A Terrible Poem

My rhyming skills are very bad,
Enough to make one very mad
If they hap' to be a poet
And cringe to hear the lack of flow it
Has!

A short scene, three ways

1.

"Go fetch!" shouted Lucy, launching a tennis ball across the lawn. Lucy was a foolish girl, whose body outgrew her smarts. She launched the ball further than she expected, right into oncoming traffic. For a moment she stood dumbstruck, then shouted, "No Sparky! You'll get run over! Look both ways before you cross!" But Sparky was merely a dog, and did not understand human speech or road safety rules, nor did he stop to consider what it meant to cross the property line. Dogs are dogs, they don't rationalize. All he understood was the joy of chasing a grey ball through a grey yard onto an equally grey stone river. He held onto that joy up until he died. To this day, Lucy still rationalizes what happened.


2.

Oh, cruel fate! How could a game do simple, so carefree and innocent, ten thus to horror? Blood and bones and dented hoods! How Lucy cried aloud, cursing the now sweating palm that had led her beloved to his untimely and unjust death. Why had he not heeded her warnings? Why must he have loved her so blindly, so devotedly, as to leap into death! To lay there still with a smile, tongue lolling about the accursed ball! And now he is but guts upon the road. The driver leapt from his car, and Lucy pounded on the murderer's chest. How dare he come now, to wrap comforting arms around her! Begone you vile human sample! Sparky would breathe still, bark still, wag his tail still if it had not been for you! If only, if only...!


3.

Lucy enjoyed testing faith. In second grade she convinced Kyle Murray to wait by the chain link fence for a kiss, and left him there all afternoon. With her dog she was no different. With every toss of the tennis ball, she urged Sparky further and further into the road. Her mother had warned her once not to take one's trust for granted. Lucy threw the ball one last time. This was the lesson learned.

FORSAKEN ON VALENTINES DAY

A Poem for Tabia by Marta, Robyn, and Andrea

Your love is like a black eye
And from it tears of blood I cry
They fall like rain from hopeless clouds
And I'm drowning in them.
Where once was flame, has now turned ash
The memory of you leaves such a rash
On my wrist the long red gash
More to the floor, red droplets splash
One more for every day your gone
I fell the sun will never dawn
I live in eternal night. No one understands
What its like to live in forsaken lands
The frosted windows hide your face
I live inside an empty place
Is this how angels feel fall'n from space??
My heart is made of leather, not lace

A Spooky Tale (Title Suggestions?) - Part 1

            For hours Nelson had driven bent over the steering wheel, eyes darting frantically at the mirror, searching for pursuing light. Though it had been many miles since headlights last shone their incriminate gaze upon him, he felt hunched and oppressed, as if a large hand were pressing him deep into the cabin of the automobile, and smothering him. Beside him sat Clint, his partner in crime, with the revolver dangling loosely in his hand; he glanced now and again over his shoulder at Nelson's frantic urging.

"No one's coming for us; we left 'em in the dust," said Clint, crossing his arms and sitting back in his seat.

"Maybe they've set up a alarm at the next town. They'll catch us, I know!"

"No, they won't, Nelson. Calm yer horses. All we gotta focus on is drivin' to the next town, finding us a place to duck down for a few days, and then we'll drive straight on down to Mexico. They'll never catch us there."

"We shot a girl, Clint," cried Nelson, his eyes near tears. The roadster jerked, tipping slightly on its narrow wheels. "She--She's dead!"

"She ain't dead," snapped Clint, "ya don't know that. 'Sides, you helped her up yourself. She was breathin'."

"Barely," thought Nelson with dismay. On his palms he could feel the tackiness of dried blood moistened with sweat. His hands clung to the wheel, bound to his inexorable fate. "What if she didn't make it - then we'll really hang! We shouldn'ta shot that girl, Clint. That's not what I signed up for."

"Well, it happened," said Clint, "Sides, she had it comin'."

Nelson peeled his right hand off the wheel. It stung, his knuckles stiff and sore, clenched in a death grip. With his dusty sleeve he wiped his nose roughly. "I'm no murderer Clint. I'm not."

"Ok, Nelson. You're not."

"I'm just a thief - thievin's not so bad, right? Man's gotta live."

"The only way we're gonna live through this heist is if you quit cryin' get us to some cover! We got twenty grand in the backseat, enough to buy us a ranch out in Mexico. Don't let her sacrifice go to waste." Clint slapped a firm hand on Nelson's shoulder. "Cheer up," he said, "Soon there'll be Senorita's aplenty, an' you'll forget all about the blondie at the bank."

"Yeah," said Nelson in a wavering voice. "You're right. I gotta keep my head straight. Can't start panicking now."

"Atta boy," said Clint. "Whereabouts are we?"

"Not sure," said Nelson, peering into the coming darkness. One either side of the muddy highway, trees began to grow closer and darker. On their long, swaying limbs hung tendrils of moss, which reached out toward the men, grazing their faces like little ghostly fingers. "I think we're comin' in close to Shreveport."

"Don't get too close to town. Let's stay out a ways in the country," said Clint, tension rising slightly in his throat. He regretted his unfamiliarity with the county; wherever they drove now was at Nelson's discretion. This was the one job Clint had kept him for, but as he watched Nelson's exhausted face and the manic fear in his eyes, Clint began to wonder if he had made the wrong choice. Perhaps he would have been better off on his own.

"I'll turn off here," said Nelson. "We'll find somethin', or we can park out in the woods."

