When Words Collide

1:17 a.m.

2010-05-14T01:19:00.006+12:00

He lies there. Just lays there, face smug with a cigarette poised loosely at his wine-stained lips. His fingers are accentuated with blotches of ink. Just residue left by his fucked up mind. A record player sings low beside him - a miserable man’s voice broken up by bumps in the vinyl. There’s the zombie of an answering machine off in the corner of his room, every once in a while voicing its concerns over its ever-surmounting number of unlistened messages. A new record of 56, though it hardly sounds pleased.

A half-empty bottle of whiskey sits assiduously at attention next to a cracked teacup full of its contents. An obsolete paintbrush lies across the teacup's saucer. He takes a drag and blows out the smoke slowly, weaving a thread of cancer, aiming at the spiders nestled against the struts in the ceiling. He stubs out the remainder of the cigarette on the guitar resting against a stack of the best rejects of literature. In between them dozens of unanswered letters lie. He takes a skeletal finger and absentmindedly claws at the wall next to him. Picking at plaster, it’s never been so in vogue in this part of town. One need only look out the window to see the beauty of decaying walls and lives.

A cat, ashen and sickly, screeches from the fence next door and he turns the knob of the speakers to drown out the sound and reaches out for another cigarette. When he grabs the carton, his tar-veiled heart drops when he finds it empty.

Charles, it’s your mother… obviously… ahem, I’m calling to let you know your sister’s back in town and it’d be lovely if you could try and make this dinner tonig- He throws the carton along with a stray shoe at the answering machine with a violence that rarely merits justification and, alike a reprimanded dog, the drone of the offending object is instantly silenced.

He sits up and cradles his head between his hands. It’s happening again. His brain feels as if it’s going to detonate at any given moment and his eyes are glazing over. The faces on the walls - so stark and expressive before – become blank canvases, an alien race of corpses looking on in apathy. They don’t teach you this in art class, but mind manipulation goes hand in hand with success.

He rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and opens them, trying to focus. The shadows blend with what little light evades the broken blinds covering the sole window of the room - the mixture colouring his world a shade of unyielding grey. He gets to his feet in a daze, grabbing his leather jacket off the coat rack and putting on his trademark trilby hat. A ‘gentleman’s bastard’, they call him.

He staggers over to the mirror hanging crooked on the closet door. He studies his face. Nothing too out of the ordinary. There is a scar forming above his right eyebrow, still pink around the edges. He chuckles in delight. His gape-toothed smile widens at the blossoming purple bruises at the side of his jaw. He touches it gingerly and flinches on contact.

“Hm. Tender, huh? Johnny, you are a dead man.” He says to his fading reflection, laughing at his malicious thoughts, picking and inspecting them as they chance upon him. Much like a kid in a drug store, where every prescription bottle has its own character, full of desirable pills that look like M&Ms.

He smiles once more at the mirror then proceeds to smash it with his right hand. Blood trickles along the cracks, giving colour to the web patterned fracture in the glass. What they imply in art class, is that anything can be art if it’s got a story to back it up.

He combs his left hand through his unwashed hair and with a parting smirk at his masterpiece of a face in the mirror’s remains, he walks out of the door, and like the prodigal son returning to his father, the ruins welcome him back.

Peter Doherty.

2009-11-26T14:05:00.006+13:00

The Stress of Longing.

Freddy was a fusion.
The rags around his minds were torn patchwork quilts of youth cults, forgotten grooves, visions and unprintable politics, with the odd bloody bandage of High Art and an aesthetic to grind away the gap between deep black dub & Oscar Wilde. Because Freddy was a deep black Oscar - his life was his gift, his bomber jacket buttonhole was his anarchy - Black as heaven he was and he lived next to my terrible Auntie Lucy 2 floors up on the White City Estate, in a tenement that reclaimed the colonies for the Hammersmith & Fulham benefits agency. From the window of the kharzi you could see QPR's ground, and for reasons not yet understood Freddy, as a child would squat on the sill groaning with the roars from the left.
Freddy was a fusion. His beliefs a jamboree, a carnival of post everything neo nothin or next to nothing thought. He'd talk about Plato & Malcolm X, the French Revolution & Welsh devolution, Notting Hill, Riots, Chas & Dave & Marx & Earl Spencer. He knew a lot about nothing in particular, & a little of the particulars about lots of things.
Freddy was a fusion - he took me to church, took me joyriding - speeding out of our ears up the A40 - he'd whisper 'All's Quiet On the Western Avenue' not audible above the Val Doonican or the Speed Garage - the sweat & sour smoke of his perennial pipe pumping out the OLD HOLBORN & HONOLOLOU HERBS perfume - clouding, rearranging - brains...

Freddy was a fusion. He said he was. "I'm a fusion' he'd grin, slyly. And it was amusing enough for a while, but all the while Freddy was losing touch with what he could have been, or should have been. King.

I hadn't known him at school, he was a little bit older, a but cool, but we cemented our funny friendship in that wilderness between leaving that school & first real jobs.

Freddy said that this wilderness should ideally last a lifetime.

Now he appears lost for a lifetime - gone into some river of one of his minds he couldn't let go - where is taking you, I would ask, my lips pressed white together. He fell from the sky, never to land - never a sound: just words 'Every blues song in the world has the answer - I'll tell you in the morning.

The boy stood on the burning deck
It was half past nine on Friday
His braces snapped, his trouser fell
He wasn't very tidy

Baring his straight white teeth, letting me note down the results of his experimentation, his fusions.

She Was A Corner Street Girl.

2009-11-17T19:40:00.002+13:00

She was a corner street girl, wrapped in faux fur and enduring winter nights with a flick of her faded hair. In the street lights she looked perfect, all untouched and Barbie-flawless. The dim orange blaze of the corner lamp and the sudden blue flashes of traffic made her shutter and flicker in and out of the scene, like a film reel ghost.

She’s there then she’s gone, just like that.

But in the stark, judging light of the day folk she looks more like a withered flower. Still pretty, but you wouldn’t pick it for the vase. Her eyes are bloodshot blue and are lined with smudged black and lashes tired from fluttering all night long. Her lips crack open with every movement and every fibre of her winces at every crack.

Her smiles are grimaces. Her hair is lank and seems to sigh and sag with her as she deflates in front of me.

“I was never good with mornings.”

She takes a sip of her coffee and doesn’t even notice there isn’t any sugar in it. The café is full of people but in the morning they’re always ‘just leaving’. Her fingers are lined with tiny bruises which correspond with the ones on her legs and neck, she notices me staring and grins and her whole mouth bleeds;

“I’m a spotted leopard, but you know, I can change my spots.”

I ask, why does she does do this? She grimaces.

“You really wanna know?” I don’t nod but I shake. I shake all over.

“Because it means I can be whoever I wanna be, I can be a different person every night, and when I get tired of being that person, I can change. Nothing’s ever permanent, not even this,”

She draws her sleeve back and there’s a huge bruise in the vague shape of a hand on her forearm.

“A souvenir from playing Tiffany. But no one ever has breakfast at hers.”

She looks at me, past me, past the street corner where I found her and past the bridge across the river. She goes all around the world with that sad-grey gaze and when she gets back I already know it’s somebody else looking at me.

“You know how I told you that no one ever leaves me?”

Yeah, I remember. She was Catherine Hepburn and she smelt of a hangover. Her voice was three notches higher then whoever this is.

“It’s because I always leave first. And, anyway. It’s never me that’s leaving, is it? It’s always someone else. You can’t leave someone you’ve never met.”

Oh, contraire. People do it all the time.

On buses. In streets. Out of buildings. In airports and off ships.

People leave each other behind every single day without knowing it and every single day 6.97 billion hearts are broken, one by one.

“So, all those people, they never get to leave me, because I leave as soon as they look at me, before we shake hands or speak a word. I leave before they even know I’m there.”

Most people do.

“And in the morning, when they do go, they’re not leaving me behind, no. They’re leaving Cindy or Louise or maybe Wendy to pick up what the night forgot to take with it.”

I feel kinda sorry for her. Whoever she is. That would mean you were avoiding who you are, avoiding being yourself just so you don’t get hurt.

“Yeah, so?”

She flicks her hair and her voice is so confident but somewhere in the back of it I hear the girl I picked up all those nights ago who I fell in love with. I want to pull her out, put her back together and heal the bruises and make her stay. I want to tie her down and reconstruct her.

I tell her you can’t run away from yourself forever.

She smiles, differently, to the side.

“No, sweetie, you can’t.”

And she’s gone,

“Just one night at a time.”

---------------------

- Mikee Sto Domingo.

Amy Hempel.

2009-11-16T20:05:00.008+13:00

The Harvest.

The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.

The man was not hurt when the other car hit ours. The man I had known for one week held me in the street in a way that meant I couldn't see my legs. I remember knowing that I shouldn't look, and knowing that I wouldlook if it wasn't that I couldn't.

My blood was on the front of this man's clothes.

He said, "You'll be okay, but this sweater is ruined."

I screamed from the fear of pain. But I did not feel any pain. In the hospital, after injections, I knew there was pain in the room — I just didn't know whose pain it was.

What happened to one of my legs required four hundred stitches, which, when I told it, became five hundred stitches, because nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.

The five days they didn't know if they could save my leg or not I stretched to ten.

--------------

The lawyer was the one who used the word. But I won't get around to that until a couple of paragraphs.

We were having the looks discussion — how important are they. Crucial is what I had said.

I think looks are crucial.

But this guy was a lawyer. He sat in an aqua vinyl chair drawn up to my bed. What he meant by looks was how much my loss of them was worth in a court of law.

I could tell that the lawyer liked to say court of law. He told me he had taken the bar three times before he had passed. He said that his friends had given him handsomely embossed business cards, but where these lovely cards were supposed to say Attorney-at-Law, his cards said Attorney-at-Last.

He had already covered loss of earnings, that I could not now become an airline stewardess. That I had never considered becoming one was immaterial, he said, legally.

"There's another thing," he said. "We have to talk here about marriageability."

The tendency was to say marriage-a-what? although I knew what he meant the first time I heard it.

I was eighteen years old. I said, "First, don't we talk about dateability?"

The man of a week was already gone, the accident driving him back to his wife.

"Do you think looks are important?" I asked the man before he left.

"Not at first," he said.

-------------

In my neighborhood there is a fellow who was a chemistry teacher until an explosion took his face and left what was left behind. The rest of him is neatly dressed in dark suits and shined shoes. He carries a briefcase to the college campus. What a comfort — his family, people said — until his wife took the kids and moved out.

In the solarium, a woman showed me a snapshot. She said, "This is what my son used to look like."

I spent my evenings in Dialysis. They didn't mind when a lounger was free. They had wide-screen color TV, better than they had in Rehab. Wednesday nights we watched a show where women in expensive clothes appeared on lavish sets and promised to ruin one another.

On one side of me was a man who spoke only in phone numbers. You would ask them how he felt, he would say, "924-3130." Or he would say, "757-1366." We guessed what these numbers might be, but nobody spent the dime.

There was sometimes, on the other side of me, a twelve-year-old boy. His lashes were thick and dark from blood-pressure medication. He was next on the transplant list, as soon as — the word they used was harvest — as soon as a kidney was harvested.

The boy's mother prayed for drunk drivers.

I prayed for men who were not discriminating.

Aren't we all, I thought, somebody's harvest?

The hour would end, and a floor nurse would wheel me back to my room. She would say, "Why watch that trash? Why not just ask me how my day went?"

I spent fifteen minutes before going to bed squeezing rubber grips. One of the medications was making my fingers stiffen. The doctor said he'd give it to me till I couldn't button my blouse — a figure of speech to someone in a cotton gown.

The lawyer said, "Charitable works."

He opened his shirt and showed me where an acupuncture person had dabbed at his chest with cola syrup, sunk four needles, and told him that the real cure was charitable works.

I said, "Cure for what?"

The lawyer said, "Immaterial."

------------

As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.

The accident happened at sunset, so that is when I felt this way the most. The man I had met the week before was driving me to dinner when it happened. The place was at the beach, a beach on a bay that you can look across and see the city lights, a place where you can see everything without having to listen to any of it.

A long time later I went to that beach myself. I drove the car. It was the first good beach day; I wore shorts.

At the edge of the sand I unwound the elastic bandage and waded into the surf. A boy in a wet suit looked at my leg. He asked me if a shark had done it; there were sightings of great whites along that part of the coast.

I said that, yes, a shark had done it.

"And you're going back in?" the boy asked.

I said, "And I'm going back in."

-----------

I leave a lot out when I tell the truth. The same when I write a story. I'm going to start now to tell you what I have left out of "The Harvest," and maybe begin to wonder why I had to leave it out.

There was no other car. There was only the one car, the one that hit me when I was on the back of the man's motorcycle. But think of the awkward syllables when you have to say motorcycle.

The driver of the car was a newspaper reporter. He worked for a local paper. He was young, a recent graduate, and he was on his way to a labor meeting to cover a threatened strike. When I say I was then a journalism student, it is something you might not have accepted in "The Harvest."

In the years that followed, I watched for the reporter's byline. He broke the People's Temple story that resulted in Jim Jones’s flight to Guyana. Then he covered Jonestown. In the city room of the San Francisco Chronicle, as the death toll climbed to nine hundred, the numbers were posted like donations on pledge night. Somewhere in the hundreds, a sign was fixed to the wall that said JUAN CORONA, EAT YOUR HEART OUT.

In emergency room, what happened to one of my legs required not four hundred stitches but just over three hundred stitches. I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true — nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.

My lawyer was no attorney-at-last. He was a partner in one of the city's oldest law firms. He would never have opened his shirt to reveal the site of acupuncture, which is something that he never would have had.

"Marriageability" was the original title of " The Harvest."

The damage to my leg was considered cosmetic although I am still, 15 years later, unable to kneel. In an out-of-court settlement the night before the trial, I was awarded nearly $100,000. The reporter's car insurance went up $12.43 per month.

It had been suggested that I rub my leg with ice, to bring up the scars, before I hiked my skirt three years later for the court. But there was no ice in the judge’s chambers, so I did not get a chance to pass or fail that moral test.

The man of a week, whose motorcycle it was, was not a married man. But when you thought he had a wife, wasn't I liable to do anything? And didn't I have it coming?

After the accident, the man got married. The girl he married was a fashion model. ("Do you think looks are important? I asked the man before he left. "Not at first," he said.)

In addition to being a beauty, the girl was worth millions of dollars. Would you have accepted this in "The Harvest" — that the model was also an heiress?

It is true we were headed for dinner when it happened. But the place where you can see everything without having to listen to any of it was not a beach on a bay; it was the top of Mount Tamalpais. We had the dinner with us as we headed up the twisting mountain road. This is the version that has room for perfect irony, so you won't mind when I say that for the next several months, from my hospital bed, I had a dead-on spectacular view of that very mountain.

------------

I would have written this next part into the story if anybody would have believed it. But who would have? I was there and I didn't believe it.

On the day of my third operation, there was an attempted breakout at the Maximum Security Adjustment Center, adjacent to Death Row, at San Quentin prison. "Soledad Brother" George Jackson, a twenty-nine-year-old black man, pulled out a smuggled-in .38-caliber pistol, yelled, "This is it!" and opened fire. Jackson was killed; so were three guards and two "tiertenders," inmates who bring other prisoners their meals.

Three other guards were stabbed in the neck. The prison is a five-minute drive from Marin General, so that is where the injured guards were taken. The people who brought them were three kinds of police, including California Highway Patrol and Marin County sheriff's deputies, heavily armed.

Police were stationed on the roof of the hospital with rifles; they were posted in the hallways, waving patients and visitors back into their rooms.

When I was wheeled out of Recovery later that day, bandaged waist to ankle, three officers and an armed sheriff frisked me.

