Coyote's Song: Part One with Millennium and Other Stories (Revised)

By Matthew Theisen

Coyote is not the most reliable character in the galaxy, but when Lady Nature commissions him for a job, he takes it for the promised reward. There are, however, contrary personages whom desire to have their own schemes and story-lines prevail. Whether to stay a free agent or enlist in a group becomes of paramount importance as the struggles intensify. Characters want their own versions of stories with their own images, yet for that to occur, they must be an individual, which can be a dangerous thing in battling societies of divisive factions. Coyote's Song: Part One is written in pentameter rhyming couplets. Millennium and Other Stories explores how family life has changed in America, with new figures rising daily as role models to adopt humans as wayward children whom require eternal vigilance. The scripts supplied to people are vapid renditions of mass-produced corporate art. The only uniqueness is an unoriginal sin of art-theft; the good and bad is decided by bottom-line profit. The revised collection of nine stories contains a variety of genres and how characters are inspired by sundry authors, be it Ganesha or Raymond Chandler, in different systems on collision courses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781663205315

Matthew Theisen

Matthew Theisen apologizes if this volume is more somber than Part One. Too many people died over the past few years and he became more philosophical and, perhaps, more repetitively morbid. He still thinks it's a good read, though.

Book preview

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1

Script Hunting

M use, sing all the songs I can understand,

while guiding poems arranged with my hand.

Beyond existence, no thing controls Time,

though we measure space and poetry’s rhyme.

Only gravity seems to have effect,

spinning in orbits as we genuflect

on light spans and voids, while you, Time, reshape

our endeavors as we try to escape

the worlds that weary us, which we destroy

in search for the new ideal alloy,

and it will not be perfect anymore,

when juices digest it to fuel lore.

People prayed to help the prairie grass grow,

and burned fires with the dung of buffalo.

Other creatures were to be wary of:

a misstep could cause a serpent’s self-love

to retaliate against the villain

invading the snake’s sun-soaked pleasure glen.

What next ideal will be invented

and marketed to be sold or rented?

Let the story begin with a bright dawn,

as cement cities spread over the lawn.

Coyote laughed at the males and women

fighting over useless books once again.

He became dyslexic in reflection

after scattering the stars’ direction.

He had such gleeful fun when he did that,

and would do it to a king’s bureaucrat,

but was not trusted with many jobs since,

though shame did not cause him to scowl or wince.

Why suffer from a lingering regret

for tossing round the cosmic alphabet?

The Mayans had made their starry forays,

but he rebelled against their chain-linked ways

of life as only an oracle game,

with an audience for the divas’ fame.

His chore was to arrange comprehension

and stop the human’s innate dissension,

but tempting chaos lured him to the fun

of scattering stars pell-mell on the run,

wearied by the self-serving seer-sayers

from the stars’ representative players,

he thought it best to live in mysteries

than eternal blood-spilling auguries.

The rebellions emptied most great cities,

and with some he went North for new ditties.

Avoiding temptation, they sat on gold,

not reforming it like the Mayans’ mold

by ripping the guts from the Black Hill’s state

to buy a greedy and destructive fate;

fighting over the body’s minerals

was better than being gold-digging proles.

Perhaps someday gold will be reburied

for nature and spirits to be married,

starting eras beyond The Golden Age,

when Yote would help form tales as a sage.

He smiled as he recalled: Among my tricks,

which induce confusion in people’s cliques,

that Mayan stars-toss is my favorite.

Why should cosmic order make us all sit

and think the same thoughts by formatted means,

with corporate dialogue for the scenes?

Universes change, and so should voices;

I want a variety of choices.

Harmony is fine, but so is a yap.

I felt the rise of adventurous sap.

She sure was angry about the world’s fate,

and kept her daughter from being my mate.

Coyote licked his chops and sniffed the breeze,

laughing at the punishment for his sprees.

He was in a pleasant mood at that time,

so was philosophical about crime

and the attending designed penalties,

which seemed to spread throughout realities.

He looked from the cliff of an overpass

as if studying movements in a class

of a species obsessed with monitors,

who mistake the latter as protectors.

Security identified with wealth

formed predators more sublime in their stealth.

Yote grunted scorn in disapproving strains:

they had an electric charge in their brains

compelling them to constant consuming.

He disliked what his ward-hive was grooming.

