( A very long tale of the Hex )Persona of the Moment: Erron |
i want someone to make love with me
in the dark
while i explore their face with my hands
and we whisper all the nights
we were alone
in those days
before we knew what
true love was
and we pour it out in the darkness
between our bodies
and crush them away with our skin
replacing them with
the memories of our touch and scent
i want to heal with my kisses
and move souls with my tears
let my voice guide to ecstasy
and my eyes hold revelations
Persona of the Moment: Feyron Current Auditory Hallucination: Moby - God Moving Over The Face of the Waters |
Main Terms & Character Glossary
( All The World's A Stage )
...to be continued...
x-posted to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) omphaloscosmos
Persona of the Moment: Hex Current Auditory Hallucination: CPI - You, My Mirror (Part 2) |
I imagine that love grows up and down like trees with parts seen and unseen
I imagine all our stories that hide in the dirt between us
I imagine all our stories that only the clouds can see
Sometimes I'm a hanged man
And nine days I'll wait
For the runes
Hidden in
your branches
to come within
my reach
Hoping the
ravens bring
you back to me
Piece by piece
I've never been
much of a climber
I just tend to my orchards
I watch buds bloom, and the fruit grow
I watch them tumble to the ground and collect those tiny seeds
I watch the leaves fall away, like papery tears the colour of fire
I watch the branches become bare as if dead, but I know the truth about growth
Persona of the Moment: Erron Current Auditory Hallucination: Don't Dream It's Over - Sixpence None The Richer/Crowded House |
Big Important Note: This is the last introductory installment on the Omphalos IRL fanfic cosmos. After this, any other stories I write about the Cillian Mission will not have tediously long explanations of the characters appearances and powers, nor will I explain the various terms of the universe. Instead, I've opted to write a very extensive Main Character & Terms Glossary for easy reference to interested readers... and writers. What's happened is that a separate LJ community (omphaloscosmos) has been created for Omphalos IRL fanfic, so that those who have characters in the fanfic can write their own fanfic. There will also be a posting of the rules on the userinfo of the community (the Glossary and Rules of the community will be posted within 24 hours of this post). Some rudimentary rules are that if you do not already have an existing character in the cosmos, you cannot write your own fanfic, since your fanfic must be from the first person viewpoint of that character (however, you can consult with me, and we can insert you into the cosmos under my discretion). Another hard rule is that you must at least obey the basics of what is described about the other characters in the Glossary, i.e. don't make Erasmus a blue-haired, mohawk-wearing chain-smoking transexual, because he's not, he's just not. Lastly, I will cross-post my stories here as well as the Omphalos fanfic LJ community, but I will not post the Omphalos rules, and I will only add the link to the glossary before every installment. Okay, back to our irregularly scheduled program, in which once again, you can read another detailed bunch of descriptions and explanations, and little plot (don't worry, the smut and badass adventures are coming soon!)
( Genesis & Exodus )
...to be continued...Persona of the Moment: Hex Current Auditory Hallucination: Marilyn Manson - This Is Hallowe'en |
Note: This is the third installment on what is now being referred to as "The Cillian Mission".
( Tipping The Scales )
...to be continued...
Persona of the Moment: Hex Current Auditory Hallucination: Bassnectar - Replenish |
Note: More IRL fanfic that takes pace in the Omphalos cosmos.
( Mission Improbable )
...to be continued...Persona of the Moment: Hex Current Auditory Hallucination: Sinead O'Connor - Troy |
Note: This is the first installment of a story/novel/la that takes place in the Omphalos cosmos. I'd also like to point out that I'd classify the narrative as "IRL fanfic".
( Geis What? )
...to be continued...Persona of the Moment: Hex Current Auditory Hallucination: Solar Fields - Air Song |
Clutching on compromises
Pouring out pieces at a time
Mustn't let the damn break
Or everything goes to hell
We don't want to build another ark
When there's no covenant to bind us
Noah's gone to rest beneath the mountain
And we're left building paradise with twigs
They used to whisper as I walked past, with scabby knees on schoolyard gravel
Ask me "are you the girl who read the Bible in one hour?"
"Are you the girl who reads books instead of having friends?"
"Aren't you, little sir? Little boy? Monsieur? Oh... little girl..."
I'm wondering if Moses lives inside me
If I can raise water up and up and up
Stand righteous; break their golden cows
Every promised land comes with stone rules
Because God the Father swore on a rainbow
That he'd never drown us humans with his tears again
But I guess when the Hebrews were fucked over
The Egyptians got exempt
I was going to burn my Bible and tear down the crosses from every room
No way to be a good girl when they all told you you were damned
But I stared at the smiling statues of angels that used to guard my bedside
And wonder what it takes to have that certainty of divinity and fly
Sometimes the world needs a flooding
We all want to get clean again, pure again, pretty please
Sleep in the deep deep water
Crash our boats and start over
And in the beginning
God was a face on the waters
And in the beginning
God said "It's okay, let it rain, and rain, and rain..."
Persona of the Moment: Feyron Current Auditory Hallucination: "Little Earthquakes" album by Tori Amos |
I ride
the power chords
and Palumbo-screams from
A wave borne of teenaged dog days
Where ridicule and averted eyes
Were given to the shaggy-haired, black lipsticked, trenchcoat-wearing
Aliens that shambled through corridors
Afraid to be touched
Fearing isolation
When did emotion become such a stigma?
Now a tsunami of memory built from years of gazing out through
Holes framed with eyeliner; hands twitching from resisting
The familiar comfort of Southern swill and malt liquor
Can we ever take back Sunday?
Crashing into adult shores
Where maturity reigns in the silence of civility
Where tight-lipped sobriety and acceptable revelry
Are etched in calendrical boxes
And sea-foam nostalgia swirls on sun-bleached sands
Are the last vestiges of a storm that raged beyond puberty
So we scream on
Through closed throats
We scream on
Echoing endlessly
We scream on
Awaiting a break in the pattern
We scream on
On the spirals of necessity
We scream on
And
On
And
On
And
Persona of the Moment: Erron Current Auditory Hallucination: Taking Back Sunday / Glassjaw |
Finally working on that novel/la I've wanted to finish for a long time. About, what, 3-4 years ago? It's tentatively called Fantasmagoria. I was prompted by some random 3-day novel writing binge suggested by Gina Rinalli on the BizarroCentral forums. I'm targeting between 15,000 to 30,000 words. Right now I'm trying to get to 15,000 before Monday evening, but I'll be happy to reach 10,000.
 |
"I think you should put a frog in your mouth," Mendelsun announced, the winding road in front of us dwindling to a single, blinking red eye. "I find it always helps."
