VIII

The chaplain preached through the camp,
devoured devils with his sanctimonious word,
and with his mouth called out the rust and salt
and wasted, ruined grout from foreign, defeated cities
upon my edged blade.
He spoke and shouted of moths and showers of treasure
held high in heaven.
I replied, to his celestial pride,
of headless Goths and divided hordes and wholesome, holy whores.
Then quietly mentioned a brutal, bellicose religion restored;
shook hands with the heavenly host,
and prayed a path to apathy.
Salvation, and I am sullen, gracious.

Tired of most everything.

So it goes.

VII

I dream of garlands and gems;
lilting laurels and lapel lambs
cascading and grazing-- erasing-- shivering lands.
Devastation-- stakes driven into eyes and wombs and tears and tongues.
It is a deconstruction of a simple-bare nation.
Impalation and mortal wounds mean nothing but festering
in the fall-- they fall, they fall-- and an awful feast of offal,
for opal worms.
I have dwelt in these realms of oblivion and the pain of Endymion.
(An illusion; a false allusion.)
I have felt the toast of maggot-spittle to the carrion,
and I have carried on with blade and buckler and chivalrous berth.
I am lowly and unholy upon these desolate stretches of earth,
and serve the children of the flies, and they fractured eyes.
They cannot see the ambience of the confident jewels that clatter by, out of grasp
--into the grass--
and I am afraid to reach for my own head, on its platter
in their refractions.
Conceded and discrete, deceit and conceit tangle and shine
as the crystalline lambs bleat for avarice.

This piece is horrible. It ended up being nothing like what I originally had in mind, and there's really not much to say about it. There's nothing to it. I'm not even sure it belongs with the Plain Praetorian poems, but I needed to put something up, because it had been over a week since I had presented anything.

So, my apologies.

VI-- A murder of poor Yorick

In the countryside, along the wayside, wandering,
I pursued a man who held his soul in glass around his neck.
He sang Aegean rimes and rang Chinese chimes,
and tried climbing the Alps in an autumnal pose
while striving, searching, seeking the Grail and the better part of prose
and valor.
I called to him, authoritative and voluble; volatile.
"Run, alum of our army!
Retreat and desert, and flee into the desert,
where your corpse will refuse to rot--
turned into a seeping, speaking spigot of vitality and failing clot
and will testify to all the testament of truancy!"
He stopped and stabbed himself, and then he fell.
I viewed his face-- I knew him well.
And his prison-prism, the penitentiary and purgatory for his spirit,
came undone.
The shards and slices, as they split, echoed and hinted the prices of being and the devices of life;
reverberated the interest on existence.
The fragments formed shapes of treachery--
perfectly forged for betrayal and the sheathe of a brother's back--
and with corrosive coruscation,
scintillated in isolation.
And my truculence, sated, left me, forsaken--
haloed, hallowed, and hollowed.

//no one on the farms//

//no one on the farms//
it's all so hazy after a vampire's day
suckling metal straw and
iron cud at fourteen minutes past the hour.
pie. pie and marlees. yeahhh. yippie kay-yo kay-yay.
and suddenly tomorrow is today.
too sloshed to arrive on the morning tide
the dissonance of the sunshine sets off car alarms
and i can’t find my neighbourhood anymore
but i don’t want to go home

One drunken morning as I stumbled in my door thinking to have some pie before collapsing to soak up the alcohol I found a pack of Marlees on my front lawn with two left and decided not to smoke.

Three

From the Surgeon-General, a dirge-end of derelict vocation--
"Expunge and impound the light of the sky, the sun.
A sponge of smoke to soak
the illumination dry, from the sun and its sky.
Smoke! And invoke, in general, as the surgeon says and elects,
a carcinogenic death that disintegrates our flesh
and frees our forms from falling, failing fates!"
--on every pack to date.

This poem is basically an ordinance from the Surgeon-General, telling everyone to smoke cigarettes so as to create a cloud of smoke and smog over the city, and so that they, in essence, will reach death faster. It's a message that's on every cigarette pack in the city, and much in contrast to the health warning of the cigarette packs of our own reality.