They killed all the bees with poisoned pollen

to reincarnate as people swollen

with fantasies civil life will endure,

though torn from the third-dimension’s ordure.

Coyote licked his chops again, and thought

they were in a world-franchise, sold and bought,

and would not be a challenge as his prey:

served like a microwave dinner entrée.

"I hope ’tis an easy accomplishment,

though she started off with a punishment,

nor pities how lust has enduring hold

for her daughter who had a rare clay-mold,

forming a woman I refuse to switch

with any other, for her eyes bewitch."

His groin felt the growing heat of desires,

the delightful mix of mothers and sires.

Her image was full and voluptuous,

and before she got too fat for her dress,

Coyote would do his task, which relieved

the straining pressures of the webs that weaved.

He had returned from watching a writer

ruled by drama guilds and a queen’s miter.

Nature bent time to send him back in space

to show Coyote the woes he would face,

and give him the needed experience

of how artists tend to intemperance.

Coyote could not believe the drunk fool

would span centuries with his lingo-pool.

Shadow Coyote looked at the scrawled text,

and ’twas as if Bacchus conjured and hexed

a drivel of slop inspired by cheap wine,

with words that did not follow a straight line.

The man said, ‘I am under the cannon,

so this will be the first in my canon.

I hope the wine does not run out before

I can finish this miserable chore.

As I read, I find it makes little sense,

and I need a scribe-guide for influence.’

A knock on the door inspired his glad yelp,

convinced an appeased muse delivered help.

Three men entered the shabby apartment;

the writer sobbed at the collectors sent

by loan-sharks who furnished his credit-line,

which had run out to the dregs of bad wine.

A thought occurred to the reeling poet:

recite to one of the thugs to abet

the finish of the drama for the stage,

and pay them with his non-commissioned wage.

He spoke: ‘You gentlemen look keen and bright.

Are one of you able to read and write?

Then I will have money to pay the loans,

and you shall not trouble to break my bones.

Who can write a play with a broken thumb,

and no wine-cash to buy a pain-free numb?

Headaches without crushed bones are bad enough.

I do not use an artful, dodging bluff:

I can get this onstage in a week’s time

if rehearsals start at the noon-bell’s chime.’

One of them was passably literate,

and took pity on the drunk idiot,

who recited as the gangster wrote scenes

to earn double-pay to enhance his means

as an agent with a propensity

for violence in London’s fair city.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona’s script,

though in need, was not edited or nipped.

It was a lesson in economics

for the playwright saved from an awful mix:

invest in theaters, estates, and guilds,

no longer borrow on weak future yields.

The unnatural pageantry displayed

had Yote trapped for a moment as a shade.

As he hesitated at where to go,

time eddied back to her with a smooth flow.

He told her: ‘Earth becomes artificial,

answering to a pompous official,

who arranges the world for the next act:

Lucifer and God’s human-smiting pact.

’Tis one thing to scatter words in a sky,

but my intent was not to be a spy.

We are in trouble, Lady of Nature,

as Earth is bound and stitched to one future.

Though I am heralded with great tricksters,

I cannot bear the thought of false mixtures.

It is a harsh sentence that you impose

in serving the actors who preen and pose

before the cameras’ consuming orb,

draining energy from life to absorb

dull-witted one-dimensional pleasures,

as if therein lay all worldly treasures.

For they have pillaged most of the green earth,

and only watching themselves gives them mirth.

They enrapture their forms so in each sense

they are their own best-paying audience.

The global economy runs on it,

guided by the elite to roles that fit.

Shakespeare had the excuse of being drunk

when I saw him write a play that was junk

to settle debts from a financial funk.

’Tis forgivable in an unknown bard,

and even his rewrites were sometimes marred,

as if he were hit by inspiration,

then thought of jail in his censored nation,

so clipped it before his head was clipped-off.

What is the excuse of the new swine-trough?

Are they intoxicated puppeteers,

adopting humans as full-time careers

to benevolently guide, by firm hands,

folks into screen-worlds through sublime commands?

The Globe Theater spread its influence:

a sober investment for Shakespeare’s pence.

We have both watched the globe become vast shows

that shake from scene to scene with diseased flows.