The car veered off to the right, down a narrow lane through the trees. Night had fallen now, and only the dim headlights flashed on the tree trunks as the jalopy jumped and rattled over branches and stones. Exhaustion was settling over Nelson, now that the sun had gone away; the dark hung on him, whispering unpleasant thoughts in his ear. It seemed the deeper into the woods he drove, the more dread he felt in his heart, and though he swallowed deep and hard, thoughts of the dying girl came to mind. As he pondered miserably her pale, flickering face, Clint cried out, "There! Over there!" and pointed vigorously through the trees. There, in the headlights, was a small, overgrown driveway, invisible to eyes less desperate. With a sharp turn Nelson bolted down the driveway. They had found sanctuary at last! He could ease his pounding head and find peace, perhaps, in the merciful fog of sleep.

The lane was dense with saplings which snapped and scraped against the car, claw-like branches clinging. Soon the men emerged into a clearing. A half-moon shone dimly on the blue-green grass, which waved in a night-time breeze. On either side stood gnarled, black trees, like sentinels who, standing guard for many years, grew bent and wicked. They leered at Nelson as they drove past, and he shrank under their gaze; Clint, however, was giddy with relief.

"I knew I could count on you!" he laughed. Already in his mind he was gleefully counting his money, there were not trees but cacti, and women beat their silken fans over him, swishing their skirts.

Still the trees leered at Nelson, the knots in their trunks like unblinking eyes. Something about the place creeped upon his mind. Maybe it was the glint of moonlight through the branches, or the manic laughter he felt brushing just behind his teeth, the breathy fear he struggled to contain. Or maybe it was the bank teller's dimming eyes...

Suddenly, in the corner of his eye Nelson saw a pale shape peering in the window. He jumped with such fear that the car rocked, and he stepped hard on the pedal, throwing Clint against his seat.

"Jesus!" cried Nelson, shaking all over. Tears stung in his eyes. "D'you see that?"

"I sure do!" said Clint with enthusiasm. "She's perfect! Dammit, Nelson, you really are one surprise after another!"

At that Nelson wrenched his eyes from the side window and looked in front of him. Far down the end of the lane stood a rotted house, leaning in the moonlight. Its windows were shattered and dark, the veranda crumbling in places. And at the back end of the house, facing the moonlight, was a large bay window, reaching out from the second storey. All at once his memory poured over him.

"It can't be," whispered Nelson. "The Maycott Estate!"

"You're shittin' me?" asked Clint. "As in the Maycott Murder?"

Nelson nodded dumbly in response. “Albert Maycott...”

All the while the house loomed larger and larger, oppressing Nelson utterly as the truth become impossible to deny. Some cruel fate had caused him to return here, led by the traitorous homing instinct!

To Be Continued...

Do You Ever Get Bored of Chicken and Wine?

[A response poem to Persimmons by Li-Young Lee from the North American perspective]


I’ve never met you, [grandfather], only
Your ashes in a marble urn.
Sometimes, if you’re lucky,
We find the time to visit you.
We drive along the windy mountain road,
To your plot just off the bicycle path.
They run over your grave like a bicycle path.
Do you miss the safety of the shrine?

Do you ever get bored of chicken and wine?

We place a slip under a stone
And lay a feast before you on the grass,
White Styrofoam nestled in white plastic bags:
A bald chicken roosting there. Its eyes are closed, its skin
Full of goosebumps, like a chilly ghost.

Next, we pour the wine (“to impress your future in-laws…”)
Into little plastic cups. [Uncle] fans
The smouldering dollar bills; their ashes fly
Between the branches, dancing
Up to Heaven.

They say Heaven is a banquet table,
Ancestors gathered all around.
They laugh, they muse, they wait year round
For their boiled chicken and wine.
Old bones buried in a far-away land
Want for visits and chicken and wine.
For centuries, boiled chicken and wine.

Aren’t they bored of chicken and wine?


Tell me, have you ever tasted pizza
Or crab apple pie?
Is this something you would like
To try, now, in the Afterworld, descendants
Like roving taste buds,
Bringing you glimpses of present life?

If I burn you a letter, will you find it?
Would you read it? (Could you read it?)

Shall I write:
“Hello, [Grandmother],
I met you in a dream last night.
You sat, cross-legged, on the counter,
A young girl in pants,
And said you were thirsty.”

Shall I burn you a photo?

No—
a poem.

I shall burn for you poem.

Holding Station

A Villanelle Written in Fishing Terms

Drifting lonely on the quiet seas,

I hope for your return to this loch,

but life is only catch-and-release.

Others, too, paddle to these

sighing waters. They cast their lot,

Drifting lonely on the quiet seas.

Some, mourning the long-deceased,

seek to bend the cosmic clocks,

but life is only catch-and-release.

I remember your white arm; we swam each

to our own green, mossy rock,

drifting lonely on the quiet seas.

And then, with sudden and with wordless ease,

you left me by my cheerless dock.

Life is only catch-and-release.

Still I circle without cease

these desolate, grey-naked rocks,

drifting lonely on the quiet seas,

but life is only catch-and-release.

Travels of a Curmudgeonly Old Fuck

[I just pulled an all-nighter for a take-home exam, and then I had to write a sonnet for poetry class. I said "Fuck it it's 6:30 am and I'm too tired for this shit." This is the result.]


