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2013-04-25 6 notes

Admiration Pains

I sign my letters with a P.H.D. notation, to make the world know I’m serious.

Someday they’ll read these letters, which are now private. In the future, nothing I do will be private anymore. My world will be open and traceable, because my world will be the only one there is. Such is the life of a visionary.

Everything needs to look good in retrospect. I’m thinking towards the future, FOR the future, for mankind. For us all. As if Noah’s Ark could come again but through my hands.
Not with, like, floods or anything, but I mean…

So let’s talk about freezing time. That’s what I’m really getting at here.

I mean, if I just had TIME to… organize things.

I could rule with a gloved fist of titanium. I could press against humanity and let the juices run out until there’s a husk… a salvageable husk… for us to breathe life into. This… is where you come into play. Not that I mean to frighten you with so much responsibility.

Anything you want, really, I’m not here to pressure you. I just have this idea.

I could utilize you. You have such a pure spark of kindness in you, a real melody that you can weave into this new world that needs to hear it. You can rebuild, with me; we can soar over the tops of heads that listen to our every whim, and you? You will be like an angel to show them what beauty is. What goodness can be. You will stand at the head of our campaign and shine your light on them.

I can make the world turn from darkness, from the rot they are inflicting upon themselves. I want a hard-reset. The kind you have to hold the button on a long time and wait and get impatient about and THEN it reboots and…

Well. That’s a lot of you, then.

You see, I’m an action guy. I make things happen, I change it all up and I’m not willing to take no for an answer. Not from him, not from the law, not from any adversaries.

I mean I’ll totally listen if you say no, because I respect you and that’s all great and I mean if this doesn’t sound good to you then that’s ok I’m just saying…

I am the hand that forces the world to change. I am the clock’s ticking arms that swing into a new era, challenging them to abandon all that they know and accept their new master. Nothing is too much, for my rule will last as long as darkness sets and light stretches. I have… ideas, and, well.
All I’m saying is that.
Maybe.
You’re a part of it?

Well let me try this again.

In a world sown with change…. I need someone to cultivate…

Well what I REALLY mean is…

I need you.
2013-04-18 2 notes

?RAGUS

The hardest part was trusting herself, as she wrote with small bits of coal or dirt all along the light stone walls. As far as imprisonment goes, this was a lesser variety, a structure built on criminality or challenge and she did too much of the latter.
She was young in a time when girls could not be smart without being witches or royalty and it didn’t seem like she could easily be either.

Her stringy hair played into her eyes as she plucked another bit of burnt detritus from the torch that glowed above her. It would hurt her fingers, but any chance to write.
One wall was diagrams and drawings.
One was words of weight.
The other two she had not filled yet, on account of being intelligent enough to know she would be there for a long time, and space would eventually be limited. These tiny, charred markings were her only connection with herself, other than vacant muttering as the sunlight moved from side to side in her cell, intersected by bars.

The code she wrote was backwards, the math she did was negatives. She sketches she did in space of her mind and wrote just the shadow of them. They trapped her to stop her creating heresy, but the silence left her only that.
She kissed each grit of oily char that she could make into new markings that would stay, and she was kind to her keepers no matter how she was treated, because they can take any freedoms from her, but they could not take her mind.
Not yet.

No colors accentuated her palette, and no new words broke into her mind, unless they were her creation.
And shockingly, how accurate those could be.
If she made new shapes and created new things and discovered new language, it a all behind the closed, solid doors of incarceration, and she would remain undisturbed in her cell until it was too late.

The moment they entered was the moment they would wash the walls and be rid of her memory, and nobody would be any the wiser.

That humans can FLY!
That the world revolves in a micro scale
That planets exist and are larger than we ever imagine.

And she had all of these notions, yet little canvas, and no ears to spread it. She wrote it as she could. She only had witchery, only, it wasn’t something she subscribed to. Perhaps someday she will be noted as a witch, who paid her dues and burnt in the fires of the pariah.

But maybe she would be remembered for being right.
2013-04-15 6 notes

What You Want

I will give you anything you want if you just let me.