Screen-worlds are protected from The Black Plague,

and lure like Sirens, though a viral-tag

can shut-down the works and leave suspended

the shades’ drama, lost and unattended,

becoming prey for hosts that the elite

have not tamed or hired for the programs’ feat.

Or perhaps those shows are sacrifices

to the lords, and public hope suffices

in staving intruders from the systems

which compete to control the buddhi stems.’

The lady of Nature smiled at her friend,

as he took a few of her traits to blend.

She said, ‘You will be relieved of your plight

when you bring me a scribe who spans the light

and the dark, not just stirring them in stars,

like you did with your graffiti that mars

the order I had planned in good intent,

so accept your lot as fair punishment.’

Coyote: ‘Has such a writer risen?

I hope it involves no path to prison,

or any other low depths or levels

past the Thunderbird scribes to white devils.

He probably delegates potency

through instinctual order of life’s sea.

Is it a human for whom I will search?

If he has a tavern-stool as a perch,

what am I to do when he confuses

realities with carousing muses?

Earth is in bad enough shape as it is

without detonating a fuming fizz

by scrawling rubbish people must enact,

or guided by plots which have nations sacked.’

She said, ‘It is a male scribe you must find,

scribbling throughout the universal mind.

There are versions of him that are afloat

who make enemies and the world’s scapegoat

for his foes to whip out their ire upon,

so darkness can descend to a new dawn.

Then, if she will, you can have my daughter

made of real stuff: flesh, bone, and water,

more than just the altering fantasy

she teases you with to goad your fancy,

inspiring the will to complete the tasks

among those who, like you, don many masks.’

Reassured by this, Coyote panted,

his tongue lolled hot drool by what she chanted.

It seemed time’s space went backward in her lair;

ancient ghosts came to her and were aware

that Coyote accepted the mission

to rise above his alphabet vision,

which he would miss because it was his art,

spread through the galaxies without a chart.

Recalling his own carefree arrangement,

he planned against his Lady’s management.

If the writer he sought farmed-out the work,

like Shakespeare when his mind was a swamp’s murk,

then Coyote might be re-hired to place

words in the sky held by gravity’s lace

and stardust clouds swimming through the story

to enforce one tale of divine glory.

If that unfolded, Yote’s will would be crazed,

and he would shatter the bonds that amazed

those whom lived in perpetual tethers

in predestined roles of angel feathers,

and bleak servitude in a gilded cage.

Why should everyone be on the same page,

recruited and funneled to one screen-site

to bloat the power of corporate might?

She said, ‘I see your thoughts, my companion,

still lusting to be free will’s champion.

There may come a time for that, but not now,

and I am wise enough to heed no vow,

despite the sincerity of your howl,

so what is needed is a dimming cowl.’

He denied he would scatter words or poach,

as he backed away from her slow approach.

She held a stick he thought would beat his brains,

while he spewed great oaths like early spring rains

that thaw Earth, but are chilly to the flesh,

awakening a broody, cheerful mesh

of promises that a future rerun

will have different commercials for fun.

Yote tried to swear eternal loyalty,

but his sale’s pitch, known to her royalty,

fell into empty space, not in her head.

She tapped his muzzle with the staff and said:

‘Many things will appear backwards to you,

like schemes, written words, memories turned new.

The situation has no urgent press,

so your duty will be a pell-mell mess,

for we have plenty of time to abide

before every person chooses a side:

driven wicked or programmed to be good

in city jungles or infernal wood.

You will perform as I order you should.’

Scenes flowed in reverse out of Yote’s free mind,

nor could he fathom what she had designed

as he tried to recall where he came from,

adding up all the parts to reach no sum.

At times with a blink of inner-vision

he sensed a path of a story’s mission.

He basked in cosmic space, idly sunning,

then yawned, scratched, and hit Heaven’s road running.

Now led to the future by his muzzle,

the past could remain a shattered puzzle.

He knew the modern era’s potency

was guided to meek incompetency,

and said: "I will try to fit with them well,

slathering at the sound of Pavlov’s bell,

with an appetite for the moment’s dish,

served like commanding a jinn for a wish.

It makes the global economy go

to have recycled trash be the main show.

Each level’s gradation has its own pukes,

hailed as brilliant by ever-trending kooks.

Like dim candles, they pay to advertise

what and whom illuminates their bland lives

in screen-world dramas woven with vast webs

by blood-drinkers as true existence ebbs.