The eye contemplates me. I contemplate the eye. I cock my head at Mendelsun, who is looking for the road.
"Where would I find a frog in this Bavarian wasteland?"
Mendelsun clucks his tongue. "What gave you the impression it had to be a Bavarian frog? Or that this is Bavarian at all?"
I'm so astounded by his wit I say nothing, and wonder if he got it by putting things in his mouth. How vaguely erotic. I insert my fist between my teeth, and suddenly the eye infront of us goes demon-obsidian black, winking out in a fit of contorted rage and sending the landscape roiling with chartreuse clouds, screams from my past rebounding off of the lizard-forked lightning.
"Now you've done it!" groaned Mendelsun. "The path is gone. The I is gone. You've still got yew, right?"
I look down at my hands, clutching a slender twig. It burns a lime-green and clashes awfully with the background. Perhaps some chiaroscuro effects could have melded foreground and background together. Mendelsun suddenly has become as tall as dragon-tipped skyscrapers, and I sigh with melancholy. The proportions are asymmetrical, making an imbalance in the overall composition. I wonder how large the frame is that God uses to view us.
The firmament opens up, shrieking out the expletives and thoughts my mother had while birthing me in that long ago hospital. Down, mercifully, as if He realized someone on this withered planet had remember to think about Him after millennia of atheism and neglect, came a torrent of croaking, bulging, bulbous frogs.
I close my eyes, open my mouth, and wait for heaven to give me a taste of answers and miracles.
Persona of the Moment: Lucien Current Auditory Hallucination: Mogwai |
( Hex )
Persona of the Moment: Lucien |
( Hex )
Persona of the Moment: Lucien Current Auditory Hallucination: The Gossip - Fire With Fire |
Well, well, look who's back, out from the ether and nether. What have you missed, then?
I'm a wannabe unpaid journalist! Yessiree bob, I will be writing an article on the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair for Bywords, and a profile on the badass Nathanael Larochette for zygote magazine. I've also been doing some minor editorial/reading work for Dusty Owl Press.
I've also composed two new songs-- "The Path" and "Pandora's Box". Playing guitar almost every day is helping to get my fingers back in shape, but I still need a lot of practice. I'll be hitting up Open Stage at Rasputin's Cafe on Wednesday to unleash at least one of those songs onto the world.
Working on new poetry. "Serendipity Vs Synchronicity" is very rough, and will need some major transformations if it's going to hit a slam stage, but I feel rather confident enough to use it on poetry open mics. I'll also be composing a new poem for the Poetic Intentions Show at the end of the month (theme: Balderdash).
I'm planning to attend more readings and shows. I also want to make it to the In/Words Writer's Circle and have a regular group of hombres critique my work. In addition to that, I've set the ball rolling for an Art Club called "Still... Life?" which will hopefully get my rusty graphic skills back in shape.
Lastly, I've written a new story! I plan to submit it to The Dream People. It's called Angels Don't Fuck In Heaven or, alternatively, The Hole World. Comment if you're interested in proofreading it, and choosing which title seems more appropriate. Its genre is "bizarro", and it's about 800-900 words long. I can't really explain what it's about, so here's the first paragraph:
"Bleary-eyed and cotton-mouthed, Philip had stumbled into his bathroom to brush his teeth when the Pulse hit. The walls contorted slightly around him, his toilet gurgling in arousal and the drains in his sink and bathtub squelching and moaning, their silver mouths flexing in anticipation. His heart suddenly thudding in his ears, his breath coming in fast, he groped for his toothbrush and tried hard not to let his hands shake from jangled nerves and glaring inexperience."
Persona of the Moment: Hex Current Auditory Hallucination: Zero Cult - P-Ray |
"Some things are just that simple," he says
And for a second, I let the silence seep in that pinpoints
The moment when a heart crashes from a
self-induced euphoric high of enlightenment
to the grim truth of
welfare, debt, unemployment, separation,
stone-cold faces and mortgage races
and the blown-up pride of an ego
hell-bent on a transformation
that happens as fast as
trees grow rings
angels gain wings
and arseholes sing
Justin Timberlake titillating tunes backward and with a touch of wet
Surprise, Canada, it's your birthday
I'm left in the lurch, rollercoasting on
full moons and long-haired princesses
trapped in a lost man's body
where, on a marshy islet, surrounded by broken shells and tattered feathers
since the chicks must have crawled from sheltered nests
to fly or sink beneath the lily pads,
I am currently drowning
on the roots of my past, staring up at the flower floating
near the sunlit surface far from my out-stretched hand
while smatterings of kisses try to save me
strawberries, shortbread, spices, and cream
but not all tongues are silver
not all hearts are gold
not all coincidences have meaning
not all accidents ruin mothers' lives
no matter how artfully or discreetly they insist on all of the above
and sometimes i wonder what it's like to feel
that belt around your neck, as you swung there, clawing
your feet unable to listen to the yearning for release
your mind craved from the unceasing chatter of void-eyed voices
a tiptoe, a slip, a well-placed kick away from blue-in-the-face
finality, a footnote on fatality
but on that day Death did not take you
gave you the wisdom to stare into my wide-eyed, bright-eyed rambles
and tell me of my hopeful theories, my grandiose epic meanings that
"sometimes, things aren't that complicated
sometimes, things are just that simple"
And I had the gall to think I had to follow in your footsteps
That I could walk that same path with more accuracy
and less last-minute-mercy, that simplicity meant complicity
in meaninglessness and bleeding slashed wrists
when in all sincerity
you were telling me
to use Occam's Razor and not my own
to dissect reality to find beginnings
not dissect the flesh to find endings
because meaning
is what you can take, and what you can make
what you can bear, and what you can share
and sometimes, just sometimes,
it really is that simple
Persona of the Moment: Lucien |
She was born with red-stained hands.
The doctors were baffled. They tried, with different chemicals, solvents, mixtures, and medications to wash her clean again. But her palms, her fingers, her knuckles stayed scarlet, the deep red of poppies and robin's breasts. Her family was deeply embarrassed for her. They tried to cover it up, give their child a sense of normalcy and propriety, but to their bewilderment, the red would seep through somehow. They'd look away, they'd let her sleep, and when their eyes fell back on her hands, the gauze or the gloves or the mittens would be the same fresh-blood color. Leave the cloth on longer, and it would disintegrate into flimsy shreds that would fall away and slough off like old, dead, carmine snake skin. Her family began to experiment simultaneously with the doctors. While the latter continued to concoct their cocktails of pills, creams, and liquids, the former searched for any material, any substance, that could hide their daughter's dire affliction and burning-flame shame.