On the news that night, there was footage of the riot. They showed my surgeon talking to reporters, indicating, with a finger to his throat, how he had saved one of the guards by sewing up a slice from ear to ear.

I watched this on television, and because it was my doctor, and because hospital patients are self-absorbed, and because I was drugged, I thought the surgeon was talking about me. I thought that he was saying, "Well, she's dead. I'm announcing it to her in bed."

The psychiatrist I saw at the surgeon's referral said that the feeling was a common one. She said that victims of trauma who have not yet assimilated the trauma often believe they are dead and do not know it.

The great white sharks in the waters near my home attack one to seven people a year. Their primary victim is the abalone diver. With abalone stakes at thirty-five dollars a pound and going up, the Department of Fish and Game expects the shark attacks to show no slackening.

------------

Minimalism at its finest.

George Gordon Byron.

2009-11-11T22:47:00.004+13:00

LARA: CANTO THE FIRST (EXCERPT), published 1814

XVII

In him inexplicably mix'd appear'd Much to be lov'd and hated, sought and fear'd. Opinion varying o'er his hidden lot, In praise or railing ne'er his name forgot; His silence form'd a theme for others' prate; They guess'd--they gaz'd--they fain would know his fate. What had he been? what was he, thus unknown, Who walk'd their world, his lineage only known? A hater of his kind? yet some would say, With them he could seem gay amidst the gay; But own'd that smile, if oft observ'd and near, Wan'd in its mirth and wither'd to a sneer; That smile might reach his lip but pass'd not by, None e'er could trace its laughter to his eye. Yet there was softness too in his regard, At times, a heart as not by nature hard, But once perceiv'd, his spirit seem'd to chide Such weakness as unworthy of its pride, And steel'd itself, as scorning to redeem One doubt from others' half withheld esteem; In self-inflicted penance of a breast Which tenderness might once have wrung from rest; In vigilance of grief that would compel The soul to hate for having lov'd too well.

XVIII

There was in him a vital sign of all: As if the worst had fall'n which could befall, He stood a stranger in this breathing world, An erring spirit from another hurl'd; A thing of dark imaginings, that shap'd By choice the perils he by chance escap'd; But 'scap'd in vain, for in their memory yet His mind would half exult and half regret. With more capacity for love than earth Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth, His early dreams of good outstripp'd the truth, And troubled manhood follow'd baffled youth; With thought of years in phantom chase misspent, And wasted powers for better purpose lent; And fiery passions that had pour'd their wrath In hurried desolation o'er his path, And left the better feelings all at strife In wild reflection o'er his stormy life; But haughty still and loth himself to blame, He call'd on Nature's self to share the shame, And charg'd all faults upon the fleshly form She gave to clog the soul and feast the worm; Till he at last confounded good and ill, And half mistook for fate the acts of will. Too high for common selfishness, he could At times resign his own for others' good, But not in pity, not because he ought, But in some strange perversity of thought, That sway'd him onward with a secret pride To do what few or none would do beside; And this same impulse would, in tempting time, Mislead his spirit equally in crime; So much he soar'd beyond, or sunk beneath, The men with whom he felt condemn'd to breathe, And long'd by good or ill to separate Himself from all who shared his mortal state. His mind abhorring this had fix'd her throne Far from the world, in regions of her own: Thus coldly passing all that pass'd below, His blood in temperate seeming now would flow: Ah! happier if it ne'er with guilt had glow'd, But ever in that icy smoothness flow'd! 'T is true, with other men their path he walk'd, And like the rest in seeming did and talk'd, Nor outrag'd Reason's rules by flaw nor start, His madness was not of the head, but heart; And rarely wander'd in his speech, or drew His thoughts so forth as to offend the view.

XIX

With all that chilling mystery of mien, And seeming gladness to remain unseen, He had (if 't were not nature's boon) an art Of fixing memory on another's heart. It was not love perchance, nor hate, nor aught That words can image to express the thought; But they who saw him did not see in vain, And once beheld, would ask of him again.

I don't really create emotional states, y'know what I mean? I just take note of the apocalypses that occur in everybody's souls and I sing about 'em again and again, every night. That's all.

-- PD.

Inertia.

2009-11-05T00:20:00.004+13:00

He is a bird cage unto himself. He is neither here nor there, though he is felt everywhere. He's deficient but stubborn. Just so damn stubborn. The kind of stubborn that gets you into craptastic situations like this.

I cough, though that doesn't register in his pigeon-like mind. “Raph, I don't think this is a goo-”

He stutters awake and looks at me as if I took away his coveted crumb. “Oh come on. Really? This was your idea after all.”

So goddamn stubborn.

“Oh, really? So when I told you that, no, I didn't want to go on a midnight casual stroll in the woods for a place that is not only impossible to find, but, y'know, doesn't even exist, I was actually saying hell yeah, lets get killed tonight? You're insane.”

An all-knowing smile blossoms upon his granite lips and he slips further into the night, tangling himself into its shadows.

Stubborn asshole.

I try to find my way back to him but all I am met with is withered willows and carved names. There's a “Johnny loves Bonny” and a “Karen was here 1987”. Johnny-who? Karen-who? No one's gonna know who you are. There's a million Johnny's and Karen's glorified on these pieces of bark now. The key to immortality is surnames, people. It's all about the Bellford and the Valvert and the Kurkovich.

There is a light in the distance and I think it's him, but I know he didn't bring a flashlight. He's much too proudly spontaneous for such trivial needs like that.

“Raph!” I call, but nothing answers. Nothing but an owl's hoot and he's not stupid enough to catch some mythical disease and become a shapeshifter, so I bring in the big guns. “Raphaello Fernando Gale!”

“Don't call-”

The voice jumbles to white noise as I sprint over to the source. What I see makes me wish I didn't eat that taco beforehand.

I swear I never thought I'd look this myth in the eyes. Or rather, in the mouth. In front of me lies a cave, rocks crumbling inwards so that the entry seems obscured. Really like a wrinkled mouth, crumpled up in an attempted whistle-forming maneuver. The light, so glazed and lemon green before, now shines a brilliant ripe orange from an ancient oil lamp post on the side.

This is the anti-bermuda triangle twist. The stuff you never see coming. That just slap you over and over for your denial. You stubborn bastard.

“Hello? Anyone there? I do believe we have arrived, but if you want to take a few seconds to aimless stare into place, then do go on. Tell me when you're ready to apologize.”

You know what else slaps like nothing else? Flawed logic.

“Apologize? Me, apologize?”

“Mmhmm.” He avoids my glare and starts whistling some old Charlie Brown number.

“What for, pray tell?”

At this he redirects his blue eyes - dark and ominous in the night – to my bewildered ones and begins. “For starters; no one calls me that. Ever. The time's too late for revolutions, so stop before you make that a habit.”

Really? I roll my eyes. It's always the same argument. He's had it in for his name since the beginning. As early as his birth, his mother reckons. Though you can't trust everything that woman says. She's as drunk as a low-life mall Santa on Christmas on her good days.

When she gave birth to Raph, she was literally tearing the linen beneath her, she was so in need for a hearty bottle of scotch. On seeing him in her arms, her first words were; “I need a double malt. Now.”

His name came to be when a nurse came to take him away. “What are you going to call him? He's got the most beautiful eyes...” and his mom, she replied, “All babies have blue eyes from birth. They only begin to change colour later. You learn that in high school, for goodness sake. Before they screw with you and tell you you're not good enough to know what they know and you are freaking reprimanded for knowing too much.”

Dejected, the nurse - following hospital protocol - left without a word, but not before the inebriated woman slurred finally, “His name will be Raphael, Raphaello Frenando Ga...” before she knocked herself out.

It would come to be a rusted cross on young Raphael's head. He hated the italian painter. He wanted to be someone more mysterious, more powerful. Someone to be admired. He wanted a name like Apollo, the embodiment of romantics. At least that's what he told me. Stubborn scalawag.

I look at him, waiting for him to continue, not disguising my disinterest.

“Secondly, you called this a – oh what was it? – a 'waste of precious free time better spent on more constructive pursuits'. Yeah. That was it. Insulting, to be sure. And finally, I proved the impossible and therefore the epithet 'insane' no longer applies. Y'know, you really shouldn't fling such hurtful words about. My soul bleeds, James, when you do such things.” Here he throws himself at me, laughing at the faux tragedy of his dramatisation.

“James, Jamesie,” his eyes sparkle as if he's sniffed some brown recently. Really, I wouldn't be surprised, the reckless fool. “Look, it's just like in the books.”

He points his crooked index finger to the cave and then stabs it into my chest. “It's just like in the books. Don't you see?” His eyes widen. “It's a sign.”

I laugh, though it sounds more like an exclamation of spite, than anything else. “Seriously, man. A cave in which poets have died writing their finest work? Nature's revenge on the cleverness of man? You believe that?”

“I live that, James.” He replies cryptically. Ever the lover of ambiguity.

“What do you mean?”

“C'mon.” He motions with his hand to follow and all I can think is; I'm walking into my grave.

We start walking in and it smells like death.

“This is so stupid. This is stupidity at its height. I should've told mom I loved her. I should've stashed my journals before the inevitability of the scavenger hunt for lasting souvenirs after my renouncement from this world occurs. She's gonna find them and think; my son was a real nut. A real freak. Not worth rememberin-”

“James, you're rambling,” a voice ahead of me rings of a calm. A stark contrast to my nervous mumbles. “Seriously. Chill, man. We're almost there.”

“Where? How do you know where we're going?”

“I told you. I live this, James.” I still can't fathom what he means by it. He doesn't turn around but keeps walking into the void. Stupid, stubborn son-of-a-gun.

We walk in silence for another minute. And then another. And another. It feels like my nerves are hardwired on end and I start getting impatient.

“Raph, are you sure you know wher-”

But he cuts me off. “Here we are.”

I am hit with thousands of blinding lights. White flickering polka dots fill my eyes and I get dizzy and fall down on the unforgiving rock of the mammoth clearing.

“James, no need to knock yourself out, man.” I see stars. Literally. The ceiling of the cave gets to a certain diameter of surrounding rock and then explodes, allowing a lookout to the sky. A dish served better cold. A dome of beauty, really.

I feel Raph lay down beside me and sigh. I still feel lightheaded from the fall. “Hey Raph,” I manage.

“Yeah?”

“Why don't you like your name? What's it about Raphael you don't like? I mean, really?”

There's quiet for a long time, and I'm almost about to hit him for the thought that he'd fallen asleep when he answers, “Did my mom ever tell you why she named me 'Raphaello'?” He makes a face as he says the name.

“No.”

“Do you know what he was famous for?”

“Uh... his frescoed 'stanze' in the Vatican, his depictions of the Virgin Mary, amongst other religious characters?”

“No. I mean in the heart of it all. Raphael was a man of perfection. His every work was idealised – his chins in perfect proportion with face, his eyes an artist's ideal distance apart. He was a man of method. He knew exactly what was perfection and what was flaw. His world was black and white. Mom, being the trailer park kid that she was, where everything was a flaw... well. She wanted the white. She wanted the perfection. She wanted something good. In calling me that, it wasn't some subconscious slur. It wasn't her drink talking. It was her. She was hoping that if she called me 'Raphaello', maybe I'd be some sort of straight lined perfection she never had. Suffice to say, I was a disappointment. Never goes a day without that being acknowledged. And I hate that. I hate the concept of perfection in a world that is devoid of such things. That's why I hate Raphael.”

I just lay looking at the stars and feel him relax and gaze at them with me. After a while, I break the silence. “Perfection does exist, y'know.”

“Where?” His whisper sounds choked on his feeble hope.

“The stars are perfect.”

“No they're not.” He replies, his voice sounds drained, a plug has been pulled out. “They're just burning chemicals and lumps of jagged rock. Imperfect.”

“Only when you look at them up close. Raphael wasn't perfect. It's the creativity that oozed out of his skull that was the genius perfection. Raphael wasn't perfect. His life was in shambles. He was an orphan from the age of eleven. Raphael wasn't perfect.”

I'm mumbling again, but Raph is quiet and doesn't seem to mind. “Besides, you write, Raph. You're kinda like Raphael too, except you paint perfection in words.”

At this he smiles and we lie there content, among the ruins of lyrical genius, the cleverness of poets receding, yet burning under our skin.

“Besides,” I whisper. “Perfection is subjective.”

I smile at him and he rolls his head to look at me and, after some time, smiles back.

“You stubborn bastard,” he says.

Isabelle Eberhardt

2009-10-27T00:07:00.003+13:00

Voluptuous Corruption

(from Infernalia, 1895)

In the nocturnal silence, the dismal, oblong hall, faintly lit, vaguely slept.

From the infamous tables, from the grimy, befouled floor, mounted a dull, insipid odor -- an odor of human entrails, of clotted blood, of splattered drugs...

In this perfume of misery, in this dolorous salon, upon two slabs, two cadavers dozed, covered by bright white sheets, sinister vestments of terror.

Close to the naked wall, wall of hospital or prison, of asylum or barracks, beneath his lamentable drapery, a man reclined, eyes closed, fixed forever in his from-now-on eternal indifference. Very young, twenty years old perhaps; the profile of a milk-white statue, very soft, blanched lips barely smiling on the livid face, a smile from beyond the tomb...

In the corner opposite, an outspread woman, she too, beneath the miserable shroud.

An image mystical and pure, in her pale transcendental beauty of a martyr...

Beneath the bluish shadow of jet black hair, a motionless pallor, flesh voluptuously radiant in the coldness of death, a stranger henceforth to inflamed kisses and ardent embraces.

The rigid form peeped from the infamous veil, flaunting the curves of its perfect figure...

And over this sinister realm of shadowy death, the flickering flame of the gas threw its cruel reflections.

In the dense, ponderous silence, in the nauseating odor, both of them young and beautiful, the nameless cadavers slept their sleep of astonishment...

They still had kept their human form but, in the mortuary hall, they counted for naught, they were naught, expunged forever from the lists of the living.

Wretches crushed by destiny, laid low by vice; travelers forgotten in an hour, they had washed up here, stranded. Tomorrow, under the frigid scalpel, cut into strips, shamefully skinned, picked apart, entrails bared, they would be shown to other young men, to young women, avid to live, to learn, to love, their organs torn open, sliced to ribbons, bleeding remnants of the bodies which were, no doubt, their only wealth and happiness during lives of sordid abjection.

They were going to expose their final misery to the sublime indifference of the sun -- to the sun in its eternal joy...

What did it matter!

In the grand enigma of eternal Becoming, who would regret this blood, this life, this sacrificed flesh?

And all of them who, tomorrow, were going to soak their hands, young and warm, in this icy blood, in this mutilated meat, afterward would go try to assuage a little the pain of their pitiful brethren, would try to appease one day the great howl snatched by incessant Becoming!

Then they, too, would come to roll, suddenly inert and glassy, in the same Nothingness without form, without duration, without name...

And so forth, forever...

They lay awash in the strange effulgence of the feeble light...

Close to the miserable couch where the sallow woman slept, a student, night watchman at the clinic, stood stiffly.

He stared at her carnal envelope, seared by a dreadful desire.

His pale face, with anguished black eyes, convulsed with icy shivers.

With all his will, with all his youthful energy, he resisted, struggling against the sinister beckonings of neuropathic compulsion.

But, unable to flee, he stood fascinated, immobile; languishing, flagging instant by instant, fallen prey to a shocking natural beauty, heart brimming with disgust...

He felt himself drained of force, powerless in the face of the hideous embrace which he madly desired.

And he would soon surrender...

His suffering was intolerable in this pitiless night...

His virility revolted against the abominable coitus; his will took flight...

And he remained motionless, forehead drenched in sweat, fists clenched tight...

