When The Scarecrows March

   A man of age seemed to wander slightly to himself as he waits on his project. His project is she in the bed. A sleeping beauty. She is accompanied by the matriarch who protects the innocence of her girls. He is not here for pleasure, but salvation. Touching something so pure; casting a shadow to show how human he is. The Matriarch explained his limitations, but he seemed to want this cleanse for another purpose. He became fictitious with the matriarch, refferencing his aging,

"It was about a man whom one morning wakes up and cannot bring himself to get out of bed. He shuts his eyes in self-defence. He re-examines his life. He’s seized with restlessness. He packs his bags, cuts all ties, he can no longer live among the people he knows; they paralyse him. He’s moneyed. He goes to Rome. He wants to burrow under the earth like a bulb, like a root. Even in Rome he cannot escape people from his former life. So he decides to return to the city of where he was born and educated, of which he cannot quite bring himself to call, ‘home’. Well the move doesn’t help; he feels he has no more right to return than a dead man. What can he do? He desires an extreme solution to his conundrum; he aches for nothing less than a new world, a new language. Nothing changes, out of indifference, and because he cannot think of anything better to do, he decides once more to leave his hometown to do some hitching. A man picks him up, they ride off into the night and bang the car smacks into a wall: the driver dies, our man is hospitalised. Broken up. Months pass. His wounds heal. Now he wishes for life, he has a confidence in himself, in things he doesn’t have to explain, things like the paws in his skin, all things corporeal. He can’t wait to get out of the hospital, away from the infirm and the moribund. I say unto thee: Rise up and walk, none of your bones are broken. The End.

I’ve been given the book for my 30^th birthday: ‘The 30^th Year’ by Ingport Bachman, So, I had heard. I had been told. I knew all along, even if I didn’t really know, the great true things are, unsurprising. But what did I do, back then? I carried on. I carried on dutifully. We were the happy couple Elisabeth and I, that’s how people saw it. But in truth; I did not cherish my wife. And I did not cherish my friends. Or even my children. I was a success, I made my way, but with each step I cringed. I was on the back foot: The defensive. And now, tonight, for the first time I say: “My bones are broken.” One day I will need your help. One day all of my bones will be broken."

She nodded in acceptance, but then shook her head in dismissal. She understood his grief for walking without a shadow, and the need for cornubial tour de force in his life before it ends, but she protected the beauty's purity. She was the lampshade over the bulb and blocked out shadow casting.

The night that followed was scorned with a hallow wind from the grieving angels. It fluttered through flora and fauna. Rugged rags felt a brunt of it's chilling touch, stiff shapes and crooked faces. The rags that trudge through the mud and grass, are flimsy, and far too light to be of an adult. 

They wrench their straw-filled arms and limbs off their bearings, and begin to march. Like wandering children away from the mother, they thrusted forward and marched through the moors. Within the fog, the hollow images of figures that are chasing you, at their own pace, hunting you. They will extinguish each dowle in your plume. The time you pass an omen onto the pure light to cast your own shadow, to show how 'human' you are among your peers. But the scarecrow marches to your door. 

Wearing your shadow like a medal, a badge of honor. No matter how faint or insignificant this shadow may be, the light you use is no leash for your badge.