LOOKING EAST

The thousand minarets of Istanbul

Stand poised against the sky

Like pencils sketching the invisible lines

Of a nation with no boundaries.

A thousand fingers pointing proudly

Proclaiming a unity

Demanding that the West wait

Just a little longer.

A thousand coffee stained needles

Working the hair strewn carpets

With threads of red and worn gold

Into suns, and stars, and moons.

A thousand gilded spears

Brandished at the heavens

Upheld by hands clenched into fists

Pillars of unshakable faith.

A thousand minarets

A thousand endless hymns

Winding prayers and long lost dreams

Trail in the eastward wind.

The Joker and the Thief

The key, to creating good comedy, Terry discovered, was to take something very common, that everyone is familiar with, and to introduce a fantastic element. It usually, creates a situation that is laughable. If you’re very good, the situation is hilarious. If you're the very very good, you make people shoot the drink they bought to keep them fresh during the whole show right out their noses. Any better than that and you start making people do things that will embarrass them.

The chief difference between him and most comics was that Terry was his own audience. The secondary difference was that his shows were of the unorthodox variety. In fact, the shows were of the never before seen variety.

He had tried the daunting standup comedy. He tried making people embarrass themselves, or at least shoot milk out of their noses, by telling that the week prior; he was in the garden with his daughter raking the leaves. After he'd finished his pile, his daughter jump into the pile only to step on the rake and make the handle shoot up into his crotch. It didn't work. He didn't have the talent for it. When he told that joke, for instance, he actually said crotch instead of opting one of the funnier substitutes like balls, nuts or the baby twins. Another problem with his routine was that he had a uncommon sense of humor. What made him laugh was other people's pain. The rake to the baby twins being one example. Being robbed being another example. Hearing about people being robbed, did not generally make people laugh. Terry, at the expense of his stand up career, did not realize that what made him laugh did not make others laugh. So, he had to find another way to make a living.

He did. Other than having a morbid sense of humor, and a crippling lack of showmanship talents, what set Terry apart, was that he had a rather fantastic ability. He could, at will, erase memories from his mind. He had first manifested it in his early teen years. His parents, having stayed married despite not wanting to be, for the sake of their son, had built up so much resentment in thirteen years that they could no longer be discreet. They would yell in the house and he would naturally, find it unbearable. He would then dream of it. That would be worse. But, he found that if he focused, he could suppress his dreams. It was hardly a stretch from their to suppress memories. He could never explain his secret, but he knew how to control the ability. He got better and better and eventually, he could erase more precisely. He could forget details. He could forget faces if he wanted to.

With the formula in mind, that adding a fantastic element to a common situation equaled success, he set out to make a living. He was his own common situation; a young man, plain, unfunny, with no particular talents, living in Montreal in a pitiful situation. His ability was the fantastic element. The next thing was how to put the two together to create a punch line. According to Terry, what stops most people from stealing, is their conscience. They cannot live knowing that they hurt this person or another. His ability was a loophole. He didn't have to know who he robbed from after he robbed them. He figured then, that he could pose as a common person, who no one would suspect. He would earn a living. And the best park, the true punch line, was that the idea he could do this, tickled his sense of humor like the most delicate touch of a feather. It made him, really, embarrass himself.

Hyperventilation Defence Mechanisms

(I litterally wrote about 10 pieces and had to decide which to post.
I posted the rest of them on my blog
iamabearonaboat.blogspot.com
Go check there. This one is called Hyperventilation Defence Mechanisms)

I inhale
I lift my left hand to my face
I examine it
All the cracks in my skins
A palmreader's dream
I exhale
I run my fingers
Up and down my left hand
Letting my index into
The dents in my palm
I inhale
I flip my left over
Staring at my fingertips
Making my way down to my wrist
I exhale
My right index and middle fingers
Search for a pulse in
My wrist
I inhale
I take the blade
I won't regret this
I exhale
One thin strip
The room spins
I inhale
What have I done?
I exhale
The dents in my palm deepen
I inhale/I exhale What
I inhale/I exhale Have
I inhale/I exhale I
I inhale/I exhale Done?
I inhale
I exhale
I exhale
I exhale
I inhale
I exhale
I exhale
I exhale
Exhale
Exhale
EXHALE
EXHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALE






The quiet falls where
The quickened breaths
Once claimed as theirs

My tongue hits my pallette
As my body hits the floor

The silence I've always wanted.


shh.

forgotten nevers

Never again
but oh
just once
just once more

Your hands
don't touch me!
but I miss them
their warmth

Your voice
your laughter
I miss the music they were to my ears
Desert soundscape without that liquid music noise