They did not understand her. However, she did. She knew, instinctively, what she was, and her mind was a shining bright ruby, hard and glittering and sharp when cut the right way. She understood the paths of her life unfurling before her, had read voraciously and persistently. She had done experiments of her own, on the rare few moments of solitude. Anything, absolutely anything she touched long enough would turn red, and then, would begin to corrode, and fall apart. They might put her in a factory for the rest of her life, when they realized there would be no way to "cure" her. She could turn objects red for a living. They could give her away to the military, attempt to isolate the compound that suffused her touch with vermilion venom, or figure out how to weaponize her, corroding and destroying for a living. She could run away, find people who could love her without ever touching her bright bloody hands. She had so much more of her, so much more to her. Perhaps there were others out there, a man with blue hands, and a woman with a forest green touch, a child just born with deep violet fists waving in the air. They would not be affected by each other's touch. They would colour the world; destroy it and make it in their own images.
Right now she felt alone. Deep down, terrified. Despair eating away at the edges of that hard ball of fear she kept hidden, knowing that when the sorrow consumed it, her hands would turn on herself, wielding a razor to get all the red out of her for good.
She teetered on the edge every time she stared down at them, her red-stained, red-staining appendages. On the one hand, there was nothing but woe and doom, to be an outcast and freakshow all one's life, singular and suspect, staining and corrupting everything she touched until she or someone else finally ended her miserable existence. On the other hand, there was the slim possibility that there would be others, to be like her or to love her, or (she dared hope) both. A life of agony, or a life of tentative happiness.
Twining her fingers together, she knew both paths of shame and triumph would be there together, vying for her fate, red against red, rage against passion. In this sense, the burden eased slightly from her soul. She was like everyone else after all.
One morning, before her eighteenth birthday, she woke up to find her hands plain, fleshy, and powerless. And yet, the futility and possibility of life still stretched before her, endless.
Persona of the Moment: Lucien |
He recalled a story of when he first met her, and told it loud and gesticulating to all of his buddies, shadowy faces that ebbed and flowed on the frayed edges of time and sleep. Muppet-like was his grace, his voice slicing through existence with each quirky spasm and rising inflection.
A poetry event-- he had organized a poetry-music-drinking event, where all poets to perform had a song on a CD from an ominous stereo to be used by strangers like a drunken slut, played to the number beside each poet's name. What a miracle! But then, even more: saunter over to the bar, and there you will find a mixed drink of various alcoholic proportions awaiting your greedy gullet if you let escape a specific poet's name, covered in the bubble of your speech, to pop on the nose of the smiling bartender. So the music, and the poetry, and the drink wove on, like a Dionysian fairy tale, and then he strode-minced towards the counter, demanded a drink of a poet, played her song, and watched her explode like a supernova on the stage of life and liberty. He sipped the concoction that was floated into his hand, and BY JOVE! He cried. BY JIM HENSON! He told his listening buddies. It was a synchronicity of wonders for both tongue, and ears, and eyes. He fell in love, brushed the goo off himself, said a thousand pardons, and tried to get up again. And she helped him to his feet.
The story amused everyone. It was a perfect appetizer of fundabulous fun before the Live Action Role Playing Game-- he'd organized it too, his next main event after the poetry-music-drinking extravaganza. They'd rented a hotel, with rooms of marble, crystal, fluted gold. Some rooms with singing, dancing, shifting gamer books filling shelves wall to ceiling, all for perusal. This was to be the best LARP ever played on the planet. The poet had come to the LARPer's baby --he the gamer, she the poet, what a tragicomic romance!-- and was insistent that this time, there would be bloodshed, there would be combat! All done, of course, in the guise of rules and numbers and rock-paper-scissors. Her opponent: a bespectacled woman she thought cute, would be her enemy, an unsteady vampire clan leader of the city whose shattered mirror was the emblem for their bloodline. However, as they stared each other down in their ornate and detailed costumes, they found that neither knew how to do battle. Thus they prance-flew up to one of the rooms, up the stairs, to a book, flittering and glittering in their hands, and attempted to find out how combat was done in a vampire LARP. They spent almost the whole evening there, reading regulations, until he came and took the poetess away.
"I will tell you another story," he said.
"I will tell you another poem," she said.
And so they did.Persona of the Moment: Lucien |
More announcements! GASP! Who-what-where-sex-now? No. Just stuff. Here we go.
So... real life is pounding on my doorstep, demanding that I get a 9-to-5 like everyone else, because what I love don't pay the bills, not at all, not at all. I've got two, up to three possible bands to jam with, and still trying to make it out to an Open Mic and perform songs-- this is where I complain about not paying enough attention to my music, as usual, but instead some other things that are actually making progress, yes!
As most of you know, the Ravenswing D-I-Y Fair went splendidly.
I am also getting published in The Harrow come November.
Due to this somersault of events, I've been screening/deleting stories on this blog that are being submitted to publishers and magazines to avoid legal repercussions.
There are still three more upcoming performance gigs that are in the works besides WestFest, and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bwanageek insists I may still have a chance at the slam poetry finals, even though I technically tied with Queenie Tirone so how they're going to resolve that one if Thomas drops out, I've no clue. In any case, I've sent a press kit to one performance gig, and the other I've yet to send one because I'm not quite sure what they're looking for and if I could perform without an equipment on a boat cruise. The Ottawa Fringe Festival opportunity is slipping through my fingers unless I pull a brilliantly crafted poem out of my arse.
Quick! Give me some full-fledged inspiration of love, lust, couples, queers, and pretentious English pseudo-Romantic, pseudo-Shakespearean vernacular! Wait... why don't I just shuffle through my own memories and syntax? Saved again. Now to actually write something worth a damn, that I can pitch to the director.
This single acceptance has renewed and rekindled the hope that perhaps I can find a place for my tattered and scattered work, and thus I shall produce more written filthy madness for eyes and brains. However, I will no longer post stories on here. Instead, I may post story concepts/ideas/summaries, and you can post on whether you'd like to read the thing and proofread. If not, well, I can always make fake accounts, post on this one, and pretend I'm loved and admired. I don't need you. I've got hands. Pfft.
And now... into the night!Persona of the Moment: Aztheru |
(Note to self: use the above as a title for a story or poem at some point.)
Assy news: Didn't make it to the Capital Slam Finals.