Two

Mother says to son, who has a grenade in his gut:
"Child, on the morrow I will cradle your marrow.
I will laden it with careful compassion;
neither a sad faction of maudlin mourning
nor a diagram of indifferent retraction from
the Great System that will spread you over the plains.
We have 'til morning-- we have 'til mourning begins.
An evening of weeping and scorning of overt emotion,
of remembrance and nostalgic entrance to meaningless memory and the corrosive motion of time.
Apprehension, and our pension is bestowed grief,
waiting to mourn-- waiting until the morning of the day that you explode.
Your marrow and horror will harrow us tomorrow,
as the black-brittle pin begins to slip
from the death-spittle sheathe within you,
a diagram of destiny's phlegm-- spit and repeat; release so grim.
And while your diagram still pushes for breath,
I will push you to my breast, which will bear the breadth
of the pain; the gory rain;
the reign of glory of the hate and acrimony of fate,
on the morrow, when I embrace your marrow,
steaming-hot and scalding my skin, enacting my sin."
Says mother to son, cries with tears hung
like criminals and convicts on her face,
as she ties him to crucifix, and escapes.
We are a people of mortality, not morality,
and die expertly and the whims of a power impassioned by our suffering.

This poem, once again narrated by the Lacerated Orator, details the role of the mechanical mutations in the lives and existences of the Miscreant people. A child has been born and created with a grenade in his stomach, and it will explode the morning after the poem takes place. The mother of the boy struggles to find a balance of self-control and emotive expression of grief as she speaks one last time with the boy. However, she is overtaken with cynicism, and continues to darkly describe to her son how he will die in the morning, and how she will mourn. Finally, she departs, after tying him to a crucifix of sorts, so that his explosion will do no more harm than is necessary. I think this poem really needs work. It doesn't flow well, has no rhythm, repeats a couple of important words (which I hate to do, in most situations), and fails to get the message and scope of the original idea across to the reader; it fails to execute as well as I want it to. This one will definitely be redone.

One

I am a lacerated narrator,
an orator and oracle of a people deconstructed, who beget transgression,
transmuted, transgressed.
My lips are cut-away so that I may speak without obstruction
at the cost of accuracy.
I am accosted-- an accusatory, obstinate leech of pronunciation,
who, in my profound instigation,
ekes clarity from the clarion that my ever-salivating smile cannot provide.
It is a trophy of the atrophy of speech, my grim grin-grimiore.
My suffering snarls and malformed moans please and permeate,
seize and sickly sate
the malignancy of the sadist surgeon who slew my syllables with scalpel:
slice and sneer, my anesthesia fear.
General! Admiral!
(Restitution, destitution, and avant-garde admiration.)
Thank you, father; frenzied flesh-fouler.
Dark-browed and slanderous, we persist and subsist beneath your smoke-sullen skies.

The speaker of this poem is the Lacerated Orator, the leader of the Miscreants. I think I'm going to have it as his introductory poem, a bitter manifesto of insubordination to the Surgeon-General (the creator and father of the Lacerated Orator, of sorts). My goal was for it to be as vicious as possible, but I'm not sure that it is. Also, the flow and rhythm is a little off, and the whole thing needs to be a little more cohesive. The content itself may need to be adjusted, as well. Right now, it just seems mediocre and contrived. I didn't intend for it to be a final draft, but I wanted to post it so I get back into working on the project as a whole.

I've given some thought to expanding Pedestrian Protection outside of the universe of the Plain Praetorian, and I've decided that I'm going to. I have a project I've been working on for a little while, but I've neglected it for the past month or so, and would like to get back to working on it. Posts that are relevant to it will feature a city symbol.

Right now, I call it "A cityscape.", and I'm hoping it'll turn out to be a collection of poems that narrate everything (and more!) that I'm going to describe next:

A preacher/leader of a religious movement has founded a civilization of sorts within the bounds of a garden that borders a great chasm. This leader, the FORLORN MESSIAH, a necromancer, has created a religion based off of the idea of resurrection. His followers are urged to get through life as quickly as possible-- perhaps advocating suicide-- so that they can be resurrected with the full knowledge of death, thus making them more complete beings. It also allows them to, in a way, circumvent the natural cycle: since death has already taken them once, it has no reason to take them again, giving them a sort of immortality and agelessness.

