Old Stories - part I
My old stories on my main Tumblr account are now thoroughly lost beneath photos and, ever increasingly, automated last.fm posts. I may have to do something with that blog since I don’t ever post there. But in the meantime I’m digging out all the stories and putting them here, in their rightful place.
——
He
She deals in the rhythm, the rhythm the pace the rhyme the ritual. And he laps it up, the eager puppy that he is. Ready to please. Ready to learn.
She deals in the blue. That light, never-ending blue. That soul-reflection, his blanket of love and security. And he flies high through the blue-sky. So at peace. She is euphoric that he has his wings.
She deals in years of weighted bones, she is dragged down and she drags him with her. And he frees himself, then throws her the rope. That lifeline of understanding. Of clarity. He is crystal clear for her to drink upon.
She deals in his joy and smiles. She is silly and flippant and frivolous. He dances in aeroplanes around her, echoing steps of her heartbeat, pulling her into a giggling embrace.
He deals out every emotion ever named, and even more that are not. Her mirror-image is syncronised beauty. He is the beauty. Those oh so precious moments are never wasted. There is always beauty around him. There are always gleaming souls. There are always pools of light.
There is always life to live. Beautiful life. Around him.
——
He sits. Hunched. Distracted. Unslick blade in hand. Sleeves rolled up business-like. Muttering, debating his own clouds. His rain, his thunder. His agonising screams.
He lifts the unslick blade. Poised. Hunched further. Then, a beep.
A text.
“You are beautiful.”
His lifeline. You never know when you might be his lifeline. Or just a ray of sunshine that made it through his clouds.
——
Slashing her wrists, spraying her blood. Attention seeker. Desperate for care.
——
There are cookie monsters in my kitchen. Autumn sludge on the bottoms of my shoes. The night’s gaze sucks you in deeper, and the day’s yawn feels pathetic. We all float. We all wait. In dramatic pause. In ominous background chords. We wait.
——
Skin
I am happy in my skin. I am comfortable. Relaxed. And that sets me on edge. I am happy in my skin. I am not pure alabaster. I have no scars. I am happy in my skin. It is not itching, not crawling. And that makes it creep. I am happy in my normal skin. It is not extraordinary. It shows the first signs of age. I want it to be brilliant. I am happy in my ordinary skin. With all its little imperfections. It makes me human. I am happy in my skin. It is clean and soft. There are no hard edges anymore. No flashes. I am happy in my skin. I want to adorn it. I am happy in my skin. Make it special once again.
——
Juxtaposition
Night turned day turned night turned death. I die every time. Listening to the relentless pace that helps me to death. Sometimes I get to 20 other times 2145 before I die. But every time I do and am reborn. Newly ready to die once more.
Now I don’t need that pace. I die in an instant. Unless the shadows are moving in. The shadows are coming for me. I must start counting. I must die if I can live and struggle once more. No more bright spinning picture shows, bring me easy death once more. Tomorrow I must live.
——
It’s late
I am lost in that cool metal lock. It’s easier to weigh nothing. No footprints on the butter heart. Her aura is slashed and sparkling. I am chopping my hair to bits with the kitchen scissors. Hair weighs less. I am lost in your nails.
——
You
You might never realise
Just how much you mean to me
Just how wonderful you are
Just how much you’ve changed me
Just how deeply I feel for you.
You should always know
Just how much I love you
Just how much I want you
Just how much I need you to be happy
No matter what.
Just a girl
Just a boy
Riding the waves
Clinging onto each other
Floating free.
Just honesty
Just openness
Just a spark
Just a connection
And so much more.
Just you. Only you.
——
Velvet crystals
Your heart feels like velvet crystals and your soul is an unlucky horseshoe. You smell of bruised steak, doll steak, doll meat. And you pound away at your flesh in all the glittering day. And I pound away at your flesh in all the light blue night. Entrancing beat, rhythm, striking all the wrong chords. And I poured my heart and my soul into everything I did. And now my heart feels like velvet crystals and my soul is an unlucky horseshoe. The crazy glue is my dust. My angeldust. My fallen angel.
——
Love Letter #3
I love it when I’m small
And you come up behind me
And wrap me up in your arms
Safe and loved.
——
Dragging heels
I thought I had hit the bottom. I was eager to find my way back up. But not too eager. Not keen enough. As I realised there were still more depths to be tunnelled. Closer to hell than I already thought I was. And so I kept scratching my way through the dirt, fighting tooth and bleeding nails to finally have arrived. To have sunk.
When you truely reach the bottom, there is no place left to go but up. This is disturbing reassurance. Uneasy relief.
And here I am…
Fighting a new fight.
I need a plan.