He felt strong and fine; he was quite young and altogether male. And his pride balked at the thought of this funebrial simulacrum of love which, so many times before, had dragged him into the ineffable abysses of voluptuousness.

Sickened, he beat back the obscure phantasmagoria born from his compulsion which, tonight, appeared in the face of this woman his eyes watched without modesty, and unblushingly devoured; the face of the horrible chimera whose gelid form, triumphant beneath the limp drape, debased him, degraded him, rendered him vile.

He strove with all his energy, with all the numbed, half-conscious, but still-living chastity which was in him, to restrain his delirious desire until it could be transferred to the possession of a living woman -- no matter whom...

But all the pictures conjured up by memory, under violent force of will, were pale and impersonal... while that which he viewed before him -- the corpse -- her young flesh simmering, whispered to him, sighed and quivered, and he buckled in a swoon.

The blush of shame, in the face of downfall, mounted to his cheeks... he despised himself, he loathed himself in this tortured hour.

His gaze glided over the contours of the funereal drape. He knew, and he looked askance.

But he wanted to see, to look at reality, invincibly.

To this desire, he gave in, wrestling all the while against the other, which he knew to be morbid and infamous.

With his violently trembling hand, he lifted the drape and regarded the lamentable nudity which sprawled before his lewd and insolent gaze.

Then he felt himself sinking, with one long shudder, into the depths of the triumphant flesh...

He fell upon the chalky cadaver, gripped by a savage thrill, mournful, painful, teeth clenched, wincing, shivering in his horrible fever...

Once taken, he no longer felt her coolness, but only the spasms of ultimate voluptuousness.

With all his strength, he clasped her, clutched her to him again and again; she felt alive, burning, crazy under his caresses, and he clung to her palpitating flesh, lascivious and soft in its mellow heat of passionate love...

He let out a furious rale of voluptuosity, the cry of triumph, the grand hallelujah of all-powerful, all-conquering neurosis.

Enraged, the pure, savage male, he thrilled all the more as he felt her come alive, throbbing under his mad caresses.

He pressed her violently, until it hurt, his lips upon those of his phantom-lover, of the insensate decedent.

Once again, the same voluptuous shudder shot through the entire length of his body.

His head, with eyes enlarged by rejoicing, rested languidly, tenderly, upon the breast of the deceased.

And she, distant, inanimate, insensitive to the ardent caresses of this male who had possessed her in spite of death, remained always outstretched, face turned toward the ceiling drowned in vague shadows.

Her dead eyes remained shut, without joy and without pain, in this monstrous coitus; she recumbed more passively than any lover ever could, beneath the potent shudder of the living being.

At the pale rise of the fine spring morning, on her couch of blood and love, the departed and her lover lay peacefully, reposed in sleep: she, ever tranquil, already flown toward the shadowy unknown; he, destined to revolve a few more years within the impersonal turbillion of eternal Becoming...

Translator: Gilbert Alter-Gilbert

------------------------------

If you look beyond the necrophilia, it's beautifully poetic.

------

2009-10-25T21:30:00.002+13:00

It was you and me, and a deep blue sea.

Not really, but let's pretend. Just for effect.

We'll rip apart the withered doors of the pickup. Throw the dashboard through the windshield. Feel the water run up, drowning our sorrows and last glances. We'll submerge and our scattered remains will show no signs of bloodshed. We'll be the lost corpses of art, lying in dry sand. Leftovers that Evapora's grasp was too weak to fling to Heaven. Our joint words will lie scattered across the plains, stark reminders of long nights, drunk on wit and that red liquid – alcohol with no name. It's the same result, I remember us slurring. Rich men covering up flaws behind thick chardonnay scented mustaches. Irony at its finest.

The sun will have no mercy, though we never expected it to, and will crust lips and hair. But we will remain. Until the coming of the moon. For that is when we'll see the glimpse of our forever. Though we won't be on the ground, but feeble spectators to the plague of stars. No. We'll float up with them, touch liberty at its purest form and never look back. Our inaudible laughs will reverberate and chime through those tormented by economic blues and they'll look up and think. No. Really think and wonder about how their life ended up centered about conformist paper bills when the sky was theirs to take as but infants to life's embrace.

William Blake.

2009-10-19T20:10:00.005+13:00

"Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.

"And, father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door."

The Priest sat by and heard the child;
In trembling zeal he seized his hair,
He led him by his little coat,
And all admired the priestly care.

And standing on the altar high,
"Lo, what a fiend is here! said he:
"One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery."

The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain,

And burned him in a holy place

Where many had been burned before;

The weeping parents wept in vain.

Are such things done on Albion's shore?

Nick Hornby.

2009-10-01T22:17:00.001+13:00

Fabien Marsaud.

2009-09-27T15:26:00.002+13:00

4 Saisons
A l'arrivée du mois de décembre
j'ai bien regardé,
la hauteur de ciel descendre
et l'hiver arriver

j'étais presque content de le voir
en l'observant se déployer
j'ai mis une veste au-dessus de ma veste
pour pas trop cailler

j'ai vu la nuit qui tombait tôt
mais les gens qui marchaient plus vite
j'ai vu la chaleur des bistrots
avec de la buée sur les vitres

là dessus la nature est fidèle
j'ai vu le jour se lever tard
j'ai vu les guirlandes de Noël
qui me foutent le cafard ?
j'ai aimé avoir les mains gelées
pour les mettre au fond de mes poches
j'ai adoré marcher dehors
quand tu sais que la maison est proche

j'ai souris bêtement
en voyant qu'il n'y avait plus
de fleurs sur les balcons
j'ai regardé le ciel tout blanc
y avait même des flocons

certains matins j'ai vu que le givre
avait squatté derrière les fenêtres
j'ai vu les gens revenir du ski
avec la marque des lunettes

je commençais juste à m'y habituer
mais les jours ont rallongé
j'ai compris que le printemps
allait emménager

le mois de mars avait tracé
en un battement de cils
et on m'a dit qu'en avril
faut pas se découvrir d'un fil

mas moi j'ai peur de rien
alors malgré les dictons vieillots
j'ai enlevé une de mes deux vestes
pour pas avoir trop chaud

j'ai vu les arbres avoir des feuilles
et les filles changer de godasses
j'ai vu les bistrots ouvrir plus tard
avec des tables en terrasses

y avait pleins de couples qui s'embrassaient
c'est les hormones, ça réagit
c'est la saison des amours
et la saison des allergies

c'est vrai qu j'ai eu le nez qui coule
et je me suis frotté les yeux
mais j'ai aimé la chair de poule
pendant un coup de vent affectueux

sur les balcons ça bourgeonnait
j'ai ri bêtement à cette vision
j'ai regardé le ciel bleu-pâle
y avait même des avions

ma factrice a ressorti le vélo
j'étais content pour elle
content aussi pour le daron
qui aime le retour des hirondelles

je commençais juste à m'y habituer
mais le thermomètre a augmenté
j'ai compris ce qui nous pendait au nez
c'était l'été

au mois de juin an change de teint
fini d'être albinos
c'est la période des examens
et puis celle de Roland Garros

ça sent les vacances à plein nez
il va être l'heure de se tirer
moi j'ai enlevé ma dernière veste
pour pas transpirer

j'ai vu qu'il faisait encore jour
même après le début du film
pour ceux qui ont des poignées d'amour
il est trop tard pour le régime

les mecs sont assez excités
et ça les préoccupe
que les filles sortent leurs décolletés
et leurs mini-jupes

j'ai aimé rechercher l'ombre
quand il y avait trop de soleil
j'ai aimé dormir sans la couette
pour rafraîchir le sommeil

sur les balcons c'était la jungle
il y avait plein de fleur et de feuillage
j'ai regardé le ciel tout bleu
il y avait même pas de nuages

j'ai adoré conduire la nuit
la vitre ouverte en grand
avec le bras gauche de sorti
qui fait un bras de fer contre le vent

je commençais juste à m'y habituer
mais j'ai vu une fleur fanée
j'ai compris que l'automne
était déterminé

c'est surtout à partir d'octobre
c'est la saison la plus austère
moi bizarrement je la trouve noble
c'est celle qui a le plus de caractère

j'ai vu les feuilles qui tournoyaient
comme des ballons de baudruche
j'ai remis une de mes vestes
avec une capuche

j'ai vu la pluie, j'ai vu le vent
les rayons de soleil malades
j'ai vu les K-ways des enfants
qui partent aux châtaignes en ballade

j'ai marché dans les feuilles mortes
et sur les trottoirs mouillés
j'ai vu les parcs changer de couleurs
ils étaient tout rouillés

j'ai aimé les lumières de la ville
qui se reflètent dans les flaques
et les petites bourrasques de vent
qui mettent les brushings en vrac

sur les balcons y avait que des branches
sans feuilles et sans raisons
j'ai regardé le ciel tout gris
y avait même plus d'horizon

et puis l'hiver est revenu
puis les saisons se sont perpétuaient
les années passent, la vie aussi
on commençait juste à s'y habituer

on est les témoins impuissants
du temps qui trace, du temps qui veut
que les enfants deviennent des grands
et que les grands deviennent des vieux...

-----------------------------------------------------

I'm sorry, but I had to put this up. It is an absolutely beautiful french poem by one of my new found favourite french poets. We listened to him in French and I swear I fell in love for a few minutes. ^.^

Jennifer Reeser.

2009-09-16T19:49:00.004+12:00

Imagining you’d come to say goodbye,
I made a doll of raffia and string.
I gave her thatch hair, and a broomstick skirt
of patchwork satin rags. Around each eye
I stitched thick lashes. Such a touching thing
she was! That even you could not debate –
impassive, undemanding and inert.
Yes, surely she’d cause you yourself to sigh.
Around her breast, I sewed a loden ring
to guard her cotton heart from being hurt,
then sat down in the fabric scraps to wait,
between the rafters and the furnace grate,
needle in hand, and never so aware
no craft on earth is master to despair.

A Broken Nocturne.

2009-09-08T18:26:00.011+12:00

He sits still, as if a carved statue of chipped marble in the lawn chair on the porch. His body is bathed in pure moonlight. If I were to sketch him, there and then, he would be a symmetrical puzzle. His signature tapered bowler hat is placed tipped upon his blond curls and his hands are at odds in their positioning. One lies dormant on the chair's arms and the other is at his mouth, holding onto his cigarette, fingers loosely keeping it in place.

“What are you doing here, Ethanael?”

“Woah, woah, woah. Let's not be rash here, the ladies might hear.” A smirk evades his disinterested expression. “I was simply taking a stroll and decided to pay my dear friend a visit. Is this a crime?”

“It should be. Do you know how scared I was, thinking there was a serial killer outside my window?”

“I can't help your overactive imagination. I'm sorry. You're free to see my therapist, though. He never worked for me, but...” He reaches inside his worn coat as if to take a card out but thinks better of it. “You know what? No. I've got time.” He stares at me with a genuine amusement and I just stare back in bewilderment.

“You aren't serious.”

“Oh, my dear, I believe I am. You see, I'm really this neglected wretch that just wants to be understood and I figure, while I'm in this emotional limbo, why not have a little fun? I've always been fascinated by your... chimerical catastrophe of a world. Do share. It would do wonders for my petty troubled soul.” His smile is barely contained. “Besides, Dr Herald always advised me to have a go-to buddy. In case of mass self-destructive thought. Y'know the one.” He takes the cigarette from the side of his mouth and blows out smoke into the stale air. His hand holds the stick out onto the grass and, with three quick taps of his index finger, brings it back to his mouth again.

“It's two in the morning, Ethan.”

“And your point is?”

“That you should be asleep! You know that smoky mist that you feel when you close your eyes that fabricates twisted realities? The place people call dreams? Yeah, go there.”

“Mockery is not a good shade on you, love.” He smiles and lithely brings himself out of the chair. “But I know when I'm not wanted, so I'll just leave and let you go back to those wonderful 'dreams' of yours. I don't want them.”

He walks past me and down the porch steps, following the crookedly cemented path.

I growl out of frustration. “God! I can't figure you out.”

He pivots around and starts walking backwards, subconsciously leading himself to places beyond thought and conception, his feet distinctly clumsy. “You're thinking too much, love,” he calls loudly, almost as if drunk on his words. “My actions aren't ever as complex nor as full of meaning as people make them out to be.”

Here he pauses, as if in contemplation, and takes a drag, his eyes scouring the skies. He smiles to himself, this little deceitful smile than only manages to accentuate his loneliness all the more.

“It's quite comical to me. Their analytical eyes with their ideal perceptions.” He shakes his head, tipping his hat down almost over his left eye. He chuckles and it sounds as Chopin's Nocturne would if it were given synthesizers to constitute for its haunting piano-driven melodies.

“You could analyse the lie and dissect its faults but you'll never get closer to the truth.” His sad smile slowly cascades as he says this and he turns back, the fog erasing all evidence of his existence.

Conor Oberst.

2009-09-04T23:37:00.004+12:00

Gold Mine Gutted.

It was Don Delillo, whiskey, me

And a blinking midnight clock
Speakers on a TV stand
Just a turntable to watch
Only smoke came out our mouths
On all those hooded sweatshirt walks
We were a stroke of luck
We were a gold mine, they gutted us

And from the sidelines you'd see me run
Until I'm out of breath
Living the good life, I left for dead
In the sorrowful Midwest
Well I did my best...
To keep my head

It was grass stained jeans and incompletes
And a girl from class to touch
But you think about yourself too much
And you ruin who you love
Well all these claims at consciousness
My stray dog freedom
Let's have a nice clean cut
Like a bag we buy and divy up

And from the sidelines I see you run
Until you're out of breath
And all those white lines that sped us up
We hurried to our death
Well I lagged behind...
So you got ahead.

To Belong in a Field.

2009-08-28T18:39:00.003+12:00

Paisley and thyme.

Thaws my mind.

They crowded around her heaped form on the industrious carpet, plaster the only restraint from satisfaction. She loathed the two. She rolled over onto her back and met the ghosts of adolescence glowering at her with lust-rimmed eyes. Musk and an odor too potent to be considered as natural evaded her nostrils and willed her into a subconscious stupor.

She was neither here nor there.

Incorrigible music played through the ancient stereo on the makeshift side table. Why is it that there's such a lure in things one cannot understand? The rough voice droned on ceaselessly and she felt herself smile as she imagined the soul behind those sordid words. Effortless beauty in defiance of itself. She sat up and stared at the picture taped to the nauseating green of the walls and wondered at its subject.

Art has a way of being meaningful in its meaninglessness. Somehow the girl was at odds with that age old phrase from Wilde. Oh, what was it again?

Something about art and its conclusive categorical ranking as pointless.

All art is quite useless.

Yeah. That was it.

She refused to believe such a picture was 'useless'. How can something be useless if it brings one peace? If it brings one to the ideal oasis of contentment?

Delirious, she ripped off the picture from the wall and crumpled it in her hands as she made her way through the frame of the withered window opposite. Her feet found purchase on the roof under the ledge and she crawled to the edge, taking a breath of the nostalgic pine-saturated air.

She looked onto the lawns of the neighbouring houses and noticed only the overgrown weeds. The unconcealed blemishes of nature. Across the street she saw dancing silhouettes thrown against yellow windows, at work in their own obscure play. There was a sound, like a glass bottle breaking against a wooden stool and a snuffled scream like the cry of a condemned woman. A bird chirped a melody in stark contrast with the present.

She looked at her hands, raw from the bitting wind and the grip on brick, and saw the crumpled picture. A reminiscent smile, like mocking irony, pulled at her lips and she tore it up.

Tore and tore at it in such mad hysteria that all that was left of it was mere misshapen dust. She looked on as the pieces fell away from her palms and floated onto the world beyond.

Fly, so that the world will know peace someday.

