Going Nuts

(Hey guys. Just writing a few choice lines that I liked.)

I've been given four screws and an ultimatum.
I still don't know where they belong.

Thinking ahead is for uh... the...uhh...

Competitors? Compredators.

A nice gesture from a jester.

These rings never fit my fingers, but they bound my pages well enough.

Oh, what? Yes, thank you. I've been meaning to acknowledge that.

Strangers can be quite normal.

I always regard silence as a stamp of approval.

Murder

I realize what day it is as soon as I wake up. I dread it already.

My eyes are still closed shut but I feel the morning light burning white through my eyelids. I’m usually awake at this hour, but sleep has only slightly pulled its soft wings apart. I can still feel their soft load weighing down on me, holding me tight against the bed like a soft push, a second gravity.

The kids will be up soon. Maybe they are awake already. How long before they realize? Before they come crashing into my room? I’d rather they find out on their own, my surprise will be easier to fake that way. Maybe they won’t even notice.

Please, make it last a little longer. The sheets throw back my sleep-warmth at me, pack me in tight like the silken cocoon of some exotic caterpillar. Maybe I will emerge with wings, fly away to some inconsequential place.

The day ahead keeps nagging at me from the back of my brain. The long drive to their father’s new place. The kids look forward to seeing him again. I’m going to have to pretend to be mildly happy. I sense a vague stirring of nausea in the pit of my stomach.

First I’ll have to deal with the kids this morning, about what I did. I had to do it on the same day so the kids know what happened, so the excitement of seeing their father again will make them forget about it.

Finally, I hear it: the eager thump! thump! thump! of the kids running up the stairs. Both of them. I know from the irregular cadence.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

My bedroom door bursts open. My eyes open to full blinding daylight.

The split second of calm before the storm. The time it takes them to cross the space of floor between the door and my bed. How I revel in the delicate peace of that moment.

Then comes the crash. The flood of cold air rushing under the sheets, goosebumps cover my legs. Tommy hugs both my thighs with his little arms, buried in the fleeting warmth. Alice is already sitting on my stomach, staring at me wide-eyed. Is it horror or excitement?

“MOMMY!”

Either she’s about to tell me today is the day she sees her father again, or—

“The dog is dead!”

I screw up my face in an expression of concerned surprise.

“The dog is dead?!”

Couldn’t have fooled an adult, but I think she buys it.

Yes, the dog is dead. I killed it. I killed it because I was sick of having to walk it and clean it and feed it. I killed it because their father bought it for them and I had to take care of it. I poisoned its food last night so we would find it dead this morning, no questions asked. Or not too many, anyhow. I hope they’re not too traumatized.

I should’ve killed their father instead.

FATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA

(Imagine Win Butler singing this (Arcade Fire))))))

They buried me today.
They buried me today with all the rings on my fingers,
wrapped into fists.

They buried me today.
They buried me with nails on my sides that I used for
the birdhouse in our frontlawn.

I know a ghost whose name I can't remember
and I feel guilty every night he haunts me.
But I call him what he is: a ghost,
a dead man searching for home.

I don't understand you

I'm alive! I thought it would be better to post something (finally) a little less than par rather than let another un-posted week go by.

I don’t understand you

With your whispered words

Hating

Tongues full violence

I don’t understand the way you think

And how your words affect me

They make me hate

And cry

And scream

Until one day I’ll rip my heart out

And lay it at your feet

A willing sacrifice

To counteract all your words

Mostly to free the things

Unspoken.

I hate to feel

Anything

Crying’s for the weak

It makes you weak

Until your bones turn brittle and you crumble to the floor

An ornament

For you to step over

For your decorative pleasure.

There Really Is No Other Theme

sit straight
uncross your arms
forget about your
penmanship
forget about your
broken heart

for this is
less serious
than you realize,
friend--

this is less of a
crucifixion more like the
scratching of
twig against leaf
in autumn

and the poem isn't
the blood on your hands
the poem is not the trace
the poem is holding the
leaf by its stem and
letting go

Seen Through a Window

{Hello all! I'm happy to announce that I'm taking an evening creative writing class in Bristol, which means I'm forced to cut back on all those long-winded ideas and write short, experimental exercises. I'm reminded of all those good times we had in our Marianopolis meetings! Our first homework assignment was "Seen Through a Window", like we did on the blog all those months ago. Here's what I wrote... N.B. I won't be tagging this as "away" because, although I wrote it away from home, it's not specifically about being abroad.}

*

I was interested in Don Miguel from a very young age, because Don Miguel was a writer, and that’s what I wanted to be. I was never good at sports, and my mother had always told me I was destined to become a famous man of letters.