——
Words
The words have always been around
And I have always devoured them
Lost in a stranger painting
Consumed by the dancing rhythm
The resounding hero
The epic battle
The gentle love
I used to read every word
Cereal boxes
Shampoo bottles
Hungry for more
Never filled, never satiated.
And now
Now I can’t read a single word
Without breaking into cold sweats
Without being so lost I get dizzy
Trying to find my exit
Everything is my painting
The dancing rhythm my heartbeat
I am the resounding hero
I am the fallen in the epic battle
I lost the gentle love
I can’t read a single word
Without feeling sick from excess
Lather, rinse, repeat
Yeah, I can relate.
——
Untitled
He smells of warm baked cakes and of angel’s delicate wings. And I… I… I stumble over words in the rush to give him a story. Paint him a picture. Of the whole wide world. Or at least my narrow one. We are impulse upon impulse. No editing, no reworking. Move forward and never ever dare to look back. I always look back. Too scared to let go. I am broken down, this is easy. I must learn his lessons. From teacher to pupil. Knowing to frightened and soft. Sometimes there are so many words. And sometimes, for him, there are none. There just aren’t enough words, not even in the whole wide world. To describe what angel wings smell like.
——
Love Letter #2
You can be a hippo
All you want
I’ll be the panda
And rest you on my lap
——
Clean
Cherry blossoms, angel haze. Twilights of dragonflies. Rippling frog-spawn ponds. Fields of verdant clover and of golden flax, soft as snow between fingertips. All is clean and pure and innocent.
A lifetime away there are pavements littered with dog shit. Playgrounds sprinkled with dirty needles. Noisy cars and even noisier people. There is every vice ever thought of, and yet more. People partaking at every time of the day. All is dirty and sullied and immoral.
Where would you retreat to with all your baggage? Your thoughts like traffic, fleeting and repeating? The sound and noise of an epileptic nightmare?
Would you go to the place with such cleanliness and purity and innocence that it kills you? Burns you from the inside?
Or the place where ordinary people live? Full of vice and corruption? Lack of morality so inbred it burns direct to your skin and bones?
Sometimes we live in different worlds. Whatever we need to stay sane. Alive. Clean.
——
Beauty
There was all at once nothing and everything on just another ordinary summer’s evening. The air carried the delicate scent of warmth. The spice added by approaching rain on a hot day. The trees were relaxed in their own company, awaiting some nourishment. A girl with an unfortunate mouth rode her shining new bike through the quiet streets, unaware of the imminent downpour, not yet relating that familiar smell in the air. She didn’t care about anything but her bike that day, and pedalled as furiously as she could to make it all the way up the hill. She spun the bike around and enjoyed pushing off, throwing her legs out either side, and racing back down. The light wind meshed with simple excitement caught in her throat, and made her eyes sting and water, as she reached the bottom of the hill just as the first fat raindrop hit the tarmac.
That same girl, now a woman, twenty years on, stands in front of her mirror brushing her hair. The morning of a similar day, a day she has forgotten about, a long lost childhood. The pidgeons coo gentle love at each other as she leaves the house. She is bristling and spunky, looking rebellious, yet slightly hunched. She appears to all the world to have something of a weight on her shoulders. She smells the warm air and that all-too familiar spice that on any other day would have her running back for an umbrella. Not today, she thinks, I’ve had enough of my burdens, my troubles, my cares, and she carries on down her path. Soon the rain begins, slow and large at first, growing into a drenching frenzy. The girl runs up the hill furiously, and races back down. The simple excitement and the raindrops making their way down the contours of her face catch in her throat, and she giggles all the way.
——
Love Letter #1
I love the way
your eyes tell no-one
but me that you are lost
in hope.
——
Nothing else to do
She waits on pointed tip-toes,
she waits with baited breath
She waits with no real purpose,
she waits for metaphorical death
The rest is clashing discord of mismatching syllables and confused letters. There is no ending here. She waits, she waits, she waits… She sleeps to make the wait go faster. She stays up to slow it down. If only she knew what she was waiting for then maybe she wouldn’t feel like tearing herself a new outside-in skin. She wanders lonely as a cloud… as lost as a cloud. In the cacophony of voice and noise, hers is always weakest………..
“Hello, thank you for calling the life-line, please continue to hold…. You have been holding for 25 years and you are nearly at the front of our queue…. The waiting time is approximately 26 months until your call is answered by one of our operators…. Thank you for your patience, please continue to hold… We are sorry for any inconvenience caused by long waiting periods, please continue to hold….. Our operators will be happy to supply you with a life, once you reach the front of our queue….. Please continue to hold……”
——
Everyone needs a little something
She screams to the night. To the navy velvet sky with its crystal trail. To the smells of the heady evening flowers. To the dull thrum of distant traffic and life still ekeing out precious minutes. Her piercing war cry punctuates through everything. It seems. Everyone in the whole wide world can hear her shrieking voice carry on past the point where everyone falls deaf.