However, the religion of the FORLORN MESSIAH is corrupted and perverted by one of his disciples, the SURGEON-GENERAL. The SURGEON-GENERAL eventually brings ruin upon the garden and the followers of the FORLORN MESSIAH, disbanding 'church'. On the other side of the chasm, he founds a city of machinery, and begins promulgating a religion of his own. It is much like that of the FORLORN MESSIAH, but without the resurrection. The SURGEON-GENERAL, a sadistic, melancholy, and suicidal being, pushes his followers to seek death as quickly as possible so that life cannot torture them-- but without leaving behind a corpse. Bodies are subject to resurrection, and the SURGEON-GENERAL fears an uprising of the resurrected (he was not able to destroy or eliminate the FORLORN MESSIAH, who now dwells in the sewers/cellars of the city).

Those who survived the destruction of the garden, and those who refuse to follow the SURGEON-GENERAL, make an exodus to the plains beyond the chasm and the city. They find no solace, though, as the SURGEON-GENERAL pursues them with soldiers and war. A brief conflict ensues, and the 'rebels', so to say, and in name only, are defeated and bound/forced to worship a great monument of metal. This monolith 'mutates', again, so to say, the inhabitants of the plains, causing them to be infused and born with metal defects. Such an example is the LACERATED ORATOR, the leader of the oppressed people, who has a razor blade embedded in his vocal chords (and whose lips were cut away by the SURGEON-GENERAL to 'enhance' his ability to orate to the people of the plains).

That's some of the background. As for actual plot and story, I'm not too sure-- it'll be something that involves the return of the MISCREANTS (the people of the plains, who I forgot to name in the last paragraph) and the LACERATED ORATOR, and the eventual destruction of the city and the reinstatement of the FORLORN MESSIAH and his religion, which is irregainable and no longer pure. Or, everyone will just die, or something. Like I said, not too sure.

It's all a bit rough-hewn right now, and (obviously) needs some work and polishing, but my goal with it, however ridiculous and unrealistic, is to perhaps get it published somewhere. If I can up its quality significantly and produce a decent number of poems, that is.

I have a number of poems already composed, so I'll post them intermittently, and will be adding new ones as well.

And that's that. Hopefully something good will come of it all.

(I think I made up a couple of new words while writing this entry. And, in regards to the capitalization of characters, I saw it done in Dante's Inferno, and thought it was really cool. So, now I do the same.)

V

"In droves we drove into the forest,
through its porous black wood.
(Chorus! Chorus! Come narrate our disintegration and defeat.)
Stood, our horses hoarse and hoary-breathed;
breathed in the scent of the bone-brothers at our feet, underfoot.
Their bodies, under soot from the scorched slayings of yesteryear,
only know what maggots and rot festered here, on this spot.
We spit in their memory, ephemeral in prescience but nearly eternal in presence.
The shamans and seers, with their peripheral, perennial sneers,
cast the bones for their auguries and stuffed our arteries
with adrenaline and discreet prophecies of ambivalence and defeat,
then baptized us in sleet
and hurled us as arvingers and warbringers
at the tyrant-lord of the black-forest hordes.
His wards bade us to our bane and brimstone,
gave us grim gravestones of totems and torture,
and death and its throes threw us to mortuary-gore and mortar snows
to complete our brutal burial,"
spoke the messenger-soldier, split-torn and sore from the conflict and war.
The Emperor mourned at the disintegration and defeat of his legion, elite,
and urged me to purge the perjurer, and the massacre:
"Complete it. Tales cannot be told through postmortem mold."
An unclean kill, though pristine my will.

The usual, for this one. The vocabulary and diction/syntax aren't the best, and there's a few cliches that could be redone and improved, so I may come back and fix this in the future. In terms of plot, it's more or less about the Roman legion (not sure which one) that was massacred by German barbarians in the Black Forest. The majority of the poem is narrated by the only survivor from the incident, who has returned to Rome to report to the Emperor. But, since such a startling defeat is simply not acceptable to the world's foremost power, the Emperor orders the Plain Praetorian to kill the man and cover-up the defeat. The last line is the Plain Praetorian sarcastically commenting on his lack of willpower and conscience. I was considering changing it to "A pristine kill, though unclean my will", but, I think the way it is now works better.

That's all. There'll probably be something else up later tonight, to make up for all the days I missed. Shame on me.

II: In this vignette, the Praetorians, on the order of the emperor, have just executed a troublesome nobleman. The entire household is murdered, and the Plain Praetorian explores the idea of a perfect slaying-- how much is too much, and how much is too little? How much contempt and disdain? How much mercy? How much pain should be inflicted? I've never actually killed anyone, but I meant for it to be a parallel to writing. I made use of 'soundplay' and wordplay, as usual. The rhyming is a bit simplistic, and I think the climax of the piece (if I can use that term legitimately), when the Plain Praetorian is killing the servant, is a bit too short. I may revisit and redo this one.

