The Speed of Light

By Richard Wesley Clough

A compilation of poems and stories based on similar material that was still in its gestation stage. Like the title says this book has come relatively fast after shaking off the forces of the black hole resisting its light filled message. It’s this anomaly in the flow of expression that gives the speed of light its unusual texture and uniqueness leaving it to the most perspicuous people to perceive the subtle distinctions between the past Simplicity it is based on the and the present so called Complexity.

In the Simplicity it says I was clutching my therapist Laurie Boxer voluptuously at the end of the Dark Southern Night which in the complexity is the Spirit of the House. One can see how time has brought into focus the warped aspects of light through time.

This book has a sequel called The Maryland Prize.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 30, 2008
• ISBN: 9781669871040

Richard Wesley Clough

N/A

Book preview

THE SPEED OF LIGHT

RICHARD WESLEY CLOUGH

Copyright © 2008 by Richard Wesley Clough.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER:   2007908496

ISBN: HARDCOVER     978-1-4257-9951-9

SOFTCOVER     978-1-4257-9905-2

EBOOK     978-1-6698-7104-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/15/2023

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

577417

Contents

POEMS

Through The Course Of Time

The Last Spartan

The Woods

August

The Gladiator

The Dregs of Poetry

The Spirit of Greece

Once by an Idling Stream

Dark Southern Night

The Best of Whats Left

Cloughs, Their Death and the Human Spirit

POEMS

The Late, Late Show

The Army of Glory

The Ivans are Coming!