Non-assy news: I've submitted three stories in to two online magazines today, I suppose as a salute to the slam poetry scene for this season. I submitted the old "Sweet Blades, Rusty Kisses" to already-rejected-me-once ChiZine and the recent "All That Glitters" and once-rejected "The Heart of Old Magic" to the Harrow. Let's see how many more rejections I can get! Collect them all!
I'm still doing some upcoming gigs, mainly WestFest with my spoken word. Still planning to go to Open Mic nights on Sundays and Thursdays, with my battered voice and even more shit-kicked guitar (unless I just want to drop my poetry on people instead like festering divine feces from the pink-tinted clouds of my genius).
Due to my ongoing lack of so-called "real" employment, I've been doing nothing but organizing events, stalking being with loved ones, and reading and writing stories. So many... stories... so... much... minkle. Perhaps I shouldn't have asked Steve Sauvé to recommend me anthologies in addition to the ones I was already reading. I'm reading seven different authors (Gibson, Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace, Kathy Acker, Henry Rollins, Antonin Artaud, Arno Schmidt), and they're mostly all bleak. Very bleak. Thus I've only been producing bleak stories, except for the weird tales about what's going on in my head, they at least have a smidgeon of hope in them. I've taken to reading online magazines and the online work of bizarro authors again as a respite.
My other projects (compilation multimedia Seekers CD, comic book, some novel) are going at a deformed, hideously mutated, dire snail's pace, as usual. Still looking for people who have anything constructive to say about my work, beyond the "wow that's good" and the "now I shit on your hopes and dreams you're so damn mediocre but I will tell you I read it anyhow" and the "I eat your muses at night that's why you bleed when you pee". Hrmmm... I think I'm just out of practice and out of touch. I've got to read more, keep writing crazier, stranger, edgier things, and eventually they'll get good enough for the indie presses, and as usual far too bizarre for the mainstream.
Oh, and a bigger evil plan project is in the works. In collaboration with Steve Sauvé. You will see. When the time is ripe. You will see...Persona of the Moment: Lucien |
( A rather long tale of the Six )
Persona of the Moment: Erron |
( Goth Night )
Persona of the Moment: Fataztheron Current Auditory Hallucination: Dresden Dolls |
There was only one place in the Outskirts Steam really knew of, and that was Darcy 6057, an upside-down three-story high steel-and-wire bird's nest with a single neon sign stuttering and flickering the bar's name out into the debris of the surrounding clumps of metal and mortar. When he and Brad used to venture out of their domiciles into the dirty chrome streets to this dead-end tavern, Steam would wonder aloud every time as to whether some giant cybernetic avian had made a home for herself out among the spires in the Ages of Wonder back in the 2020's, and during the Fall the nest had come crashing down like the rest of humanity's hubristic aspirations to be remodeled into a cesspool of cheap alcoholic swill and seedy gatherings. Brad would do the customary punch to Steam's arm, slicing into Steam's reveries with logic and historical anecdotes, debunking myths of "cybirds" for the much more boring stories of "airplanes", as well as dating the bar itself to only fifty years, not even close to the five hundred needed to sync it with the Ages of Wonder.
Brad had been the brains, always. The brains, and the pervert. Some hybrid cross between Geek and Criminal that Steam never could completely figure out, but strangely set him at ease. In turn, Brad was fascinated with Steam's hybrid social caste of Dreamer and Brawn, a lanky bastard decked in leather and steel studs, able to hold his own in a bar brawl and at the same time forget it was happening around him as he stared up at the ceiling drunkenly pondering on human nature and the philosophical relevance of spilled beer on new pants while Brad himself was ducked down behind the counter getting a blowjob from the bartender-- man, woman, android, eterran, never mattered to Brad. They were the odd couple, and most bars loved when the two stormed in, dropping loads of hard-earned (in the case of Steam) and easily pilfered (in the case of Brad) creds on the counter in exchange for local mead without even pausing in whatever they were hotly debating. Something entertaining always happened around them, whether it was an avian eterran ceiling orgy (that Steam was always pissing in the bathroom for much to his fury and Brad's smug self-satisfaction), or a street-wide fight that ended up in a house party and new gang pals.
Darcy's especially loved them, but for different reasons entirely. Brad had a special place in his blackened, filthy, fan-boy heart for Darcy's, and as a strict rule, him and Steam swore they would never drink there. The place was the crème de la crème of bad scenes, literally foxy ladies and houseboys, top notch stolen merchandise, exotic and bizarre forms of fornication, and the most important thing of all-- information. Info was Brad's true drug, and he didn't let sex or beer or even Steam truly interfere with his beloved, even if it made him switch bodies and neighbourhoods. Steam had known Brad in already three incarnations, before his most recent and jarring one where not only did he change his age, but his sex too. The other three were just race-and-build changes, one a feline eterran, another a dark-skinned cyborg, and the last one a balding, pimpled human fatass. The only reason anybody ever knew it was Brad when he went info-hunting was the recognizably tall and unchanging figure of Steam at his side, with his trademark spiky-hair, indestructible titanium and tricrystal glasses, scruffy goatee, and battered, studded, dark trenchcoat. When the two walked through the door of Darcy's, everyone knew the recent bounty had been lifted, and the king had come home to roost. Brad knew how to settle everybody's deals, knew what people wanted and how to get it to them, with no hassle and no evidence. Every visit to Darcy 6057 was a good one, except for that one terrible night etched in every regular's memories, the night Brad and Steam got shitfaced.
...to be continued...
Persona of the Moment: Caztheron Current Auditory Hallucination: CPI - Robots Are People Too (Pt 1) |
Burned on the inside of his eyes, the outline of one and the solid shape of the other, with no relation to any humanoid shape and yet he saw them like demigods etched into the probability of space-time as if sliced into his reality with a knife made of light and fire. He had blinked, face awed, stumbling backwards in surprise, and that's when the explosion must have happened within the containment field, an expression of their displeasure at being seen, and the realization... they had no eyes, but their very essences saw him, saw through him, and recognized what he was. Grew afraid. Him... or them...?
Hands pummeling against his face, slapping his eyes back to open, wide, and scared shitless. Brad-Emilie's voice shouting down at him. "Steam! You have to get out. I... they... I'm so sorry. I just wanted to ask about your hallucinations... But somehow, even with a new body, they can trace my feeds. And they're not interested in me anymore, you've got something they want."
"Wh'fuck?" Steam mumbles. "Me? I'm a fuckin' hobo, Brad. I don't got..."