Of course I get the only fucking screen
that’s broken. God dammit! Fine. I did not
want to see your cheap Hollywood brain rot
anyway. Except now I’m stuck between

A walrus and a public nose-picker.
Yep, just keep digging. It’s not like I’m not—
Oh GOD he ate it! Gross. Just when I thought
it couldn’t get worse. Hey you, seat kicker!

Yeah you. Yeah, your son. Watch your child for Christ’s
sake! You shouldn’t have been allowed to breed.
There should be a law for that. God, I need
a stiff drink. Where’s the lady? I’ve buzzed twice!

I can’t wait to get to get off this thing and grab
a REAL lunch. Then it’s work. Augh! I hate cabs!

Run, Run from the Smoking Gun

[I wrote this for a poetry workshop assignment. The challenge was to take a previously written poem and rewrite it from your experience today. The rewrite had to be to the tune of a popular song, using the same rhyme scheme, rhythm, chorus pattern and everything. I chose to rewrite BLAM. (from HeartRape!) to the tune of "The Needle and the Damage Done" by Neil Young. Thanks Bruno for the song suggestion!]




The chair still rocking
By the fireplace
A stunned expression
On your cold white face
Ooh, ooh, what have I done?

You were my blood and
Now you’re on my hands,
I took the money
From the coffee can
Run, run from what I’ve done

Red thumbprints on
These dirty dollar bills
I wander dark
And lonely desert hills
Sell love
To get out of this town

Can’t leave behind the
Dirty deeds I’ve done
From up behind me, bloody footprints come
My downturned eyes are
Like a smoking gun.

Juneau, Alaska (Complete)

[I have added the last two parts to this poem. The song lyrics are not mine. Please tell me what you think.]

I.

We drove here in your mother's station wagon,
listening to the old mix tapes
I had sent you, once, in the mail.
You sang along absentmindedly
as you counted raindrops on the window.
Forgotten words came floating up
with two strums
or a snare.
You traced the fleeing rain, and sang:

Someone told me long ago
There's a calm before the storm
I know
It's been coming for some time

The road was but a crumbled path,
Pine trees whispered through the windows.
I glanced at your neck;
it was smooth as fresh fallen snow,
but your cheek was trampled, worn.
Water had eroded your landscape.

The roads were frozen as we drove to Juneau, Alaska.


II.

“It’s nice,” you said, overlooking
The tumultuous black sea.
The dark iron hulls of ships
Appeared through the fog, like
a bad memory; a secret. I held your loose
cold hand.

The inn was warm, close. When the
keeper smiled at us you briskly signed your name,
then took the luggage. I asked for some wine,
and followed you to our room.

You had unpacked your bag. You turned your bare
back to me, saying, “Help me,”
and I zipped your blue dress,
smelling your hair.

My hands rested on your shoulders,
And you gripped with all your fingers.


III.

We lie naked side by side on the bed because
the bear skin revolted you when I proposed
we make love on it;
Yet even on proper sheets,
you remain revolted.

The town is sleeping. It is blinding midnight.
You stand up and pull the curtains aside,
exposing your breast to the empty town.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” you say,
watching dogs sniff snowmobiles,
but say nothing. Snowflakes dance past
your face, mottle your white skin.
Your naked figure is frozen in place.

“Don’t,” I say.

“Please don’t.”

Burroughs

[A fragment I found when cleaning my room. Drawing by Marta Barnes <3]

Whenever I see naked men, I always wonder what it would be like to live in the wild. Imagine being Jane Porter alone in the jungle when Tarzan jumps out of the trees, nearly naked, muscles rippling beneath his bronze skin as he tears a lion off you. As you lay breathless and bloodied on the ground, you watch him tear off the lion's jaw with his bare hands, his back glistening in the moonlight. He is tall and thick and strong, with those wide shoulders that flex as he hurls the growling beast into the underbrush. His loincloth hangs dangerously low, revealing a glimpse of his manhood dangling there. He throws his head back in a deep growl. He is engorged now with the adrenaline.

It takes a moment for him to remember you there - you, lying weakly, now pushing yourself up feebly agaisnt the base of a tree, trying to crawl away, your heart racing in your chest. He rushes up to you with rough curiosity, brings his face to your neck as he sniffs you deeply and licks your wounds the way he was taught to in the wild. You whimper, "no," but the word dissolves into a hot breath. The feel of his tongue against your skin sends shivers down your spine, up over your breasts and tingles your nipples. He licks those too, his warm mouth engulfing them, his hardness against your thigh. A grunt. He is an animal and he wants you now. He will take you. He grabs your wrists with his thick hands and pushes you down.

Suddenly there is the loud rush of paper. Right. I forgot I was in Human Figure class. The model turns himself over on his bench, lifting his hips to expose to me the glorious intersection of his ass crack and his penis. His long and girthy organ leans seductively over his thigh. He looks me in the eye. Am I not beautiful? he seems to ask. I bite my lip and ponder the thickness and length of him. I've never seen an uncircumsized one before. It's strange, the vague shadow of a head wrapped in a delicate skin. But then it blossoms, the pink emerges, and I imagine the thin wrinkle of it against my tongue, the smooth round top pressing firmly against the roof of my mouth.

I flip the page on my easal. Too much time wasted thinking. Need to scribble something fast. Gottheim steps up quietly behind me.

"Oh my!" she says, leaning over my shoulder. "What an interesting position."

We both stare for a moment. She smiles and walks away.

