Ned Hayes's Blog, page 178

"Any man among us has seen so many die over the years, the wave after wave of death sweeping in like..."

"

Any man among us has seen so many die over the years, the wave after wave of death sweeping in like a tide that strikes all, haphazard. The good, the bad, the virgin and the harlot: no one is spared, all go rose-spattered with plague lesions, and there is no sense, no judgment before doom strikes.

Death takes us all with the black malady or the sweating sickness or the white blindness or the winter croup, crops failing or bitter water in our mouths.

There is no justice to such deaths, and there is no sense.

But this fire – the flames that burned our boys – these few deaths were an act of malevolence. Someone intended this, there was a judgment made, an evil act. And in this, it is for sure and certain that there is a soul at fault. Someone can be blamed, if not for all the deaths that have been visited upon us, then for these deaths as a synecdoche for all that came before.

I will move heaven and earth to hold onto one thing that makes sense now, the few victims who can be atoned, the one tragedy that can be redeemed.

"

- Sinful Folk, by Ned Hayes (forthcoming 2012)

April is the cruellest month, breedingLilacs out of the dead...

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desiger, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain

- T.S. Eliot

"White men’s bodies turn green under the billows of the seaI have been told so; when the young..."

“

White men’s bodies turn green under the billows of the sea

I have been told so; when the young are dragged from the tide

their lips have melted into a delicate slash of emerald.

Black bodies turn blue in the brine

none of the longshoremen here notice, for there are too many dead;

in Jamaica or Barbados it is rarer. There, the heavy pictish tinge

is obvious — their friends, dark and strangely indigo, found

among the flood of tourist caucasian suicides.

There is a color women’s bodies turn

the change is as oblique as the departure of the soul

when our flesh takes on the scent of waves, our skin tone melds away.

But no one has ever noticed the change of shade; these corpses often float for years. then, sometimes, they return to shore, marry, take up jobs or clean house, have children, laugh and talk.

I am walking around still, tasting of ocean, undetected.

”

-

“Transfiguration”

From the book of poems Glossolalia: Speaking  in Tongues (2009), by Ned Hayes

                                       (Poem appeared previously in The Mid-American Review )

"White men's bodies turn green under the billows of the seaI have been told so; when the young..."

"

White men's bodies turn green under the billows of the sea

I have been told so; when the young are dragged from the tide

their lips have melted into a delicate slash of emerald.

Black bodies turn blue in the brine

none of the longshoremen here notice, for there are too many dead;

in Jamaica or Barbados it is rarer. There, the heavy pictish tinge

is obvious — their friends, dark and strangely indigo, found

among the flood of tourist caucasian suicides.

There is a color women's bodies turn

the change is as oblique as the departure of the soul

when our flesh takes on the scent of waves, our skin tone melds away.

But no one has ever noticed the change of shade; these corpses often float for years. then, sometimes, they return to shore, marry, take up jobs or clean house, have children, laugh and talk.

I am walking around still, tasting of ocean, undetected.

"

-

"Transfiguration"

From the book of poems Glossolalia: Speaking  in Tongues (2009), by Ned Hayes

                                       (Poem appeared previously in The Mid-American Review )

"In the early hours of the night, I tell myself that the sound I hear is frost cracking, river ice..."

"

In the early hours of the night, I tell myself that the sound I hear is frost cracking, river ice breaking. I lie to my own heart, as one lies to a frightened child, one who cannot be saved from the conflagration.

All the while, I know it is a fire. And I know how near it is.

"

- Sinful Folk, by Ned Hayes (forthcoming in 2012)

"Sinful Folk" - a 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel

Sinful Folk just hit the "2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel" short list (the quarter-finals)!

You can get two FREE chapters right here on SinfulFolk.com (over to the RIGHT here —>  I'm recommending getting the chapters here, because Amazon messed up the encoding in the text for download to Kindle. 

Posting a review on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Sinful-Folk-2012-Entry-ebook/  would be GREAT — the judges use these early reviews to help decide what novels will progress to the final stages of the contest. (Note that reviews need to be submitted before  mid-April) 

More about the contest here: Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest

Thanks for all your support so far! 

"In the end, I listen to the fear that keeps me awake, that resounds through the frantic beating in..."

"In the end, I listen to the fear that keeps me awake, that resounds through the frantic beating in my breast, the dry terror in my throat, the dread that comes with the pricking of the rat's nervous feet in the darkness."

- Sinful Folk, by Ned Hayes (forthcoming in 2012)

"Always, I must hide my true face. As my fingers work, I grip hope to me, a small bird quaking in the..."

"

Always, I must hide my true face. As my fingers work, I grip hope to me, a small bird quaking in the nest of my heart.

…

This sooty ritual is perhaps my own strange paean to womanhood. Like Theresa of Avignon, that spoiled heiress of the French throne, who shared my vows at Canterbury, the world will see me only as I intend.

It is a type of vanity: if I cannot be a woman, I will be as ugly a man as I can muster.

"

- Sinful Folk, by Ned Hayes (forthcoming in 2012)

"Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I..."

"Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained."

- Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones (via bookmania)

Sinful Folk book trailer (preview version)

Sinful Folk book trailer (preview version)