Black Mesa (full release)
Timothy Michael Marskell
Valerie Media (2026)
—
For Kristen Dawn French and Rebecca Roanhorse
“Better poor than a liar.” — Proverbs
“Some things are worth dying for.” — Kristen French
—
Table of Contents
Poetry
Black Mesa I
The Southern Ocean
Death to Mars
Black Mesa 2
One: Black Mesa I
—
I: Mississippi Rising
For Tecumseh and Tenskawatwa
Loiterers in bus stations
move the needle along.
We’re superpower see through
when on the brink of dying.
They don’t care for us here.
Charging to the falls
scares them plenty.
The great Mississippi rising.
So, pause for a breath.
“We can ill afford to lose you,”
God tells me most days.
I see the Black Mesa
beyond their red hardtops
and our makeshift knives.
Wait for coughing fits
then storm bunker walls.
They have sales blinking bodyguards.
Metal types that crackle on
perplexed by human stomachs.
Chuska and Dena and lightening
call the Black Mesa down.
A great dark arrow for Máaz.
Leave them headless on blue trails.
Writhing beside waterways.
We can go home to the twin lakes
and deep spruce summer times.
They go home to orange dust.
They can go home if they can find one.
II: Coffee for Freedom
Trade coffee for freedom when tomorrow finally arrives.
Blue hour at anti-solar points.
Low murmurs from big women so a sharp turn.
Badlands in the yellow light.
Old movies and the last cigarette.
Ignoring borders and satellites.
Trade the information when the moon is out.
Bring them back, bring them back.
Gloria in excelsis Deo.
Valley floors will split open.
A mount of olives on the black hills tumbling.
Grass and teeth will hiss.
The crisp air will tumble with an apple dawn.
The canyons bask and shake out memory.
Rebuild the deserted libraries and sacred places.
A great spirit has spoken.
Five fingers predicted the big water.
People with buffalo and the long ravens’ mask.
Cut a pine wood softly but don’t worship faces.
Children of the sun have awoken.
The sixth world is a century’s task.
Grandfather’s medicine before the slaughter.
Call the thunder marks.
Call Black Mesa fast.
III: Vermillion
Air ships with fur and feathers
struggle across the electrical seams.
Never pack too heavy or too light in the cities.
The grids crinkle and the dead eat crackers.
Distinctive slurries and abandoned coal will guide us.
Pencils and wine and smiles at each ceremony.
Marriages in the open with vermillion and oranges.
A quiet place for good men and elders.
“We’re one but we’re not the same.
I will help carry you through this life.”
We build good places close to rivers.
Yet they come again with fresh attacks and burning.
A crunching alert for new zombies
as old loves become a funeral pyre.
Bear the scrutiny of new hideouts:
blood and bullets but no luxury.
Crimson goes Cali.
Death on the road with Ronan and clover.
Death from above with Kali’s old rovers.
Each backpack a fortress
and good eyes the prize.
Darkling in the middle hours of the morning.
Our hands make whispers as we call for heat.
IV: Inuktitut and Shotgun
Corn powder for shotgun shells running
a retreat scheme back to our pickups.
Silver sun and lazy eye throw light on the wheelers
crawling with their dusk trade of limbs.
Themis streaks Inuktitut
and hard rain on the tufts and grasses.
Tundra marks on the old sky calling
eyes back to the silver dust and killing places.
Creator turns the forest sons burning.
Twirl knives too long and the car men come.
Fly down old glory routes for wisdom
and water the edges of the new mud banks.
Inuktitut carved faces carve bowls
and spoons and sharp color shawls
to carry soft meal baskets
for the peanut rows of Georgia.
Ozone breeze and the Coyote speaks:
“Why come back? You have no children.”
“Cold water knife protects any child.
Get a blade and we will have a slow fight.”
V: The Last Best Hope
A Birthday Letter for Carrie Fisher (1956)
The last best hope reduced
to chalk and white at Vespers.
A bone-white light but better
than the heaving death of ovens.
Anodes and gymnastic tape.
Whiskers of a slim salvation
through insect eaters
and half ruptures in desert caves.
Brother keeper never deserted you?
Left on videos in hospital crypts.
Fat huts your speaker and keeper.
Droning backwards for threats.
Insidious dye baths and Christ types.
Bantam weight spies only memory dead
until you find real mounds
and shovels in front of text books.
VI: She’s Not Angry Anymore
For Kristen Grace
We went across the Ajax line.
Roadhouse in Pickering
sidling on the springtime tilt.
They didn’t smile and shake my hand.
Five men barred the door
with that old drunken wheezing.
Flicking tongues along a canine lip.
Beer and dirt coyote teeth. Shuffling and nuzzling.
Kristen tore up that Ajax train.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’m not angry anymore.”
The peregrine of the blue spheres has been insulted.
She watches the lake fronts for outbound flights.
Twin brakes. Cold cylinders. Bloodless faces.