"It has something to do with what you saw. All I got was dragon. Does that mean anything to you?"
"Wh'fuck's a drag on? Is that when you take a shit and--"
The thirty-year old man appears again in the twelve year old girlish body, as Brad-Emilie roughly forces Steam to his feet, screaming up at him, high-pitched female tones melding with the gruff panicked way Brad used to talk when he was really pissed, really drunk, or both.
"I AM NOT FUCKING AROUND, DUDE! They're going to KILL you! Get the fuck out of here, and remember what I said!"
The situation finally hits Steam full in the stomach, like a ton of ancient concrete thrown at him from a wind-up mecha, and spliced with electric charges for spice. He wants to heave; he thinks of passing out again. Brad-Emilie stamps on his booted foot, hard.
"Fuck! You didn't have to-- how th'fuck am I going to run away with a broken foot, Brad? And where the fuck am I going to go without them finding me? These are high-high-ups... they... they saw into me..."
"I've got some friends on the Outskirts. You tell them my old name and my new name, and you tell them about that time we got shitfaced at Darcy's. And you tell it to them in that order, as fast as you can. These people will slit your throat and sleep in your dead carcass for fun if you don't mention you're a friend."
Steam's eyes are bugging out of his head, he's thinking of the kind of people that would slit his throat for jollies, and he opens his mouth to argue with Brad-Emilie's so-called sanctuary, but the entire house starts to shudder, as if caving in on itself. Steam's eyes flick back to the containment field, grown dark and obscured in lock-down, but faltering as brilliant angry red cracks spread over its gleaming round surface, seeking to escape into this reality, into this home.
"Brad, we have to go--"
Brad-Emilie shakes her head. "I've gotta throw them off your trail-- and off mine. Don't worry, dude, I know what I'm doing. I've done this plenty of times before. We'll see each other again."
Steam is being pushed out of the observatory, stumbling backwards over the wreckage of the livingroom, grabbing onto the couch so as not to trip as the floor ripples, and the walls groan. Brad-Emilie gets him to the front door, swinging it open, her small pale hands with their unusual strength shoving him out on his ass, the familiar gravel smacking his tail bone.
"How... How am I supposed to find them in the Outskirts?" Steam calls out one last time.
"Ask for David Helm," Brad-Emilie shouts. "David Helm and Finn Duval."
The door slams shut, and then a terrible world-ending, heaven-and-hell-merging sound of snapping cables, screeching insides, great winds of sound-shattering speed, and the death knells of furious titans, before the house implodes in a scarlet blaze that shrinks into a single red dot, finally winking itself out of existence and leaving Steam weeping on cold and desolate streets.
... to be continued...
Read Part 1 here.
Persona of the Moment: Caztheron Current Auditory Hallucination: Destroyer.Net (Arkon - Secon Impact) |
Whoa. So... I won my first and last slam of the season. (Yay grocery money!) I'm definitely in the Semi-Finals, and perhaps in the Finals if I keep my performance up. Nobody replied to my last slam post about which ones were their favorite, which, after closer introspection, was probably due to the fact that most people haven't heard all seven poems. I was thinking of posting mp3 recordings on here and have you guys listen to them, but I decided on a different plan instead.
I'm going to condense/cut down and memorize the following: Spark, Ubertopian, To Beau Sia, Phoenix, Horn of Plenty, and Mr. X.
Unless I write something really new, these are the six I'm bringing to the Semis and Finals. I'm not going to make a definitive "game plan" like I did last year, where I was like "these two I'm performing at the semis, and these two or three at the finals". I think this time, I'll just have them all memorized through and through and figure out which one I'm doing when they call out my name to hit the stage.
To be honest, I'd really like to make the team this year for the sole purpose of actually doing real team pieces with the crew. We didn't get to do that at all last year, which really made me sad, because I just love the whole energy, the scheme, the concept, and the performance of team pieces. The feeling of these talented individuals working alongside you, working off you and with you, all together.
NEW PROJECT IDEA:
Madame H said something to me last night that got me really thinking. The thought I eventually ended up with was that perhaps I could make a CD, a multimedia CD with not just those 6 poems I mentioned above, but non-slam poetry work, as well as stories and prose that I can read out loud, and artwork (hopefully a comic book, or at least a graphic novella) that you can access via a computer. My fixed price will be $10, and I'm going to call it "Seekers". I've always been rather lazy or paranoid or just disenchanted with the idea of finding middlemen (agents, publishers, etc.) to make my work "accessible" to people. Perhaps if I ever find the right agent, publisher, or distributor, I'll sign up happily for whatever contract they pull out of their ass. But that's going to require more time, hard work, and luck for such an opportunity to occur. In the meantime, this CD will be a portfolio of sorts, showing what I got.
My $3 CD business cards sold really well and really fast, so perhaps these ones will also be a hit, who knows? I also haven't produced anything in awhile, because I've been so busy with school, and which is also making me really hate school right now, unfortunately. Having a project like this gives me a definitive goal and motivation to get things done.
I'm thinking I'll place the deadline for this project around July or August, depending on how much money I'll be making at that time to support the initial funding of it (i.e. getting blank CDs, computer ink, nice paper, better/new drawing utensils, Bailey's ice cream, etc).
I've also been looking over this LJ, re-reading all my old posts and old projects I'd wanted to do. I still haven't finished my comic book "Shalott", or my novel (initially called "Fantasmagoria", but I may change that). I'm going to lower the bar for the comic book, and thus have a chance, finally, at getting it done. The novel I'll get back to after "Shalott" and "Seekers" are done.
Of course, this may all change if I get a shit job, but when do I ever let work interfere with real life anyway?Persona of the Moment: Lucien |
I've still got the scent of you both on my skin
Even though I hear them whispering words of
"harem", "pimp", and "slut"
As if love can only take a single form
Like a single son from a single father
To die for everything that ever lived and ever will be
While the statues and stories of elephant-headed boys
Angel-talking prophets, and horned, goat-legged men
Are set ablaze in the war of who's right and who's wrong
"What the world needs now, is love, sweet love..."