The Chapel in Vermont

[She liiiiiives! And is quite busy with school and such. Hopefully there will be lots more writing now that I'm in CREATIVE WRITING HOLYSHITHAPPINESS! Also my workshop class really puts me in the mood to read and review so hopefully I shall be rampaging through the archives :D This piece is one that I wrote just now actually...based off a photo. Enjoy!]



It was ten days after the funeral. I was boxing his items: dusty brass paperweights, the scruffed and grimey golfball that won him that tournament three years in a row, his pewter mug. These had been placed upon his bureau years ago where he could admire them. They left spotless shadows beneath them, their visible permanence.

Mother sat in a wooden chair, watching me from a corner. She had never sat in his leather armchair, before. I asked her why she wouldn't. "You'd be a lot more comfortable."

I pulled open a drawer and removed his fountain pen collection; each barrel was heavy with the weight of unwritten thought.

"I can't," she said, smiling warily. "I can still feel him sitting there, writing up some letter. Can't see him, but he's there."

"Does he mind that we're donating his stuff?"

Mother stiffened. "Doesn't matter what he minds. Just mind that he is there."

***

Between the oak bookcase and the plaster wall was a sizeable gap not visible from the front. I discovered it there when I tried to unplug the desk lamp - the kind with the glass green shade and brass neck, chain dangling - and traced the wire under the carpet and behind the bookcase. The plug slithered into shadow and hid there like a timid snake. Summoning my courage - who knew what dusty spiderwebs were hidden in the dark? - I stuck my hand into the crack, groping for the outlet. I felt something of an ornate bevel, something I thought to be a vintage switchplate but discovered was the carved edge of a picture frame. Grasping it by the wire, I pulled out a painting from behind the bookshelf.

Dust had accumulated in the crevices of the gilt frame, except those paths I had traced with my greyed fingertips. There was no glass to protect the oil painting within. In it were hundreds of trees, dappled red, yellow and orange, overlapping each other, forming hillsides. I could see the raised peaks of paint that cupped the dust like an unmelting snow, and a stray bristle or two. It was as if the leaves were being blown out of the frame to lick my face, earthy and moist, the bristle like a loose branch. A ghostly white chapel haunted the hillside, half-obscured.

The chapel was unfinished.

All around, the landscape was thick with colour, fleshy with broad, messy strokes, oppressed by a deep, ponderous sky. But the chapel itself was bare; only the light grey trace of a pencil outlined its tower and its slatted windows. I could see the weave of the canvas in the chapel-shaped absence, and the edges of the church flamed with a feathery whiteness where the paint was delicately flicked outwards and away, preserving this holy space.

"Your father never finished that one," said my mother from her seat, startling me. I had forgotten she was there.

"He painted this?" I asked incredulously. Then I noticed, hidden between the shadowy branches, his thin, black scrawl. "I didn't realize he was a painter."

"He never was. Not officially, anyway. Liked to keep it a secret."

"Well, he did a good job. I never saw any brushes, even! How'd he paint this without me noticing?"

My mother stared thoughtfully into the landscape.

"That one was painted just after you were born. It was the last painting he ever did."

I looked into the painting.

"How come he never finished? Is this where you were married?"

"Such a curious child you are," she teased, but the lines around her lips were grim. "That isn't where we married."

"Where is it then? This from a calendar or something?"

My mother stood up from her chair and stared down her nose at me as I sat on the floor, painting in my lap.

"Yes, a calendar," she said. She turned round - "You can donate it" - and walked away.

"Alright," I mumbled to myself, and traced each brushstroke with my eyes. There was something about the chapel that held my attention. It haunted my consciousness as I pulled the donation box over; I couldn't give this away. Where is this chapel, I wondered, and what is hidden there?


To Be Continued

Superluminal (Version III)

[A redo of my first HeartRape post ever! Original found here.]



II.
It comforts her to say that her life remains unchanged. She wakes on her side of the bed, showers, dresses, eats, arrives at work at the punctual hour. She finds time passes no slower than before. When she arrives at her cubicle she is greeted by her neighbour with the customary grunt; at the lunch table her coworkers speak the same mundane babble without noticing a profound change in her, and so that must mean that there is no profound change to be noticed. Even her fingers are unaware of turmoil, flitting across the touch screen with as much assuredness as the week before, like pistons on a train, propelling her forward. When she returns home, it is as still and empty as when she left it. That these things persist without alteration is proof that past events are no great harm done in the grand scheme of things. The past can be put in the past so long as one slogs forward.

I.
The table was glass and she noticed the flecks of grease across its surface, dried now into small opaque stars in a translucent sky, flung from the mouth of a famished god, starch worm wriggling into a puckered worm hole. She saw also the smears and, looking closer, the minute lines drawn by the ridges of his finger pads, and the concluding whorl. And these were like spinning galaxies leaving trails behind them of their unique existence. And even closer on a microcosmic scale she saw the globules of oil, intermittent deposits through time, sticky and insoluble. And as she stared down at the bottomless glass he took her hand. She pulled away.
“That’s a really long time,” she said.
“I know.”
He glanced down and they gazed into the universe together. They perceived the timeline of a thousand shared meals and a thousand wax drippings from a thousand lit candles, their light overwhelmed by a unified gust, and they saw in the dark of space some remnant flickering until the last flame reflected in their eyes was snuffed out by darkness. He gripped a little harder.
“The irony,” he said, “is that at the same time, it’ll only be five years…”
“For you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And what am I supposed to do?”
He huffed his chest. Contemplated a spaghetti stain.
“Whatever you want to do, I guess.”



“Then I’ll wait for you.”
“You can’t. You’ll be waiting your whole life – for nothing. It’s impossible.”


