MGWATAM

Before he had been dropped from a great height, Salva’d been just like Lynch and Leer, a twinkle and a rage in his young eyes, a lip to his mouth that shocked most but not the brothers. To them he was kin in every sense of the word; a brother in soul, a spirit in their midst, their ribs and sinewed heart. In times like these how can you look at the sky in wonder when brutalised bodies can fall at any time?

From a novel in progress [2]

“ He got crazy, Leer, heat and blood.”
“ Heat and blood. So what. Everyone got that. The pigs that used to run around under Verlaine’s house, they got it and Jpaw’s family that you saw and I saw slaughtered in front of our eyes had heat and blood, now gone cold and wet, washed with mud, sunk into holes that soon will be wet season tombs. Heat and blood is nothing by itself. Was it Jaffe’s heat and blood that fired bullets into girls he had kissed, splitting their heads instead of aching their hearts? Was it heat and blood that made him tell us his pitiful story while the Tat, those browned-up soldiers with only killing on their mind, gathered in the forest ready to attack our village?
Jaffe lost his soul. Forgot who he was, to save who he wanted to be.”