Eighteen? Young Death. Death. Name's familiar then again couldn't say for sure. Killed in combat? The War? I can't recall the face, But I know about the Why-where place. Faces flash; only Polaroid shots. Snapped smiles; sixty second slots. Man-made mechanically. Forgotten instamatically. Never began before nobody knows, Why-where, always here. First buried-born, eldest sea storm: Epileptic winds seized with spasmodic motion, Slamming insanely into slime, milk-yellow muck; a prehistoric ocean. Wildly roaring, blindly ramming seering lungs Madly moaning as they swallow their own tongues. Smashing sea against sand, life against land. It's not surprising anymore. Never survivors; life came before boats. Everyone's killed in the War. Savage in animal hides, hunched cave men Blood-sweat streaked, stabbing bones Screaming nonsense, hurling stones Herding, beating through the bush tangled den. Wandering in the wilderness. Where have we gone? The wilderness is everywhere. He wore jungle yellow-green patched with dark sweat stains like an oiled snake skin Moulded to his body by hot jungle rains. Breathing hard the heavy air He sucked it, liquid thick and silent While unseen cave men stop and stare Ready, waiting, defiant. Waxen leaves blend over him silence everywhere. Thunder! Thunder! Crashing thunder! Attacking cave men kill trample him under. Pagan war gods laughing, striking senseless toys. An insanity of painful noise. Silence now. Smashed in vomitted profusion his erupted body fragments Shattered glass, smattered gore. Slam a door. This is death. This is war. Cows are holy, but War is holy too more ancient than India, life old, oldest religion. Hindus should reverse revere the beast in man. He is dead. Now that seems very odd for I read somewhere that it was god. God is dead. It's a popular notion, the article said. Perhaps the stink of death and blood Has risen since earth in rancid flood And standing for eons in the ceaseless tide God sickened from the sight and so committed suicide. Would you like to see the moon on a rocket ride? Progress has made it possible. Of course there's only dust the moon is dead, But men will make it grow with green and red. Now rockets can land safely there no fumble, no bungle, And in lunar stone, men can plant their seeds for the jungle. BECKY DAWN WOOD. 26 How strange it is that the frigid kiss of an autumn cloud can warm the hills with blazing color. Life is but a masquerade in which we disguise ourselves with freedom to cover the face of imprisonment. How carefree we are as we dance through life intoxicated by an illusion of freedom. In reality most men are but puppets. The only free man is the one who can, when needs be, sever the strings of conformity. Once I asked a man if he could see. He replied, "Of course, I have two eyes." Then he walked away with flowers crushing beneath his feet. Leaves, once green, now turn to gold. So it is with all that lives even an oak grows old. It stood half frozen in the frost heavy winter air, with audible but indiscernable sounds being uttered from its lips; its tiny, uncovered hands too cold to make change for a news-paper. STEPHEN L. CLARK 27