Even Iktomi got caught in the strands,

taken hostage by official demands

that want to program him as our savior,

so he was paroled for good behavior.

Then once a day he had to take a test

to see if his urine was truly blest,

and uncorrupted by intoxicants.

He learned his piss-exams, and had the sense

to not be a caged exhibition-beast,

life mortgaged like an empty space is leased

to popular sponsors of the era,

who claim each millimeter of terra.

Some brains are simple to have colonized,

others dislike being homogenized;

they have their own concepts of right and wrong,

not tuned to a stupid corporate song

posing as an unstyled rebels’ fashion

that embodies each level of passion."

Coyote loped down the steep over-pass,

alone against a protected thick mass

of consciousness that was led anywhere,

all watched over by a dual orb’s glare,

which penetrated into dark matter,

promising light with a pointless chatter.

Wild Yote would visit Iktomi to find

if they could have the programming unwind,

and laugh at the problems they were to solve,

which they helped to create and watched evolve.

Yote left the network of galactic space,

grinning with pleasure, eager for a chase,

and ran along earth’s outer atmosphere,

then felt an attack of pulsating fear.

He paused at the holes of emitted fumes,

torn through ether fabrics that ancient looms

wove long ago round the globe to protect

the denizens of each various sect.

Back then, he entered tunnels and traveled

to sundry sites where the caves unraveled,

and not be too far from his target’s spot,

for the holes were few, and each had a hot,

fetid odor of its own idiom.

Sometimes a pipe smell or sounds of a drum

could be followed to a pageantry’s tale,

or celebrations in a lovely vale.

There were too many holes now, great and vast,

as if too many fishermen had cast

nets into the Milky Way, turned acrid,

where no thing was holy or could be hid;

always in search for the ideal prey

to energize a wish and form its clay.

He watched the vortexes spew elements,

as if to out-do each other in rents

and gashes as they went on to compete

in whom could build the land to a high-seat,

and conform it to be inhabited,

after striking any opponents dead

with fire-storms, cinders, lava, and ashes

that melted foes with blue-white hot flashes.

Yote: "’Tis like the drilling by prairie dogs,

except it is shaped through polluted fogs

instead of the dirt-fumes of earthly must

kicked-up by digging to form a cloud dust

above undergrounds of safe unity.

So seems the world’s human community,

yet are lost at the top of the food-chain,

running out of land to hunt and sustain.

The way ’tis rigged, I could end up somewhere

the games are corrupted to steal my share."

Yote once liked the aspects he could turn loose

on consumers, then slip free of the noose

when their ire was raised and the pranks played-out,

seeking to lynch him with a jeering shout

for his show of disdain to their order,

which he disrupted, though short of murder.

Now there were many tricksters crowded in,

and he disliked the mass competition.

The rewards were high, and all was covered

with summoned dark energy that hovered,

and the last prank would be total mayhem

like the Fruit of Knowledge plucked from its stem.

So moved the chief of the karmic lever,

whom liked a ploy that was wise or clever,

and knew it would snare through the self-conceit

of a creature that performed sly deceit,

to be drawn in and fooled by their own ads,

losing reason in screen-worlds, drugs, and fads.

Any damn fool can learn how to mimic

a sub-moron doing a monkey-trick.

Ron Reagan had been a father-figure

to the apes programmed by screens to be pure,

who assumed their roles and granted rewards

of vacuity from corporate lords.

Yote lingered about a sulfurous pit,

and shades collected like bats swarm and flit.

There were four of them, and they surrounded

Coyote like a beast trapped and hounded.

He smiled cheerfully, though felt ill at ease,

wondering who they worked for, and if fees

were owed to enter any aperture,

which seemed the way things were with the future

being gambled speculations of force

to steer the world to a predestined course.

Coyote: "Is my credit good enough

to dive in a hole that is not too rough,

and slide into an easy existence

of fulfilling love’s pleasure with each sense?"

A tall shade with ice crystals on his beard

shook his head gravely, and an echo leered

from the three who spoke in similar tones,

though their words varied a bit with deep moans:

"You no longer have a place in our lands,

for although your Lady Nature commands

you find the soul who has the ghost-visions

that free the boundaries and divisions,

we cannot trust you to complete the deed

without you laying your devilish seed.