III: In this poem, a band of gaudy miscreants and thieves are planning to graverob the tomb of a recently-deceased emperor. The Praetorians have caught wind of the plot and plan to ambush the intruders in the catacombs. More wordplay and phonic puns. I'm really trying to build and develop that aspect of my writing, as that's what everything I compose is predicated on, more or less. I'm going to come back and fix this one up. It's a little vague in some points, and the 'marmalade' reference is a little cliched and doesn't really fit in the rest of the poem.

IV: The Plain Praetorian is on guard duty, patrolling the perimeter of a coastal complex/compound/fortress. It's high-up, and there is a cage of birds along the rampart he is stationed upon. The inspiration for this poem came from me pondering on the 'battle' between nature and civilization, and how the environment and animals and all that are being driven out of their element. My thoughts are this: maybe it isn't so bad. Animals can adapt. They can survive. We have several bird feeders at my house, as well as an artificial pond. Both have altered the surrounding nature, so to say, but maybe the animals the handouts, the safety. Maybe they prefer that over the 'purity' of untouched wilderness. It's not a real great thought, and not very developed, but, whatever. I'm definitely going to rework this one: the central idea (animals who remain animals and 'in touch' with nature, but who also take advantage of the benefits of civilization) isn't very strong or apparent, and I think the descriptions could be supercharged and whatnot.

I'm still working on the layout as a whole. I may change around the icons for each post, so that they'll be more appropriate for the content/what they represent. I also need to find some readers, and, since this project was inspired by an art group, I may look for some contributors and compatriots as well. Finally, I may use this for ideas and writing outside of the Plain Praetorian character, but I'm not sure yet. I'd like to remain focused and concept album-like (conceptual?) if possible.

IV

An aviary, observatory, and place of revelry above the Adriatic, upon exotic shores.
I am certain and sure of serenity as I patrol
the top part of the rampart,
watching down to where the dock starts
as ships and serpents exit to the sea.
Sparrow turns to me, and I mention:
"Sing you wistful odes of wishful liberation
and contention of your caged sedation?"
His face contorts, and he reports:
"Nay, sentry: I opt not for sedition. I partake in civilization
and your nationalism nation, and, in my current condition,
also hold a pretentious position in the natural matriarchy of nature.
My flock-brothers flock to berries, but I have found wine,
and when the citizens whine of taxes and tariffs,
my tact tells me to flap and fly
to the whims of the wind and the way the air lifts wing.
I hold a pact with the wild and the mild,
the caterpillar and the city--
have no pity for me, sentry. My century is not over."
The bird picks the lock of its cage with its beak
and drops from the peak-- like Icarus--
into the sunset, sea, and beach.

III

Tonight the ardent harlequins prepare a heist of the expatriate emperor, now patron of the passed and exhumed and the fallen lepers.
(He lies laden in leopard skin; the laity and the peity remove his sin.)
They seek a Eucharism of coin and monetarism, but no golden monism or joy will adjoin them in this emporium of the defunct.
Adjunct, we wait and bait the inhibitions of the marquetried performers and pilferers alongside incubators of death,
marked and tried by stone and time.
A guardsman coughs among the coffins, and I envision their marrow being spread between the narrow rows
like marmelade.

More on this later, I think. I just wanted to get something up because I didn't last night.

