of an Old House in Japan (Haibun)

The white sheet metal siding is streaked brown from too many years of exposure to wet and cold winters. The once solid square frame and high sweeping roof is now sagging. What did this old building contain, a family, treasures, simple junk? It is in a sad state, but sadder still is the indifferent wrecking machine that sits patiently in the front yard.

-leaves so large I thought they were roof tiles smashed on the ground in the rain

Trout Streams, Motion, and Memory

Trout Streams, Motion, and Memory

The desert of Eastern Washington is a place of dryness and death. Without water nothing can live here. The thin little stream that cuts through the harsh rock and sand provides nourishment for the willow trees and the grassy meadow. It is the single life-giving artery in this arid place.

I walk along the west bank of the stream just as the sun rises in the east casting off reds and violets across the black, sharp stone ridges. A small white tail deer stands atop a crumbling ridge staring down curiously, afraid of the upright predator parting the thick weeds by the stream.

I have to be careful that my shadow falls behind me and not across the stream. The trout here are wild. Everything in their world is either a threat or a meal. Unnatural movement  or reflections on the water scatters them. They are selective in their eating habits. Even my steps along the bank are measured. It’s a trade off; the rule is walk heavy for the snakes and softly for the trout. Rattlers, like trout don’t have ears, but are very sensitive to vibrations, striking suddenly when surprised.

I’m looking for dimples or swirls in the stream’s current, any sign that gives away the trout’s position. They always face upstream in feeding lanes where the current drifts insects down to them. Caloric energy is a premium in their world, and they never waste it lightly.

And then I see it, a break in the gentle flow of the current, the sloppy splash from a big tail, slashing back and forth in the trout’s enthusiasm for its breakfast.

I pull a few feet of slick fly-line off the titanium reel, making sure there are no kinks or tangles. I hear the methodic click of the metal drag deep within the reel as the fly-line peels smoothly off the arbor. I hold the tiny fly between my thumb and index finger, blowing on the delicate spun deer hair, and dark brown turkey feathers, fluffing them up, so they will be more buoyant. Then I gently press the point of the steel hook into the tip of my thumbnail to test its sharpness. Looking over my right shoulder, I check to make sure no hanging branches from the willow tree behind me will obstruct the path of the nine and a half foot graphite fly rod, as it is pulled vertical on the back cast, in a steady sharp snap of my arm.

But it’s not about the technical aspects of fly-fishing; the stalking, casting, and landing of the fish are unimportant. When the moment is upon me all these things drop away. There’s this feeling of clear intuition guiding me. Time is a tentative force in the background, and the stream and surrounding desert disappear. Only perfect momentum remains. I feel nothing but the flowing motion. It is the purity of form obtained in the action of doing. The motion of my body, the flow of the stream, cause and effect suspended in the structure of synchronized rhythm.

With the soft landing of the tiny fly on the gentle water, and moments later a large silver trout cruising from the depths, breaking the barrier between air and water to take it, shaking the energy of its life into my rod and through my arm.

It is always fleeting though, never captured, never grasped, or described. I have the moments spent stalking the trout, the long sweeping cast, and the trout’s short fierce battle for freedom. Then the brief period after, gently holding the slippery trout for a quick picture and then releasing it back into its cold home, but this is all. Only a shadow of the grace may be reflected in the depths of my eyes, or a faded copy of excitement imprinted slightly in the tone of my voice. Maybe the memory of wanting to be an angler, and learning to fish, and later in life, wanting to be an artist and learning to fly-fish. These thoughts and memories remain, the rest drift down stream.

The Buddha at Four

I can feel them pulling on me. One pulls from the ground and the other pulls from the sky. I don’t know why their in my backyard. The one in the ground wants me very much. The one in the sky wants me too, but he is worried. I think that maybe they are God and the devil. I don’t know why they are fighting over me.

The grass in my backyard is very green. I keep walking and looking at the grass. I’m a little scared. But now I hear another voice. This one is nicer than the other two. He tells me to walk in the middle. I listen to him and the other two voices go away. I ask this new voice if he wants to play with me at the swing set. He laughs, but not mean, like he thinks I’m funny.