But I don't
Don't want you
Don't need you
Don't miss you
Don't even
think of you
Not
lying
Not lying alone
in bed
remembering how you lay beside me
how I fell
fell asleep in your arms
and woke up with them still around me
your caressing hands
No, no I don't remember that
Don't imagine that
As I fall asleep
don't hope to dream of...
No
not you
You are never in my thoughts
or dreams or secret, denied imaginings

My lips
have forgotten
your name
your taste
My skin has forgotten the feel of yours
My eyes don't see you in every passing stranger
hoping they'll turn around-into you

I don't miss you
no
not at all

Never
never ever again
but oh
just once
just once more

Bread and Butter

He briefly considers putting a hand on my back, but decides instead to rest against the table. "Now don't worry," he says, his voice calming, and I suppose it should be, as his job is to master the skill of taking rebellious kids and furious parents down a notch, "Take all the time you want. No matter what, your mom and dad will understand, and still love you just as much as they do now." He pushes the blue pen to my fingers. "But we do need you to write down the name, whichever one you want, of the person you want to live with."

Then he pats my back, whispers that yes, they are in the room, but they are not looking, and they are not judging, and it's okay. He steps away, and I sit at the table, alone.

I have a memory, fading and distant, but very much alive. I am seven years old, strolling down the street, in new size three sneakers. They light up when I put my foot down and make a silly sound when it comes up. My father walks on my left, my mother on my right. I trip. They catch me, simultaneously. I am overwhelmed with the time, the attention, the care that they lather on me. I decide right then and there that no shoes of any sort with give me the support I have from them.

Someone coughs behind me.
Nervous shifting.
The memory disappears entirely.

It is as unrealistic as my belief in family values. It belongs to a talented screenwriter who wrote it for the film I saw last Thursday. I have no cherished memories, have hidden away little or no memories at all, in fact. I was alone. And I am alone. Alone. Three other people in the room, two of which raised me, and I still feel alone. And I like it. And I wish I was two years older, wish it was legal to be alone. Wish this day was over, wish this feeling of alone could go on forever. I wish this dotted line could remain untainted, this cap on the blue pen immovable. I stare at the line, the parentheses underneath it (name of chosen guardian)

More nervous movement.

Each moment I spend staring is a moment more painful for them. Good, I decide. Decide this is payback for all less-than-friendly atmospheres I’ve been subjected to these past five years. Let them wait. I grip the pen harder, imagine it bursting and witnessing the ink form its own letters and name, leaving me innocent in this choice. Choice. I wonder how much of this choice is mine, wonder what other thoughts have managed to snake into my mind, what other materialistic goods or whispered lies have poisoned my judgement. Somewhere in the back of my mind I see my future, foggy but transparent: It is full of hardships and broken promises. More broken promises, and I cringe at the mere thought of more betrayal. Can't handle more of this pain, and can only blame myself for making this particular moment excruciatingly long. I pause, consider their feelings. For once.

Consider how this feels for them, consider that they, in their own minds, on their own time, are rattling through every mistake, every regret they have made throughout my sixteen years. No matter my decision, they will lose sleep tonight. Both of them.

And the decision is clear.
Clear as day and clear as night.

In this one moment of clarity, the image of a sobbing figure on an otherwise empty king-size bed floats into my mind. I do not understand how I had ever doubted myself. I can hear the sniffles, can hear the pain, can't stand to picture it, know I am, and always will be, willing to throw myself at their side. I cannot write any name other than theirs, I cannot enter adulthood with the other, do not, and certainly will never desire to do so. I scribble the name and it's never looked so foreign and put the pen down and he walks over to me and pats me on my back again. He kneels down, asks me if I'm okay, voice genuine, asks me if I'm sure. I'm sure. "I'm sure." It's time, and was time long ago, to leave this broken family behind and start anew. Because I'm not ready to be completely alone quite yet, nor do I want to be parted. But I am ready for a new beginning, a home life without doubt and regret and betrayal. I am craving new life.

He picks up the paper and I turn my chair around, looking at the two adults, separate, both physically and emotionally. More emotionally apart than I've ever seen them. Through the years they've shared so much, and now, finally, it comes to a crashing, flaming car-wreck of an end. The deed is done, and they will now, from this moment, never share anything ever again.

He reads out the name, and their eyes grow wide. My mother can barely look at me, only opens and closes her mouth, staring at her hands. Stares at them as though they're stained with blood, perhaps stained with the ashes of every last moment between us she let wither away. I have betrayed her, I know, and hope that in time, with time, she will forgive me. Not for my soul or sake, but for hers.

My father now looks older than I've ever seen him. He blinks, as though he's uncertain as to what was just said, stares at the back of the paper, which now has his name scribbled furiously on the other side. He looks at me. His eyes wide at first, then closing slightly, affectionately, as though the stranger by his side had just given birth to me all over again.

He does not cry.