Between Life and Death

The Duke of Glanville

Man From the Mountain

The Omaha Marathon

Great Stories

What the Reef Sows

The Great Cloud

The Prophecy of the Dead

What escape Wrought

Mr. Hyde is Near

Biodide

PROSE

The Future Past

The Elements of the Game

Life in Price

The Spirit of the House

Escape from the Fat People

Croix de Querre

The Good schooling

The Spirit of a Woman

Only Glent Knows

The Disciplinary Order

That Mysterious Girl

The Black Hole Agent

The real Zombies

Moon Low

What is seen and Unseen

Visions of the Unsuspecting Pauper

What is so Good

A Weather Story

The Return Voyage

Marine Park

Classified

The Difference

The Special Program

The Late, Late Show

Since When

My Room

For Eternity

The Victims

Evangelical

Coup De Grace

Rim of the World

The Dangerous Girl

The Classic Story

The Apex of Time

POEMS

Light Verse

The Drama of Power

The Fields of Waverly

The Fall of Rome

Fortress of Darkness

Glents Redress

Tomb of a Soldier

Rhi Lavrador

Chesapeake

The Kaleidoscope

Great Stories no More

Beyond Chesapeake

Great Poetry no More

Inertia

The Ides of March

For Beast and Man

Buried Among the Dark Trees

Pretorias’s Party

PROSE

Never, Never Land

True Justice

The Ten Bad Ones

The Omaha Marathon

Taking Care of Business

Assassins

Spirit and Physical Reality

The Man From the Mountain

La Bitch

The November Event

The Escape

The Fount of Poetry

The Spirit of the Beach

The Presidency

The Rainbow Trail

Sands of the Beach

Reality and Illusions

The Power of a Woman

For the love of a Boxer turned Poet

When the Weather of Earth Descends

The Beginning of the Dillemma

A Hero

The Law

Important Points

The defendants Statement

Finis

The Aftermath

A Gripping Drama

Carrie

THROUGH THE COURSE OF TIME

Once upon a time

My life shined

In spite of the dearth

I found in the world that I reside

A world far divergent from peaceful

As if the tribulations were equal

To the things we thought were peaceful

So in spite of what people

Say to alleviate the deceitful

The worlds constituency was customary

To the degree it became ingrained

Like we were creatures

Who yet espoused the scriptures

With hopes of what they preached

Would make things peaceful

In vain people tried

To withstand laws that seemed contrarily evil

Forcing me to find the last people

Who were dead souls amid the wasted terrain

That highlighted a valley of death

Marked by my initial poetic dearness

Symbolic of what forces pervaded the people

From which desolation

Like Jesus wandering the desert

I heard the first messages

Couched in simple language like

Hip Hip Hooray we’ve gone this a way

Or Yippee yi yee reflective of the once innocence

Of the west that harbored the desolate

Place in which resided the last people

Who survived by some means

That were divine

Yet t still must tussle

In spite of the enlightening

Whose writhing power Iasted for decades

That answered things from the dark age

With insightful words

Like some epic play

That said owed itself to 187,000 miles per second

A figure that evil couldn’t equal

In allowing me to dispense

Words that might cure the lament

For those who wanted to be peaceful

So much so the original inspired lines

Became translated into real golden ore

The kind people wanted more

As it showed the greater Gods church

Held covenant overall

The necessary pace to free us from the adiabatic lapses

That had formed from our ashes

So much so it created the undertow

Carrying the evil scion Lord Skin

Away from the now hallowed shores

That became apart of the greater Gods bible

Something that spanned the universe

No longer shrouded in the nebulous

Bringing light on Galaxies near and far

That proved I had more than the power

Of two million

Which was just a estimate of the forces

Pervading the vast reaches

Of my literary firmament

Like how people swore in summer

About being swore

From the winter solitude

That always warns us of our dire reality

That needed something greater

To find solace

Even as death made some cry

The way it happened to Jesus’s life

Which was more than meant

To mean a temporal trite

This was just part of my chore

Where what I construed

Of losing freedom annually was true

Despite the illusion we lived freely

But then this took some greater complexity

From the prevailing simplicity

This is what the spirit of Anna Lee told me

As the rain last summer finally like the snow

Came pouring down on this Glent wasteland

THE LAST SPARTAN

From the deepest declivities of history

Condensed mans final symmetry

Around the time of Alexander

With women brimming with naiveté

And men derogatorily mean in their mentality

This would change either by Gods design

Or just men transforming time

Theirs was a Spartans reality

That angrily took women’s’ virginity

Setting them forth to sail more than from Troy

But into the dark ages

Fully testing their mean and agile chemistry

For the most part they’d emerge unscathed

Just for Hitler to throw most of them away

It was this sacrilege

That started to turn the weather into a unlivable gale

Just as the last Spartan commiserated

Over how all the honor of the Spartans was forsaken

By a world that rebelled

Against the imperial bell

That rang for all

Until all were smitten by God

Who could never condone their law

That said they were the greatest men of all

This the last Spartan saw

When his gallant girl made him recall

All the ardor before this winters fall

From her image he knew he couldn’t know those women

Unless he was back again with them

Lucifer most of been listening to him

By disguising the fact he thought I merely meant

Marble busts of those women who relented

To the passion through the ages

That brought Gods wrath upon us like mere pages

Now the vision is clear

That God was going to send all of us back to our dears

Only the last Spartan had a deaf ear

Since the girl was his mission

He knew he wasn’t carried off the field of Thermopylae

Just to forsake a even greater vision

To fulfill her evil mind

That had arisen

As strong as his fallen armies

This is why he used his last strength

To keep her from failing her mission

So the last Spartan stands precariously fastened

Hoping she’d love him for his passion

This was the end of the Omaha marathon

Begun thirty years ago

When the last Spartan didn’t know his position

THE WOODS

Sturdily they stand sentinel

Guardian of the sentimental

Including even venal acts that weren’t incidental

Their stoic posture is like a prism

Refracting light in different quantities

Making them appear light or darkly

Depending on ones peculiar personality

For instance the stranger from Philadelphia

Is a perfect example showing their moody nature

Of course I shall transcend the stranger

To look upon the woods again

Decades later to be refreshed as if by some cleansing wind

I can still hear that melancholy song

Like some mystic rite

That began my literary life

It seemed a losing fight

Only salvageable by their reassuring sight

No wonder there are those who throw flaming embers

As if to erase this Godly blight

This they do to cover their wounds in clothes

As they see me a maniac amid the woods

Whose only hope is the tom boyish girl

Who flirted here years ago

This the sullen woods promised

As the woods survive their fiery summit

AUGUST

How is August known

By summer or something

Cloaked in historical form

Yes Caius Augustus of Rome

Who arose from the primordial mess

Thanks to the swords

And the wisest men on Earth

Who knew the sunlight today

