January 2012
11 posts
1 tag
New Year's Part II - 2012
Hey y’all,
Happy New Year’s! I was going to hold off this announcement until January 31st, the anniversary of a post called “Fire,” which I consider to be my first swing at consistent creative writing for this blog/for myself, but I am impatient.
I’ve been fooling myself for too long. Starting now, I’m going to stop sharing and reading as much. The plan is to...
December 2011
46 posts
2 tags
New Year's Part I - 2011
Because I don’t believe I’ll change any more next year than in any other year, I have no resolutions to make other than “Don’t kill myself,” which will probably be pretty easy to keep. However, I do find that I’ve been especially melancholic for a long while now.
regret has hands wringing against each other. my head like a rag between. its one hand is a desire...
The Wilhelm Scream
I don’t know about my dreams I don’t know about my dreams any more All I know is I’m Falling, Falling, Falling Might as well fall in
I don’t know about my love I don’t know about my love any more All I know is I’m turning, turning, turning Might as well turn in Might as well turn in
- by James Blake / James Litherland
1 tag
I suppose that laying still should hurt this much; that emptiness can crush; that this, here, now, the edge of the end is an illusion; and that illusions and stray lights have killed before.
I’m too afraid to take the easy way out; though the weight has been twisting my skin for so long. I’ll risk the cliches for some answers.
6 tags
Solid Ground, and the Malleability Thereof
As always, I wake tying a rope, blood red, to the morning post. And as I walk, neck clutched in the day’s crawl, my shadow sprints ahead and secures the rope, red, to my bedpost, sturdy in root as Mesopotamian pillars. And, as with months, and years, tomorrow seems already to have tautened the rope, bled, between days and sealed my bygones into neat leather pouches (the moon and sun inching...
Blasphemy!
Could it not be? All of this, one star (ours) and a million mirrors?
2 tags
I’m finding that I’m not much of a morning person. Or a daytime person for that matter. Maybe it’s my windows, but sunlight is stale and overbearing. I’m thinking I only appreciate sunlight in pieces. Like, when cut and softened by the horizon. Or as flecks in the night sky - (not the usual blinking/moving ones, but the more distant, fate-tangled ones). Or when carefully...
3 tags
There came a point when I began to wonder if I am defined less by what I know than what I want to know; and, of what I want to know, if I am less the foreign worlds I want to explore and record on fresh paper than the forgotten glances and heart palpitations I want so desperately to remember again.
O, how the world spins on mood swings.
She asked me, Is it wrong to love the death of trees? To admire their wither, the winter. Dance in dead leaves and nipped ice?
I said, Death is not felt. There is nothing to wrong, only the craven to offend.
4 tags
Pompeii
I reached for your hand. So far. I swear, my fingers grazed the back of your shoulder. And we can stay like that forever, as we’ve always been, now that time is freed from the clock’s grip, from his clutching hands, tearing, tearing, tearing. Well I’ve been torn open, and though she hides behind grey eyes, the moon fires...
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Two things surprised me: 1. how easy it was to escape all of this and disappear. (I turned off my phone, and when I boarded the plane I might as well have been in India or France. Or even, I could’ve gone to a 7-11, or anyplace aside from home or school, and it would’ve made no difference. I’d be gone. And no one was chasing after me; even if someone did, they wouldn’t know...
1 tag
Stop the Presses! [Extension to what I wrote...
I realized late last night that I am much more comfortable labeling myself as a “student/writer” than just a writer. I would say that I’m an “aspiring writer” but honestly I’m not aspiring to be my definition of a writer. I’ve kind of already loosened it and defined it as what I’m doing right now. Still, I’ll always be a...
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I left a plate of cookies for Santa Claus. He said they were too hard on his teeth. When I told her the news, my sister was devastated.
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Watching bits of dust swim in morning sunlight (they look like stars’ travel) and scribing the picture down, I realize how clunky words can be.
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Like paper burnt black I am collapsing Like acid between bones I am collapsing Like father’s tobacco ash
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On "Writer"
Because I still feel a sort of hesitancy whenever I even think about calling myself one, here is more writing on the term “writer”!
I think that before the internet and blogging were things, the term “writer” was more closely associated with professional occupation; you know, someone who writes for a living and makes money and stuff, or at least tries to make money with...
4 tags
Customer Service
Excuse me, but I am new to this. Could you tell me: What kind of gift do I get for a ghost? An empty box? Or an open fire? What if I packaged my heart? Could she, would she smile?
4 tags
When the sun was gone but the last of his light was still slipping away, the sprites came to life across the town. Please, comfort me, sleepy jungle.
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How are you?
(How r u?)
((h w e ?))
1 tag
Hopelessness is like a black sheet over my head, gripping my skull. Hopelessness is like my hair.
1 tag
The Spider, the Frog, and the Turtle
Once upon a time there was a spider, a frog, and a turtle. And they were all caught up in a big storm.
The spider could build anything in the world with his web. So he spun a roof to shield him from the storm. But the rains grew too heavy and the spider’s web could not withstand the water’s peltings much longer. The spider was washed away.
The spider caught the leg of a frog and said...
God is always a minute late with the miracles.
3 tags
I suppose I’m a stubborn kind of stupid. My arms are shaking and my throat on fire. I’d drop the waterworn woodcuts if it wasn’t for February and a cigarette smoke leash.
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The Sand
The sand on the beach liked to nibble at my soles. When I fell to my knees, I could feel the skin on my shins sinking, pulled by the shore. The muscle and bones licking the seashells.