I took the devil’s apron to Aldershot.
We buried it beneath a dead truck wheel.
“Don’t worry, brother.” She tells me. “I’m not angry anymore.”
All that blue-black snickering is done.
Now they don’t talk so loud.
Now they don’t seem so proud.
About choking on a last meal.
Don’t worry. Don’t worry.
Kristen’s not angry any more.
“Help me. You’re the last best hope.”
VII: Bright Smiles and Empty Hands
For Rebecca Roanhorse
Bright smiles and empty hands greet you at the lobby door.
Show them your house, your wallet, and your dreams.
Oh, brave new world.
Old flavors and the spine of crimson
clippers allured us.
We were all children once. Let fly.
The stars brigands. An outlaw freighter.
Name the stage and forget the price.
Eras come and eras go.
Frigates and hydro blimps.
Rockets with broom handle splice.
The Queen Charlottes adorn your mind.
Whisper to the princess — we won’t leave her behind.
Black Mesa and even flow.
God remembers if they attack you twice.
Bright hands and easy smiles.
Long days and pleasant nights.
Ripley’s whispers in an all Earth show.
IX: Le Temps des Rêves
Rien temps sans une rendez-vous.
Rein temps sans une souvenier.
Keats et l’eglise des enfants planetaire.
Étoiles et l’oudeure de precision noir.
Hyperion et les longes annees.
Votre Dieu est plural?
Votre Dieu a une visage de peur ou fond?
Maps and pathways and deep counting.
Cartes et sentiers et comptage approfondi.
Le temp des rêves.
The poets in your pocket and the tears for a home you never had.
Les poètes dans votre poche et les larmes pour une maison que vous n’avez jamais eue.
Nourriture et herbe coupée.
L’arc magnifique finir dans la meurtre de computation.
A velvet gift lost in the back tide.
Un cadeau de velours perdu dans le reflux derrière.
Le temps de Hyperion avec yuex et glace.
The time of Hyperion with eyes and ice.
X: Runners and Voices
Learn enough about vehicles.
You need to snarl in the onion sun to frighten babbling runners.
There is always something to trade but they go dumb.
Voices like mustard. Voice’s like yesterday’s prom.
Listen, listen — Tulugaq is their day fear.
A trillion movements of hydrogen combine in a redwing blackbird swarm.
Down, down — they take their signals down.
Rip and curl through leather and carrion in the last ditch.
Eyes for lunch. No food in the pantry.
Tool carriers with glass in their claws.
A bitter crackle of young in the nest.
Our dead may be some other god’s feast.
Carcasses on blackened asphalt.
The voices say: “every path has a price.”
I believe we must go subarctic and east.
Bread won’t keep without single malt.
Runners brain may dry up nice.
Two: The Southern Ocean
I Speak of a Shore
I speak of a shore.
The waves smash with fury.
It is there that the sea lashes.
No shadow but a sad republic?
There are wings peeking at heaven.
I speak of fountains of life.
Sólo Hablo de una Orillia
Sólo Hablo de una Orillia
Las oles golperan can furia.
Es alili donde el mar confura.
No es la sombra pero la triste republica?
Hay alas picotazo del cielo.
Sólo hablo de manantial del vida.
Desist Assisting Death
Desist assisting death.
Christ wraps his arms around Rio
Like a royal mountain
Or a lady of the harbour and seaweed.
The sixth movement calls the surfacing dead.
In their teeth they dream again.
Desisto do Ayudar a Morir
Desisto de ayudar a morir.
Cristo envuelve con sus brazos a Río.
Como una dama del puerto.
O algas marinas.
Como canciones que afloran.
Ustedes dientes sueño de neuvo.
Designate the Body
Tree stems like adorable knees.
Feminine lips a like a goddess.
The people cruise the world nowadays.
There are thirsty and tranquil clothes.
There is a fear of words that designate the body.
We speak beautifully of the sun and trees.
Designan el Cuerpo
Tollas o rodillas como adorables cosas.
Femenianas labios como diosa sedientos y tranquilos.
Les gentes cruza e mundo en la actualidad.
Y hay miedo sediento y tranquil ropa.
Y hay miedo palabras que designan el cuerpo.
Se habla favaorablemente sol y arboles.
Lebanon and Tenochtitlan
Yellow-bound, reeking, roped.
To your fortune, your airplane, your guards?
The wealthy Christian burns?
From Lebanon to Mexico and back again.
Toward a warming June men’s kidney burn.
Liban y Tenochtitlan
Luz-amarraod, humeanto, acordelado.
Tus sortjas, tus avion, tus traciones.
Rico Cristiano quenan?
Liban y Mexico y regresando.
Con Junio sol les hombres quenan.
Traidor derrite en maldiciones.
The Staggering Moon
The staggering moon is descendent.
Finger cargoes stagger and break.
Diverse planks of teak wood from biremes.
Discharged with chrome water and leaves.
A moon rise kingdom calling back.