“But if you can travel forward through time, can’t you go back?”
“It’s not the same.”



“It’s not so easy.”

VII.
She turns her back to his side of the bed, certain she feels his warm shadow there.

III.
The colony suffers a minor power surge. Artificial gravity offline. She sits above her armchair, legs gently brushing the fabric. She is awash in white light. Watches the news:
“‘We can assure you that this is nothing more than a minor disturbance, caused by a small solar flare, not a warhead—this is not an attack.’”
The framed photograph glides through the air like a mote in suspension. His plump smile turns to the screen. In uniform, he salutes the President. She stares with moist apprehension.

IV.
She has decided to take up knitting. She buys a holo-tutor, scours an antique store for the needles. Cannot find yarn.
“Knitting is an archaic craft,” states the holo-tutor, “sustained by a few devoted hobbyists on and around the globe. However, knitting circles are more commonly found planetside, where the craft possesses deep roots in some traditional Terrestial cultures.”
The needles themselves are ancient. She traces with her eyes the dark brown warbling rings of the wood, the stretch marks of time. This tree was alive, once. It seems so prehistoric.
“A novice may find it difficult to procure yarn at an affordable price, particularly in the colonies, due to high exportation costs. However, yarn can be salvaged by unravelling knit sweaters.”

V.
She stirs pasta in a pot, attempting to break its sticky bonds. It becomes a heavy, entangled mass, a ball of yarn with a dozen loose ends. There is too much starch in the water, viscous and grey. She tells herself that she might as well cook the whole pack, no sense in leaving just a few strands behind, save herself from cooking again later, what if she wants another plate, might as well make extra, just in case…
As she stirs the clock pauses a moment, timid. It quickly steps into the next minute.
“Is someone there?”
A warm, familiar smell. She hears footsteps approach from behind.
“Cooking the pasta wrong.” A rumbling laugh, a deep breath. “Same as always…”

VIII.
She finds, abandoned at the back of the closet, a man’s sweater.

IX.
She unravels.

XI.
“Want to talk to her, Tony? Don’t you have something to say?” – a woman’s voice, garbled somewhere between Iowa and Lagrange Point 3, by a surveillance satellite, perhaps. She hears shuffling as the phone is brusquely shoved into Tony’s hand, clattering against the newest handheld gaming device. She hears the tinny music, the rush of vehicles through space, chasing stars.
“Thank you, Aunt Marla.”
Pew pew pew.
(“For what?” )
“For the birthday card.”
“Oh, you’re welcome Tony. Thirteen is a big year, you know.”
“Mmhmm.”
Shuffling static. The techno-beat of space fades.
“You should really come down sometime, the weather’s great.”
She eyes the unlocked door.
“I’d love to,” she says, “But I’d have no one to watch the house. Who knows what kind of people might break in…”

VI.
“You look different.”
“I’m older.”
“But still the same…”
She appraises him. A little tattered, a little softer around the edges. She supposes she is too. Too much pasta.
“You said this would be impossible.”
“It was. Back then.”
“And now?”
“It’s still impossible, now. But not in the future. I’m…from the future.”
He shifts his eyes. His smile is grim.
“But your ship hasn’t arrived yet. You said that would take my entire lifetime.”
“Time dilation is a tricky thing…”
X.
She finishes knitting the scarf. Or rather, knits it to its logical end. The yarn ran out. That seemingly endless thread…It had surprised her to discover that the sweater was made of one continuous line, looping over and back and under itself. Taking form.

IX.
She unravels.

XIV.
She opens a package and finds a tiny, potted cactus. It’s from Tony. He’s roadtripping across the country with son.
“C. Gigantea from what was once Arizona State. It takes 75 years to grow a side arm.”
It is a small and prickly nugget. It tears through the tissue paper.

XII.
Maybe he was a figment of her imagination.
She sits in her armchair, needles in hand, watching the dusty couch, its indented cushion. Maybe it is the phantasm of her own weight she sees. Or maybe it is like a ripple in the water. Maybe in another time, he is sitting there, and she sees only the frozen reverberation of his existence, like pausing on a single frame of film. Maybe he moves too quickly to be perceived – the Wink of an Eye.

XIII.
At her retirement they give her a watch and a cake. A fruit cake. She notices for the first time that their faces are different, and yet the coworkers in her department have remained the same age: fresh-faced graduates, faces so plump that the strain does not show around their smiles. Retirement, they muse, must be…awesome.
They pat her on the shoulder or back and she feels like a statue, groped and greased over thousands of years by thousands of hands.
“Such a nice lady,” they sigh, and take pictures.

XV.
She sits in her armchair, unravelling. The needles lie on the table and yet she feels them in her fingers. On the finger a ring: it shimmers dully like a star behind a cloud, traveling across the sky. A star that has lived a million years. Maybe it is dead, and we see only the dying burst. Beside the needles rests the framed photograph, fading in the sunlight.
The television screen blinks its eye, searches for her face.
“An incoming transmission,” it coughs.
She nods, stiffly, then hears a shuffling static, an image warps into place.
“Hello...is this...Marla...?”
A living photograph.
“It is.”

Grant

An Italian Sonnet

The stubble only stuttering across
Your (sadly) uncleft chin. The mesa of a
Mole upon your neck, the mark of a lover
Surrendered to the beast. Your eyes agloss

With eager fear, transfixed on the horizon
Still. The net upon your skin, it sears
You to the bone. Legs thrash as death comes near.
Head pressed against the alter of my thighs,

You plead for your release, gripping ankles.
A chortled frenzy rises from between
Your grinding teeth. The apex of your horror:

A groan, contortion in weird angles.
All covered in a cold and sickened sheen,
All limp, you eye the open door.