She lay on that roof for a very long time. Time left her fighting to obtain reason within chaos though the harmony of the skies, only to get drunk on the stars.

Paisley and thyme.

Oh sweet love of mine.

Anne Sexton.

2009-08-22T00:29:00.005+12:00

The Break.

It was also my violent heart that broke,
falling down the front hall stairs.
It was also a message I never spoke,
calling, riser after riser, who cares

about you, who cares, splintering up
the hip that was merely made of crystal,
the post of it and also the cup.
I exploded in the hallway like a pistol.

So I fell apart. So I came all undone.
Yes. I was like a box of dog bones.
But now they've wrapped me in like a nun.
Burst like firecrackers! Held like stones!

What a feat sailing queerly like Icarus
until the tempest undid me and I broke.
The ambulance drivers made such a fuss.
But when I cried, "Wait for my courage!" they smoked

and then they placed me, tied me up on their plate,
and wheeled me out to their coffin, my nest.
Slowly the siren slowly the hearse, sedate
as a dowager. At the E. W. they cut off my dress.

I cried, "Oh Jesus, help me! Oh Jesus Christ!"
and the nurse replied, "Wrong name. My name
is Barbara," and hung me in an odd device,
a buck's extension and a Balkan overhead frame.

The orthopedic man declared,
"You'll be down for a year." His scoop. His news.
He opened the skin. He scraped. He pared
and drilled through bone for his four-inch screws.

That takes brute strength like pushing a cow
up hill. I tell you, it takes skill
and bedside charm and all that know how.
The body is a damn hard thing to kill.

But please don't touch or jiggle my bed.
I'm Ethan Frome's wife. I'll move when I'm able.
The T. V. hangs from the wall like a moose head.
I hide a pint of bourbon in my bedside table.

A bird full of bones, now I'm held by a sand bag.
The fracture was twice. The fracture was double.
The days are horizontal. The days are a drag.
All of the skeleton in me is in trouble.

Across the hall is the bedpan station.
The urine and stools pass hourly by my head
in silver bowls. They flush in unison
in the autoclave. My one dozen roses are dead.

The have ceased to menstruate. They hang
there like little dried up blood clots.
And the heart too, that cripple, how it sang
once. How it thought it could call the shots!

Understand what happened the day I fell.
My heart had stammered and hungered at
a marriage feast until the angel of hell
turned me into the punisher, the acrobat.

My bones are loose as clothespins,
as abandoned as dolls in a toy shop
and my heart, old hunger motor, with its sins
revved up like an engine that would not stop.

And now I spend all day taking care
of my body, that baby. Its cargo is scarred.
I anoint the bedpan. I brush my hair,
waiting in the pain machine for my bones to get hard,

for the soft, soft bones that were laid apart
and were screwed together. They will knit.
And the other corpse, the fractured heart,
I feed it piecemeal, little chalice. I'm good to it.
 Yet lie a fire alarm it waits to be known.
It is wired. In it many colors are stored.
While my body's in prison, heart cells alone
have multiplied. My bones are merely bored

with all this waiting around. But the heart,
this child of myself that resides in the flesh,
this ultimate signature of the me, the start
of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche.
 The figures are placed at the grave of my bones.
All figures knowing it is the other death
they came for. Each figure standing alone.
The heart burst with love and lost its breath.

This little town, this little country is real
and thus it is so of the post and the cup
and thus of the violent heart. The zeal
of my house doth eat me up.

James Joyce.

2009-08-17T19:56:00.006+12:00

Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts : secrets weary of their tyranny : tyrants willing to be dethroned.

For the Love of Vertigo.

2009-08-16T16:37:00.002+12:00

The hand curled around the soda feels numb. The wind bites into exposed skin and I throw my head back just for effect. For today I feel faint. Have you ever had an out-of-body experience? I have. I'm feeling that right now. I wonder if one of its symptoms are masochism.

My head throbs like fingers are probing around in there, damaging tissue and countless shot neurons. I take a sip of the soda and it tastes like artificial garbage.

Toes poke out from damp sand and wriggle in a dull slow-motion-like pattern. God. It's one of those days. I see waves roll in and roll out. In and out. In. Out. In, out, in, out. My vision blurs and I swear I see a man transpire out of them. He smiles and beckons me near.

Annabel.

He calls me and I find strength to get up. One step follows the other and my subconscious fights reason. It's the drugs. The paracetamol. The xanax. The vicodin. The ultram. And I stop. Attempting to widen my eyes, I try to make out details about the man. Nothing but a blur. There's something alluring about his voice, though. Something so persuasive.

Annabel.

Coming. I hobble over to the water's edge and feel laps of glacial cold embrace my already dead feet. Who are you? I whisper.

I'm your one-way ticket to freedom.

I giggle. No really, who are you?

I'm Abandon.

I frown and seem to look a little too alert as he covers my mouth. Shhh. His obscure eyes betray his excitement. His soul lays in them, mysterious, yet methodical.

You have no conception of how long I've been anticipating your visit.

The throbbing in my head multiplies in intensity and it feels like someone's hammering it into place. Or trying to hack it out. I can't decide. All I know is that I can't move my arms as they try to cradle my skull by instinct. Abandon has got me in an embrace and I can't feel reality anymore than I can feel his cold dementia.

Annabel, close your eyes.

I shake my head but lose my resolve quickly. It's like he's chained me to his desires. I close my eyes. He turns me about in his arms and they feel strong but consciously gentle about my waist.

Take a deep breath, love.

He brings his arms around tighter, in a kind of lock. His cracked lips move against my ear and he kisses my temple as pain envelops my entire being. He chuckles and brings me down with him as we fall into our own endless oblivion. And I choke.

I feel a hand at my wrist and I'm pulled out of the water.

“What in the world, Annabel? Have you lost your mind completely?”

I hear the voice but can't relate it to a face.

“No,” I cough out. “No, no. It... it was Abandon.”

My throat feels like it's swallowing sandpaper at every gulp. I shiver and look around for any proof of his existence but all I am met with are waves. Infinite and all-consuming.

“Abandon? Vertigo, more like...” The voice adds in a hushed tone I'm sure I'm not meant to hear. “There was no one here, Annabel. Are you feeling okay? Are you sick?”

The voice redeems itself, oozing in concern, but it hardly registers.

The waves roll in.

Roll out.

In and out.

In.

Out.

In, out, in, out.

The Wind.

2009-08-08T22:26:00.004+12:00

They say he’s too young for her and that he’s just some hyped up, superficial kid. But he loves her, you know? He told her that he did; swore it, even.

And, besides, James is not so young and stupid like they all think, he reads a lot of books and he can talk about anything; he could hold an intelligent conversation about a piece of dust if you wanted. Lynette is old and rich but that doesn’t mean he’s in it for the money. He doesn’t care about fast cars and lavish houses and he feels awkward in suits, but, boy does he look good in them. You should’ve seen him in that black one with the silk lapels, he caught all the old hens’ eyes that night, but he left so early, without Lynette. She was glowing all evening, and even if having him hang off her arm like a shawl or a handbag just drew contrast to her age, at least people were looking at her, at least people were using the word ‘beautiful’ and her name in the same sentence, like back in the glory days.

He’s stretched out like a stage for the sun, the first they’ve seen of her in a week. They had to escape on a plane to get away from all those grey clouds and smoggy buildings and those awful people with their stinging words.

He’s just gotten back from the beach, so he’s all sand and blue skies, his skin’s still pale and grey, but a couple more days in Italy and maybe Paris and his yellow skin’ll be gold.

Laid out on the front porch, blinded by his dark hair and thinner then usual, he turns and looks at her through heavy lidded brown eyes, half closed in the light. He is the image of some sickly and nicotine-hooked god who’s lips are reddened not by vintage French wine or the ambrosia of Olympus, but by the constant, nervous chewing of a shy and Byronic boy who yearns for some consolation and, finding no solace in the paintings of the Louvre or the pyramids of Egypt, is resolved to sit and destroy himself, a storm brewing within, attacking his inner peace with demons and visions of death.

She stands in the doorway and looks back at him, hoping the lines around her eyes don’t show as she smiles. She’s all dressed up in a creamy linen dress, because he hates beige, but white isn’t flattering to her sagging figure and she doesn’t want him looking elsewhere.

A long time ago, Lynette was very attractive, she wasn’t like the other girls her age, and she wouldn’t wear make-up because she didn’t need it. All the boys would chase her around, but she had eyes for only one man, Werther. Now, though, her body is doughy in places, even if she works out three hours a day. She wears all sorts of make-up, too; eye shadow, blush, lip liner, lip stick, liquid foundation, powder foundation, etc. And that’d be only after she’s applied all her anti- aging creams that’re so full of vitamin e, b, d; all the way to z, just so that she can walk outside.

Her hair’s gone grey but she had it dyed wheaten, like it was when she was young and in love with her first husband, Werther.

Werther, who left her rich, with a huge estate and luxurious parties but still so alone.

Werther looked nothing like James. He was a serious man who was fair skinned and fair haired with eyes the colour of autumn leaves. He was quiet and reserved but easy to read, easy to understand, not like James, who’s so difficult sometimes, so mysterious, disappearing for entire weeks to go strolling and drinking and other things as well.

They say that’s why Lynette loves him.

Even if Vivian Miller can swear she saw him run off with some peroxide girl, the pair of them drugged up and delirious from the neon signs. Some of Irvine Warburg’s not-so-clean friends say that James sells all of Lynette’s gifts so he can afford drugs and strawberry liquorice rope.

A hundred miles away from all that, though, Lynette can smoke and watch James dry himself, still so pale and too-thin with his ribs poking out. He’s missing the shell necklace she’d bought him at the market that very morning, but she doesn’t say anything, lest he run away.

“Enjoyed your swim, James?”

She chirps, raspy and old,

“I would’ve liked it better if you could’ve come along,”

He says, taking her stick of cancer and putting it in his own mouth; the cigarette hangs so easily and so relaxed between his lips, not all stiff and strict like with hers;

“It was beautiful. The way the waves crashed against the cliffs and the moan of the far-away boats carrying too many tourists.”

He exhales, not coughing and spluttering blood all over the place, like he had heard her do in the bathroom earlier.

Her eyes are distant and grey, he feels her exploring his soul and he doesn’t like it. Most of the time when Lynette is around he pretends that she is just a figment of his imagination; just a made up friend he doesn’t want to get attached to.

She notices a bruise on his left arm and touches it, delicately, lovingly, and he remembers his mother;

“What’s this?”

The concern comes out all wrinkly on her forehead, maybe all those creams aren’t working;

“Oh, this?”

He looks at the purple mark,

“It was just the wind, it blew so suddenly while I was swimming and I hit myself against the rocks,”

Lynette shakes her head and strokes his face. Her hands smell of an expensive cream imported from Berlin. The one she always uses that smells like his Grandmother’s soap. She says that it is a mix of rare and exotic flowers, but it just smells like Lavender to him. James is quite uncultured, Lynette thinks, and she likes that; she sees it as a sort of clean-slate situation. Because James is not able to think properly for himself, she is able to mould his arguments, his discussions; but that’s only if they’re about cultured things, James knows all about things that are not, and those conversations make Lynette afraid.

“Ah, James, be more careful next time! Now, go get changed. We have a party to go to at 3; I need you well-dressed and well-groomed.”

“I don’t want to go. I don’t like the people there.”

“Oh, James, these are different people, you haven’t even met them yet! They’ll be much nicer, I promise you.”

James believes her, but he doesn’t, really. He is not so naïve, like all the people at the parties think. He does as he is told, though, because he is grateful for Lynette.

There was a time when days were hard for James, much harder then they are now; he used to live on the streets and in gutters, all awkward and crooked in the corners. He used to mooch off this actor who had gotten so good at his job he’d forgotten who he was. His name was Devon, and he was Macbeth in the morning and Rick Blaine at night, but he was always lying. Then she came along. Lynette with her long white trench coat and sparkly earrings, she towered over him in the pavement where he was drinking beer that was more poison than it was beer; Devon told him that this was his chance out, that he should take it “Carpe fuckin’ Diem, man!”

James does not like to think back to Devon who was always lying and still does whenever he calls. He does not like to think about the mean friends of Lynette who flirt shamelessly with him and ask him degrading questions. No, no, James does not like to think about how Lynette is using him. In fact, James does not like to think at all; it has only ever caused trouble. Sometimes when he does, he begins to wonder about leaving Lynette, about running away; he thinks maybe he does not need all her money. But he knows better; a smart boy would stay and take what he can get. He can never be sure when he will next have to call Devon up to say that he needs somewhere to live.

She pats his hair, the metal of her rings clang together and hurt his ears,

“And comb this for me, will you?”

He turns, obediently, and makes his way towards the bathroom of the hotel suite, past the bed where they sometimes make love, but only in the dark.

She hears the turn of the tap and the gush of the shower head. Her ears prickle at the sound of water meeting skin; every droplet working together to create a metronome that exhilarates Lynette more then piano lessons or a world-class symphony ever could.

Later, Lynette watches James get dressed from the bed; she made sure to choose the best suit for him, even though she knows he hates them. But, my, he does look strapping in it; a charcoal grey one with a white shirt and black tie, if only he did not look so deathly thin he would look much richer. Lynette does not mind, though, James is already excessively beautiful but in a way that is not conventional, she likes that about him. He is damaged, she can tell, he needs her help, he needs to be put back together. He is like a puzzle; only not boring. She knows a bit about him, she often turns a blind eye to the things she does not like; after all, without James she is just Lynette again. And Lynette is not exciting.

“James, help put my dress on.”

She turns away from him and he zips the back of her dress up. It’s a black dress that’s not too loose and not too tight but she still folds over in places.

The party is crowded with rich people who all stare in awe and disgust at James and Lynette. They all gather together in small clusters and mutter amongst themselves; this is the most exciting thing that has happened to them in years. It is a wonder how, so far away from home, so far away from everything; how it is the people are still the same exact people. They’re all dressed in beige as well.

James hates beige.

“Ah, Lynette, so nice to see you’ve arrived!”

A woman with a beige dress and red lipstick that gets caught in the creases of her lips comes over and kisses Lynette on each cheek;

“Oh, and who is this?”

The woman steps back and looks James from top to toe, her eyes moving at an uncomfortable speed that makes James shift from foot to foot;

“Oh, my; I almost forgot. Margot, this is James; James, meet Margot.”

Margot. Margot sounds like the name of an old woman; an old and bitter one who would likely spread rumour after rumour. Deep down, James makes a bet that Margot is divorced or is at the verge of it.

“Why, hello, Jamesss.”

She spreads his name over a second too long, like she is tasting it. Sampling it, even. This happens often, many of Lynette’s friends sample his name like they are sampling fine wine. It’s disgusting, but he says nothing and kisses Margot’s wrinkled hand.

“How are you enjoying Italy, Jamesss?”

“He is enjoying it very much, Margot, very much indeed. This morning he went to the beach, it was beautiful, he says. I bought him a necklace that one of the locals made completely out of shells.”

“Ah, is that so?”

Margot raises an eye brow, drawn on with a pencil;

“Do you have this necklace here, Jamesss? I do so love the work of the locals.”

He does not answer, knowing full well that Lynette will do that for him,

“Oh, no, he doesn’t. I believe he must have lost it this morning, while he was at the beach. There was a huge gust of wind that had him cast against the rocks. It must have broken and gotten carried away by the ocean.”

“Oh, dear.”

Margot cringes, her teeth huge and white and straight;

“The tacky workmanship of the locals, eh? I bet they do that purposely so you have to buy another.”