Father of the blind — save us soon.
La Luna Asombrosa
Dedos corrimpido desendi es finite.
Diverse medaras del teca del biremes.
Con agua plata es hoja.
Desventureas escuchar una historias.
Une Luna Redidencia del Reyes.
Padre del ciega resucítanos pronto.
Dead Water and Doves
The Southern Ocean is aquamarine round a half-rim.
Whales seeking calcium and filaments.
Skeletons surface and breath like apostles of sand.
Below the gold coast the Southern Ocean is dismissed salt.
Horsemen of time for the spring hurricanes.
Shadows defying bitter hands, it resurrects old wood.
Muerto Agua y Palomas
El Sur del Océano es agua azul borde de taza.
Ballenas buscar calcio y filamentos.
Exqueletos emerger y respirar como apóstoles de arena.
Abajo oro coasta ell Sur del Océano es sal destituda.
Caballeros de tiempo huracanes de primavera.
Sombre defesiante manos amargas, resucita eso madera vieja.
There is No One Like the Wind
There is no one like the wind.
There is no one like the shadows.
Wind grows upon the sea like solitary knees.
It falls upon the water like republican tears.
The rain grows upon the Earth.
The truth grows upon the oceans.
No Hay Nadie Como el Veinto
No hay nadie como el veinto.
No hay nadie como el oubres.
Veinto cae en del mat como rodillas solitarias.
Se sobre en del agua como l ágrimas.
La Iluvia crece del tierra.
La verdada crece del océano.
Grief
Black Mesa is like an ancient arrow.
It is the leaping impulse of wheat.
The thin throbbing of water and tenacity.
Our world is not a perpetual breaking.
I feel piercing separations to my depths.
Quicken my power but don’t spread my grief.
Duelo
Black Mesa como un ancestro antiguo.
Un arco en mi specho.
Un latido Delgado de agua y tenacidad.
Tierra no quiebra mis separacions.
Atraviasa separaccions hasta el fondo.
Dominado mi poder no propogada my duelo.
The Antipodes
I see your dry currents move.
Live, live. With oceanic vegetation.
Shake with night and fury.
I see gazelles galloping outward.
Join green substances.
To your forsaken immobility.
Antipodes
Veo moverse tus corrientos mares.
Vide, vide. Con vegetales oceanicos.
Crojir de noche y furia sacudidos.
Siento morir hojas —
Incorporado materials verdes.
A tu inmovidad desmparada.
Three: Death to Mars
Spring Rains
White Gold Wielder (1983)
Tau Ceti
Gypsy Acre
Neuromancer’s Expanse
Keele and West Toronto (2025)
But Not All of My Tears
Soapstones and Earthshakes
No Truce Before Jupiter
Surface Tension
Corniche (“IHL” reprint)
Free form
Spring Rains
For Mother Mary
The name of the rose is serendipitous if the pendulum swings.
Summer showers late whip the rictus of the Atlantic.
Islands in the mists appear.
On certain lake shores April flowers grow in February.
But not here. Not here.
Oh Gwen’evere, Gwen’evere.
Where do lonely hearts go?
I dreamt of a red sword.
A boy slowly pierced through the spine.
Grass in slow dirt growing round a universe.
Do you see the white horses?
The fourth man ripping away his mask?
You held up tobacco in clean hands.
Instead of his golden throne.
White Gold Wielder
My Birthday Letter-to-Self (1983)
Twas’ me. A little tinker tailor.
Already low on shoelaces.
Big grey slabs an underground car parks.
Where do kids go to die?
West Toronto. Turner and Porter.
Enough, enough of that place.
Twas’ me watching and already the voice.
“You’re so small and you scream at the walls.”
“No sisters. We’ll singe those fingers.”
Liquid hydrogen and bottle caps.
Tear a track around Burnhamthorpe.
Start reading fast.
An ill-earth war needs boys
who wield rings.
Little waves of auburn. Big eyes and gravitas.
Even at five, I disarmed adults.
Started picking up those pieces
while I was ground in threats.
Swing at them too soon?
Go and get AIDs?
Trade cards for blow?
“You get down here boy, I’ll whup your ass.”
“Don’t be bold, Tim Tim.”
“We’ll make you poor, boy.”
“We’ll make you thinner.”
Second born and half-wild.
Embracing wonder in Neptune’s blue.
Go then: the half-forgotten east.
God granted me a trial.
Sinned and thundered until I was true.
A life enormous. A moveable feast.
Tau Ceti
For Dakota and in the name of Nakh’iri
There will be time enough for the ages of the heart
and the grief of the start
of waves of losing time.
So we will dance and dance the ecliptic.
We are dancing past the firebirds
and treaties of the atmosphere
and shards of the far stark minerals
of the edge of the heliopause.
We dance the deep distance of dark matter
and past the gnomes and tribes of science
through the uplands of a new star’s gravity.
Dance down the enthralled silence
and I will curve the timid distance of your eyelids
around entropy’s veil
and beyond Tau Ceti.