All is well.

Addiction

Pushing her way through the sweaty, crowded, too-bright high school gym, past booths she’d seen at the last conference and brightly coloured banners advertising the latest trend in God only knew what, she sniffed appreciatively at the air. The new smells were electrifying – every part of the room had a slightly different scent of its own, every person had a unique blend of sweat and perfume and hair and skin products, every conference had a distinct and completely new odour. Someone passed by her in a cloud of something sickeningly floral, and she pressed her hand against her turning stomach and grinned.

She milled about for hours, allowing herself to be tossed around by the crowd until the colour combinations got boring and she could quote the hawkers’ lines back to them perfectly. “Designed with the chemistry of the stars in mind,” she murmured to herself as she made her gradual way to the exit, “to help maintain a healthy balance between your aura and Mother Nature’s.” A vaguely purple crystal tinkled against the eyelet of her skirt pocket as if in response to her words, and she gave an inward shudder of delight at the new little sound.

The door loomed ahead of her, big and solid with peeling red paint and a drooping, unlit “EXIT” sign perched precariously above it. She sighed and wondered when this sight had become so standard in schools that it ceased to provoke even the slightest reaction in her normally sensitive body. Pushed it open, breath catching with pleasure as it gave its own distinctive creak, a few tones up from the one she’d come in by, a few tones down from the one to her bedroom at home.

Stepping out into the crisp fall air, she took a moment to savour the change in scent from inside to outside, breathing in the heady mix with relish before pulling open the crinkly blue plastic bag that had been thrust into her hands as she arrived at the conference. Leaned against the brick wall, a little disappointed when the rough pattern of it turned out to be exactly the same as that of her own high school’s walls, and began to explore the innards of the bag.

The conference guide was fascinating, although she already knew some of the information, and she closed her eyes and let her shaking hands rustle the plastic until the wash of adrenaline thinned and she could think clearly again.

The blue pen lit up, she discovered with a shudder of joy, and she clicked the light on and off, on and off, until she had exhausted every ounce of pleasure from it.

The lanyard was disappointingly nondescript, a discovery so commonplace that she didn’t even get a rush from the plainness of it. Annoyed, she thrust it back into the bag and dug around for the free samples.

A coupon for free yoga lessons, saying nothing she didn’t know. A cellophane-wrapped stick of incense – boringly jasmine – afforded the brief pleasure of the unwrapping. A packet of matcha tea with the usual characters demarcating its origins was useful only for its odd shade of green. She threw the bag down in disgust and pulled her lighter from her pocket. It was, she realized, almost a week old and even its spiderweb network of cracks from when she had dropped it two days previously had lost its ability to quicken her pulse.

Scrambling angrily in her other pocket for her pack of cigarettes, she swore in Cantonese, her newest language acquisition. The jolt of pleasure from the words calmed her down a little, and she pulled a cigarette out of the pack without spilling the others, sending a thrill up her spine at the unprecedented feat of coordination. Placed the thin white stick in her mouth, orange end loosely clamped between her lips, and flicked the lighter into flame.

Glanced down at the pack in her hand as she inhaled, pausing to take in the new chips out of her silver nail polish before reading the label. It was a fairly obscure brand, a sign of her growing desperation, and as she breathed out a stream of bluish smoke she crumpled the pack and tossed it to the ground beside the abandoned conference bag, despondent in the face of the exotic tobacco’s waning effect on her system.

Suddenly too warm, she struggled out of her sweater, leaving her bare arms to goosebump, suddenly too low to notice the cold, the ashes dribbling onto the lilac lace of her camisole, or the pinching of her jet black patent-leather shoes.

Suddenly feeling too closed in by the rough brick walls, by the peeling red door, by her slowly unravelling mind, she blindly stepped out into the street, stumbling a little, clutching her stomach, breathing in fast, short gasps, sweat beading at her temples and at the nape of her neck.

Too quick, too close, and he skidded as he slammed his foot onto the brake pedal, praying uselessly that he’d stop before he hit her, that she’d notice and dart away.

Body quaking uncontrollably, she lay in a growing scarlet pool and luxuriated in the feeling. She’d never been hit by a car before. It was so brilliantly new, so unexpected, so completely out of the ordinary, and, dying there on the street outside a high school, she had never been higher.

I Have Found

I HAVE FOUND
little beauty in this
body of mine

Every limb is a struggle to be freed
from the hosts within these cells,

Every follicle a battle
to be combed
and shaved
like unwieldy crabgrass
in the temple garden,

Every emission alien
every feature stolen.

"This flesh is
broken and unfinished,
it moves it fits and jumps--
curves like old type
with the awkward grace
of new limbs."

This is why
when brown turns to gray
the reshuffling
always
bows
before the amalgam.