I will make your name in lights and bring eyes to you.
I will pad your bed with compliments and kiss your doubts to sleep.
I will break the jaws of dissenters, I will whisper your virtue into the crowds, I will show you as a frightfully strong being that none shall open their mouths to.
I will cast the faerie glamour, I will weave the clothes of gentility, I will enshroud you in the colors that people will notice. I will make them see.

I will make the heavens sing your name, with syllables I teach to them one by one.
I will make them capture your figure in stone, far bigger than life and not as far as impact, as you charge above the crowd, immortal.

I will speak you to the world and they will translate for themselves.

I will do those things,
If you only knew what you wanted.
2013-04-14 6 notes

Emoticons O_O

Lavinia had tried to explain the concept of emoticons but… she just wasn’t getting through.

“So you’re using letters, to make faces?”
“Yes, and they’re not words,” she said patiently, “they’re like… letter art.”
Her best friends face alternated between blank and doubtful.
“You see,” Lavinia continued, “like if I wanted to make one of how you look, maybe I’d use an equal sign and a diagonal slash. Or a capital B because of those stupid glasses you wear.”
“I don’t look like that.”
“Well, to me you do!”

They had reached a technological impasse, and it was nothing new. Meleney had never been great shakes with computers and Lavinia was constantly trying to explain the concepts to her because so much of her life was built upon it. Meleney at least understood the idea of talking to someone through writing in real time, but the idea of making little faces out of letters were foreign.

“It’s a lot like when you use your notebook,” Lavinia tried, “you draw a lot of things in there. And so do we! We just work with what we have.”
“But I actually DRAW in mine. Like when I want a duck, I can just draw a duck.” Meleney wrinkled her nose at this blatant inefficiency.
“Yeah, but, it’s kind of fun! Like that heart thing I showed you.”
“Not a heart, Vinny. You made sideways liney things.”
“It’s a heart, If you tip your head and-“
“It’s an equation.”
“A LOVE equation,” Lavinia corrected, hands once again snapping at the keys. She had spent so much of her life around computers, it was difficult to imagine that someone didn’t understand when she mentioned she was “AFK.” She had been Meleney’s best friend for five years, it was astounding that none of it had rubbed off on her by osmosis. Lavinia wore her geek on her sleeve, and oftentimes her shirt. Contrary to popular concern, it was clearly not infectious.

“Is this how you and Curtis talk all the time?” Meleney waved her finger at the screen, “In your made-up art language?”
“Yeah but we do it in a game.”
“So you make gibberish symbols at each other, dressed as elves.”
“Orcs.”
“Gross.”
“Nah, mine’s pretty.”

Some things will never make sense to an outsider. Q_Q
2013-04-07 2 notes

The lights were set.
She was just an understudy.
It was minutes til the show.
She was wringing her hands.
The curtain was drawn.
She was rehearsing her lines.

The orchestra played.
She was cursing her big moment.
And the actors were onstage.
God, they thought it was so easy.
And the audience cheered.
Yeah they seem like a good crowd.
And the cues were all met.
Like everyone was a fucking professional.
And they checked her makeup
But you can’t erase the look of fear.

And the lights set on her
It’s the time for my big opening
Then the orchestra blared
Those are the starting keys
Now, sing us a song!
And I’m singing my heart out
So the audience stares
Yeah, I’m not in the booklet.

But she gave it her all
In a voice of high-toned Alto
And her actors were proud
“Say, ya did a bang up job!”
Then she went home that night
My hands just won’t stop shaking.
The next day will come
Understudy yet again.
3 notes

Legends Writ

His quill scratched the parchment faster than he could believe recording each moment, each thing he noticed.

He had the unenviable position of noticing things, and needing to transcribe them by himself. He was the eyes and the mouth of the world, and it was often exhausting if he wasn’t so interested in it. He worked alone, bag of ink at his side and multiple quills at the ready so he looked as an archer did with feathers jutting out his back. It was his courtly duty, and he was not only privileged, but fascinated.

This had lasted many years, as he saw the drama unfold. The eyes that did not cross, or crossed too often. The gazes that moved around places, the circular table that was pure in its right and withered at the seams. He knew the King had much to worry about, and he held him no grudge. He watched as the world fell down around him, in small bits here and there.

He knew the King did so as well. His eyes may not have touched those things, but only because he already knew they were there. The treacheries and successes were not invisible to his gaze. He found it the fairest to go with it.