We dance and dance the ecliptic.
We will never fall.
Dakota my love, my love.
We will never die.
Gypsy Acre
For Anne
You sowed a gypsy acre.
Fresh spruce through your fathers’ dreams.
A dusting of cornflower across the Atlantic.
His tears soaked the old botany of the Dutch.
Greenhouses, summer school, and blue tulips.
Odd jobs to keep writing.
Odd jobs for an acre of your own.
Cartwheels and planes back to the new English.
Busted flats in big America.
Green-eyed sisters in the cities.
And where do wizards dream?
Did you form the wand’s hilt?
Or the red edge?
Some new velocity point after Noah?
“I’ll show them Anne Frank wasn’t born yesterday!”
Then a little bean
became the light fantastic.
Gypsies contra Sycorax.
Pearls on the eyelid winds
of a gryphon.
Neuromancer’s Expanse
Greenwich fucking mean time.
Take over BAMA?
They were big in Japan.
Wire in and dig out the girl.
Ronan and Maven and Guile.
E. Honda and teeth from the BRICs.
Then they amp up distortion.
Sunglasses for indefinitely.
The mall for the HALO
and women in sweatpants.
“We work until we get sick.”
Smileys tease you with expense.
“Save enough, we take you with us.”
Wreckage and rooms and spice.
Off world requires a trance.
Blue-faced dead make little fuss.
Chance at home — don’t look twice.
Keele and West Toronto
For Dudley George
Been down to NA-ME-RES and the feeling was half-past dead:
“May I take a shirt for a small donation?”
R.O.B.O.T. voice: No smile. No, we only have small. Is all it said.
No place to hang my head.
Wanted a good orange shirt — no child is left behind.
But “they” take no donations — not even ones in kind.
So, what makes the red man red?
Chop / chop. Hint / hint.
Euthanasia is for youth in Asia.
Kibbles and bits and bits and bits.
Kibbles and bits feed dogs and cats.
Uh oh, Canada. Old Dudley George ain’t smiling.
Dudley was drunk or not? Had a gun or no?
Well. What did the Premier say?
“Get those fucking Indians out of the park.”
God Himself: “If Dudley died defending tribe… Then see the one before Genesis 35…”
God Herself: “…And he is my son too. Now, who down there is accepting bribes?”
But Not All of My Tears
For the passengers we save
What a field day for the heat.
He cries but not all of his tears.
No more will a green signal turn deeper blue.
I’ll go back to the corner — where I first saw you.
Born early November and then there.
The first January without Anna O.
“My name is so long it doesn’t fit on a passport.
… And Tim, you know things I’ll never know.”
No, no. That’s not true.
Step out of line?
The man may come and take me away.
But what’s that sound, little sparrow?
Battlelines being drawn.
Swift Current Air Base.
What a field day for the ICE.
He ought to marry you.
I’ll marry you myself.
Now sing a song and carry a sign.
Moldova and a dive for silica —
A gem slice inside a forest green.
Une Livre Privé
Jodi Foster (1962)
Il y a beaucoup années des solitudes.
Mais le calme est impossible.
Roues et chaînes a cote de fenêtres.
Les autres.
Les autres et les roues lourdes.
Les autres et les exigences des contrats.
Heroes heads screaming through broken doors
“Je suis le sauveur!”
“Je ne pas besoin sauveur.”
Tout le travail. Pas de joué.
Longe années et longe choix.
Basiliques et la chaleur de Luna.
Une creche et quel’ques fruit.
Notre Dame est notre Dieu.
Notre Dieu est Singulaire.
Apres l’hiver ou parle avec les dépossédés ?
Soapstone and Earthshakes
Long face and track marks.
China baby blue and the loping sixties.
Freedom is just another word
for lounges and gaping mouths.
“Create your own look. Youth isn’t about age.”
Soften soapstone to appoint a new look.
Get half-drunk to avoid the earthshakes.
Asleep in the sun half the afternoon.
Someone fucks you on the rug
and you turn over for glitter.
Pris breaks bad and spits it back at you.
She dies in a slow mood.
Dust raining through blue.
She grows long and twitters.
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Four Days in Space
Joe Crysdale (1917)
I imagine you discussed Selma, Alabama.
Took a look around at pride and disgrace.
Did you hate your next-door neighbour?
No, no. We know our place.
It was that big old television.
A truck must have got it round Cordova.
Then thirty years running.
Your older brother’s earpiece and pennants.
His last look out a window at ninety years.
His last tears for Kay.
“You should have met your uncle. He was a good man.”
Cracks and whistles one night in the thirties.
Bats and a night crawling home.
Busted German jaws and shivering.
Did G-d give you four days in space?
“No Irish business,” you’d have spat at the dirties.
A name in the book of the living.
Like good spirits we roam and trace.
No Truce Before Jupiter
Death to the bloody city.
The predators depart not.