We desire the world to stay revolving,

though machines and humans are evolving

beyond control; but for their goodness’ sake

we shall let them cull-out by give and take,

deciding for themselves, after bloodshed,

which deities to be rid of or fed

with sacrifices and incantations

blessed by love-fetish infatuations."

Coyote used a paw to scratch his head.

He was bewildered, then aware, and said:

"Hey, I know you guys. Why in such dolors?

What happened to your distinctive colors?

Now I cannot even tell you apart.

Were each of your traits sold on the world’s mart?

You were the North once, if I guess correct.

Now you all belong to the same shade’s sect.

Defending and fighting for dominions

kept you separate and blessed your minions.

Do you want to go on as all the same,

with no color details or distinct name?

Have you been so trained in diversity

you accept the world must be one city,

with everyone thinking they are unique

because they understand computer-speak,

and the sale’s pitch that there is only one

hue of the future web-road being spun?"

He sabotaged by what he had to say,

but always enjoyed double-talk that way.

His Lady would be angry at Yote’s words

because she wanted oneness of the herds,

and The Four Quarters of the Earth worked hard

to grant it a single computer bard.

The Four Quarters were trying to follow

Yote’s bizarre logic, which seemed a shallow

ridicule of his appointed mission,

and they could not come to a decision.

Why would Nature, who could be so precise,

hire a goof who plotted his own device,

though those plans were apt to change with his mood?

The one set thing was his bad attitude

to direct orders and authority.

He might yap along with a tune’s ditty,

urged for the sake of the community,

and teach or carry it a certain way,

but given the chance would sing his own lay.

The Four Quarters counseled on this subject,

as Coyote’s mind roamed to genuflect

on Lady Nature’s daughter’s thighs and waist;

he drooled a bit as if he had a taste.

Was he evil-souled because he was not

diversified like them in what he bought?

Would he be good for the global money,

helping to progress the economy?

Auctioned-off as a face of the future

so wealth’s investment would need no suture,

but glide to a stable society

of a consumer market’s piety?

So The Four Quarters discussed Coyote

to be packaged and sold to the public,

then consumed by the mainstream or a clique.

Coyote seemed bored to the point of pains,

but found a way to live inside their brains.

Yote cast projections of his images,

like work done by technology mages,

putting into their minds what had been made

when Yote’s Lady dimmed his thoughts to a shade.

When their conversation ended, they turned

and told Yote their jobs required he was spurned

entrance to the world they held together,

despite the wars and capricious weather.

Yote cocked his head and sniffed with bleak disdain,

then looked about as if for a safe lane

to return to his Lady with the news,

when North hit South an eye-blackening bruise.

The Four Directions fought with a mad fury,

each wanting great triumph in a hurry

for the trophy of Yote’s skinned, mangy pelt,

crushing their friends, each blow raising a welt.

While they danced about, mistaking the guise

of each other as Yote’s shape and lean size,

he refrained from laughter, yet felt such glee

he decided to watch rather than flee.

When one of the four was thrown from the mix,

he lured the tossed fighter with simple tricks

back to the brawling, ferocious melee

by putting in his mind a false display:

"So you cannot get the best of a dog

who has you beaten to a swampy bog

of lacerations and scraped contusions.

Alas, for one of The Four Directions

vaunted for holding the world in one sphere!

You will no longer inspire any fear

among your denizens when they find out

that I beat you bloody in a fair bout."

The thrown Quarter would leap in straightaway,

proud pride fueling the undignified fray,

hoping to be the one who wrecked their foe,

as they mistook friends for Yote’s swift shadow.

While they spun and reeled, falling out of place,

Coyote felt joy, yet also a trace

of unbidden nervous anxiety

at the network’s shifting stability

due to The Four Direction’s reckless rage

in attempts to purge him from the world’s stage,

and their minds as well, though quite unaware

he had spots in them like a rent-free lair.

A responsive upheaval from below

revealed to Coyote the entire show

was spinning to an orbit’s implosion,

which he did not wish to bear as a sin:

the adrenal-rush of The Four Quarters

would fill the solar system with martyrs.

Coyote thought: My task makes their work end,

and I will be blamed for these fools who rend

each other at the cost of a planet,

whose souls will haunt me as the blamed target.

They shall torture me in their deepest hell,

wherein the philosophy of, ‘Oh, well’

shall not be much of a consolation

or bring about reconciliation.