Well, I've got news for you: the world does not NEED more love
We've got love everywhere, people kill for love, people die for love
And I, for one, am sick and tired of cleaning up after love's bullshit
What the world needs is less love mismanaged
Less people who have eyes only for bouncy mammary glands and tight glutes
For numbers printed on paper and metal
For pipes, bottles, and needles filled with the only thing we think can love us
Forgetting the simple truth that we are all connected
and not just the flaky New Age idealism kind,
or even non-linear dynamics in the form of math equations and chaos theory kind
but the common-fucking-sense kind of small towns and close-knit villages
If we could remember all of this, maybe then we could break out of useless cycles
Where some politicians always get away with shit because most of the people don't care
But most of the people don't care because some politicians always get away with shit
If we could remember all of this, maybe then we could break out of useless cycles
Where she leaves you who leaves him who leaves her who leaves her who can't go
Because she's got a bun in the oven and no one to help bake it
Because no one will take responsibility for the burden of love
Ginsberg once said
"that the weight of the world is love"
How does how many and what kind of genitals I come in contact with
At any given time make me less of a human being than someone
Who has stayed with one heterosexual partner their entire life
And spent those days in drink and abuse and mutual misery?
It is not the quantity, or the character of the love and the connection
But the quality, the acceptance of responsibility that
This is NOT an object, this is NOT a sex toy, this is NOT a trophy
This is a human fucking being
And he or she or [insert gender neutral pronoun here] loves you
And I am willing to accept my responsibility with a smile
In all its myriad forms of lover, family member, active citizen
And when you ask me why I'm smiling, I'll just say
"I've still got the scent of you both on my skin."
Current Auditory Hallucination: Abbesses by Birdy Nam Nam |
( A Hex Tale )
Persona of the Moment: Erron Current Auditory Hallucination: Mishaps Happening - Quantic |
The Capital Slam Semi-Finals are coming up (Ottawa's conclusion to their slam poetry season and competition). There is the possibility that I can also make it to the Finals. Here's a list of new pieces I wrote this season:
-Spark [minor condensing]
-Ubertopian [minor condensing]
-Isangmahol II: With A Vengeance (aka To Beau Sia) [this poem needs to be condensed]
-Do You Believe In Magic? [this poem needs major revision and condensing]
-Phoenix [minor condensing]
-Horn of Plenty
-Upon His Foe [a short story condensed into a poem]
For those who have read or heard me perform these pieces (though no one's seen or heard the latest one yet, but it'll be bomb-dropped at the April show), I would greatly appreciate it if you could give me a list of your Top Five or Three, either your favorites or the ones that you think are the strongest pieces-- 1 being the highest, 5 being the lowest.
If I don't get hit with more sudden bursts of inspiration from now till May and June, I'll be taking people's (and my own) favorite poems to the Semi-Finals and beyond. I also plan to do some recording with the Sound Mind crew. I think these poems would be real nifty with drum and bass, or saxophone, or guitar strumming.
Stay tuned for more madness. I should probably also update my Myspace page. Bleh.
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I've still got the scent of you both on my skin
with eyes shut lightly
I only have to breathe in slightly
and then I remember how it felt
my fingertips
and your curves
my moistened lips
and your words
"You're mine now"
my body arched as you kneel behind me
spooned not so innocently
cupping my face back
neck bared
unprepared
for this rampant, snarling, insistent desire
that sprung between us like two circling tigers
and even in the throes
of my own personal hang-ups
as I curled within myself
listening to you both giggle
on the other side of a wall
you still came out to find me
strong arms around my shivering frame
nuzzling my apology and confession
away from my lips
with a single sentence
"You should never apologize for being yourself"
this jumble of persistent reminiscence
all from the cornucopia of smelling
coconut, kiwi, lime, and peaches
that seem to suffuse your clothes, your touch,
and your mouth
that same hungry cavity
that left these blooming violet flowers
all across my arms and back
as if planting flags of conquest
or seeds that lead to future greater harvests
I've still got the scent of you both on my skin
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"I'm going to write a novel," he whispered, with a shy half smile trying to take over his face, but his gaze stretching farther and farther away from his eyes off into a place I couldn't even begin to grasp let alone look at.
He turned to me and her, his eyes storm-grey-bright, like the electric charge in the air before a hurricane hits, and I wanted to say something with edge and power-- but birds have no teeth! So I was silent enough and let her speak for me, skeins of her hair tangled all over her eyes, soft lips stretching wider and wider into a grin-- into a scream-- into a howl-- of laughter.
She only spoke in poetry.
"
i am a messenger from god
a god so divine we must have made god
and god must have made us
a god so divine he is everything and nothing
a god that is not a god
only us
and we are only god
"
"I should put that in my novel," he mused gently, catching her locks as they whirled over his fingers. I marveled at a wind like this, that made fairies into angels.
"
when we run, make sure the sunrise is in front of us
or a sunset behind
for there are fields out there, vast and sprawling
like arms widespread for the embrace
of... of...
"
"Of what?" I finally spoke. "Of destiny? Of fate and time and human melodrama spinning into cycles of beauty and pain and suffering and glory? Will there be bliss waiting for us? Will there be only... nothing?"
Oh, to be answered in silence. What a fitting ending. To a novel. But instead, she spoke, and stole my memory right out from my soul.Persona of the Moment: Aztheru Current Auditory Hallucination: Nara - E.S.Posthumus |
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Spark
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Oct. 19th, 2006 @ 02:22 pm
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( Spark )
Persona of the Moment: Lucien Current Auditory Hallucination: Wild World by Mr. Big |
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Sep. 13th, 2006 @ 09:44 am
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This goes out to you
Blond blue-eyed boy
Watching me from the corner of your eye
Like scrutinizing a rare, ugly, exotic bird
At least, I think you are
For your face is pervasive, invasive,
Built up from the smiling pale statues in Church
To the well-adjusted, well-loved flickering
Phantoms in my TV-set
You're everywhere, everywhere
And nowhere
I searched for you, I feared you,
Fuck, I wanted to be you
You seemed to have it so easy
Melding into a crowd, doing what you wanted
And the waters parted before you like
Goddamn Charlton Heston
And it took me all these years
These knee-scraped, academia-laden,
Fear-swallowing, girl-kissing
Yearning-and-hating-and-prejudiced years
To finally realize
That my stare towards your beautiful,
Untouchable, unknowable, seemingly perfect
Foreign face
Is the same you give to me.
Persona of the Moment: Shara Current Auditory Hallucination: the streets |
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Aug. 20th, 2006 @ 01:06 pm
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I will miss the way sunlight streams out of a window
Situated in a wall completely painted black
Looking up at a world fringed with green shrub and blue sky
Filtering in to my cluttered desk
Illuminating a life disorganized by choice
And organized by habit
A change is on the wind and
If I can get there, if I can just reach that glimmering horizon
Where phantom debts and trollish landlords
Where CRA and blank bone paint
Where calorie counters, and calorie burners
Where waiting for jobs and waiting for funds
Is finally fucking over
Then I can finally breathe easy into that errant breeze
Before the next storm comes and sweeps it all away
Persona of the Moment: Erron Current Auditory Hallucination: computer hum |
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Jun. 15th, 2006 @ 08:13 pm
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Blink.