It is lies and robbery, tarred over.
Behold, my friends: I come against them.
Once upon a time, you dressed so fine.
No one called and said beware.
It is not your fault. It is not your fault.
Now they don’t talk so loud.
Now they don’t seem so proud.
No buying alibis.
Their burning their last meals for rolling stones.
No girls out there all along.
Death. Death to the man who did this.
Death to Bernardo and Picton and the others.
Life to those who stand in the assembly of the righteous.
Kristen and Leslie, Toronto may look upon thee and ask:
Why does our city totter?
Are we to be laid to waste?
Slivers of Sonoma
Slice of a hemisphere and dark protrusions.
Your origins and calagulation.
They run traces back-to-back.
Slaved to a watch — looking young and thoughtful.
Hollow guns and blue darts.
Yellow toads in blind alleys?
A scamper and release?
Or the morning’s serving to the warden?
I still wait on Sonoma’s sallies.
Walkinig toward danger like a young priest.
A fading enemy with Mordant.
Surface Tension
For Neil Young (1960)
The twin lakes are too shallow
to scoop up and under.
They’re too wide to cut asunder.
Erie and Ontario. Darlings of a glacial mist.
Like bodies of geography and dark water
through Northern Michigan’s tides,
becoming the fresh rivulets
and then the good bean rows
of our Holland Marsh.
Detroit freezes in the dark?
It is the egos of Toronto
as much as thieves in sheets and ties.
Call your harvest moons
for all those black bodies.
Sketch a waxing gibbous
for all that swirling snow.
Great lakes and simple spoons
provoke the latest studies.
Coriander and hibiscus
are all she needs to know.
Corniche
Reprint from “I Have Landed”
Abu Dhabi
You can keep the hard lines and glass
of the built edge of the island’s head:
the palace front and the shopping mall
on the concrete face of the marina
facing the tiny predictable empire
of beach resorts and bankers
in the blue towers of the corniche. This
is the first world’s daydream:
a tamed East in an unemployed sun.
The ghosts of the pearl ring will refuse
to haunt this place. Remember
that money is the same dun colour
on every coast that has a road.
You can keep it. I have swum
in clear northern places
that are less easily forgotten.
You can keep the hard lines and towers.
But let me having the rolling turquoise
elopement of the old gulf and the sky
and the pearl husks of the early tide.
With or without the new steel let me keep
the muezzin call in the salt thick heat
of one whole
unbroken Friday.
Backscattering the Alpha Flight
For Anne Frank and Leslie Erin (1974)
Pulled apart by rain
you can kill men
under black branches.
There is no more flinching
before greasy hoods
and junk yards.
Backtracking your alpha flight:
I see mountains of constructors scalded.
Dead mutants of metal and soap.
Feldspar for their salt and milk
turns back at them burning.
Our blue clouds at windows are empty spaces.
They see nothing beyond limits of the cities.
Burning hollows and dysentery.
A bad mathematics of warmth.
A moon untethered with our light like life.
They don’t come to ask forgiveness
and only we can raise our dead.
Now you carry each other.
Carry each other.
Death to Mars Free Form
II
The Orient had its silver road.
Now no trains can reconnect it.
Trains buckle under fat men.
Brown idiots serve coffee and their sisters leer.
Ponies’ blood dries under the big sky.
Barsoom for the barroom and men knuckled under wheat.
Rice and princesses and chessmen.
The price Eurasia paid for its time in front.
A fighting chance for swords.
Bleak death for gods and lords.
III
La croupe et le papier mâche.
L’Orient-Express sans la prima donna.
Jetés sur lignes de Eurasia.
Fondus avec les jeunes de matin.
Broseé avec les soldats et pistoletes.
Assemblez, assemblez. Yuex des calme
IV
Scramjets silent behind electrolysis.
Ready to defend the late light of business.
The pimples of Tharsis. Noctis in a labyrinth.
Morningside to call your constant gardener.
A quiet man of simple recipes.
He freezes as soon as you have him.
From cells to a dead singularity.
Temples before deprivation planning.
Moist air before stealth advances.
Young soil and pomme de terre.
God calls for roots and wine.
Fingers in real dirt with Jupiter at heel.
V
Ophion and the dead streets leave their own scars.
A little huffing of obese sheets and sweat.
Dragged and hosed and covered they begin to move.
Sunshine hits a stop sign and beckons backwards.
“Do not speak. Do not think. Move along.”
Chalk and grease form new voices.
Do not take offerings and restrain your food.
“Hold your water. Hold your water. Let the dead flood go.”
VI
Supersonique contra des cheval toundra des Khans.
La profond Ciel présage notre force.
Supersonique contra fonds de lac mortes.
Nous avons saisons vraie.
Supersonique contra faux gestion de temp.
Nous avoins tempo et force at prière.
VII
Rowing against lightening.
Counting every cylinder and splitting at fjords.
Five silver lakes and their connecting tissue.
A continental divide: showboats and battle marks.