James leaves the party early to go to the beach and watch the sunset with the wind blowing around him, embracing him in its temporary infatuation. Urging him to leave, to run away. To swim and drown himself in all of eternity, and he calls Devon on one of the pay-phones to tell him that he cannot do this anymore, but Devon tells him he needs to pull through; he needs to stop being silly, Lynette is being so gracious and kind. James walks the dark streets of the city, the wind bringing the sounds of far away traffic and the bark of street urchins to his ears, and he remembers home; he remembers not living anywhere, not belonging to anyone. And, anyway all places are alike to him, he is the cat that walked by himself. This place is just another nowhere.

James makes the resolve that when the wind next beckons, he will leave. He will be free.

Lynette is a kind and loving master, but he is not a dog to be leashed.

He takes another shower when he gets home, and Lynette listens again, but this time the feverish music is interrupted by a timid and unsure knocking at the door.

It is a girl, mousy-haired and beautiful, with deep brown eyes and pouty lips.

Lynette doesn’t like her, doesn’t like her at all.

“Ah, hello Ma’am, ah, is James here?”

Her accent is thick and clumsy, just like her it stumbles everywhere over long, deer-like limbs;

“No. Why?”

Lynette growls in reply, her lips curl in and she tilts her head back and gives the beautiful girl a mean glare,

“Ah, well Ma’am, your son told me I could find him here, but since he is not present, could you give him my phone number?”

The girl takes a pen and scribbles large, round digits onto a highlighter pink post-it which she hands to Lynette, her brown eyes sparkling;

“Tell him I had a wonderful time, tonight. Tell him that our train leaves at eight tomorrow, and that I would really like for him to come along.”

Her teeth are white against gold as she smiles and saunters away. Lynette can hear the shell necklace she bought for James that morning rattling against the beautiful girl’s collar bone; ringing in her ears all the way down the hall and into the lift which the girl disappears into.

James emerges from the shower only moments later, as ever an alert and lithe sprite, in constant need to appear when he is least expected, that is also why Lynette loves him;

“Who was that?”

“No one, dear.”

And she smiles;

“Just the wind.”

-------------------------------

-- Mikee Sto. Domingo.

Did you spot that Dead Poet's Society reference?

Apocalyptic Disorder.

2009-08-05T18:55:00.004+12:00

Gabriel wrote of forbidden pathways and failed entrances. His relationships were love-hate. Passion is the answer to monotony. In this way, it was ironic how he held cognacs close to his pen.

He never noticed anyone's attentive glance, nor the curious elongated ones.

He rarely even noticed me.

I was merely a comic relief to him. Some distraction from his otherwise artistically-driven life.

Maybe he didn't notice it, but I did.

Oh, but don't get the impression he was reclusive or introverted. He was a vocal soul when his heart was in it, but those days were separated by a great divide of indifference. Sometimes he came off as hostile. Sometimes a little conceited, but those are labels. Stereotypes. Brands people put on other people for the sake of branding. Like it's an art form. People must name things. They cannot stand the thought of something remaining a mystery.

Well, what happens when you discover the secret of the universe and find you're too late to save it? You're mighty screwed then, aren't you? No fun in the world anymore, is there, when you've identified the detonation switch.

You know, I have read books of rich calibre, of classical structure, of blunt prose, of metaphoric complexity, of mindless intellect. Yet, I don't feel I'm any closer to the world then I was before. Maybe I understand things more, maybe. But I don't feel any closer to humanity, itself. I think it was the same for Gabriel. He never was an ordinary boy. Even when I met him in second grade. Always off on his own with a pen and his dull green journal. I was much the same with my worn Lewis Carroll books. I guess we sort of bonded in our fondness for literature. He told me about his stories and I told him about mine. What I learnt from each book, I described with as much detail as I could muster and through that, he seemed to nod in understanding. In a sense using what I told him to build on his fictitious worlds.

He was a genius with a pen. Once he started, he couldn't be disturbed. Like when I used to visit him in his dark hollow of a room, if he was writing in that nook between the minimalist walls and his unmade bed, he wouldn't acknowledge my existence.

He was racing time, stalling the inevitability of responsibility. His mother wasn't impressed. His grades were below average and tittering on failure. Mary always asked me to talk some sense into him, to make him comprehend what he was doing to his future. I told her I would.

I didn't.

I knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to live his life before it got pulled out from under him. He wanted to write. It was a craving that never ended. An addiction so skewered into his genetic make-up that searching for any hobby to eclipse it would have been a fruitless use of energy.

I didn't question his moods.

When an ending or a plot twist he'd concocted didn't turn out the way he'd envisioned it to, he got mad. He got impossible to be around. Every swirl of emotion was a passionate, all-consuming one. Fairies only have room for one emotion at a time.

Now, as I sit on my snow-sleeked steps, I watch the flakes fall onto sidewalks with runaway shoppers clad in their designer coats with phones in their ears, living in virtual reality. A taxi blows its horn as a crammed SUV blocks its way as it's reversing. I convulse in the cold and wrap my scarf tightly about my neck. I can feel the rigorous pumping of hot blood to my veins to constitute for the mind's foolish will for arctic enclosure. I can see a hardcover book in a window from across the street in the old bookstore I love. It's nothing eye-catching, nothing interesting to tell of what it is incasing but I stare at it as if it were. Because it is.

I read the inscription this morning.

To Lewis Carroll, without whose wit and charm, I never would have met the person who inspired this and transposed imaginings into fruition.

His sole book was for me. This was the only one, out of hundreds of others, that he ever put to publish before his inevitable death from a long drawn out disease.

He never told me about it, I guess he never wanted me to know.

I feel my chapped lips forming a sort of lopsided smile at the rectangular object in the window as an overwhelming sadness catches my lungs unprepared and I head back into the apartment behind me.

The story was a masterpiece, critically acclaimed and everything. Beauty simply oozed from its pages, but I wouldn't read it. Of all the books I have stored in my mind in the past, this one... This one will remain a mystery.

What happens when you have discovered the secrets of the universe, only to find you're too late to save it?

You no longer find the lure in knowledge. You put away your chemicals and your apparatus toys. Then, well. Then you write a book.

Sylvia Plath.

2009-08-02T12:21:00.001+12:00

The Illusion of Discontent.

2009-07-30T23:13:00.022+12:00

He sits lopsided, playing his old Harmony as I stare at the glow stars on his ceiling that have long since lost their glow. As I lose myself in thoughts of no importance, he toys with strings, testing out couplets of chords that blend into the background.

And in a way, I guess we complement each other well.

I no longer feel the necessity of speech and he had abandoned such trivial pursuits long ago.

“Words cease to matter when there's no one to listen to them,” he told me, once.

As I lay there, I flick through the many things that have gone through my mind. Many things that I would have quivered to utter aloud. There are some concerns in people that can never be voiced. Less because of cowardice than the loss of air from the lungs, as traitors they hold vocal chords hostage.

And if, by chance, on the rare occasion they allow leniency, you can see it in the proclaimer's eyes. That irrepressible lust for vertigo. To feel the ground's support - if nothing else - they so long for beneath their feet. To fall onto it would not be such an unpleasant fate, would it? There are worse things, I concur.

I guess it's at moments like these, with Papageno leaning against the bed, his downcast eyes searching for a resolution in strings. With me beside him, dividing my attention between raptures of fantasy and the fixtures of reality. It's moments like these that you contemplate the little glitches in humanity without much consequence. Learning no more about the world around you than what you have known before. You think you do. You might walk out of that room with a new-found revelation about things as they are with a conviction the likes of Parmenides, but then someone says something or does something and you falter. That is why I have a fondness for confines.

I mean, when I think of Parmenides, I think idealist. Probably the most defined in existence, with maybe the exception of the divine. But things aren't always so clear cut as he declared them to be. The whole divide between the positive and the negative, the light from the dark. If a man kills a man for the freedom of the people, does that make him inhumane? Does that make him a negative force in the universe?

Would anyone ever have the answers? Questions penetrate resolves, they do. And people are scared. Paranoid. The foundations of their lives may be built on lies, but stoop to untangle them, they won't. People sure as hell won't change, but wonder, they might. And that spark of wonder, of curiosity, well. That about haunts them 'till they die.

I feel a tear roll down the length of my cheekbone and his thumb reaches out on instinct to brush it aside, ceasing his strumming once more. And I just look at him and he frowns back. His right hand cups my face and I feel the cool metal of his ring against my wet cheek as he comes in close and whispers in my ear.

"I wrote you a song."

He adopts this boyish smile as he slides his fingers from my face gently. He turns back to his guitar and arranges the fingers instead to strum its strings in a most peculiar pattern which conjures the word 'beautiful' in my head. It's insufficient, but isn't language always? Just letters strung together in futile attempt to convey feeling. Feeling. As if you could explain it as you would a fact.

With this staining my thoughts, and with Papageno by my side, we stay unhinged to a world that spins madly on. This will surely get us into trouble one day. This, weightlessness, that we sail the days on. Yet, I can't bring myself to care. We may be long gone, but we are content.

A Lonely Disposition.

2009-07-27T01:31:00.002+12:00

Look not into the haze,

for what is it that you'll see?

A stark dot seeming to float

in a translucent sea.

Look not a little closer,

for what is it that you'll feel?

A raw awareness unwinding

in a sliver of film reel.

Tip toe not a little higher,

for what is it that you'll smell?

Something disastrous unfurling,

attempting to compel.

Sink not a little lower,

for what is it that you'll hear?

Silence - harmonised with

an ensemble of truths ringing clear.

And after all this,

what have you come to comprehend?

I live in a world of fear,

my friend.

A Sequence of Equation.

2009-07-12T13:10:00.006+12:00

Oh dear, is it really all true?
Did they offend us and they want it to sound new? - The Strokes

He walks to me as a stranger does to a wailing child. Cautious and guarded, his every step is carefully drawn out and calculated, weary and unattached. He's become quite the deceiving mathematician. I chuckle humourlessly to myself at the paradox.

“Madeline,” he calls me and I stand there perplexed. When did I become 'Madeline'? He's close now, his body radiating a heat that I can only perceive as a glacial cold.

Fine. Two can play at this jest.

“Benjamin,” I counter, and I see him visibly stiffen at the word. Ah. So he does seem to have retained his heart.

“How is the family?” He swiftly recovers with whatever remaining dignity left in his masked countenance.

“Good. Yours?” I ask in a detached air, while my insides scream in protest. If he could deceive, I could do one better.

“Good.” He equals my cold tone. I simply stare at him, looking onto the man that boy became. That boy who's eyes once quivered with spirit and the anticipation of adventure behind every rickety treehouse door, are now replaced with the aging despondence of a man's nonchalant stare. The arms that used to twist and curve to lift me up and twirl me about so I could fly with the blue jays in my backyard now reside limp on either side of his ram-rod straight frame. The fingers lie dead, hanging from palms soft, no longer the course they used to be from climbing countless trees. His flushed face is a respective meter away from mine, yet I can't bear to look him in the eye any longer. I feel a tear forming in the glands and I know it is time to leave.

I turn on my heel and start to walk away to a place that isn't so constricting. To a place where truth isn't so well hidden behind indifference. To anywhere away from this room.

Just before I could step a foot outside to the ever mounting snow now covering whatever remaining patch of grass lay exposed in defiance, I feel a slight pressure on my right hand.

“Ben I don-” I start as I turn around but he doesn't allow me to finish as he covers my mouth with his. His lips are urgent against mine, as if fighting against immeasurable time, and I let go. I don't have the strength to uphold silent resolves anymore as passion, missing from so long ago, ignites this all-consuming kiss. As I feel my knees giving way, I feel his strong arms around me and I let him hold me up as his lips continue to crash with mine.

And then, just as abruptly as he appeared, he left, leaving me gasping against the unforgivingly hard brick wall. My heart feels like it might hammer through my chest in attempt to leave a conspicuous hole for all to see. A hole big enough to show just how stupidly naïve I'd been. I feel drained as I collapse on the wooden floor and touch my lips absentmindedly as acquaintances crowd around in fraudulent concern.

What to do when you're restless.

2009-07-07T23:21:00.010+12:00

An old soul song comes on the alarm clock radio. -- Conor Oberst.

-------------

She clutches onto Byron, onto Emerson and onto Keats. Time won't let her go and she's not sure if she wants to take leave. Maybe there is a comfort in constriction. Or maybe it's the boys outside her window, toying with her dreams. The coffee beside her spreads it's nostalgic aroma about the paper room. The pencils atop her desk come to life with spasmodic movements akin to the old men she sees in cafés, tapping aged fingers against mugs of ale. The pencils twist and turn, but make a sound, they do not dare. Without a grip to steady them, they are but lost toddlers, not yet skilled in balance. She sighs and she lies there, trying to bring her pulse down low enough to hear her thoughts.

-------------

The constellations made evident by pre-historic humans race about in grandeur, traversing the abundant sky. His eyes glaze over, not having felt the luxury of a blink for quite some time now. In between tall Poppies and scattered Wild Lupine, he ponders over where the rest of the stars fit into the equation. All the remainders, the leftovers of the nighttime escapade. Are they spectators? Or are they simply biding their time, waiting for their neighbours to realign themselves in a more favourable position for a new constellation to arise which would – with planned consequentiality - include themselves? Or do they not even have the mind for such things, with threats the likeness of comets and meteors on the rise? Not to mention their old foes, the Black Holes. Horrible betrayers, deceivers of the worst kind, they are. He chuckles at the thought. The places his mind wonders to, when given the time of day.

-------------

The television blares, telling apathetic humans of their demise through patriotic propaganda and detailing of fictitious epidemics. He doesn't mind. The words blur to incoherence now anyway. He couldn't make out the sense in them if he had any care to. He wants to run. No. He wants to fly away from this world and over to where civilization has not yet reached and where a man's happiness isn't dictated by the sum of numbers at the end of the day in his bank account. But until he can perfect his one-man flight plan, he'll sit there, watching the sun masking the day – media brainwashing the rest.

--------------

She walks across destinies and highways, dreams and one-ways

He beckons and calls, but she could only respond in despondence.

Why mask the face of greed when it lies so firmly within

Why ask a man to drown when he's already mastered how to swim.

--------------

The moonlight leaks through the window, lightly tapping the dormant soul lying beneath the ledge. The eyes flicker to life, irises seeing only a slight orb of light racing across the moulding ceiling of childhood. Near-conscious of its surroundings, the languid soul sits upon the ledge and stares up at the moon. It's brain remembers a far off tale of condolence. A voice telling of how things often are more helpful when disconnected from the item in question. Free from bias, the voice affirms in a detached tone worthy of its cause. Does that make the moon the middleman, the sole constant? The soul inquires. That would make for an awfully lonely disposition. But how does it stay afloat with all the world's weight in troubles upon it's back? The voice answers in all sincerity. It doesn't. It gets carried by the stars.

--------------

How to explain, to express something that was never really there? How to adopt a sense of conviction when all you get is uncovered fraud? Where does creativity spark when people stop believing? Oh they left it up to us, again, didn't they? I guess we'll have to be the salvation. The arm around the emotion that tells us that negativity is passivity and that passivity is better than to be affirmative and fail big time. Because being optimistic is akin to being disappointed at the slow pace of man, now, isn't it? But how would you know that, if you never saw for yourself? The slow pace of man is for a reason. We have the answer but no one is willing to share. Or rather its all an obscure game of chinese whispers, fibs fusing with truths until the end result is complex and not one single individual is capable of discerning the boundaries of reason and beautification.

-------------

Her lips a riotous red; his a chapped pink. Her hair the colour of rich mahogany; his barely passable for a rugged black. Her eyes the colour of the earth, full of its mysteries and hidden crevices; his the shade of a desiccated blade of grass. Yet, where differences divide, this feeling bridges. This... love, is it? This warm bind that laces the two conflicting hands together and that dismembers both hearts, assembling them back to beat as one.