BLAM.

[This is a "just for fun" kind of post. But the last stanza looks like a gun and that makes me giggle. Teehee!]


My grandpa won the lottery
Yesterday,
Yesterday.
My grandpa won the lottery
And I inherit it today.

I don’t need no court procedures,
I don’t need no will,
The fastest way to get my cash
Is to grab my gun kill:

Shoot down all my siblings,
My cousins big and small,
‘Cause there’s no way I’m giving
Them guys anything at all.

I’d shoot my parents too,
But they’re already dead.
Ain’t got no aunties either,
Just my Uncle Ed.

And now my pistol’s smokin’,
The barrel spinnin’ hot.
Gramps, you’ve really won today.
This bullet’s
The last
I’ve
Got.

To See Her Stand There So Still

left him breathless. She, embodiment of the law: for every action a reaction. She, the inevitable thrust of a loaded spring. She, shadow lurking in the obscurity of “NO,” green eyes aglitter. And now she, sullen woman, her silk shoes soaked asunder, crumbling at her feet. She held in one hand the amputated heel of the left; her toes gripped the tattered sole. How he wished to do the same.

He wished to speak the same words to her: don’t don’t don’t – the same as he had always spoken; and he cursed himself that he had. He cursed the unforgiving word that like a stamp pounding incessantly in red rectilinear ink had denied all, forbidden all to her. But now that it was the time for it, this single utterance was denied to him.

She did not shiver, simply pinched her eyes against the wind that lashed the hair about her face; that flew up across the water, haptic sirens urging her to the sea. But even these could not entrance her, and having failed in their seduction dissolved into a whispering howl inside the conch shell of his ear. Whirling anguish, an ocean of it – a tidal wave unseen until it reached the shore and the pink, frothy crest of it rose between his teeth.

“Lara,” he said, and it died.

This name which had once been the proclamation of assault, the instigator of action, the breath of life against the flame, died amidst the greater winds. Simply lay down, and died. Norman wished he had been wise enough to see it endangered, at the brink, somewhere among the still-living, still – Living.

Still.

She was.

“Norm,” she said, twisting the gold band free.

A moment of silence passed.

“Don’t.”

[Hey guys, sorry for the inactivity lately. I haven't had time to comment although I have been reading the posts. Thumbs up! :D]

Birds, In Rain, Sing

[So this is a bit of a non-fiction piece...I recently brought my cat to the vet, who discovered a large mammary tumour on her, possibly cancerous. My family and I were deciding if the best choice would be to put her down or not when we noticed the bird on the car. Please comment, as I'm not too sure about the end of the third stanza. Also: are the italics too obnoxious? Thanks.]



Its neck was bent back,
Calcium nubs against stretched, translucent skin,
Eyes squinting at the sun,
Legs bent in mid-stride
Like an ostrich;
Archaeopteryx
In stone.
A baby bird.

It was glued to the car.
Bird sweat, rotting meat,
Baked against the hood in the
Sweltering heat.
Tufts of down amongst
The brown mottled plumes.

I wanted to stare death in the face
With all the indifference,
Curiosity of a tourist.
I snap pictures on my phone;
Wonder if I’ll be the one to
See her undone:
A tumorous cat.


Soap-soaked foam brushes
Flap-flapping the windshield,
A rainbow in jets.
Baby bird in final flight.
Nature’s tragedies, I think,
So easily swept away
By modern man
Or a needle.

Moon Shines on Earth's Creatures

The empty glass bottle lets out a deep, hollow groan as it rolls across the hardwood, clunking each time it stumbles across a gap between the floorboards, before it clinks into a wooden crate. It rebounds slightly before settling into silence, the clear liquid within sliding across the glass and settling into a shallow pool in its belly. He looks at it with a wavering, bloodshot eye that stretches impossibly large in the rounded glass, and he thinks to himself that the last drips are 80% saliva or something ridiculous like that. Then he thinks of the glass bottle, stretched into being by a man’s breath, how those last drips are like the inevitable spittle inside a balloon, and this amuses him. He smiles a yellow smile, too tired to laugh, wheezing and sputtering.

Oh God, he groans. Even just trying to laugh makes him feel like vomiting; he can hear the liquids in his stomach gurgling with every shake. He rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling. Every crack of it familiar, every crooked line and seam of hardwood like the wrinkles on his face, or the way the water used to trickle down her skin over her round breasts and buttocks, over her closed eyelids, streaming off her nipples like young men diving over cliff sides, naked. And the wood is naked too, the paint peeling in all directions, spreading from that jagged hole in the roof where the rain falls through, clinging to the splintered wood before dropping onto his upturned face. He closes his eyes and remembers the feeling, the cool splash on hot, steaming flesh; the deep, satisfying huffs and the hay clinging to red, sweaty cheeks.

He opens his eyes and the sky is clear, a dark purple splashed with diamonds, cool and crisp. They shine on the glassy surface of his eyes, dazzling him, as if he were a cartoon character knocked silly. His head spins and reverberates. She is twirling him in a dance.