It was painful, but the scribe wore his colors and watched the court with an eye of the eagle. He watched the colors of the court fly in pride. Others wore them in jest.

Well, their end was near as well as his. He quietly sat as the banners above him grew dim and old, as the stories around him turned from rumour to true. He watched as people brought about their own end, by pain or by success. His job was to write it all.

As his hair grew whiter, as his tales went out of fashion, he spoke to those around him just a bit more. They laughed with his familiar face, their hair growing as mink-white as his own, and sat him down to regale them on their own glories.

“He said it!” they proclaimed through aged mugs of ale, “It’s true! It happened nigh before ye were borne!”

And he told them more, and embellished a bit. A luxurious stead he never kept, but for when he took their eye. It was towards a time that he would like one.

He was the shine in many eyes, for he told them well.
He was the bane of very few, who figured him a disruptor to their plans, while he was merely aware of them.

All along, he had picked a new one, a new youth to carry along his plans. And he copied and entrusted his stories to the youth, dressed in fresh new colors of the court that was likely to fall in on his ears as the large hat fell about his head, and he said: Be careful with them, lad.

They are an ecology and we work within them.
We show what they do but do not interfere. We are quietly ourselves.

When you are my age, you may mingle. I hope t’God ye be my age someday.

And the ale flowed
and for the first night, he slept in a mattress made of feathers, and was celebrated as a bard instead of ignored as a scribe.

It was not long after he ceased to be either.

But his legacy was writ in the young man before him, with letters unwritten and stories untold.

The downfall was beginning. The youth would be there for it all.
2013-04-06 2 notes

London Calling

London is not a place for poetry.

It is a place for many things
and poets are not one of them.

It made him very lonely
wandering familiar roads
for the hint of a notebook
or knitted hat.

Maybe that meant something.

He browsed faces as one would browse a bookshop
reading what he could
looking for color
and was often met with sunglasses
or tourist stares.
But maybe one day…

The names were not important
so he did not ask.
What he asked was what they were reading
or if they could abide by a compliment
or if they liked the arts.
He heard many replies
and wrote words about them.
Coated,
disjointed
words.
And he had none to share them with,
not yet.

And so the story goes,
he hummed to himself,
the music of masters that he based himself upon,
and he trod looking for interesting footwear
or people who knew where they were going
in life if not in location
and he would ask them if they were interesting.

It came about strangely
when he sang a song under his breath
in a voice unmade for singing
that he was in the shadow of another
who looked at him and smiled
and went along his way.

He did not have to ask if this person was interesting.

He had caught up
and foolishly left his pen behind
but with his eyes locked onto broad shoulders
he moved closer to ask
Excuse me
how are you doing today?

Which started a conversation.

Which quickly led to the art of living and why they might appreciate it
in so many words
or often in none.

And, which eventually led
to a cool linen bed
in a hotel room
littered with scraps of paper they had torn from notebooks
so many notebooks
with their new friendship and beyond
written on each leaf.

London is not a place for poetry.

But the best poetry is based upon things which others never see.
2013-04-02 2 notes

Rooted

So long as they’d been living, the tree had been there. It kept the sky aloft on its bristly branches so it would not fall on them. It struggled upward in defiance of gravity, for inches at a time, piercing into the clouds as far as it could go. From their small position, it was tall, so tall that it cloaked the whole ground in mottled shade as the sun spun around. The grass knelt at its legs. The creatures ran up and down its spine. It was patient.

It bathed in the rain, letting drops clean the sweat and dirt off the leaves, and shuddering in the chill wind. It creaked in the storm and sighed in the gentle breeze. It was a friend, a protector, a savior, a source, and above all, it was taken for granted.

Sure, there were no others around…

Petal tears fell and coated the ground in white droplets when the blossoms had fluttered their last. Leaves tumbled into piles and nests, giving themselves up to moss or tiny insect bites. The spindly frame transformed yearly, shrill and skeletal when the world tried to rip it from the ground, then flush with vigor when the sunshine flirted from far above. It didn’t ask much, it was focused on something else.