Don Miguel wasn’t really renowned internationally, but he wrote sufficiently popular novels in an energetic, manly prose — reflected in titles like The Furious Commandante, Walking on Burning Suns, and Death and the Queen’s Gardener — to be something of a celebrity in the town where we lived. My father owned the town’s hotel. Don Miguel rented from him a small, one story guesthouse, which served as his studio.

One day — I was about probably 11 or 12 — as I was watering the flower bed of peonies that grew at the edge of the hotel gardens, I noticed that the guesthouse window was wide open. I approached and peeped inside, noticing that a peculiar odor, a kind of tangy sweetness, was mingling with the smell of the peonies. The window’s angle only offered a limited view inside: the opposite window with its curtains closed, a patch of tiled floor, a rickety chair in front of a wooden desk, a large black typewriter on the desk with spindly metallic strands holding the keys and a sheet of paper jutting out from the top, an ashtray with a cigarette still burning in it, spewing a thin plume of smoke that swirled and dissolved halfway to the ceiling.

Then, to my surprise, a naked woman walked into view. She was thin and inconceivably beautiful. It was the first time I ever saw a naked woman other than my mother. I made sure the hedge covered me and stared, hot blood thumping in my ears.

The naked woman went over to the typewriter. She took the lit cigarette, put it in her mouth, and bent down over the desk, giving me a marvelous view of her narrow backside.

I stood there, awestruck, frozen stiff. The hard, cold hose was still my hand, spurting water at the fat, fragrant peonies.

She started to type fast on the typewriter. I heard a man’s voice, imperious, from the other side of the room: “Make the dialogue more intense, guapa. Make it funny, like when I tell you terrible things and you answer with that sarcastic tone.” It was Don Miguel.

The girl typed away, sucking on her cigarette.

Soon, my mind became less crowded with the image of the woman’s naked beauty, and I realized that Don Miguel was not the author of his novels. This girl had written The Furious Commandate, Walking on Burning Suns, and Death and the Queen’s Gardener. Despite never having read any of these books, I felt cheated.

Then, it struck me that this woman was also Don Miguel’s lover, and that the faint, vaguely sickening odor that drifted out of the open window was the smell of sex.

Paint

I feel like paint.
It's a strange thing to compare yourself to,
but when I say it,
it feels true.
I cover walls of their imperfections
and with the passing of time and conversations,
crack under pressure and stillness.

I used to love to dance,
but you told me a secret,
and once you're gone,
I'll break into tiny pieces.

I gave you part of me.
Just realize that
you don't have me completely.

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

Spell

I have a secret desire to be a hipster, so I'm not going to tell you all I'm alive in italics. But I'll tell you I'm alive. The only writing of quality I've done lately has been for academic purposes, although I have a scathing epic poem that really only makes sense if you know its subject. So, without further ado, I present one of my favourite pieces. I wrote it half a lifetime ago, it seems, but it's still proof that I'm alive.

If I could conjure you, make you of my deepest desires realized?

I would give you skin as strong and beautiful as a spider’s web, covering muscles made from the most ductile steel and bones of purest diamond.

I would give you eyes made of crystallized thunderstorms and fingers as long and graceful as silverbirch trees.

I would make every hair on your body from strands of love and all your cartilage from salt-sea tears.

I would give you a personality as rich and sweet and exotic and many-layered as raspberry ginger cheesecake with mint sprigs and a cocoa crust.

I would give you a voice as smooth and deep as dark chocolate melting slowly over a low flame and a smile made from three hundred half-burned candles; it would light up your eyes in a way that shamed the very stars and broke your face into a thousand perfect fragments.

I would give you a will of indomitable, steadfast silver and a heart of soft, resilient gold.

I would distil into you the best qualities of every myth that I love; the most tragic flaw of the most tragic hero I would lightly dust over your consciousness to avoid the jinx of desiring Perfection.

Winter comes around again

and I am left scribbling on the bus,
stuffing poems into cracks
between two walls
of academic sound.

What of the city keeps me pent
like water suspended before rain?
Is it the sky closed by the building-line,
the absence of marshwind through my heart--
the certitude of movement
that renders it boring and
unworthy of a thought?
But every snow piles upon me like
another failed downpour--
another reason to keep rewriting,
if only to warm up the clouds
for the flood.


It's been a rough time, lately. Too much to think about, future-wise, and too little time for scribblings. It'll get better, right? I hope, anyway.