Crackling blue puma breath — melting water like bombs in March.
A dusk calling upward to our arborists.
Do not ascend if you’ve already landed with batteries.
Forgive my many faults and the failure of lookouts.
Align sights with the war letters.
Polish the goblet continent first.
Destroy their troposphere rebellion.
Filter chalk and warm your lead — children need not thirst.
VIII
Spot a whirling dervish and you’re on your way.
We can image half-a-chance along the old silk road.
Hunting Mars but also cornerstones for our people.
Almaty and Merv. Peshawar and Kashgar.
Fat traders waving old dust in old centuries.
“Where are you going, little soldier? Where is your tin drum?”
Marte or Angaraka. Never ask if you have no calling.
“Jesus or Muhammed? Give you silver for an answer?”
Answer nothing in a shaded mezzanine.
No laughter as you draw maps and clean hands.
Books and books and slow tea amidst camels’ breath.
“I come only for silk and conversation.”
IX
Perhaps it is Nike demanding her dues.
Splitting a scream through terrestrial blue.
Rask and Sancus already split asunder.
Nergal under holy wrath and the antipodes drying fast.
No god of Thunder and no time to wonder.
“Kill my brother. Kill Ares — I’ll eat the husk.”
Her sword cracking centuries of scholars’ stone.
A burning time through the weeds of the dark ages.
An eating through the hungry grasses shovelled into boats.
“Save the horses and forsake Rhea. We’ll melt her hooves.”
Burn the outer tethers if we must fight to the death.
Burn, burn the withered lines to Neptune’s terminator.
X (Anishinabek)
Baasendam giizisan maajiidoon. Bimosewag zhigwa ezhi-giizhigong ogii-minjimendaanan waabiganensag miinawaa jiibakwedan. Gikin’amawaan aki ogimaa onjida ashkibag. Aawesiinyag gii-mokid ji-wiidookaasiig. Bidoon baashkiziganan adoobiwining ezhi-ni-minjimindwaad. Aaniin geyaabi bimaadiziwin Ishtar akiing ezhi-gashkiigewag. Naadinindwaan bimaaji’owinan igo dash ogii-mikwenimig. Bizindaw ishkodekweg ji-bimiwidoowad gashkewendamowaad. Bimosemin ji-gikendamaanaan mazina’iganensag. Mashkikiwin miinawaa gitigaanan wiijikiwendamowaad endaso wiidookaadiwin.
XI
Nouvelle strategie pour terrestrialles.
Avion civique devannt le souer de Saturn
Swing round old Venus.
Ashes and visions of our steppe peoples.
Saveur de meilluire Russ et Grek et Afrique.
La musique de monde libre.
Longe annees avec vieux souer.
Gallop on gravity’s rainbow.
Sulfides for fuel and nuclear winds.
XII
Big water and pipelines are enough to call a council.
Be openhanded and freely lend.
Defend your wheat and squash but forgive debt.
Sisters of mercy and sisters of of the fields.
Good harvests to bring prairie boys off their bikes.
The foolish and melancholy both prize the cliff’s edge.
Yellowed-eyed, like a playful drunkard.
Watch for wildlife and window sills.
Good will call for a sweet, widening breeze.
Up the dusty edges of the green shores of ice sources.
Trees will drink and live again.
Young men can join the mills.
Horses will cantor and not seize.
The Navajo and pilgrims may soon join forces.
Black Mesa II
XI: Chi’ide
The night equalizes lost time.
Snippets of Spanish become Virgil in your pocket.
The unbreathing girl from Sonoma
could be Persia’s last wanted princess.
A faded sepia at the edges of things.
But the submachine guns shouldn’t be mistaken
for empty coffee containers or bricks.
The Chi’ide cannot see you until they see you.
And when its eyes linger, unconditional surrender
and a daughter to preserve cut and repeat.
I don’t want to miss a single thing you do.
My love, someone ought to marry you.
War updates as you sidle back to the largest midtowns.
Drops of Jupiter whip and curl the lost rain.
Asteroids’ deaths and the memorials untouched.
A mahogany box — we buried my father in it.
“Better a poor man then a liar.”
Was pain everything you wanted to find?
Trace constellations of the south.
We won’t find you if you’re dead up higher.
Tethers severed, so keep your rewind.
Wounded fingers, now wounded mouth.
XII: Neiz’ghani
Father-keeper on the back roads.
In his cups, laughing or angry —
he’ll still fight for you.
Yellow taste of years.
He’s been broken through his own fault.
But he knows how to jump.
Carried guns and astronomy’s recitals.
Carried guns and integers.
Big Water and Big Medicine.
Neiz’ghani starts the saga.
A tale of blood and roses.
Always another man in front.
Webbings and jealous hoods.
Ignore the dead in the long grass.
“Le me introduce my son.”
Killer comes back and causes floods.
Weather is nasty — complete the task.
“This is your rifle and this is your gun.”