And while my legs were to the sand, my arms were to the wind. I could feel the sea drawing them in.
When I turned around I could see the stars break in your eyes. Like they did in mine.
We were there a long time....
3 tags
The Pond
The pond was roughly five shoots of bamboo deep. Or maybe half of a bamboo shoot deep. Depends on the shoot of bamboo and the deepness.
The pond held clear water and one fish. The fish was black as sleep, and her tail a stub of inkstone; when she swam, her fins were ink’s billow. The ink seemed to disappear at the water’s surface. Maybe leaking into the air as invisible smoke. The...
2 tags
1 tag
Writing Quirks
1. Rhetorical Questions: My most recent English teacher said that rhetorical questions are a pet peeve of his. He thinks of them as a “lazy form of writing.” I suppose that makes sense. Apparently, you can often reword, or de-question-fy, a rhetorical question and it will sound better, stronger, and so forth. (Sorry, no examples off the top of my head.) I still use rhetorical...
2 tags
“Humor is the ovum of dissent.”
– Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
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Adamana
I live in a ghost town. Been here since the town was settled. But then I grew sick and scared the mice from even the cheese traps. After the news of my illness found its way into the water well, and then from there to the lemonade and butter biscuits on dinner tables, I first saw the neighbors leave. Without the kids, the schoolteachers left. Then the sheriff, for his wife was a schoolteacher....
3 tags
I’ve been seeing the term thrown around a lot. My sister even called me it. But from what I am understanding a writer to be, I am not a writer. The words I shove together are not pockets of air I need to breathe. I do not write to pace a heartbeat; or to bleed a heart. I do not write whenever I can, like it’s effortless; when I write I sit down and force it; I vomit language from one...
1 tag
Minerva [in three parts]
I. This girl.
II. See. The fireflies she set free.
III. How many souls she must have.
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I’m shining bright lights into my eyes. I want to wake up.
Instead of reading today, I spent a few hours laying still while waves of depression washed my back. I laid still, eating seafoam and beating myself up for being an absolutely awful person (I’m bad. I’m very bad. I can’t even make friends with myself). The assurance that these thoughts have buried me countless times before is only barely comforting.
I’m too jaded to read a...
4 tags
Minerva
She faced a wall with television eyes. I was told that the eyes are the windows of the soul. But I couldn’t make sure of that until I had grown tall enough to peek above the bathroom sink and its silver fixings. I know I’ve stopped growing since.
This girl, though. She used to glow. Even though her jaw has frozen, I can tell her words are light with snowdust, they hold bath-fulls of...
5 tags
Mirror
Down the hall, a mirror sits alone.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?
And a casket cracks. The mirror snaps. And I am turned to face a new one. In the mirror, a woman stands behind me. Her hair is wet drapes over her face, the river styx.
Mirror, mirror, in the sea, is no one else here with me?
The mirror buckles. And then swings back. I slip away. Like a...
5 tags
0012/0011
I think I write and think too much about the moon (my life isn’t so crazy and I don’t go out much) but for the past few nights the moon has been absolutely amazing. Fuller and brighter than I’ve ever noticed. I wonder if it’s the sky, or my eye that has changed.
She is the sun, but not at all. A flashlight? She is a piece of the sun, broken off, rogue, brushed steel. I bet...
5 tags
About Me
I am a terrible person. A total narcissist and utter fool. The solicitous slot machine spewing out “I’m sorry’s” and “I-want-to’s” into puddles on warped-wood flooring. A hollowed shell of ambition. The bane of productivity and sociability. A blindfolded humanitarian, impoverished and misguided. The man suited up under stars; to wonder which is the true truth.
I enjoy listening to jazz music...
Magicians
savvystrider:
It’s awesome when I tell people that sometimes I get anxious or depressed and they say, “Don’t worry!” or “Don’t be sad!” It’s like, wow, thanks for curing me, I had no idea it would be that easy. Cure AIDS and bone cancer with your magical vocal chords instead of wasting your precious gift on me.
3 tags
I never grew out of having imaginary friends. I couldn’t kill them. It was just that my family moved away to a new town, so we grew apart, naturally. But now we’ve grown and travelled, and sometimes we bump into one another. Most of the time it’s pretty awkward. Especially with the girls; to see one of them, find both how she’s changed and not changed, and fall in love with...
Of course, I love life. Have you heard of Stockholm Syndrome?
December,
leonik:
Wake me up.
I’ve been stuck sleepy and cold. Silent and static like muted television snow. Last night tasted like peppermint toothpicks, secrets dripped and dried pretty like oil stains after rain. Dozed off and dreamt of my father crying by the sink, back so bent it was all I could do to keep from counting his beat up bones. I opened my eyes and winter was here.
I lose hours almost as...
2 tags
2nd Dec 2011
I’ve found myself in the sea, again. Sorry. How many times has it been now? Whenever I’m out of ideas about the sky or time or anything else, I’m tossed back into the ocean to either drown or draw a way out. Or both. Because I lean on waves to carry me. And the moon to hold my head above the water. But I’m tossed back and wading so often, it must bore you to read. I’m...
I’ve heard that some people like to turn to religion toward the end of their lives. So some people, who didn’t believe in anything for most of their lives, just suddenly start believing in an afterlife. Isn’t that like believing in gravity for most of your life but then later trying to convince yourself that it doesn’t exist when you’re already freefalling halfway...