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The Battle of Fort Bragg (Free verse) by Dovina

I used to stand on grassy bluff of Fort Bragg’s ragged coast, observing the battlefield below— angry water versus steadfast land. Being young and full of motion, I sided with the sea. Attack was always quenched back then by strength of solid rock. Still I cheered the young and angry sea, and still it pounded. After many battles passed, some broken rocks, a lot of motion, I came again to grassy bluff, and looked from different view. Now memory moved, met solid desire, armies under different flags. Where before the rock was winning, the sea was breaking through. Gentle rolls still swelled in shallows near the shore, then toppled hard against the cliff. Resistance waned in longer view, Some rocks had slid away. Memory kept rolling in, breaking stone, dissolving need, taking it off in painful bits to spread beneath the sea.

zodiac 9-Apr-06/7:55 PM
Anyway, so things went for a long long long long time until two of those humans happened to have a child that they named "zodiac". They named him zodiac because his dad was named zodiac and his grandfather was named zodiac, and it seemed like an easy thing to call him, and besides, he was more likely to get love, attention, and inheritance with that name. Zodiac grew up and asked all kinds of questions, being a human question-asker. He asked sensible things like "Where should I eat lunch?" or "Should I get a job with the army to make money to buy lunch?" But he also asked other things, like "Why does chocolate taste like chocolate, instead of like poo?" And of course, he asked "Why am I here?" That was obvious enough, since "why" "am" "I" and "here" are pretty much the commonest words in his language. Zodiac didn't feel like that was a very important question to answer, but alot of other humans sure did. They'd made up a thing ages ago to answer the question "Why did my crops die when I worked so hard, while Steve's crops in the next valley didn't die?" They called the thing "A God" or just "God", and ever since they made him up, they'd been adding things to him as they needed them. They made him the answer to "Why do I feel bad when my mom dies?" and the answer to "Why shouldn't I kill Steve and take his crops?" So it was only natural that "God" should be the answer to "Why am I here?" The people who had God raised their children to think God was the answer to all of those things, and even those children who later didn't believe in God (or in the same God, because there were dozens, all made up for the same purpose) had trouble letting go of the idea that the question "Why am I here?" had an answer other than the one I've been giving, and that the answer was God. Zodiac found all of this to be nonsense.




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