Shudder, gasp, crawl on your hands and knees
Claw yourself upright, raise fists and hands spread
Open
Wide
To teeth, and sky, and distant, dead, or delusioned gods
Feel that skin, frail and fancy free
As if it was never there before
Passageways of sensuality to vistas of experience
Fingertip, pore, fine, feeling follicles
There, exploding between the mechanisms of withdrawal
And addiction to the world mind's next big sell
Love, beauty, hope, divinity-- what will it be
This time... around... This sublime crime of sound
And laughing furies. Each day is your first, he said.
Live it.
The Reaper can only catch you if you stand still within yourself.
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( A Hex Tale )Persona of the Moment: Erron |
| » Icarus or Psyche Rising |
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Gasp! Festrell speaks!
After a decade long of deliberation, I've decided to get published somehow. My goal is to get published at least three times before my 23rd birthday-- yes, I know, a quixotic dream, but everyone's got something. I will either fail like Icarus, or be transformed like Psyche.
In either case, here's the breakdown for my attempt:
1) Open to speculative fiction, literary fiction, poetry, and miscellaneous/general. Find at least five places that require a deadline with their submissions from each and polish something off to send to them.
2) Only after sending the contest pieces in, should I scope out the wide, wide range of markets, and apply to at least two of both spec-fic (sf/f/h) and lit-fic (poetry/short stories/general fic).
3) I repeat this for at least three times before I consider sending in a novel for novel writing contests (like Delacorte or Arrowsmith), or send a novel to be considered for publication (like Late Late Show or Iris Print).
I figure this is a good way to motivate me to write something up. I'm looking for anyone interested in reading and editing any of the work I'm going to send off. The Pharmakon Rules are that I write one piece of work for the contest or market in question, send it off to at least one person to review/edit, and then send it off as soon as possible. However, more deliberation will be taken for contests that require entrance fees, so the more expensive the fee, the more I'll want further assessment as to the quality of the work.
( Contests & Anthologies )
Apr. 2nd, 2006 @ 12:44 pm
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| » Politics Make Me Emo |
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Listening to melancholy melodies
My fingers itching for a respite
From grasping like a maniacal scientist's fist
At the world domination plans and wayward creations
That always slip so insidiously
Out of my waxing and waning control
They are tired, these hands
Tired of banging on windows
To get the attentions of passersby
That gawk at my exhibition, my freakshow
Only to realize that I'm the one on the outside
And I'm staring at mannequins
With painted smiles and plastic hair
Are you going to let me go?
I don't know who I'm asking these questions to
Only that I keep asking and asking
My hands grasping and banging
And itching and finally limp in my lap
Trembling with defeat and exhaustion
If I am a hypocrite and I am a coward
Then what's left to me?
If even Chomsky says that we are all hypocrites
One way or another, why do we even try?
There seems to be just dominators
And complacent escapists
And terrorists/freedomfighters
With no one in between except
Idiots and... me? (Am I being redundant?)
This poem is going nowhere.
And maybe some other time I'll try to re-write it.
But not tonight.
Tonight I try to sleep, my essay unfinished, and unstarted
My uniform for tomorrow's laborious labour cycling in the wash
Clutching at the smell of sweat and sex in a bed I have forsaken
Listening to music that I don't "own"
And remembering why I am neither a politican nor an activist
Because either way, I get really fucking sad.
Mar. 19th, 2006 @ 10:55 pm
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| » o |
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( This is how it is )
Mar. 18th, 2006 @ 08:39 am
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| » Dunno |
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"I don't know."
And my father would always reply with "What do you know, then?"
I would stare, with my smoky chestnut eyes
Piercing, infuriated, silenced
And purse my lips as if I'd superglued
Zippered up, sewn them shut
What do I know, dad? What do I know?
Nothing. Absolutely-fucking-nothing.
And so he got silence and a stranglehold of a glare.
It's not some pretentious philosophical bullshit thing.
Socrates was a childhood hero, I'll admit,
And to try to keep myself from self-loathing
And arrogance, I'd whisper under the bedsheets
To lull my speedy, busy, thoughts-buzzing-frantically mind
To sleep with: "I'm stupid, just like everybody else. Einstein
and Socrates said so, it must be true. It must be."
What is it with me and weird-looking crazy old men?
Hemlocked and A-Bombed, worlds shook with their revelations
And equations, and sagacious instigations
If I could just reach out and do it, like they did
Maybe it could mean something
Maybe I could mean something
Hell, I've got the hair already, man
So what if I don't got the cock?
I have the balls.
I feel old in new skin.
I've got ideas, crazy ideas
And yet, I could see them now, smirking
Like badass thug patriarchs
In their laurels weaved around their necks like gold chains
And rings of adulation glinting on their fingers
The Western world their hummer, gliding them into immortality
And they roll down their windows, look me up and down
"You gotz a long way to go, kid.
Don't you ever forget that when it all comes down to it
You don't know shit."
And I nod my head earnestly
My heart hammering in my ears
Watching the trail of smoke and grit
As their car wheeled off into the annals of history
Even though the vision's faded, warped from grade school
Meanderings, dog-eared, creased, and smelling like
Unwashed pockets
I hold on to it, like so many of those notes old crush's
Would pass to each other during study hour
And I would wait diligently for my father again to ask me
"What do you know, then?"
And I'd be old then, with wild hair, and crazy old man eyes
I'd purse my lips as if I'd superglued
Zippered up, sewn them shut
But this time, I'd smile
Mar. 16th, 2006 @ 10:02 am
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| » Back To Poetry |
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I haven't written here in awhile
My words carved into the air in rooms
Soaked with beer and melancholy
Feedback amp-wound breath and chord
Sounding out my soft words into a battlefield
Of eyes and mouths, loud and glinting
Flinching, remaking, remolding
Grown hard from this battle of
"ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME NOW, BITCH?"