-------------

So she paces. Her future lays uncertain, in the hands of aristocrats playing with lives as if a simple card game. One ace of hearts in trade for a king of spades. She was never good at deceit, anyway. Always an open book, her face relying reflections of varying emotions, yet never quite enough to express her despair. It doesn't matter now. She tugs her worn cardigan across her frozen frame with a subtle self-reassurance. Memories of childhood and heartfelt songs of the ages replay about in her brain as she taps her feet in agitation. A defense mechanism, something she wasn't surely able. Anything is better than to face what may surface within time.

Small Talk.

2009-07-06T20:58:00.005+12:00

An early morning coffee, but it’s laced with gin because she’s making me ill.

She’s in an oversized blue or maybe white shirt of his, smoking and smiling.

Her young, freckled face glows with some suppressed excitement that bubbles when she talks;

“He’s so wonderful. He took me on a picnic, yesterday, and kissed me on the swings.”

When I’d asked him where he was going in the grey light of yesterday he’d said with some girl whose name starts with the letter L. Who? And, anyway, it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean a damned thing.

“He’ll hold my hand when I go quiet, you know. He feels it when I’m sad. Wants me to be happy all the time.”

I grimace a grin and take a long drink, but there’s not enough to drown me in that little mug;

“He gave me a flower in bed this morning. He even made me toast and tea, told me I can stay all day if I like. I love him so much. I love him more then anything, I love him, I-“

I cut in, quick and angry, and I don’t mean to, but;

“Does he love you?”

She goes quiet and I regret asking. It’s already out, though, the suspended question hangs in the air with intentional spite, and the answer is there, too, it sits in the pit of her stomach, rising to her throat like bile. She blinks away the truth and I watch as she pushes the answer down beats it and forces it into the very back of her being; no, she won’t have that. She won’t have it.

“Of course he does.”

Of course he does. He does. Of course he does.

I can hear the lie resound in her hollow head, bouncing around the stubborn walls of her narrow mind. So, I shrug and I say;

“Fine.”

“We’ve just finished making love!”

Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. Pah. Stupid girl. I decide to call her L. Because she’s so stupid.

I’ve seen this happen time and time again. These girls and boys just fall in love so easy.

Like they want to. Like they need to. It’s pathetic and sad and entirely their fault.

But then there’s him.

Him.

We’ll call him Saki. Because he loves Saki.

I met Saki back in a coffee shop down a street we’ll call Vertigo.

The coffee shop was this dusty, little place that had been popular back in the thirties but had gotten pushed into the background by rivalling cafes which were more adapted to the times. The shop’s owner was this charming old guy called Carton, who was dying of lung cancer. All day he’d be coughing and still sucking tar into his lungs, he looked like death, but he’d muster a smile and tell a joke if you ordered anything. He’d be dead by now, but I don’t think about that.

I was working at the corner of Vertigo in a rug shop and so all day I had to breathe in dust from these rich people’s rugs that they returned because they were out of date, the rugs, not the people. Though you could argue on that one. The bare minimum look was getting to be all the rage, so these rich, beige-wearing customers we used to get were stripping down their carpets and throwing out their old, family-heirloom rugs. Our merchandise was going out of fashion, business was slow and the land lord was thinking of shutting us down.

I had a bad habit of engaging in polite small talk, so Saki called me Rugs, since that’s all I could yammer on about. He’d gotten bored about half way through my woe-is-me-I-work-in-a-rug-shop routine and told me;

“You love rugs so much? I’ll call you Rugs.”

I’d told him;

“No, I don’t like rugs,”

And he’d smirked and said

“Then don’t talk about them so fuckin’ much.”

Now I live here in this morbid little apartment with walls so thin you can hear someone thinking through them. But, at least it’s with him. At least.

The only downside to living with Saki is all these girls and every now and again boys that come through from some drunken whim or spontaneous notion.

He leaves at about four every morning for a walk, so I’m always stuck here to simmer in my own social backwardness.

None of them need introductions; they’re all nameless, anyway, Saki prefers to just give them labels. Names lead to attachments, and Saki doesn’t need those.

I feel no need to introduce myself to L, who twirls her wheat-coloured hair between her chewed pink finger nails and gnaws at her petal-shaped lips while tapping her foot on the floor.

She should know me. She told me that Saki talks about me all the time.

He talks about me all the time. He talks about me all the time.

L and I sit there for about five minutes, me staring her down from my chair which is only a notch taller then hers and her twirling her hair and tapping her foot. I only have to look at her and I can tell she’s already realising how worthless she is to Saki.

How easily she’ll be forgotten.

Ha.

Just a week from now I bet I’ll be asking him how that girl whose name starts with L is and he’ll be asking;

“Who?”

And I’ll laugh, on the inside, so he doesn’t know.

I almost feel sorry for her, but I don’t because she could never understand love, really. She will never have to burn up countless diaries filled with indiscrete confessions of; I love you, I need you, I want you. She will never conjure up dreams of blue skies and grassy fields, lying next to him while the world topples. No, not this one, not L. She is only a girl, after all. Poor, stupid L.

I wish I was her. God, I wish I was her.

“Ah, just who I’ve been looking for this very morn’.”

Oh, it’s Saki. Even before he walks in I hear his broken, brown shoes hitting the decaying floorboards of the entrance way. I love you, I love you I love you.

But I don’t say that.

He enters the room and I try not to look at him but I catch his reflection in the polished wood of the table; he is as ever a mumbling mess of forget-me-not thoughts and dreary grey eyes with a whip of brown hair and a cigarette dangling from between his lips. The outside world gives him back to me but his mind is always elsewhere, always running from here to there, crying;

I am the cat that walked by himself and all places are alike to me!

I brush the poetry from my mind and ignore him. Not that he’d notice.

He runs over to L who jumps up and embraces him with all her love. Pah.

He’s carrying ‘Les infortunes de la vertu’ by Marquis De Sade and ‘Confessions of an English opium Eater’ by Thomas De Quincey. He must think it’s a Wednesday.

I take note and I cut L’s week of fame down to three days.

“’Ello darlin’,”

She jumps into his arms, her bangles and gypsy necklaces ringing in my ears;

“Where’ve you been? I’ve missed you terribly!”

Yeah, say what you like, L. Three days from now and he won’t even remember you.

Ha.

They kiss and I feel sick to my stomach because he’s gotten so good at making it look real. I cringe and pour myself another drink, this time I don’t even bother with the coffee.

“Ah, Rugs, you shoun’t be drinkin’ so early, you’ll have a burst pancreas in a month if you continue this way.”

I don’t say anything and he comes over and sits real close so I have to notice how beautiful he is. God, he is beautiful.

“Aw, come on Rugs, what’ve I done now?”

“I think your friends a bit cranky,”

L says in a sing song, tell-tale voice. As if he cares that I’ve been mean to her.

He leans over and, I can’t help it, but I lean in too, as if he has a gravitational pull;

“Just say the word, Rugs. I’ll get rid of her if she’s annoyin’ you,”

I shake my head, but I know he’s not convinced because he stands and looks L in the eye and says;

“Ah, sorry love, but I think Rugs’ got a headache. Think you better go, how’ver much I’d like you t’stay.”

“Aww, can’t you come with me, then? Leave Rugs ‘ere to brood over a mug’o gin,”

“Nah, I got work today, love. Tell you wha’, you call me around 8 and I’ll take you out for dinner?”

She pouts in that annoying way kids do. Except it’s not cute.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She smiles and gives him one last kiss and hug before she’s out the door in a flurry of colours. She doesn’t give back his shirt. When she’s finally gone, he sighs, his shoulders relaxing, sinking downwards;

“Thanks, Rugs. You really got me outta that one.”

He takes a cup from the sink, not even bothering to rinse it, and fills it with gin as well, sitting opposite me with a smile on his face; he’s been out, so he’s all rosy cheeked and blue-eyed;

“Now we can hang out, just the two of us, eh, Rugs? It’s bin a’while, admittedly. I almost feel as if I don’t know you anymore.”

Just the two of us. Just him and me. I don’t respond, I want him to feel bad for making me deal with that girl, for making me deal with every moment of loneliness and rejection over the years, for every second that he doesn’t love me back; but I know he’s not so sharp on empathy, so I just shrug my shoulders and say;

“Nah’m busy today, actually.”

Saki raises an eyebrow, theatrically;

“Really? With wha’? Not more fuckin’ doormats, ‘sit? Or, wait, maybe you’ve moved onto tables, which is a shame; ‘Tables’ don’ have quite the same ring as Rugs.”

He takes a long swig of his drink, and I tip myself another, hoping to dear god that I’m not completely off my face soon; I’ve got work today,

“A date, actually. With Thomas Minnet, I’ve got to meet him at the park at 3 today; we’re going for a picnic.”

Saki looks shocked;

“Thomas Minnet? Tha’ wanker? Never met so much of a bore in my life, one time I asked ‘im how he was and he actually told me. Details ‘n all.”

I feign being hurt and summon an indignant air;

“I’m in love with him, actually. He feels it when I’m sad, you know, he wants me to be happy all the time,”

Saki shakes his head in disbelief, and I can only hope he doesn’t tell Thomas Minnet that, otherwise I’d be stuck with the wanker;

“Well, to each their own Rugs, ‘ave fun. If you can.”

He stands, drinking his whole cup in one gulp, not flinching. I can tell by the fact that he doesn’t bother taking off his jacket that he’s planning on going for another stroll, this one might last a week; he does that sometimes;

“And, anyway, things could be worse, I mean,”

And he winks;

“You could always be in love with me.”

------------------------------------

By Mikee Sto. Domingo.

The eye of the beholder.

2009-07-06T17:37:00.015+12:00

She walked to me with an undeniable grace unrivaled by any I'd known. Clad in bright red shoes with an equally dazzling yellow coat, she looked straight into my eyes. Her soft hands touched the side of my face. This, she said; “Look all around you, what do you see?”

She stepped back, so I did. I turned around and looked on either side of me. There were buildings as tall as the cranes accompanying them with stores of long gone business at their base. There were trees fighting for life in odd nooks and little children with ear muffs playing tag behind them. Running, they chased each other with rugged twigs. The coffee guy from Queens was picking up littered paper cups from the snow-sleeked pavement, making his preparations for a lonely Christmas again this year. The odd shopper rushed panic-stricken, praying to the Gods to be able to catch the last of the end-of-year sales while hastily applying lipstick to at least have the dignity of vanity in disarray. And all the while, the pigeons picked up leftover chips dropped by busy go-getters, an apparent chirp in their step. Though this was not unusual.

“Look a little closer now. Bring yourself to chip the superficial layer away.” She said this in my ear in a tone leaking of conspiracy.

So I did. The buildings turned to mansions, uniform and profound – soldiers armed against the economic war of rowdy analysts and shortsighted financial statisticians. The little children turned to elves, cheeky and boisterous, laughs reverberating in the lighter atmosphere. Their twigs now hummingbirds the colours of rainbows not yet seen in this world. The coffee guy now a gentile dwarf, hobbling about the square, playing his lute to the casual listener. The odd shoppers now fairies, still as absorbed with the lure of vanity, but less grounded. Free in every sense of the word and alight with stories to recite to anyone who will care to sit with them on the whittled benches. The pigeons transfigured to doves, scattering garlands to those in need, spreading the message of Christmas.

“It's okay to believe.” She said with the slightest whisper imaginable. So quiet she conveyed this, that I would have missed it if I payed even the most minimal of attention to the fresh snowfall now blanketing out the remaining grey to be left of reality.

Insomnia or contingency?

2009-07-03T01:10:00.003+12:00

His respiration is evident in the conspicuous smoke that flows through his mouth and evaporates in the cool autumn air. How did it get so cold so soon? His thoughts pulse and quicken as he feels the unwanted adrenalin coursing through his deadpan body. His eyes carry bags of fatigue as he makes his way up steps and turns at an abrupt right. Left, right. Left, right. Stand still. He sees himself in a cracked classroom window and wonders at the dismembered soul staring back. Who are you? He asks, taking leave of all false perception.

------

The characters just jump out of the books for you, don't they? You see the distinctive line between reality and borderline insanity but you don't care. A step here, a step there. Aren't they all the same? They just might mean more on one side than the other. It's this disillusionment that you fear but feel right in the heart of it all. You see the probes, the penetrative looks of casual passer-bys, but you can't feel cognizant of them anymore. You're long gone, dear, utterly disconnected. A pay-phone hanging in unavailing attempt to reach the ground.

------

There it goes. Up, and out to the skyline. Just shadow play as you find yourself in a desolate alley. Some voice calls out but you can't discern fact from fiction. No, no. Your footsteps no longer resound ominously about the place but rather stay on mute. They feel lighter. As if every movement is stressed. You're moving around craters. Words from ghosts clamber to and fro about from one brain cell to the other. And your senses heighten, but things are splitting at the seams now, and you collapse, wondering what to do.

To be the odd one out.

2009-07-01T20:52:00.009+12:00

Peter. Peter. Peter.

I don't want to grow up. Not like this, with society's face pressed sharp against the window, etching their disinterested visage through the fog. I want to fly, where words make no more sense than the clouds' dissection in the sky. Where thought has no meaning and where facial expressions suffice. The key in the door stays in the doorknob and I am reminded of my seclusion. Oh, how desolation envelops the decrepit, the passive. The wind chimes flutter their whispers to the wind, telling of this girl's unfortunate demise.

Oh, Peter. Dear Peter.

Won't you lend me a kite?

------

The boy, ripened at 19, sits atop his dismantled draws looking to the crash site below. His hair falls over his clouded eyes as like glaciers they stand still by default. He brings his Benson to his mouth and breathes out cancer. Not a care in the world, despair had long left, having appraised the young fellow and deemed him bizarrely disinclined of its presence. The boy's hands stiffen and grip the edge unyieldingly. Men with broken top hats and ladies with half-lacerated corsages dance in a revolving circle, taunting him, asking of him justifications that he can't give.

------

The love. The fear. The spark. The tear.

Oh where, oh dear? Oh simply lend me your ear.

I'll tell you stories of elaborate fences and hoaxes and strange preferences.

You'll build up that wall, finely constructed, bricks and all.

I'll shout and I'll pound, but oh, you won't hear the sound.

But then you'll sit there. And then you'll wonder.

Oh why, oh how you could have made such a blunder.

------

Irony, like tar, flows from his mouth and taints her pellucid mind. We could make it, couldn't we? Ah. But there is the trick as he binds his arms around her. He whispers her promises of realities that won't exist. The ones that can't take shape in this dimension. The rain filters down upon the untimely couple and his face is petered out of its inconstancies and hers relays an emotion no longer relevant. You promised. Ah. But aren't all men fools, chained to desire?

------

He recites her sonnets. Floral vocabulary is his language of choice, yet she responds in simplicity. Each word coincides with the other. Who goes to say that the tiger lily is any more compelling than the lone daisy? The pictures he laboriously paints, she arranges within a few strokes here and there. He doesn't understand this as he grasps at words unknown. And all the while, as she listens in content, her eyes mask a knowing smile.

------

Conceited as he is charming, he dangles hearts on makeshift strings and lulls himself into a sedated stupor, identical to a child and it's beloved mobile. His dreams leave much to be desired as they catch him by the throat and knock the breath out of him. Unintelligible whimpers escape his still form on the unmade bed, disturbing the peaceful atmosphere. A ghost as he wakes, eyes a dull grey and drawn back in weary defeat. I'd pity him, but alas. My heart is empty and hanging from his nightstand.

------

Fingers accented with wrinkles, souvenirs given from his new acquaintance, Age, flit across numerous keys with visible skill and precision. One note after the other leaves the casual listener curious as to its inspiration. Its muse a constant question. At the end of each piece, the man routinely tips the checkered trilby hat atop his head with the causal pressure of his forefinger on the rim. He smiles and starts a new song, words lost amongst the jovial crowd. They know not where the man comes from, nor where he calls home, but know that wherever the music is, he will surely follow.