Was akin to that a thousand years ago yesterday

Particularly for August

That was always warm

In line with some climatic norm

Which is how August came to be known

Even if men didn’t fully conform

Like the barbarians

Who swept the Romans from their homes

It set the stage for me to hear my grandfather whisper

A snied commentary on Lenny Moore

This as Sandy Koufax threw fastballs

Past the greatest batters people knew

While I languished from some paradox

By the absence of some pirouette

Due to some social law

That said when I thought the least

I seemed more a parvenu

Than one who could leap

Which all stems from

My little towns August home

Where I imbibed the flashing light

From stormy August nights

This power is why

Rome dove from its heights

To insure my August renown

In this small town

Where I’m a singular man

By the myriad Augusts that rules the land

THE GLADIATOR

I stumbled upon poetry by some ancient chord

From an inner discord

For going contrary to my natural role

Which would be as a lover decadent in score

That metamorphosed itself from some internal ravings

I called Great stories no more

That derived from a timeless place

Indicative of all being caught in space

Marooned with nothing left to trace

But love letters to grace my grave

Instead of the worlds hearths

That were lost in space

Except for one Carries infidelity

Who would send me plummeting all around life’s gate

Where I could see it from here

Even if I couldn’t take her there

A lumbering dark venue

Known in Rome as the coliseums historic retinue

Where I was banned to stand of late

For its spectra recalling a great rift of hate

Between Rome and the Christian race

Since there their two bloods spilled

Amid the ancient shells creating this epistle

Only the Christians thought my role was in derision

OF what forged the present union

Which I now say wasn’t true of my position

Who gravely felt the tearing of peoples mortal dispositions

As if it were an ungodly vision

Which proved how the gladiators weren’t evil

But fair game to some extent

By a civilization that didn’t know what God meant

Of course this was going to change

Yet for some reason the gladiators were blamed

For all the pagan ways

Nevertheless has he transcended the battle of sexes

Beyond the mere illusion of the women wearing dresses

Who could still feel the surly roar of the crowd

As he fell by the blows to his head

In a arena that killed the senses

He shared with all those holy people

Who would see him as the antithesis

Of the bloody demeanor

He was known as

The gladiator

In this vein it was almost in vain

How he tried to prove his good name

To the gallant girl

For whose lust he felt so much shame

But like the days when they all sang

At Rome’s glorious day

Once they saw him fallen against the grain

He was certainly destined to fail

Just to one day stand tall among the cheering throng

The champion of all

Except the girl who might see how she was wrong

Which thought had given him the strength

To renew Rome’s imperial state

THE DREGS OF POETRY

Such a picturesque little enclave,

Spoke the stranger from Philadelphia

Somehow he knew the score

Underlying Mary’s treacherous role

This was what his copy of the dregs of poetry told

He who was profoundly touched by its lore

What he thought mostly about

Was the diabolical armies that aligned themselves

With the evil the hero fought

Alongside them just to be turned out

As though his greatness would ruin their life after the rout

This the hero construed as a legion

Protecting every region

Of his existence like he espoused treason

Of this foulness the stranger drooled

Thinking of why this happened to the hero

Who had fooled

Most of the enemies with his deceiving interlude

That derived from this idyllic setting

That hid Mary’s treachery

But of this the stranger didn’t care

He was more interested in the sprites lair

That female who enlivened the hero

On his deathbed

But don’t tell the hero

Who sped forth full fledged

To bring more than the holy bread

Back to Hitler

But to prove his anger at the girls underwear

Who scoffed at his heroism

By the forces of the legions

That guarded every region

Which all went to show how he was a hero

To find her spirit inside a dilapidated houses sundry window

This was something even the legions couldn’t keep hidden

From the man who was bidden

BY God who even told him of the new religion

This wisdom still couldn’t satiate the heroes vision

That lay etched at the base of a tree with the initials

Of stricken Robin not the hero

It was more than this the stranger envisioned

More like the whole panoply he was more than a secret witness

But the actual resurrected hero

Who somewhat sadly carried

His copy of the dregs of poetry

Back to Philadelphia

THE SPIRIT OF GREECE

When life meanders placidly like a river

Before furiously frothing when rains deliver

Then suddenly it appears above the turbid tenor

A zephyr connotating a immortal paean

Stemming from the glassy Aegean

About the time of my sweaty use of Sheila

That says this is the highest moment of creation

That transcends him from a mere proponent of poetry

Into Hercules

By the greatness inferred by those clouds of antiquity

ONCE BY AN IDLING STREAM

From the dark and dour streets

I found a creek

Its water was blue and deep

It lay beside a highway

And contained fish good to eat

My uncle led the way

To that which I’d call pikes creek

Because I caught one within its blue deep

Just a few months before it was overridden

By a new highway to hold the peak

Of modern societies social leap

Of course a myriad new automobiles

Something strangely I didn’t seek

In later life unlike all the rest

Which then made me seem like a freak

I didn’t understand what made me think

To be uncouth in the ways life seeks

When so many had less means

While I just thought about idling by a stream

Somehow when that creek was all muddy

Harboring little of what once was a mysterious creek

It predicted my dalliance

From what others preached

Theirs was a sacrilege

That only desecrated my secret creek

The omen was the frightening viper

Writhing below my feet

I winced knowing little

Other than the desecration of my creek

Now I know what progress means

Life doesn’t slow down

As society reaches for the peak

That doesn’t allow the wonder

Of idling by a stream

In the years that passed me by

I often thought of pikes creek

Until it became a blur

Until resurrected by a freak

Who found the time

Against all that people preach

To write once idling by a stream

In the momentary eloquence

That defied what I should think

It shows we’re like computers

Who are programmed from our earliest years

To find the beacon

From which stems the fruits of what we think

Even if enmeshed by the same morass

That destroyed pikes creek

Because through it all the story remains

Just like the streams blue deep

In time it froths a tempestuous row

More like a river flooding the streets

With concepts like megalomania

Bespeaking the authors mental state

Who has been accursed by something foreign

The same way construction

Destroyed pikes creek

The world may be polarized

Into a direction that stultifies

But there are beings who assuage

What others trample down under

Like how I once was idling by a stream

Seeing the goodness of everything

Indeed through the years

Its now becoming a bad dream

This is why it is now so clear

By these incisive means

Since experience creates a great rift

By what one knows and what one sees

Like how I once was idling by a stream

There’s