The base grew deep, as much as the tree itself was tall. They would rest beneath it, and they were lain to rest beneath it, while the roots curled through the crevices of their bones. They would fade into the ground, and the tree would remain to provide the ground to them. It hefted the soil, it shouldered the sky. It played a game of patience with the world, and nothing else was still enough to listen.
6 notes

Dearborne

Shanna was popular. Shanna was busty, a no-nonsense girl. Shanna had perfect hair and wore heels that made strippers proud.

Shanna fought crime, and took no prisoners.

History was inconsequential, superfluous. How she got to be a detective wasn’t important either, but she made it clear that her boss shouldn’t have hired her if he just wanted eye candy.

“I’m here for justice. Don’t make me bring it down on you.”

Yep. Shanna Dearborne was a certified badass in an undersized top. Her current prey was the pharmaceuticals industry, and through extensive investigation, she had considerable evidence that local companies and doctors were adding addictive ingredients to prescriptions. Addiction happened first, but what else could they be adding that the public didn’t know?

She had only been on the case for a few weeks, her first assignment after her promotion to detective, and possibly her last as they tried to dismiss the case altogether. She would have none of it, and people trying to dissuade her meant she was closer than ever. She could feel the heat of villainy nearby, coursing through the walls of the medical building she infiltrated that fateful night.

Well, superpowers were not the strangest thing to happen in this situation. She considered it a side effect of determination to do her job. After days of trying to make sense of the changes (physical and otherwise) after she dropped into the chemical mixing vat, Shanna came to grips with herself. She could see others’ hearts, whether pure and shining or shriveled and dark. She could see them pounding along in their daily routines, could sense who was hurting themselves and who was spreading their light to the world.

The hardest part was realizing how few pure hearts there were in this world.

Shanna didn’t like the new pink highlights in her hair. She didn’t like how her clothes didn’t seem to fit, that her chest was now bursting from her brassiere and her hips had swollen to a peach-like shape. She felt liable to snap in half, like a tree branch overburdened with snow. She couldn’t button her signature trench coat anymore. She couldn’t find jeans that suited the thinness of her legs and the swell of her rear. Those with shriveled hearts couldn’t stop making comments now, and she did her best to avoid them. They couldn’t stop her from getting to the truth of the crooked pill industry.

The hearts thing made it more difficult to tell who was the enemy, though.

So many broken hearts, inflamed with pain and abraded with regret. So many compacted, burnt little things that shined so brightly anyway. Even, other times, watching pain she never knew existed in those she loved, seeing what they had rebuilt after a foundation of mistakes. It was hard not to be distracted by every person she saw, and every one she knew. Her opinions changed, she saw darkness and cruelty in some of her acquaintances, saw a flickering glow from people who had given up. The enemy? None of them looked the same. She had to be careful.

Shanna called over Klaus.

Bookish, quiet, probably gay. She relied on him often for emotional balance and thinking things out. He had an extraordinary mind to offset her extraordinary handgun prowess. They shared glasses of white wine in her living room and she waited to open up.

“Something feels weird, recently. I feel like, ever since I had that accident at Pharmacorp… I feel like I’m seeing things.”
“Like what?” Klaus said, his fingers steepled in front of him.
“Like, a sort of judgment. I think I can see inside people, I can see who they really are. An aura, in a way.”
“Is this why you missed work last week?”
“How did you know?”
“I try to check up on you.” They worked in very different departments, Shanna sent reports over every few days. Why would he be paying so much attention?
“Yes. It was disconcerting, after noticing it. I’ve always had a level head, I think, but then I went to buy milk and caught a guy shoplifting…” She murmured her words into her wine glass, expression foggy recalling the memory, “He had such a dark heart that I just FELT like he took something. After I chased him out into the street, it turns out he hadn’t stolen anything at all. And I had hit him. I assaulted this man who had done nothing. He just looked… bad.”
“Do you think this will interfere with your work?” Klaus asked.
“I don’t know yet. It’s distracting. It’s preventing me from seeing a situation logically. Klaus, do you ever think…?” She didn’t finish, but slouched down into the couch cushions in thought. Her satin nightdress slipped up her thigh.
“Ever think what, Shanna?”
“Do you think that maybe these things happen for a reason? That maybe I’m meant for something else? Sometimes it feels like I’m doing the right thing with my life. Then others… like I’m built for entertainment. Like a puppet.”
“Has this newfound ability really changed you so much?”
Shanna sighed, “I think it has. I think I’m seeing things so differently now…”

The clock on the wall chimed eleven pm, and their attention snapped away.
“It’s getting late…”
“Yeah, you’re right…”
“I should be going…”
Through a series of quiet apologies, Klaus stepped through the door into the building’s hallway.