He feels flat, suddenly aware of the floor along his spine, lifting him like an upturned palm, offering him to the gods. He thinks of how he can see so many stars from such a small hole in the ceiling, a pinprick of the universe. And he sees the moon, a white spectre across the sky, gazing down serenely. Fuck the moon. Fuck the sky and fuck everything in it. And yet he feels still, here, cradled in a pocket of time, as if the world has stopped for this one moment. What if everyone else left in the world is lying down as he is, drunk with despair, contemplating the minutes slipping between their fingers? He feels secure in his aloneness, that others are also alone and waiting, somewhere far removed. An attic. A locked bathroom, in the bathtub, curtain drawn. Little buried ants, praying never to be found. He prays never to be found, but he knows she is looking for him already. Can she find him, here? Of course she can. She will.

He lies like that, pondering aimlessly in all directions, lost in a world without time. That was always his problem, she had told him. Too many "what ifs," nothing concrete and serious. He'd argued that there was nothing dangerous about hypotheticals, and dared her to try one, just for fun.

“If you ever died,” she had said, sitting in a coffee shop, swirling a creamy vortex thoughtfully with a stir stick, “I think I would kill myself."

"So would I," he said, and placed his hand on hers, tenderly. "Wanna keep it simple and go double?"

Laughter and flailing smack.

"You're a jackass."

But there was a twinkle in her eye.

He's too drunk to stop smiling. Maybe it's the irony, or the tears in his eyes, or maybe it's just the memory of her. Maybe it's a sob and maybe it's a drunken hiccup. He can't decide.

All he knows is that he dreads being found by her, like a boy hiding under the bed, waiting for the feet to appear, for the cover to be ripped up and the monstrous face to surge under. He rolls to his side, looks down over the edge of the hayloft, and stares at the barn's door, barred shut. Imagines her furiously pounding the door, seething. But it is too late. There's no turning back now.

He lurches up into a sitting position and immediately regrets it. His head is like a wrecking ball, dense and heavy, dropping deep and low, swinging high into the air. He thinks he might fall onto his back like a man shot through the chest until he realizes that he reason he feels he is spinning is because he is. He is sitting up, swaying his body around and around, drunkenly acting out his inner state of mind. He tries to climb onto his feet, brace himself against the angled roof, but he stumbles onto his ass. Notices the shotgun beside him.

The sight of it makes his already-pounding heart leap up harder into his throat, makes him feel like vomiting again. He had forgotten about that shotgun, didn’t want to remember it, but he knows the ultimate purpose of it being here. He just needed a drink, first. Or two. Closing his eyes, he lets his body sway on an internal ocean of booze. Tries hard not to imagine bloody pulp and crushed eggshells sneezed against the wood wall, but it all comes back to this conclusion.

He wishes he could just get on with it. But there is something about those last living moments that makes him want to enjoy himself, one last time, like a soldier drunkenly swinging a girl around, his money gambled gone, unable to look into those desperate eyes as they fuck for fuck’s sake because they both know this could be the last human touch they ever have and every moan is anguish. The complete abandonment of impending death. Only it's much more miserable alone.

But he won't be alone, he reminds himself. He leans back against the wall, sweating, swallows. Cradles the shotgun against his head. The cold nip of steel the last link to the physical world. Oh God, please just let it happen.

Then he hears it. The slow, ambling steps coming up to the barn, her dry, rasping voice, as if she's been crying too much. Her words are muffled groans. He quickly stands up, peers out the hole in the roof, only to catch a glimpse of her flower dress disappearing. It strikes him just how desolate the world seems outside. Quiet.

The barn door rattles. She's found him. He lifts the gun up to his shoulder, gets himself ready. As a second thought, kicks down the ladder so she can't climb up and stop him or make him lose his nerve. The sweat drips cold along his face.

Suddenly the door shatters, splinters flying from the hinges and she comes running in, screaming, her hair loose, teeth dark and bloody. Dirt and blood caked across the front of her dress, her hair, from her fingernails down her arms as she shrieks and claws wildly up at him. He clenches his eyes shut and screams.

The world is quiet outside. Two shots ring out, settle into nothingness. The moon peers through the barnyard roof, and shines on Earth’s creatures.

Social Absenteeism

I was standing in the kitchen today, thinking of how my friendships are like spiderwebs. Fragile, translucent. It's hard to tell if they really exist. And I am in the center, absolutely still, just waiting. Waiting for something to shock me awake with the violent vibration of its struggle, of its desire to live and fly free. And I am waiting to feed off that lifeforce, to nourish myself, then discard it. Keep its hollow shell in macabre company. Then I fall into a satiated trance, waiting once again, supported by that fragile network that might tear at any moment, sagging under my gluttony.

As I float there sometimes I snap awake, forget that a web exists, feel like I am hovering over that great abyss alone, clinging desperately to air. No one will approach this web, except by unfortunate accident. I live alone, in this shadowed corner. Feeling the zest of life in my veins only every long while, like an old woman waiting for death, only to be prodded to life by the sporadic family visit. Wishing they could just leave me alone, let me wither, instead of tantalizing me like this.

I watch the world around me change colours, flourish with life. Yet I just sit and wait for life to come to me.




[What, Andrea's posted on Heart Rape?! My deepest apologies for the neglect. I pledge to work harder on my writing now that school is out and hopefully I'm out of my creative rut, and can read all of your posts for inspiration! Yay! Expect a flood of comments soon.
On another note: I now have as many posts as the FAQ! Hurray!]