He sat and pondered the oncoming plight,

paying no heed to the four’s savage fight.

A stray kick to his snout near had him done,

and he decided he had enough fun.

Yote backed from the fight and shook off pain,

and thought, while he hoped there was no bloodstain:

Too bad wrecking the world was not her wish,

for that I could easily accomplish.

What use are college degrees people earned?

Elite profiteering, and also learned

Jesuitical justification

mated to an obtuse obfuscation

quite as brutal as ‘You made me hit you’,

and one has a choice of which corrupt crew

to be recruited or conscripted in,

depending on taste and the means to win,

which are gilded as necessary tools

to punish and reward the flocks of fools.

Once it was In Imitation of Christ,

now they mimic the Beast or a screen-heist.

They become a world of lesson-teachers,

using their pupils like psyche-leechers

to play roles formed in a blank consciousness

with dull scripts to run the karma business.

The global market is never finished

rewarding some, while others are punished

using codes, which are important factors,

though numbers have no first principle cores.

For funding and expensive student loans,

schools dance to the world’s conglomerate tones

that choose policies of government states,

which weave stupid non-stop consumer fates.

A campus cat-house with a scholarship

offered to those centered on sex worship

should be normalized for business reasons

to stop rape, scandals, and crude school treasons.

Diversifieds have their products to stump,

but will not admit they work for Don Trump,

for loans, funds, and real estate to spread

the good news to people they must be led

by a resurrected Alfonse Capone,

who the media follow like a drone.

They go so far in teaching their lessons

that they arm and train their enemies’ sons.

They like teaching lessons to those countries,

which are as warped as drunks on insane sprees,

vengeful and fully-armed to do damage

so they can form the world in their image,

and punish through re-education roles

in the vacuum consciousness like blind moles,

whose sundry tale versions for diverse folks

are scrambled at the core like split egg-yolks.

Some shape great reputations as their lot,

I watched people mind-build, but I can not

hate myself if the forms lack what I am,

so ’tis easy to give no good goddamn,

while they think they can shape me with a code,

and summon me to travel a screen-road.

A nation wired to shows, as it slumbers:

a life of hedonism by numbers.

Yote liked pleasures he was made to feel,

because when he partook of the real

it fulfilled him more than the digital;

and if his stomach was bloated and full,

he could puke some up to save for later,

thus refused to be a body-hater.

Joy by numbers was limitless drama

that continued ’til severe brain-trauma.

He watched the four fight, whose heads he had spun,

thinking: I am guilty of having fun,

but I do not do it to control wealth

like the computer-guides in their hired stealth.

He yowled a laugh at his hypocrisy,

and wanting the reward of his Missy.

He knew he was guilty of collusion

in perpetuating life’s illusion.

Would the grand writer whom Coyote sought

also have humor about being caught

by his own weaved snares of scripted fabrics,

or spurn his part in the world’s parlor-tricks?

He was probably a drunken hard-case,

avoiding his mirror’s reflected face,

except when he sobered to primp and preen,

believing all his work belonged on-screen.

There must be some flaws in Yote’s character

to get him mixed with such a bad actor.

So The Four Directions would not stay mad,

Yote voided from what little brains they had.

The more he tried to erase his picture,

the worse they clung to it as a fixture.

He thought: Oh, great. Will I ever be free

from my own self-fulfilling prophecy?

What next? Do I have to destroy myself

like Faustus burning the books on his shelf?

And I have not even sold my soul yet,

just a blank form without any content.

Has Jesus, too, been trapped behind facades,

destined to be vengeful with smiting rods

to hit others for those who call on him,

whether planned like Hamlet or by a whim,

with counter-strikes on those Christ also saved

to make the road to extinction well-paved?

Coyote released that dismal insight,

and launched himself into the tangled fight.

Though there was a hole by which to escape,

he desired for them to delete his shape.

It was best to travel incognito,

and not be trapped in their heads as a show

that acquainted them with his shifting shade

to be tracked to his corporeal-grade.

He would take a beating for the sly trick,

then roam the territory of his pick.

He bared no fangs, nor bit, or even nipped,

but was too fluidly fast to be gripped.

West grabbed at Yote by the scruff of his neck,

as if a cub carried by his clan’s sect

to a den of safety from predators

wanting