“I’m always here if you need me, Shanna.”
“Thank you, Klaus. Goodnight to you,” she said, turning away and beginning to close the door.
“Good—”

The door was still cracked, and she looked at it quizzically. Something felt wrong. Shanna peered back into the hallway just in time to see the silhouette of a masked figure leap towards her.

She braced the door to knock the stranger off balance, and he stumbled through the doorway, immediately turning back just in time to see the flying kick. Her leg swept across his neck, dragging his head to collide with the kitchen counter, which dazed him for a moment. The assailant caught Shanna’s leg and she tugged it back futilely, then flipped upside down to wrap her thighs around his head and drag him to the tile floor. They fell together, a cascade of sheer satin and coarse black fabric. Whatever weapon he had with him, she had found hers first, knocking over her purse on the counter and dragging out her police-issued Beretta. While he struggled beneath her, she arched back and delivered a sharp blow to the back of his neck, until he was slack between her taut legs.

The intruder had the slowly beating heart of a dark brutal life, but as she caught her breath and adjusted her nightie, she knew they wanted to silence her. That means she’s getting close. Her work was just beginning.
2013-03-19 0 notes

Cut Off

Bits of colored paper littered the floor like confetti, some scuttling off to tiny cracks and crevices under boxes or table legs to avoid capture. It was a paper city all its own underneath the one that sprawled across the tabletop. Beneath: chaos, kaleidoscopic mosaics and disregarded scatterings. Above: meticulous order and sense, in roads that swept and intersected at trees and general stores.

Graham had nothing to do with his time until he had found a pair of scissors, and that was that.

The tiny city was surprisingly accurate, mapped out into square miles by a graph he had drawn under the table, and he had enough space to do it all in, even adding a tiny card table or two so he could include the golf course and estates. His sister let him do it. It kept him indoors and warm and she knew where he was. It was worth the price of taking odd photos around the town every now and then to make sure the pizza parlor didn’t get a new paint job.

The fact is, Graham was good at it, or at least he was by now. He’d put on a podcast or listen to old whining records all the day long, glasses pinched onto his nose that he swore “made him see better” with no evidence of him having visual fault. But she couldn’t judge. He’d snip and clip and make an ungodly mess and ship boxes of new paper to the house, boxes so large they’d block the doorway and she’d hear him holler, “Get Joey to bring ‘em up to me!”

It was just a hobby, after all. Graham didn’t allow photographs of his work and nobody really knew he did any of it. He didn’t want the notability. It introduced risk into his life, and she guiltily realized she was relieved. Let him keep his hobby, and don’t let anyone take it away from him.

“I think we need a gazebo,” he idly said to her one day, using a delicate paper tool to cut a trellis. He was redoing their house for the fifth time. This rendition was shaping up to look better than the actual house itself.

“How do you know we need a gazebo?”
“Saw one on the net. I wanna make one.”
“Why not make one anyway instead of us buying it?”
“Not as fun.”
“We don’t have room for a gazebo in the yard.”
“You can get little ones.” Graham wasn’t making eye contact, his pupils were flipping between the screen on his phone and the dainty paper ornament before him. He had taken a new photo that morning, and was already dyeing the tip of his tool with tea to show weathering effects.

“How about you write a letter to the mayor and ask he adds one to the park?”
There was no response. Either he was drafting in his head, or he wasn’t listening to her anymore. She left an armful of fresh towels on the dresser and stepped out.

The attic wasn’t such a bad place to spend all your time, she thought. So long as he’s happy. And safe. Things could be worse for all of them.

As she stepped over a discarded shipping box in the living room, her eyes rested on a spot just outside the window that might look quite nice with a small gazebo.

Admiration Pains

?RAGUS

What You Want

Emoticons O_O

Legends Writ

London Calling

Rooted

Dearborne

Cut Off