A Heart Rapist's Limerick

I know it sounds bad - "Heart Rapist"
But I swear we're not cruel, we're the same as
Any other Joe Shmo
Who snorts coke on the go
Or spends time with French hoes
Or births pineapples
Or anthropomorphizes robos
Or speaks "sunshine." "stop." "oh."
To the beat of bongos
Or records awkward convos
With Cyrus Pekoe
Or gets high with his bros
With philosophic lingo
Between "hmm"s, "what?"s and "woah"s
Or whose oceans of woe
Tell old lovers, "No"
Whose dog chews corpse bones
And whose dark oracles
Speak to spirits below.

Clearly "rape" is not on our playlist.


Alternate ending:
Clearly "forcible non-consensual entry of a penis into a vagina (or rectum)" is not on our playlist.

Superluminal

[My first Heart Rape post! Hurray! :D I've been working on this for a while, but I still don't feel %100 about it...I know it's a little long, but please comment! Thanks :)]



The scarf folds and coils at her feet, slowly, slowly growing; rolling hills of green, winding coils of blue, dark purple sunsets and pink sunrises. The diamond on her finger shimmers dully like a star behind a cloud, traveling across the sky. A star that has lived a million years. Maybe it is dead, and we see only the dying burst. The needles shift up and down and the landscape flutters.

Sometimes it astonishes her to think that a knit scarf is but a single thread, looped and looped again upon itself. Endlessly self-reflecting. She ponders this as it slowly rolls onto her lap. The yarn is hairy in the sunlight, like his arm stretched across the pillow, hair quavering under her breath.

There is a quiet, mellow chime from the hall clock and she sets down the knitting needles on the glass table beside her, beside the digital picture frame. In it is a young man in uniform, clutching a young woman around the waist. She clutches the armrests and hoists herself up, scuffles into the kitchen, and places a glass mug into the hot beverage dispenser; presses the touchscreen, and hot water pours out. It turns into a steaming dribble and the machine opens a latch. A tea bag falls out and into the hot water, bleeding brown and red.

It takes her a moment to regain her strength. She leans on the countertop, wheezing over the steeping tea, and wonders if she has the energy to continue knitting. She doesn't. She takes the tea and makes her way back into the living room, stiffly tips over into a chair like a falling tree and crashes down into the cushion.

"Television," she says in a quiet voice, and the television zips on.

"-say that xenopolitical affairs may worsen over the next few years. Terran forces have suffered 867 more casualties in the past 3 months, bringing the total to 12,369, and Terran Prime Minister Asaj M. Lewis says that now is the time for affirmative action."

The screen flashes to a prerecorded planetary address by the Prime Minister. He drones on in a slightly Middle Eastern lilt that Earth will not tolerate the violence of the Xertians any longer and that the time for negotiations is over. That as he speaks 10,000 human troops are approaching Xertian orbit. That we Terrans stand for peace, justice, and liberty. In solidarity we stand-"

"-to bring peace to the galaxy," she mumbles. Her lips quiver as the final fleet approaches alien territory. In sixty years her skin has become the delicate crepe of a mourning veil; her hair the dry grass of an untended grave; 10,000 young men and women have traveled 60 light years to a distant planet; and her husband’s flushed and fleshy smile has gleamed unchanging on the coffee table. She clenches the coffee mug and the ring on her finger glimmers dimly.

The television screen turns white and navy blinking text scrolls across the front.

“Incoming video call,” says a gentle woman’s voice.
“Accept.”

“One moment please,” says the television. The old woman sits still in her chair, wheezing. She has no more energy for outward excitement, or for happiness. The tea grows mild and loses its steam.

“Maddy?” asks a male voice as the television screen crackles with static. “Maddy, can you hear me?”

She takes in several shaky breaths and rasps, “Yes.” It surprises her to hear her voice, so hoarse from years of disuse. She doesn’t recognize it, the brittleness. She takes another breath as the image on the screen wavers, and then straightens itself. There is her husband, as soft and youthful as the day he left, wearing that same uniform. A living memory. Other men walk past behind him.

“Oh—” he stutters. A smile shivers on his lips. “You look so…you look great, Maddy.”

She takes a deep breath. “Thanks.”

“How long has it been down there?”

“Sixty…sixty…years.”

Her husband’s face pinches and tears well up in his eyes. He sniffles loudly.

“Oh god, Maddy.”

For a moment she watches him sob, his shoulders heaving up and down. Hot tears rise in her eyes and trickle down the ravines of her face. She grips the mug.

“It feels like…” he whispers, “it feels like two years, maybe five.”

“It feels like yesterday,” she says, and picks up the photograph.

“Do you…do you have any…children? A husband?” he chokes. He looks into her living room, sparse and bleak – an armchair, a loveseat, the single photograph in her hand.

“No,” she says, caressing the frame. She cannot look at the living thing. It trembles in her hand. “I waited for you.”

His eyes soften and he smiles a brief, solemn smile. Then he clenches his teeth. “You know I can’t come back. When I do you’ll…I told you not to waste your life.”

She thinks of him saying this, the day the photograph was taken. She thinks of the feel of his arms around her waist, his chest hot against her cheek, his cheek pressed against the top of her head, his hot tears on her scalp as they clung desperately for eternity, for a moment. How that moment was all the life she had, all the life she wished for. She could not forsake it.

She looked up at the screen and looked into his eyes.

“It was worth it.”

[Superluminal is in reference to relativistic travel as it happened in Ender's Game and Left Hand of Darkness, but I don't know if that really came across...basically a person travelling through space at lightspeed ages much slower than someone on Earth.]