Overrated.

2009-06-22T19:17:00.002+12:00

Cause I feel absolutely terrible for forgetting to post this. I honestly was carried away with endless critiquing to realise that I had yet to blog it. ^.^ And thus, without further ado;

----------------------------

The room is light blue.

It looks cold, it feels cold, it smells cold. Everything in it seems to shiver and pulse and sob, whimpering;

Help me. Save me.

Love me.

But even with the air conditioning going, the windows cast wide open and the blistering Winter cold spreading itself beneath my clothes and under my skin, he sits there, rocking back and forth.

It’s hot, he repeats over and over. It’s hot. It’s hot. It’s hot.

He says he wants a fix. He says poets have been smoking opium for centuries.

He’s a poet, he says. He’s a poet. A poet. A poet.

Yeah, I know. I know because his room is filled with scrapped pieces of paper. I know because his ashtrays are overflowing and he’s still staring at a clean page.

I know because I know everything about him.

The local rehabilitation centre. All you can hear in this closed up little space is room after room of junkies crying, despairing with their zombie friends and zombie hallucinations enclosed within their quarantine of self-destruction.

You won’t find anyone in here who doesn’t hate themselves.

Everyone here found love in some form but paid the price of for it.

Some will tell you it was worth it, others will tell you, well.

They’ll tell you otherwise.

He smokes entire packs of cigarettes to make up for what he can’t have. His room is a cloud of asthma, glue ear and Cancer. Some of the staff in this place call it ‘productive suicide’, it’s supposed to be an ice breaker for family members sick of visiting their failure brothers and sisters, their disappointment daughters and sons.

But he’s no son of mine.

He pulls out a parcel from within his cocoon of blankets. He says that he went clean for an entire week to afford this, I pull away the newspaper gift wrapping and reveal a red toy aeroplane.

He smiles. It’s hot. It’s hot. It’s hot.

Back in Primary school, all the parents used to say to stay away from him.

He was bad news, that boy was. His mummy had magic mushrooms in the kitchen. His daddy was in jail for killing a man. But, I’d been curious because he’d only ever read.

Yeats, Shelley, Byron; he loved the Romantics. We became friends and he’d brought me to his house where showed me how to drink and taught me how to smoke.

“You see, the thing about spiders is they eat their company,”

He’d tell me

“My mummy tells me I’m a spider, I’m poison. I’m alone all the time and whoever I meet I destroy.”

The aeroplane was painted red and dazzling. It even had my name written on it in big, bold letters; ‘Richard’.

I wanted it painfully, but my father only worked in a toothpaste factory and my mother spent all day looking after my little sister, Lucy. She was dying.

“One day I’ll buy it for you.”

He whispered when he caught me staring, as if it was a secret. Or a promise.

We’d just been in a fight with two of the older boys at school; they’d left our clothes ripped, our teeth chipped and our souls alive. They’d said Jimmy’s dad had a real British gun, but we knew Jimmy’s dad was a Nazi, everybody knew that.

We stood there in the damp autumn air, staring into the candy coated window of the toy store. I thought to myself how sugary the glass would taste and what it would be like to be rich enough to go inside.

“You know, I reckon you’ll fly one when you’re older!”

He declared, suddenly, grabbing my arm and shaking it rigorously,

“You’ll fly you and me right out of this dreadful town!”

Then, without another word, he bolted down the foot path. I chased him, running as quick as I could, all the while my heart pounding faster against my chest then my feet against the shattered pavement.

I slowed as we neared the river, waiting for him to leave me behind, but he stopped and ran back.

‘I’ll not leave you, Richard!”

He exclaimed theatrically,

“You and I are two one legged men, Bonnie and Clyde! I’ll not leave you behind; you’ll fly us both out of here!”

Then he grinned, wide and honest, and I saw blood seep through the cracks of his broken smile.

He sits there, poisoning me with his cigarettes. It’s winter and everything is dead but his beauty is feverishly alive. His dark brown hair untamed and chocolate against his honey coated skin. His fringe falls over one of his eyes casting a dark shadow over his thin, tired face. This whole time he’s biting his wine-stained lips and smoking.

Nervous. Alert. He is an alley cat, a stray, never living here or there but always moving. Always running away. But this place has him trapped. This town has him jailed in.

He asks me if I like his gift. He tells me; happy birthday, Richard. He loves me so very, very, very much. He wants me to be happy. And he’s so sorry. So very, very, very sorry.

I’m sorry too, I tell him. I love him so much, I tell him, and I forgive him.

It’s not my birthday.

The nurse tells me that maybe I should leave and I sigh and stand. Clutching his present in between my hard hands,

I start to walk away, and on my way out I hear him chanting;

It’s hot. It’s hot. It’s hot.

The hall is light blue. It looks cold and I can sense the distance of everything around me.

I feel the ticket for one in my pocket. This is my way out. This is it. I push the unsaid farewells to the back of my mind.

The hall is light blue. In the corner of the floor I see a spider curled up, lonely and poisonous.

Trapped in its own clumsy web.

-- Mikee Sto. Domingo

---------------------------------

It is honestly wonderfully written, whatever beliefs for or on the contrary you may have, Mikee.

The Casual Flit of Remembrance.

2009-06-17T15:52:00.011+12:00

I don't like that last one, I'll probably change the perspective, since it is quite misleading. Now, on a more happier note. I've been waiting forever to write a type of wistful romance, so here it is...

------------------------------

Gossamer silk cascaded about her petite form, accentuating the subtle rose stain on her soft cheeks. Her long, chestnut hair had been loosely coiled and twisted into an elaborate bun that fell about the nape of her neck. The forbidden necklace hung encircling it - the locket, with all intent and purpose, lay tucked within her bodice.

As she walked about the euphoric ballroom filled with guests of honorable disposition and their secretive fetish for scandal, she felt more solitary than ever. Various men looked her way, believing they could seduce her through the smokey veil they produced from their freshly bought Upmanns.

But to no avail - there was only one man that could ever hope to capture her attention tonight.

“Izzy! How good it is to see you! It has been too long,” a voice called to her from across the dance floor. People stared in incredulity at the bold woman walking her way.

“Gabby, why it has been a while, hasn't it?” Isabelle responded with a detached air as Gabrielle Harrington of Devonshire came to exchange the customary kiss-on-the-cheek.

“Oh yes. I have much to tell you! Paris was simply exquisite. You have to come with me one winter, it is true. The city is most beautiful at that time.”

“So I hear.”

Gabrielle, puzzled by her friend's aloofness, decided to pin it to excessive fatigue. “Izzy, your father isn't press-”

Isabelle abruptly cut her off. “No, why would you think that?”

Gabrielle stood more baffled than ever at Isabelle's odd behaviour. “Oh, it's just that you don't seem to be entirely here. As if you're off on some other planet.” A planet filled with much more entertainment than this one, apparently, she added under her breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing dear. I'll come find you later, I must go greet Thomas and get a sip of that delicious wine,” she ended with a suggestive wink as she embraced her friend and left to set on her next pursuit.

Isabelle just stayed there and stared in awe, bewildered at the short exchange, and emitted an infinitesimal giggle at Gabrielle's antics.

“Whatever is so humorous, I am so deeply thankful to it. Oh how I adore your smile, love.” Her breathing hitched. Her heart stopped its beating and restarted with a painful thump at the words being whispered into her ear from behind. That voice. Ah, the voice that she had been longing for, for what seemed like eternity.

He took her gloved hand with undeniable care and lead her swiftly out the door held slightly ajar for the few that felt like a stroll in the starlight. The moon beamed its light upon them, letting them know that their world was never entirely theirs. They walked for a while in silence, tension held aloft all the while, till they reached the only place they knew the could not be seen.

He turned to her and, with a light touch that made her shiver, he caressed the side of her face and leaned in to kiss her.

She missed this.

She dreamt about this moment for so long, it was hard to believe that this was true and not simply one of her hallucinations. But it was real, it really was. She could feel it in the marrow of her bones, in ever fiber of her quivering frame. His lips were so soft, yet filled with such an intensity that she felt like she would scorch from their fire.

At last they parted, betrayed by their need to respire. His forehead on hers, he closed his eyes and smiled this perfectly crooked smile that was all his own. Isabelle's elation lifted her, made her feel as light as the air surrounding their intervened bodies. She slipped the glove off her right hand and touched his golden halo of hair; moved her fingers to his temple, over the ridges of the lightly protruding scar that was surely found there, to his cheeks – flushed with the cold – until they finally reached his lips. He was so beautiful, an angel.

“Isabelle,” he sighed her name, and it sounded like a lullaby. So sweet on his lips. “My dear, dear Isabelle.”

“Yes?” She panted, not having yet regained her breath from their passionate kiss.

“Isabelle, you nearly gave me a coronary when I first saw you. You're heartbreakingly beautiful, you know that?” He smiled his crooked smile once more, than kissed her nose gently.

“You're not so bad yourself, handsome.” She smirked and he chuckled. She abruptly pulled him in for another kiss that grew in urgency. He bought his hand to her face and ran it down her neck to the necklace that resided there.

He pulled their lips apart and whispered, “You kept it.”

“Of course I did. It is the most precious thing anyone has ever given me.”

“Strong words.” He mumbled in a distant tone as he brought out the ancient locket.

“Yes, and they are every bit the truth.”

He smiled, as did she.

“I have kept that locket close to my heart, every night, you know. I kept faith and I prayed for fate to bring us together again. I read the inscrip-”

He put a finger to her lips. “Shh, love. Can you hear that?”

She listened. For a while, all that could be heard was water colliding with rock from the river nearby. But then, a small chirping came to and a whole harmony of sounds, as if an orchestral composition began to unfold among the desolate ferns.

“It's beautiful, Jasper.” She stared in contempt at the night sky and breathed it all in. She wanted this all memorised before she had to be sent back home.

All the while he just stared at her. He would give up everything in this world to have her be his. Thus, with the faintest whisper, he spoke to her soul. “Run away with me, Isabelle, and this could all be ours. Away from the binds of our parents. We could be together, Isabelle. You and me. Free.”

Those alluringly tempting words wormed their way into her heart, but the fight of logic prevailed.

“I can't, Jasper, you know that. I have to obey my father's wishes. I'm the only one he has, after mother-”

He took her in his arms. “He'll be alright. He has the ever-evident aristocrats of society and his seldom-sober poker partners to keep him company. He doesn't need you. If anything, he is trying to destroy that girl full of hopes and dreams inside you that I cherish so, for his political gain. I'm not going to let him do that to you, Isabelle.”

“But-”

He felt a tear denounce his despair. “I will not let him take you away from me. Not again. Not this time. I-” his breath shuddered. “I love you.”

She smiled with those characteristically sad smiles of hers. A tear trailed down her cheek. “I love you too. So much. But what happens when father finds me? What if love is not enough?”

And he replied with a resounding finality. “Remember when we were little, you ran to find me and I read you that book you found that you thought looked pretty, because you couldn't read yet? Remember how Peter took Wendy to Neverland, that place where no adults were allowed and where all your cares were carried away with a cloud? You remember when you told me you wanted to see what it was like and I promised you I would show you one day? Well, I think it's about time I did.”

He smiled at her and Isabelle felt herself smiling back as they began to slowly fade away.

--Ani.

---------------------------------------

*blushes* I'll go away now.

Reflections.

2009-06-16T22:02:00.005+12:00

The clouds, so numerous and uniform in their bleakness, march alike Sassoon's sleeping soldiers to the ends of the earth. A lone bird, obscured by the dark outline of sky, flits across her span of vision. She sits up and feels the subtle shift in pressure of the trampoline. Over the white fence, she sees the light post of the street slowly flicker to life, the chimney of the house behind smokes and veils the tall fern beside. It has long since forgotten its nicotine patches.

All this activity in a world that is so quite, yet she feels nothing. She does less than the immobile objects on either side of her. She does nothing.

Sometimes, she just wants it all to stop.

She wonders what it would be like if the predator would stop short of catching its prey. Would take a minute to listen to its surroundings. She wonders what the outcome would be then. Or if a corporate driven marketeer would stop and see the damage he has created in his wake. Would he even bat an eyelash?

Somehow, she feels we have moved so far out from the selves we used to be. Are we not all robots moving day to day in monotony? She asks vainly to herself. Or maybe it just seems this way to just her because she feels like a robot.

And she doesn't want to feel this way. She fights like hell to not be this way. To be precisely the opposite. But it is so hard when people are constantly screaming and unloading their problems with the world onto her as their sole constant. When the media taint any positive outlook she manages to procure.

It's like saying “50 people died today in a grand massacre, but don't fret. Smile, darling. It's all you've got now.”

She doesn't get it. Maybe she never will. But even if the humans of our generation taint this world, they'll never taint its skies. She finds hope in the stars.

They're the pure sprinkled beauty that won't ever be tamed. The innocence that won't ever be touched by the fatal chokehold of the human.

So she writes and writes, in futile ambition to redeem the day, fingering the strings of her ancient acoustic while he paints her wondrous visions of a world that no longer exists. And they stare in awe for a while as they slowly feel themselves fading away, like the smog you see outside your bay window, wondering why it ever chose to stay.

--Ani.

-------------------------

Sigh. The man gave me the courage and audacity to write this.

Thus, The Men Who Chase the Dreams.

2009-06-15T00:21:00.005+12:00

She was falling. Falling forever, held prisoner, chained to the colourless oblivion that seemed a contradiction to her elation the day before. Like Peter Pan, Skyler brought her to a Neverland that seemed irrevocably in reverse.

Arms wrap around her torso and her first instinct is to run.

“No. No. Shh. It's okay, it's fine Vi. It's me. It's Aaron. Shh. You're going to be okay. Just breathe.” His voice, so soothing, seemed to ail her further and she immediately felt horrible for bringing him down with her as her breathing exceeded the norm and sent her gasping.

“Come on,” his determined, strong voice shook and penetrated into her brain. “Come on, Vi. Breathe. Breathe. In and out. In and out. Come on, say it with me; in and out, in and out, in and-”

“Out.” She managed to breathe out.

He sighed in contempt, and kissed her forehead so lightly, that she would've missed it had she not been noticing everything with a strange new intensity.

“That's my girl,” he whispered and caressed the side of her face. To the ordinary observer, with their conventional eyes, her face would seem to be a picture of perfection. A most beautiful collage. But he could see the cracks and blotches of where glue had not been applied and where it had been spread in haste.

Through those imperfect scars Skyler left her, he could see the raw flesh and bone throbbing, grasping for something complete.

Violet's chest rose and fell in uniform succession as she steadily succumbed to sleep. Whatever relief felt, he knew, would be short lived. This would happen again. Tomorrow night. Perhaps the next. But he wouldn't ever leave her. He would always be there to bring her back from the cliff's edge. To keep her feet firmly planted on the ground.

Because if he let go, maybe she'd slip and fall peacefully into her own abyss, but he would drown.

And for that reason, he stayed up that night, like he did every night, feeling the bags protruding above his cheeks that were now a part of him as much as the eyes they were under.

He would protect her from herself and love her with all the affection she deserved in delicate hope that maybe, just maybe, one of these nights, she would wake up from her nightmares and would hold on to him with as much of herself as what he'd given her.

--Ani.

------------------------------

Hmm. Inspiration credited to Brand New. Hmm.

The Flight of Time.

2009-06-11T00:36:00.000+12:00

The clock and the bell

Alight and swell

Are beating upon the hour

Her quivering hands, skin stretched tight over bone, grasped the rocking chair's arms. They unintentionally betrayed the raging turmoil she was battling inside.