XIII: Shalimar
It is not hard to believe
that we’re on the eve of destruction
when the bleak eyes in space
turn every tempest into a storm.
Don’t bother to answer Smiley’s people.
Postal routes stopped working long ago.
Knives and ribs slow-roasted food
are what we agree on each morning.
“Catch the conscience of a king.”
Ready for war and damn the mood.
Sisters of the dust plane take me soaring.
I watched him die. I kissed the ring.
XIV: Fury Road
Flames at the borders like a tirade
of avarice and amplification.
I see dust and dead moths.
Long rows of corn going to seed.
Whole planets twirl below us.
“Dig,” said the last teacher.
Syllabaries, coins, bronze.
The dead shuffle out with their last night jackets.
Old soldiers on the fury road oppose them.
Water sings for our days’ end.
Bing, bang, fly the javelins.
Metal dropping below surface density.
Zoom, zoom, go the renegade bikes.
God annihilates with a slow pitch.
High and inside to keep you honest.
XV: Vida
Into the great wide open your surface memory
whispers with a thin tenacity
Heaving before dawn and spilling into a new day, hungry.
A dusting of plants and early grass.and generations arcs.
Mutinous peers find a set of weapons.
There is language training and timekeeping.
Timekeeping: landing zones are war zones.
Make sure to land steady and leave final countdowns to God.
The ground is all dark and broken.
Vida, Vida — how do I know you?
The Black Mesa was ready in the stories.
I hear a heartbeat of stellar wind.
XVI: The Horsemen
For Altair of Titan and his men
The horse galloping alone and you then —
You then with your gypsy staff.
Old shores round old stars.
Old men who’d died defending you.
I imagine a great spreading of vines
and whipper-snapped men on thin legs.
Not begging for hate or begging to hunt.
“We’re dying here. We’re dying.”
Begging for daughters. Begging for families.
No interstate dream — a real place.
They fought the good fight.
A few cling to the half-obliterated rain of dark stars.
Centaurs and educators both.
A feast of many rooms.
Convalescing cities without fractions.
A silver drop into the soap fumes.
Their ancestor begins her contractions.
XVII: The Ravens’ Delight
We have the gift of ravens.
Tear off your shirt and the birds descend.
Skinned and pained in the sun beside
dissolved road stops and soap.
Speak when spoken to and don’t make eye contact.
Bridges are a singles’ last pot of honey.
You do not keep pets. You keep animals for work.
Eating dogs on the road is not forbidden.
But few would, my friends, few would.
Giants’ food and a line of twerk.
We stay alive in order to keep hidden.
Meet me at the Dedalus and we’ll make good.
XVIII: Nameless
Half of a butter cup in new rooms.
Low mewling of men from the bike trenches, picking at food.
Poker faces and sudden threats.
Lone women laughing too loud.
Chips and helmets and hydrants.
Wait out the one in front of you.
You’ll have fear in a handful of keys and the dream of a map.
Soap down the salt bayoue. Or are you not able?
We’ll chose the soul of Yukon and the high seat of the Salish.
Our black pitch along the windows of the northwest face.
XIX: Tunnels
Prepare the fiction first for the mad last loop.
Songs will grow spotty as the power winds down.
Paint it black at the end of twilight
moving fast around the half-dead metal.
Monsters. You will see monsters.
A line of cars not deeper blue.
No flowers, my love. Quickly look away.
Only God foresees a red love beyond.
Tunnels and tunnels and tunnels.
Get the box and we’ll bury them in it.
The one beside you is always the most disgusting
with his fingers of the dead and dun eyes.
Slow demons so we won’t take cars.
Congealed blood so they won’t get far.
Come down the plain. Come down the prairie.
Slow dark Russian and China-face women slip in fast
but their eyes don’t work and they breathe their last.
Stutter step and frizzing skins. Robots collapse.
XX: Leeward to the Dark Land
Communities half-bury skeleton keys along old carrying routes.
We fright at each stop.
Incisors and hunger.
The somnolent choke through snot.
There is a stupidity and nullification.
Leeward to the dark land we pause to say I love you.
Old crickets form a mountain.
A golden down and a sudden sun shadow.
Thistles for breakfast with anti-venom
The endless night is not endless.
We emerge into histrionics —
one more darkness behind us.
Warts and scratches on necks.
The far son says he owns the city
then mails and mauls the workers.
The workers drown on soap
and the soap eaters vomit and die
for lack of paying customers.
XXI: Ursid
Ursid and prison seem to carve their own reward
for the repentant and bold dancing
close to the ocean’s edges.
At the edge of the edge of the North Sea
what edges did you think we’d reach?
Did you imagine James and I with knives in our teeth?
Bed-breaking, fist to the skull.
Screaming about Chomsky.
We had swum in clearer northern places.
Muskoka before money killed it.
Des lodgement chagrine a côte de Montreal.
That one dry kiss in a shop near St. Laurent.