It fills the hours of predawn breadbaking
In bleached, threadbare uniforms that
Pare me down, bare me down, spare me now
For corporacracy has me by the throat
And I'm petrified that I'm paralyzed
So I scream and sing and slide out
My words carved into the air
Of yeast and factory-crafted powders
Stainless steel sanitized for sanity's sake
Maximum cleanliness, vapour-trail fast
And a customer can get what he wants
Without ever seeing my face
Yeah, I haven't written here in awhile
But now my words are carving into plastic buttons
Glowing screen, blinking cursor, type-font-click-clack
Loading... overloading... for your eyes
Mouthing in your ear through your eyes
Awaiting your attention and not counting on it
I am trying to reclaim my sense of poetry
With the landslide of conjoined voice and sight
That tumbles down every time word births itself
From my mind that is pregnant with thought
After a not-so-immaculate conception
Let me open
Let us see eye-to-eye
So we may yet bridge worlds
With word.
Mar. 12th, 2006 @ 10:21 pm
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| » Faith |
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( Memoir-In-Progress )
Nov. 24th, 2005 @ 09:57 pm
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| » Spoken, Not Stirred |
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The following are the two pieces I performed last night at Capital Slam. The first round poem, in accordance with tradition (i.e. my habit), was written on the spot and drunk off my ass. The second one I actually memorized, pared down, and perfected a head of time in case all the nagging supporters were actually right and I'd make it to the second round.
Of Flesh (i.e. The Drunk Poem III)
Girl Meets Girl
This piece was written on the spot and drunk at the last poetry slam in September. I didn't prepare a second piece, and got into the second round, in which I stood on the stage and stared blankly and apologetically at the crowd for awhile, did a dance, and generally was an ass.
Poet(ry) Is Hawt (i.e. The Drunk Poem II)
And this last one was the first drunk poem I wrote at a No Rules Slam and performed a second time at a Dusty Owl Open Mic.
Muse (i.e. The Drunk Poem I)
Oct. 22nd, 2005 @ 08:11 pm
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| » Girl Meets Girl |
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I was lying underneath her bunk bed
staring up into those green-gold eyes, wondering:
Holy shit, can this be real?
Why me?
She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen…
why me?
It was one of those fractured times in a teen’s life
where everything seems to be breaking and remaking itself over and over again
into new twisted, wonderful forms.
In the turmoil that is my memory,
this moment was an island of crystal-clear beauty,
where for a second,
despite the way our lives would turn out,
despite the pain we would cause each other,
she and I felt it,
that connection
which poets sing praises of,
which honeymooner’s convey with shining eyes and lidded glances
which, despite all the jaded bullshit you go through everyday
it still had the power to convince you
that the stars shone for you alone.
All of this
all of this
with a girl.
This had only happened once before.
Yet, that first girl was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen,
and the next one after this siren would finish ripping my heart to shreds—
she would be the most beautiful girl I’d ever see,
and so on, and so forth, until maybe I’d learn that I’m just not cut out for girls.
Fat fucking chance.
I’m tired of the whole “you’re going through a phase”,
or “you just need some cock”,
or “how the hell does that even work?”
It just happens, okay?
Maybe it’s too difficult for people to realize that maybe
just maybe
that mysterious force that we call love, or at least, that I call love,
isn’t about matching genitalia, or pumping out progeny, or any of that shit.
It’s so much more simple than that,
so simple that it eluded me for so long, until one day I woke up with a girl in my bed
and realized I might have been going about all of this
completely wrong.
Even before I hit puberty, I was chasing boys.
I would chase them with an ardour that, inevitably, scared them away.
And I wasn’t looking for sex—
I barely understood what that meant in my six-year-old mind.
I was looking for completion,
I was looking for destiny,
I was looking for the other half of my soul,
I was looking for the reason I kept breathing,
I was looking for meaning,
purpose,
existence,
and somebody just to make me feel safe in a world that,
let’s face it,
is committed to breaking promises.
Well, I fashioned for myself a soulmate that would never break any promises.
He would be a redhead, ideally, with a poet’s voice, and joker’s smirk.
He would be tall, and strong,
not too skinny, not too chubby,
with eyes not quite green and not quite blue.
He would love me for who I am,
and hold me when the storms of life came thundering into my placid little world.
And he would know.
Because that’s what would distinguish him as my soulmate—
that electric connection,
that knowing, without words,
that would occur between us
and open the worst and the best of me.
He doesn’t exist.
He never existed.
I fabricated him so that I wouldn’t have to risk, and step out of myself.
I fabricated him to feel safe, and to keep myself going.
I fabricated him so I would feel less alone as I cried into my pillow every night.
I fabricated him as a knight to take me away from all the abuse I found outside and inside my home.
I fabricated him to make me feel human.
I was lying underneath her bunk bed
staring up into those green-gold eyes, wondering:
Holy shit, can this be real?
Why me?
She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen…
why me?
And what did she do?
She leaned over and kissed me.
I kissed her back, with a passion that did not drive her away.
She was not a redhead, and she was not strong.
She was rail-thin, with a poet’s eyes, and a pampered princess’s smirk.
She was a broken, beautiful thing, and she loved me for me.
And of course, she was not a boy.
She was everything I thought I’d never fall in love with,
but here I was,
wrapping my arms around her, and pulling her down to the floor.
What does it matter, then, what shape the connection comes, as long as it is there?
Her green-gold eyes knew, and froze it for me,
embedded it into my memory so that, when lost,
I can remember those eyes
and trigger that island of comfort,
that warm fragment where in the midst of Catholic high school drama and stupidity,
two girls hid underneath a bed and got lost in it
that connection
which poets sing praises of,
which honeymooner’s convey with shining eyes and lidded glances
which, despite all the jaded bullshit they went through everyday
it still had the power to convince them
that the stars shone for them alone.
Oct. 17th, 2005 @ 05:05 pm
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| » Upon His Foe |
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He only knew the first three stanzas.
***
They never understood what he was always muttering, under his breath, eyes wild and ragged, first seeing them, then drifting out of phase. Those gobs of blue dulled, or glazed, or clouded, and suddenly he would be shouting, ravening, flailing his arms. The cops would come, and they would take him to the nearest shelter, and he would quiet again.
“Mr. X.” That was his name, something filled with scorn, or pity, or both. The rags hung from him, reeking of booze, piss, shit, blood, newspaper print that he slept on, and all sorts of fluids and gritty solids us respectable folks stay away from. But there, emblazoned on those dirty, greasy strips that masqueraded as clothing hanging on his flesh, was a cross. The first line started from where his collarbones met, and ended near his navel. The second line bisected his chest-- I imagine from nipple to nipple. Red spraypaint. No one knows if he did it himself, or if he got some punks to do it, but when you mention it to him, he smiles, so you know it’s meant to be there. And some idiots, they see an “x” instead of a cross, so there you have it.
( Read more... )
Oct. 6th, 2005 @ 05:54 pm
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