There aren’t any kids at the playground today, but I’m not lonely. My new friend is still with me. Even though he is only in my head. I like the red paint on the swing set. It looks like a fire truck. I see a big spider web on the swing set and get scared. I ask my new friend if I should kill the spider before it bites me. He says no because the spider is a part of me, sort of like my brother. I don’t understand, so I keep swinging. I ask my new friend where he lives. He tells me he lives everywhere, but right now he lives inside me. I don’t understand this either. I tell my friend I think he is funny. He laughs.

I go over to the big muddle and look at myself in the water. My friend isn’t talking now, but I know he is watching me. I have to be careful because I can go near the water, but I can’t get wet. My Mommy would be mad if I did. I ask my friend if he wants to eat dinner at my house, but this time he doesn’t answer. He’s gone now.

Part 2

The memory is just a tendril on the cusp of conscious thought. But a vague outline of importance has remained with me for twenty-eight years concerning this memory. Were there truly two entities vying for my soul? Or was it just some subconscious fear emerging from a slightly narcissistic four year old child’s mind, who still believed the world revolved around his own center?

I do remember distinctly pressure from two opposing forces. And I remember two voices, male both of them, and a strong desire emanating from them. I believed them to be God and the devil competing for my physical form. I do not think the notion of having an eternal soul had confused me yet at that early age, so I assumed they would take me in my current physical state.

The grass behind the apartments where I lived was very green. I‘m sure with a simple dark green crayon and a blank piece of paper I could have captured the essence of the thick green grass with a few enthusiastic downward strokes. From simple play would come the understanding of the grass and its connection to myself.

Then there was a third voice. This voice knew me. I felt no pressure from it, only kindness. It spoke to me of finding the center. Like a mother explaining to a child, only with a masculine voice. I remember asking the voice as a child would ask a playmate if it wished to follow me to the playground. The voice laughed the most gentle laugh of pure joy I have ever heard. The playground was deserted, but I was not alone. The voice embraced me like the warm blanket of friendship. The bright red paint of the swing set caught my attention and I began swinging. I saw a thick spider web and became frightened. At that age I still believed spiders were evil creatures that sucked the blood of all unsuspecting people. I asked the voice if I should kill it, to protect us. The voice said the spider was a part of me, like a brother. I didn’t understand at the time and told the

voice so. I asked as a child friend where the voice lived. It told me it lived everywhere and inside of me. I told it I did not understand and I thought it was funny. I remember the gentle laughter again.

I got off the swing set and searched for my reflection in a dirty brown mud puddle. I called out for my friend in my mind but it did not answer, but I still felt its presence watching over me. The threat of mud stains made think of my Mother, and how unhappy she would be if I became dirty. With one final request for the voice to join me for dinner I realized my friend was gone.

What did it mean? The memory has never left me and I often contemplated its meaning. In high school I discovered Freud and Jung and decided the two voices must have been the remnants from an overheard argument between my parents that manifested itself as a struggle between God and Satan. But the third voice remained a puzzle. I thought maybe it was my Ego trying to negotiate between my Id and Super Ego, but that did not seem possible at that young of an age. According to Freud, my Ego should not have been developed enough to intervene.

Several years ago I discovered Buddhism. Buddha spoke of the Middle Way. I believe this is what the third voice meant by finding the center.

The Buddha also spoke of eternal joy upon reaching enlightenment. I believe he meant the eternal joy a child feels when seeing the simple wonder of beautiful green grass. And the joy of being completely alone at the playground and yet having an invisible friend to discuss all the things that occupy a four- year olds enlightened mind.

The voice has never returned, at least not to my conscious thoughts. But I still catch shadows of its echoes in half remembered dreams. And in those places good and evil are only modest ideologies, and reality is the perfect experience of a child.

Blue Note Arachnid

Jazz pianist plays

Fingers white like

hunting spiders.