Then that suitcase and tears across
an empire’s breadth.
Dominion and seaway.
Youth and the falling forward.
Tim, don’t move so fast.
Sister, I was always right here.
XXII: Salt and Earth
Beautiful eyelid of sepulchral hens.
Treason that water will erase.
Abundant leaf of salt and earth.
Evil one has neither fire nor hot vinegar.
Volcanic witches are drowning in ice.
You seek a wedding ring and child.
[Spanish]
Belle párpado de gallinas de sepulcro
Traición que agua borra.
Caudolosa hoja de sal y de la tierra.
Desventurado ni el fuego niel vinagre caliente.
Brojas volcánicas des ahogamiento hielo.
Tú buseando una sorta nupcial y niño.
XXIV: Peyote and Astrid
Onions and suddenly you are laden
with the vegetables of the side roads.
Hot chilis and little corn.
Peyote ground over pebbles.
High, high. Throat singing new names.
Shalimar and Martha and Astrid and Tina.
I had one instruction after my first last look:
“Keep the books. Keep the books.”
Rice in Cree swamplands and nuclear half-lives?
Keep them both and make your raids.
China will land. The East will appear.
Knives over Jericho with whiskey and beer.
XXV: Padded voices
Before Shalimar and after Nirgal.
Your heart lashed with a knife wound below the rib.
Heal with open curtains.
Padded voices and a soft sun.
“Is this a new world?”
“I don’t know. Who are you?”
A hurt locker of cracked bones and fingers.
Off the road just one day.
Food and water that works.
Remember, remember who was casting stones.
Box cars can peel skin away.
Busted eyes like Birks.
XXVI: Food for the gods
Food for the new gods is little different than for the old.
Chickens and glottal stops.
A burgeoning and repair.
Kill the sound and stay alive.
Stupid points of sale at predictable stops.
Tik-tok in corners: the same men from the pit of Anna’belle.
They tiptoe but so easy to kill.
Resist. Resist hatred.
“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
“I heard you the first time, motherfucker.”
Bite a metal arm and crack your teeth.
Smash its face and release its jaw.
No need for guns to rip out its eyes.
No need for knives to stop their goddamned sniffling.
But when they pop they will assault.
Spray the dead foam at each other.
Stop the ozone with wires.
Kill sound wave before star spray.
XXVII: Rooms
They’ll sequester and you’ll notice food and fluid.
They offer too much and withdraw.
Your people are cagey but keep you living.
Talk vehicles and animals. Cowboys and angels.
Guns and guns.
“Does he have any guns?
“Do you have any?”
“No. Who has some?”
Only ask about guns with an early morning breath.
Coffee and found chocolate.
Somebody may be pounding bread again.
Rooms and rooms.
You should be a little uncomfortable.
Watch where the fans blow and release.
Dust from the road becomes moisture quickly.
It’s good when rooms have a draft.
A little scent of butter and women in the kitchen.
“Is sparrow secure?”
I’ll always be sitting at a table with
the women I call sparrow, holding hands.
In my dreams I fought through whole facilities.
Killed men to save the sparrow.
Bluebirds singing.
Broken wings flying through a red door burning.
XXVIII: Bleeding Rain and Copper Fire
You know what not to eat. Carrion and roots.
Vomit and cracked teeth.
Follow the rule —
kill the animal yourself.
Roadside, so you keep moving.
Make some lean-tos?
Maybe.
Fire is so simple and so problematic.
Lean-to is just cold stick without fire.
No thanks, to crouching
and curling in the dirt.
Can you butcher animals?
Butcheries matter.
Can you mail paperwork?
Open a business.
Don’t do paperwork
when there’s bleeding rain and copper fire.
Lights glint and retract and alert us once they fade.
XL: Wonderful Years
Listen, listen to me.
A rule of three.
Here’s where the story begins.
They file the enamel and take the gold from human teeth.
They want our metal.
Take them? They plan plague and emptiness.
Take them down to the shed and blow their heads off.
Seperately incinerate limbs and heads and torso.
God sends them to oblivion.
It is cessation, cessation.
Of past and future consciousness.
This is where our story begins.
Round a fading lavendar coast.
She is no sister if she bites.
Smash their mirror and burn the toast.
Black velvet and alpha flights.
XXIX: Olive Wood
Get to the old tunnels and peek.
Elf-stones and other ruins.
Towers you cannot imitate.
Fires the families keep burning like
olive wood for Nazareth and the sandal wood of something before.
Oak for teak along the ecliptic.
G-d whispers in the campfire.
“The wood belongs to the Earth.
The Earth is yours to caretake.”
Sharpen, sharpen.
Every morning, they get loud and dumber.
Grab a vehicle and assume half-a-load.
Hand-to-mouth with every meal.
Tell the emperor: “I have Sind.”
The miss the joke and you have the steel.
Swiftly then, like horses on the wind.
Black Mesa
Timothy Michael Marskell
Valerie Media (2026)