Knifethrower

The curtains part dramatically. Bright red. Blood red. The lights shine, blaze, pretend they’re the sun tonight. Anything goes when you’re on stage.

The man in the velvet purple coat and tall stiff top hat bows. His coat, in the fake sunlight, sparkles. The crowd claps. A couple of people whistle. Most of them just want him to get on with it.

“May I have a volunteer?” he calls. “A volunteer to the stage please.”

Some of the youngsters, the ones who do not know why the adults let them come yet, raise their hands and desperately cry, “Pick me! Pick me!”

The man in the velvet coat laughs and smiles, twirling his waxed mustache until his cheeks are glowing cherry red. He points to a girl of nine, her blonde hair done in two loose braids by her ears. She grins and hurries onstage while the other young ones frown and hiss their jealousy.

“Thank you, thank you!” the man says. “Now, if you please,” he tells the girl, “stand right over there with your back against the wall.”

She walks to the opposite end of the stage and stands board straight against the wall, still smiling.

The man calls over his assistant, who brings him a leather bound box. The man takes it from him and opens it as dramatically as the curtains opened.

Inside are six freshly sharpened silver blades.

The crowd claps a bit louder. They begin to sit on the edge of their seats.

The man in the velvet coat takes one of the knives from its casing and holds it up to the audience in a rather showy manner. Whetting their appetite with whetted blades. Tension spins between the seats in the crowd. A web of apprehension. No one can move. Except the girl with the braids, who smiles even wider, excited into fidgeting.

Schwwwzing!

The knife the man throws shaves the peach fuzz off her earlobe. She is struck into absolute stillness, body rigidly rigid – eyebrows, dual drawn bowstrings over her O-eyes.

The audience lets out a breath. The tension builds once more, quicker this time. They have all unconsciously been pulled to the edge of their seats.

The man takes another knife. The theater is utterly silent

The girl looks at him with her wide eyes sending out the words, What are you doing? I didn’t sign up for this! But the man ignores her, of course.

Schwwwzing!

The second knife lands, this time by her right hand.

The audience groans, shifts, shuffles.

Third knife thrown. Stabs the wall by her left side. Collective exhale.

Fourth knife thrown. Stabs the wall inside her thighs. Collective inhale.

Fifth knife thrown. Stabs the wall by her other ear. Collective shouts of frustration. Some stand up to yell like primitive beings, calling, craving blood.

The man in the velvet coat takes out the final knife. Everyone sits. Is still. Is quiet. People know this is it. The moment they’ve been waiting for. The moment that will make up for the five teasing knives. It has to be.

The girl has thin tears staining her cheeks by now. She looks wildly around, betrayed by the man, betrayed by the audience, betrayed by her own enthusiasm. The knives pin her in place, promises of what’s to come.

The man holds the knife between his two hands, shining it in the false stage suns until it blinds the audience. He waits. He smiles. Silver fillings show.

And he throws it.

Schwwwzing.

The punctuated hit thudding with deadly finality. The silence choking the air. The lights too bright to see.

Then a breath, a heartbeat. The girl opens her eyes and looks up, sees the last knife stabbed into the infinitesimal space just above her head. She exhales loudly.

The audience, exhales loudly as well. With much less relief than the girl, however. They grumble, push themselves back in their chairs, become aware of the individuals in their collective mass once more in order to find someone to complain to.

The man in the velvet coat claps for the girl as he walks forward, inciting the people in the audience to half-heartedly slap their hands together a couple of times as well.

“Thank you, thank you!” he tells her, smiling silver broadly. He reaches forward and takes her hand, drawing the girl out of her nest of knives. She has to rip a few hairs out of the top of her head where the blade stuck them into the wall.

When she’s found her seat, the man thanks the audience as well for a fantastic turnout, and hopes aloud, as everyone shuffles and collects their belongings in order to exit the theater, that they will all come back again.

Which he knows for a fact they will. Because at some point the tables will turn. At some point his aim will be off. At some point one less pair of eyes will sparkle in the neon sunlight.

And he knows that they wouldn’t miss that possibility for the world.

Days

Monday: Marta and Jordano
Tuesday: Bernard
Wednesday: Jessica
Thursday: Tabia and Davina
Friday: Emlyn and Max
Saturday: Mike and Audrey
Sunday: Charles and Andrea

Getting Started

->You can post anything as long or as short as you want for your date, about any subject, any theme.
->Optional assignments will be posted Saturday Mornings for the arriving week.
->When you post your piece, please tag your name, so as it becomes easier to divide our work.
->Adult content is on, so don't shy away from profanities.
->Try not to use the tags for anything else, I think we can all imagine the tagging tool clogging up the sidebar if all of us started using multiple ones.
->Take one day, and stick to it. Do not post on other days.