Stalk across

contrasting keys.

While blue notes

fall on a

bleeding stage.

Daily Dragon to Slay

In Transit

In Transit

You drowse in the rhythm of the

JR train's click

over the tracks

opening your eyes briefly as

the train hushes

into another station.

This half-consciousness,

more like forced meditation

on an icy morning

than real sleep;

you draw out a long over

due yawn as

Koizume Station drifts past.

With eyes now open,

green and alien to

the dominating browns

you watch for your stop

through the window.

A row of half sleeping Japanese,

faces tight as concrete, are

reflected back at you

in the window.

You wonder why the softness of a

child's nap always alludes

them on the sleepy

late afternoon trains.

The Dead Along the River Speak to Me

https://www.kobo.com/jp/en/ebook/the-dead-along-the-river-speak-to-me

The Dead Along the River

There are no bodies

in the ground.

Japanese cemeteries

contain only headstones.

On the gentle sweep

of the river bank Kami wander.

Small pink flowers fight

through frozen dirt.

A sudden explosion of color

amongst the black mud.

This afternoon snow

will cover all.

The Center of Centers

Things You Ran From

The summer comes, high school ends, but you don’t notice. The flash of a gun, cryptic hand signals exchanged, and the two colors suddenly grab center stage. Red and blue, “Both the color of blood,” you think, “One removed from the body, one not.”

In your little town, a teenage boy takes three rounds to the chest and one to the face on an otherwise passive Saturday night. Experts are called in from the Bay Area’s gang cities. “Dead before he hit the ground,” you overhear, and think, “Yeah, and dead before he turned sixteen.” They tell you what to look for and what to look out for, but the violence still comes. You over hear black words and thoughts emerge from your neighbors.

Soon you hear streets like Sycamore and Mahogany, benign names normally, whispered in fear. You hear little voices of the old quietly marking each bloody transgression against the neighborhood.

“Don’t go down there no more, they’ll kill over nothing these days.”

“They sawed the boy’s head off right after they shot him.”

“That’s a bad house, sell crack right on the front door step.”

You watch the safe little 7–11 on the corner close down with ten bullet holes in the window and a dead cashier behind the counter. You hear everyone start talking, talking about shotguns, pistols, and carjackings, and how not to be a victim. There’s talk about taking back the town and guns come out of the dresser drawer and nightstands. Anger and fear carry words like “niggers” and “wetbacks” deeper into the daily conversations.

You feel something breaking down inside you, something you don’t understand, but you can feel the tension and the fear twisting and tearing your thoughts. People’s faces change — change to threat or non-threat. The blood colors are no longer the only ones to fear. You see T.G.I.W appear tattooed in black on the shoulders of friends you used to understand and now can’t accept.

You lock yourself away in your apartment, ignore the occasional gunshot, and let the anger simmer in what’s left of your middle-class memories. But it gets closer; the death of a friend of a friend in the newspaper puts it in your living room.

Then it happens. You’re at a local fast-food joint waiting in line at the drive-through. A man walks along the line of cars waving a pistol demanding money. You see the driver of the brown Ford Bronco two cars ahead aim a sawed-off shotgun. You tear your car out of line and drive away not wanting to see what happens. That night you lay in bed thinking. You’re on the fringe, neither a color, or a racist, but what a frightening fringe it is.

Late that night you remember the green of Seattle, Eliot Bay, Mt. Rainer, and a lack of fear. The next day after no sleep and without thought you leave town, just throw a few things in the car and drive north leaving all colors and connections behind.

Haiku #0

cicadas dying
salary man’s envy
forty more summers

Haiku-like poems from A Samurai's Sunset Twisted

A Samurai’s Sunset Twisted 

as if sliced with a blade sunlit clouds bleed crimson twisted truth of pollution 

Kind then Cruel 

Paper leaflets rain down with less substance than the ashes of a butterfly -but their potential holds more weight than the half-life of two doomed cities. 