This did not just happen. This is not true. She chanted over and over to herself, hoping for a favourable resolution. It is simply a wildly, incredibly drawn out piece of fiction my run-of-the-mill imagination made unnervingly real.

Besides, it has happened before.

But this time didn't feel like the last, nor the one before. The nostalgia in the air was tangible to the touch and hovered all around. Everything had the air of a very real reality. A sick and twisted reality. The atmosphere smelt of acid.

The hand that now lay surreptitiously atop her own felt cold and unfamiliar. Something she could surely never imagine. And then she knew that it was real. This cruel truth staggered her and caught her by the throat, inducing her to say it. Admit what was the truth. To exit from her made-up worlds and acknowledge the present.

“I'm so sorry,” his words cracked the fictitious landscape in her mind and she saw it. She finally saw it.

“Madamoiselle, h-he was brave and strong. He did not suffer for long, I-our troops out in the fields and Lieutenant Garret made sure his last hours were spent in the blissful sleep he deserved. Pete- Monsieur du Beurette told me to give you this.” The awkward soldier, silhouetted in the early morning dawn, reached inside his navy blue tunic and emerged with a worn, earthen envelope that was noticeably once a pristine ivory.

On the front, in beautifully slanted script, read “To my dearest Élodie”.

Slowly, as if to delay the inevitable, she opened the envelope to reveal an equally worn, earthen letter.

Seeing the overflow of emotion in her eyes as she stared for immeasurable time at the letter, to the soldier seemed too intimate for him to stand guard for any longer. He had done his job. He delivered the letter. The Lieutenant General was waiting for him to make their peremptory voyage back to the barricades. This he told himself, over and over and over. But something kept compelling him to stay, if just a little while longer. If he was a lesser man, a man of foolish stature, maybe he would have. But he had a commitment. And by God, he would stand by it.

With that he turned to leave the forlorn maiden with as much stealth as he could muster, recalling what he learnt while in training to perform surprise attacks on the enemy from behind. The deadliest and least expected, he reflected in black irony.

But as he took the first step, his foot weighing down on the porch's weathered boards with an ominous croak, he heard a small voice beckoning.

“Antoine?”

How did she know his name? Curious, he turned with a skilled swiftness and waited.

“I'm sorry, I... I know you must be a very pre-occupied man, and in your own right, but could you please read me the letter?” She spoke in a soft but determined tone that was at odds with the slight sight of her. Her eyes were already brimmed with the ripe tears of mourning and he was afraid that if he read the letter to her, they would cascade and crumble away with her.

“Madamoiselle, I'm so deeply grieved for you loss, but I-”

“Oh, no. I understand.” She produced a sad half-smile. “It... It's fi-” Her voice caught and she started to breathe erratically, the hand clutching the letter slumped down from the arm of the rocking chair and her head bent back on her spine and against the chair's back - trying in half-heartened attempt to recapture the stolen fresh air from her lungs. To breathe new hope into her broken body.

The lone soldier -with his navy tunic, his cotton trousers and his various embellishments- felt utterly out of place and at odds as to how to conduct himself. He had not been trained to deal with grief or despair. Rather, he was told to discard it. Those feelings only taint the victorious mind, the Lieutenant General once told him.

But his father taught him chivalry.

He walked to the frail Élodie and lifted her now unconscious form up from the chair and carried her through the doorway of the house beyond. The entrance was dark but his gaze caught a door held conspicuously ajar by a wooden right-angled object and he decided to enter it. To his relief, it looked to be her chambers. He carried her to the modest bed and lay her down, caressing her gleaming forehead. Absentmindedly, he traced the lines of stress already evident on her lovely, youthful face.

She looked almost at peace in her unconscious state. Her face transformed into Peter's and he found himself looking back at his dead comrade.

Something wet appeared and spread on the cotton of his trousers. It took a while for him to comprehend that he was crying. He had never shed a tear in his life. Not when his father beat him with wooden cane for taking a forbidden cookie. Nor when his mother died of cancer. Nor when he killed a man -a man that meant something to somebody- in battle. Never.

Élodie's serene countenance did nothing to lessen the violent blow of his suppressed collision of emotions. There, his back to the edge of her bed, he sat in reverie for a very long time. Élodie never came to.

In his despair he pounded on the dust-veiled floor, when he noticed an earthen paper. The letter. In all his contemplations, he never noticed it.

He took it in shaking hands and regarded it's entirety. Here and there, he saw a smudge of ink, which could only be tears.

“My dearest, my love.

Do you believe in fate? I like to believe so. I like to believe that God put us on this planet for a specific purpose.

I've never been good at anything. I cannot climb the trees like you can. I cannot tell stories straight out the imagination like you. I cannot aim a rock to hit a clear target even with the aid of a sling-shot. (Which really makes you wonder why in the world I got registered into the army.)

And so, as I sit here in these desolate barricades, and look over my talents (or lack-thereof), I realise that, my love, my purpose her on earth is not to climb some tree, nor to hit a target in perfection, nor even to tell the most wondrous story. My purpose is you.

Now, I know, if you have been handed down this letter by Antoine, (he can be a little cumbersome, as he surely knows, but his heart is in the right place. Be sure to pass him my thanks for his troubles and his loyalty to me in my dire circumstances) and that you have read thus far, you would have learnt of my demise. But do not cry, oh how I hate to see you cry. Do not taint that beautiful face I love so much with those ugly monsters they call tears, because this is not goodbye.

You hear me, Élodie? This is not the end. Remember what I told you before I was sent away?Remember the bird? We'll fly away like that bird, Élodie. Away, we will.

And when you're ready. When you feel your work is done, and there is nothing else you feel you need to live for; you just spread your wings and I'll help you fly. We'll fly our way through the heavenly skies with the stars as our guide and stay with the clouds and the moon forever. I promise.

I'll see you soon, my love. I'll be waiting,

Peter.”

She read it.

Antoine picked himself up, gathered his bearings, turned on his heals and slowly looked down, and he smiled a knowing smile at the lifeless face of the girl. The girl who flew away and never returned.

Time flits by

Oh how it seems to fly

But oh, how it also devours

--Ani.

------------------------------

Midnight rush/product of Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles. Très inspiré.

Ode to Lua.

2009-06-05T23:10:00.005+12:00

Fingers slip through the silk, leaving a residue of water on his finger tips. Bitter cold. Glacial, almost. The wind bites through his thin sweater and into his back. His fair hair sways and veils his ocean eyes.

-And I'm not sure what the trouble was, that started all of this.-

The lyrics of their song plays endlessly in his mind. Coiling and fusing with the neurons in his brain to the conspicuous tendons of his fist. Haunting him, inexhaustibly.

The wind increases in magnitude. He hardly notices as he falls back onto the dock. The corroded wood is painted with various holes of all proportions, through which he can see the unusually clear, watered down banks of the old Mulberry river.

-The reasons all have run away, but the feeling never did.-

He sighed. How much longer? He asks of himself, as he tilts his head to the west. His eyes meet the sun's as it floats down behind the towering hills, bidding him farewell after their short rendezvous.

Ten minutes.

He shifts his head back to its prior position, facing the already evident stars. It feels as if gravity has swelled to an intense degree, driving him into the unyielding timber. As he lays there, he starts to contemplate things. Things that a young heart such as his shouldn't have to be troubled with.

The stars give him a blank stare, lacking in expression for once. No longer questioning, as if they can already outline the pathway to his fate. And that scares him.

-It's not something I would recommend, but it is one way to live.-

Ah. Pain shoots through the left side of his body.

Two.

He sits up with steady precision and folds his arms across his chest, hoping for dear life that the pain subsides. At least for another two minutes. Then his body is free to do as it wills itself to.

His palm feels through the dips and crevices of the rough wood and touches upon something smooth and solid. He grabs it by the neck and settles it on his lap. His fingers flit across its strings with skilled yet abnormal detachment.

-Cause what is simple in the moonlight, by the morning is so complicated.-

The words, now in sync with the chords he plays, resonate in the clearing as he sings along. His voice, clear and soft, caresses the willow beside which sighs in content. It has heard him play before, but never so beautifully. Never did such a raw emotion evade his customary calm air.

Like an angel, she used to say. You play to the soul, not just to the head. That's what I love about you.

-Cause what is simple in the moonlight, by the morning never is.-

One minute.

The moon observes him with a sympathetic eye. Poor boy.

The boy turns away. He doesn't need the moon's pity.

She'll come. She'll come, she'll come. She has to. She'll come.

-Cause what was simple in the moonlight...- “Cosette! Come on! Sing with me! Please, you know this!”

-Cause what was simple in the moonlight, so si-

“COSETTE!”

There is no one in the desolate gloom, save for himself.

A suppressed sob escapes his lungs and he feels like he can't breathe. But he must, he must. He must finish the song. For Cosette, if for anything at all.

-So simple in the moon-light..-.

And with that the chords collapse into the watery abyss.

She's gone. She's not coming back.

He feels the surface of his cheeks. Wet with the salt of his tears, having spilled from the over-brimmed recesses of his irises.

“ARGH!” His scream reverberates and deafens the hooting of the Eagle owls nestled close by. His out-cry resembles the cry of a condemned man burning at the stake.

Using his arms as leverage, he jumps up onto the tips of his tethered Converse-clad feet and grasps the neck of his acoustic guitar. He walks away from the edge of the dock in reverse with new-found determination saturating his convulsing frame. Without a moments hesitation, nor thought, he runs to the edge and sends the acoustic into flight.

His body follows suit as it hits its water-bound resting place. I will be with my love once more is his last coherent thought as the water engulfs his entire being and lulls him into its oblivion.

A raindrop thus falls from the heavens, as the obscured moon slowly fades away, taking leave of the still atmosphere.

--Ani.

-----

I'm wayy too obsessed. It's becoming unhealthy. :s

He Looked Like Spring

2009-06-04T21:57:00.000+12:00

He looked like spring. All the boys and girls that had kissed him told me he tasted like blood.

I’d known he was there in the room before I’d even seen him. There was some shift in the light or maybe the staleness in the church air disappeared when he walked in, but I knew he was there. My ears tuned into his foot steps, light and leisurely, I could hear as he dodged people in his path and the hushed mutters of apologies as people parted for him. Then, I’d seen him. And he looked like spring.

His hair was a reddish blonde color that might’ve been ginger once; he was pale and speckled with that same faded cinnamon across his nose. He wasn’t tall but he seemed to tower over everyone, moving at his own pace, unaffected by time and company. His kaleidoscope grey eyes shifted from shades of blue to green in the clear autumn light. The air in the church was musky and claustrophobic but his breathe was cold and lonely. When he blinked it looked as if he’d never open his eyes again, his eye lashes curling and spreading outwards like sunshine against his porcelain eyelids, tiny delicate pink and blue veins etched just beneath. Something was living under his skin. And it was stealing him. It was taking him away from everything.

He smokes Marlboros and breathes toxic into the air, but there’s no way anything out of his mouth is poison. Or, maybe all of it is poison.

“Haven’t they told you to stay away from me?”

He smiles and blinks, for a second I hold my breath, because I swear he’s gone.

“The church wears only beige every day and black on special occasions. You should’ve seen their shock when I came in blue to his funeral. Oh, poor Friedrich Creswell, his son won’t even wear black to show respect.”

His lips are chapped and stretched over; I can tell he hasn’t slept in days. A red line the night before drew beneath his eyes almost makes him look like he’s been crying. But he hasn’t been. The whole funeral he was somewhere else. Somewhere far away from the church and he wouldn’t take anyone else with him. Not even his dead father. Not even me.

The women in the church, superstitious old hens; they say that he’s turning into a demon. Ever since his mother died something in him began to rot and decay. Something was becoming foul and it was beginning to show. He never eats these days. Doesn’t sleep or drink, and only talks when the weather is as morbid as he is. As angry as he must be.

“But, I’m the happiest boy in the world.”

He says this, then he smiles, big and bright and sad.

--Mikee Sto Domingo

------

Bravo. ^.^

Uhh, Yeah.

2009-06-02T16:23:00.000+12:00

So, this is something that I stumbled upon, that I wrote around the middle of last year. Truthfully I can not recall. All I know is that it was written quite a while a go, while obsessed with classical literature.

The Jester's Last Bow

His smile downcast, the jester was quite the strange creature he dressed himself up to be.

His shoulders sit lodged in an uncomfortable hunch as if a great weight has been strung upon them for what seems to be years.

As he sips the cool drink – which was once, much like he, warm – he hardly acknowledges the curious faces probing at his disheveled form, sitting crippled on the ancient, worn out rug by the fire. His eyes, never having shed a tear nor a true emotion; were now asunder with the most unusual tenants – pain and regret. Those deceiving eyes... once so alight with intriguing amusement, were now impossibly tainted.

He stares at his cup a while. His lips form the silent words of a lullaby he once knew, reciting them with each swirl of the dull concoction. His actions seem to be of no avail to his sunken features. His inaudible chantings serve a different purpose; they seemed to be more of a foundation, a sort of common ground establishment in this world that shakes with uncertainty.

How had life found a way to corrupt the most alive of its kind?

What could have infected such a jolly soul as the one of the jester?

He lets out a suppressed sigh that tells of his exhaustion. His breath shudders as it re-enters his crushed chest.

Time seems to be no vital element to him.

He boasts the countenance of a man with a greater worry than that of inconsequential time.

He sits still, more statuesque than human. His eyes cloud over, obscuring the view of his raw emotions to leave them in an almost dead state. Rock hard in a glacial abyss; leaving no room for his soul to creep through.

There is one lesson he did seem to have learnt this evening - his heart could not be trusted.

He felt utterly confused and helpless at the swarm of new emotions. All he ever knew of was fake and superficial to what he was. He just could not deal with this. This was simply too much. Too much, too soon.

So, in livid response, he locked them away; in his mind miming the key to those inconceivable feelings away, away into the dark unknown. He would not feel anymore. Nobody would ever know.

His resolve was clear in the rod straight amendment to his posture and the blank stare he returned to those now brave enough to question his well-being. He was determined. He must escape.

With that he stood up. His hands, dusting off his bright vest, then reached for the crown of his head. He touched upon something coarse, and with a skilled flick of the wrist, he tipped his hat; recovering dignity and grace as he bowed to the casual onlookers. Jingles from the hat sounded with resounding familiarity; as if the end of a great act.

He was a jester, after all.

--Ani.

Preface

2008-11-19T16:28:00.000+13:00

Hello one and all and welcome to When Words Collide.

This blog is going to be dedicated to all those random, or if you prefer, 'undiscovered creative, poetical geniuses' that I know many of you are.

If you ever felt a need to rant or to follow that part of your mind that wants to emancipate words from your soul or, like most, just felt bored and words came out in rhythmic stanzas, then this blog is for you.

What I'd love to achieve here people, is for people like extraordinary you - yes you, sitting on that chair reading this profoundly, unnecessarily long blog - to send me your words and we can share them, I know I have a few. And when I say a few, I mean I could fill my wardrobe up with poems of such incoherence sometimes, that you'd be mind boggled.

See this site/blog thing as your poetic ranting drop-off market.

You'd be surprised at how many people feel the same way as you.

So, if you're interested; drop me a simple hello, or even start conjuring up a poem to send in at anita.irsevic@gmail.com. I can guarantee that you can stay anonymous if you'd rather; or you can even make up an even more inventive pen name like wordasaurous... heyyy.... don't laugh, you never know; there could have been a dinosaur with a particular literacy skill... :)

Anyway, I'm off, but I'll leave you with an inspiring thought from Lucy Maud Montgomery titled 'The Poets Thought'

It came to him in rainbow dreams,

Blent with the wisdom of the sages,

Of spirit and of passion born;

In words as lucent as the morn

He prisoned it and now it gleams

A jewel shining through the ages.

Happy writing!

Ani.