II

[A nobleman's vista at dusk. A number of PRAETORIAN GUARDS, including the PLAIN PRAETORIAN, have just ransacked the estate. Several of the inhabitants lay dead or dying on the marble patio at the entrance, where the GUARDS are.]
PLAIN PRAETORIAN: [Prodding a badly-wounded servant, who spasms meekly and weakly on the ground. To the other GUARDS.] This one stirs.
FIRST GUARD: [In regards to a corpse that has been torched; mockingly and sarcastically. In reply to the PLAIN PRAETORIAN.] And this one burns!
SECOND GUARD: [Part of the mockery and jest; pointing to a body that hangs from an overhead arch, by noose. In further reply.] And this one turns! It swings! It sways! It rings in dead-tones and dead-flesh moans! Stench!
CAPTAIN: [To the SECOND and FIRST GUARDS.] Stay your words. [To the PLAIN PRAETORIAN.] Be his savior; slay the servant. We operate on a mercy absolute: oblivion.
[The CAPTAIN exits, moving deeper into the vista.]
FIRST GUARD: [Continuing the CAPTAIN's statement.] From our own position, of course.
[The FIRST GUARD exits, in pursuit of the CAPTAIN.]
SECOND GUARD: Though coarse, regardless of their condition; a meridian of pity and compassion.
[The SECOND GUARD exits, following the others. The PLAIN PRAETORIAN watches after them, watching over the crippled, dying man at his foot.]
PLAIN PRAETORIAN: [To the servant.] Like the hounds we employed to hunt you. They enjoyed the hunt and chase, hardly-chaste as they are. [Noticing the man's wretched state.] You, at my greaves: do not grieve. For you, I will bereave, reap, weep, and weave.
[The PLAIN PRAETORIAN slides his blade into the torso of the mortal servant. The servant expels anguish from his throat.]
PLAIN PRAETORIAN: [In thought.] That was not enough to kill you. The tip can only rip and unwrap your skin, and promulgate your sin. I will press for more. [The PLAIN PRAETORIAN leans upon the blade slightly.] But my weight-- how much? And I wait-- how long for you to die? Shall this blade be dirtied by soil and soul, or soiled by blood alone; sold to the killing hand?
[The PLAIN PRAETORIAN leans heavily on his sword, and the servant exhales and expires. The PLAIN PRAETORIAN tries to pull his blade from the body of the man, but it has punctured too far, and is now stuck between the marble slabs of the patio. He shrugs and prepares to delve further into the estate, but turns and observes the dead.]
PLAIN PRAETORIAN: [To the smoldering corpse.] You gray. [To the hanging corpse.] You sway. [To the once-stirring servant.] You lay.
[The PLAIN PRAETORIAN thinks for a moment, then smiles briefly and subtly.]
PLAIN PRAETORIAN: [To them all.] I will not stay, or even pray for you. You have been hounded and saved. [He exits.]
END

Eh. Not the best, but it's practice. I'm really tired, though, and it's really late, so I suppose I'll just analyze and explain in the (later) morning.

I

Gladius is glad it must
swing and slay and end the Emperor Augustus, august.
Munity and treachery, and galvinizing constancy
bring republics and republicans
from recluse to reclose.
Disgusting August days bring heat and heresy.
Lord Avaricious, he bows and vows to find the killers
with his equestrians and chivalry.
He rides away on conspiracy and cutthroat coffers.

Augustus was the first emperor to employ the Praetorians, but by the fall of the Romans, they had basically become mercenaries and terrorizers who murdered at the whim of the coin. This poem I guess explores the consequences of Augustus' creation, enacted upon himself.

I focused heavily on 'soundplay'-- alliteration, assonance, rhyme, etc., and their corruptions-- as I believe to be my style ("recluse...reclose", "bow...vow", "conspiracy and cutthroat coffers'. Wordplay is important as well ("Gladius...glad", "Emperor Augustus, august, August", etc.). As for plot, Augustus is killed by the blade of a Praetorian (the gladius, although that may not be historically accurate), and anarchy falls upon Rome as its Republicans are slaughtered too, in a coup by Lord Avaricious. 'Avaricious' is a play on Roman names (the majority of them end with '-us') and the avarice and greed of the later Praetorian guard. Avaricious is the plotter of the conspiracy (the coup), which has netted him a large sum of money (cutthroat coffers). His equestrians (knights) are a more-modern version of Praetorians (rendering them obsolete).

Not the best analysis, but that's why I'm doing this. Oh, improvement.

Saving Caesar with unspectacular style and skill, the Plain Praetorian proffers pedestrian protection, gaunt and gauntleted guardianship, and a plethora of prose, poetry, and plays depicting his experiences through anachronism and fantastical, phalanxical fiction alike.

Welcome.

This is Pedestrian Protection, proffered by the Plain Praetorian. It's like an archery range of words, in that its central purpose is to provide me with practice writing. May my compositions and creations strike keen, deadly, and true.

Pedestrians (like the one at the beginning of this post) indicate ranting and rambling, swords imply poetry and perhaps prose, and shields are an exhibition of vignettes, drama, and dialogue.

Enjoy.