Early Blossoms, Early End (maybe)

in winter’s center

sakura grow happily 

global warming neh 

 A Dirty Closest in Fukuoka City: ( headline from a Japanese  newspaper)

Fukuoka City, the temperate 

princess of Japan's southern 

most island can seem an arctic Hades from the confines of a 4X6 closet. 

Arachnids and a Jazz Pianist at Blue Note

Fingers white like hunting spiders stalk across contrasting keys while blue notes fall on a bleeding stage. 

New Year’s Ritual 

Shinto shrine glows

torii gates blooded anew 

white hands washed of past  

The Denial of Existence 

in Copenhagen 

reality often fails us 

 just ignore and calculate* 

*Note: the extra three syllables are only real if you are observing this Haiku 

Tanka for a Sociopath 

Boy genius pianist? Maybe. 

Something in those eyes 

speak of mutilated puppies

in the basement.

The Ronin of Chikusa Junior High

Black mood circus strangely absent. No Cherub faced glue sniffer wears his dark Prussian school uniform or dances down blood flecked hallways.  Did a rival’s blade find your throat?

Artificially compliant, you drift in with the late morning sunshine.  Greet Sensei with burnt out rusty waste pump eyes. Wago san, what blew your fuses today?

Militant is your nihilism as if you're Nobunaga’s hedonist offspring, though always hedged in by school rules and vigilant acne.

What mad dog anarchist revolution do you lead? So sorry, teacher cannot reach you. He no longer speaks your caustic pulsar language. Will you forgive this defeatist’s wash of hands? 

Purpose?

Published this today!

http://five2onemagazine.com/purpose-steve-howard-creative-non-fiction-thesideshow/

Kundalini Confusion

Kundalini Confusion 

I have no idea what to expect. Some Indian music plays in the background, a sitar, warbly singing, Mantras maybe. We sit in a circle on a large white couch. The Deeksha Givers ask us to close our eyes and relax or meditate. I’m in half lotus slowly counting my breath. I feel hands on top of my head. And then….. 

Wild blue ropes of energy shoot from my hands and the top of my head. Waves of heat cause to mildly convulse. Suddenly, involuntary deep breathing pulls the energy up my spine. The snake uncoils into spectacular visions; The Buddha’s contented face in gold, a rainbow pulsing from my solar plexus; the “I” melts into the indescribable. Calmness descends. Bathing in the knowing, I smile. 

breath deep this holy gift electric

 Dharma fires through 

blocks the path has opened

Seven months later and I’m still unclean. Anger Karma rages across the little groove I occupy in the Field. My spontaneous Kundalini Awakening has been full of contradictions. If this is step one where should my feet fall for step two? Am I supposed to sit on the edge of the Ganges chanting Mantras? Hard to do seeing as I live in Japan. Life goes on in this modern world. I don't have time to chase down a Guru. I’m left wondering, “What now?”

Life. Divine Mirth. 

Not laughing at it? 

Then you don’t get the punch line.


https://www.amazon.com/Samurais-Twisted-Sunset-Steve-Howard-ebook/dp/B00WQGHGL2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499733049&sr=8-1&keywords=A+Samurai%27s+Sunset+Twisted

Rice Age

At Hime station only the

elderly board the JR trains.

Youth has abandoned the toil

of the rice fields for the glitter of Tokyo streets.

They ride the train into an autumn sunset

comparing in whispers how much their

hands resemble the gnarled branches

of the passing cypress trees.

Cradled in the hum of Sunday trains

they dream in colors denied in waking hours

by cataracts and glaucoma. Bright leaves continue to fall

in memory. Only the red shift of August 6th

still attaches itself to tired retinas.

Track Endings

Track Endings

“I should have ….” Ji ji sighs.

“Coward. You’d never do it,” Oba says.

“I’m no coward,” Ji ji growls.

The 5:15 roars towards them.

“Banzai!” Ji ji screams, living exactly 1.2 seconds.

Oba keeps a still face only smiling briefly when the first check arrives.

bullet train screams by

dust and porn mag pages swirl

morning departs quickly