A drunken man calls back. Making indeterminate noises through his gin-soaked throat. He doesn’t get the point, she thinks. He can’t even form words through that liquor haze.
Someone out there must surely understand, she reasons, her voices beginning to waver and thin. Finally it cracks and she slumps to the ground, panting heavily, almost defeated.
Gathering all her strength and might and breath she takes to her tiptoes once more and screams into the now darkness. The echoes of her voice travel across the land, over oceans, all around. Everything else turns deadly quiet as she waits, not breathing, not moving. Just counting the echoes in her head.
And finally, euphorically, there is a response, another female voice, stronger than hers, calls the answer she needed to hear. The question she knew all along. And the tears fall as solidly as the rain comes from the shaken clouds. She is not alone. And she has everything she needs, right there.
——
Limits
“I have no limits” she says and she means it. She pushes things far. Sometimes too far, just that bit past the boundary. And it’s difficult to modify, sometimes, when she’s used to silently being right. But her limitlessness has warmth and love in abundance. Limitless abundance. She can’t turn that off. And when the night draws in and she tells you she has no limits, then you might find yourself feeling like the one and only. The all and the everything. And ready for an adventure.
——
Too much
Too much going on to think straight. To see straight. To see the wood for the trees. Everything is cracked dried eyeballs turned to dust with a blink. You are the power, you giveth and you taketh away, and I’m pretty sure you know the impact. Of everything. Of you.
You.
On me.
Me.
[Blink]
——
I am always out of time, but never out of memories
I am always rushing like traffic. Dodging through it, jumping bonnet to boot. I am always running faster than my legs will go. Stumbling unelegantly. Tripping and falling. Picking myself up and dusting myself down. Flailing through the world once more.
Forgetting things these days. Too much for a burning brain to take. Remembering too late. Always too late.
But some things I never forget. They are cool and solid iceberg calm in the mess of red hot ash. Some scents. Some sounds. Some tastes. Some sights.
In some blissful moments photograph memories are captured. Never to fade, to crinkle and yellow. Hold them up to the sun and they will always gleam like new. Some shivers. Some shudders. Some crinkled laughing eyes. Some beautiful teardrops. Some soars and swoops and somesaults. Explosions of fairy sweet fireworks agains a pure velvet night.
In some blissful moments sweet sultry scents are captured. Never to sour with age. Always ringing through every breath. Sweetness and light. Fresh and young. Some salt. Some sugar. Some flowers. Some fruits. Some pure new coffee. Some warm toasting bread. Evocative smells of a room just filled, of a heavy slumber, of a bright new day.
In some blissful moments delicious glorious tastes are captured. Never to become metallic. Always crackling on tongue tips. Some soft skin. Some gentle kisses. Some carefully made tea. Some lovingly drawn blood. The most lingeringly delectable treats to savour on the tongue.
In some blissful moments provocatively exquisite sounds are captured. Never to become ghostly echoes. Always the soundtrack of a loved life. Some torrents of love. Some declarations. Some sighs of comfort. Some moans of pleasure. Every emotion captured in a treasured album.
Together. It is my everything. My all. My reason for getting up. My reason for rest. And it is always enough. No matter how many days are devoid of its enchanting angel presence. The beauty is always with me.
——
Streaming
Dead eyes. Dead Life. Disconnected. Disillusioned. Disenfranchised. Distracted. Dismissed. Diseased. Parasitic. Bubonic. Bubbling. Tumbling. Tripping and falling. Downing. Drowning. Frowning. Wrinkles. Spots. Freckles. Cover-up. Pin-up. Down-up-down-up. Soaring. Swifting. Shifting. Sands. Beaches and Cliffs. Diving. Divinging. Searching. Seeking. Finding. Losing. Gaining. Removing. Clothes. Teeth. Bleach. Nirvana. Heaven. Saints and angels. Devils and demons. Fire. Brimstone. Wrath and ire. Piercing. Branding. Scarring. Scarification. Art. Paintings and Photographs. Windows. Souls. Titian Nudes. Brush strokes. Shutter speed. Elbows. Dead eyes.
——
I never got poetry anyway
A symphony in acid burn
A cacophony in twilight haze
A blissed-out boy in blueish thrall
A tight-sprung girl holding his gaze
There are no words
There are no sounds
All is all
And all surrounds
He leaves her there
In bright tear stains
Forever is too long to wait
Yet her adoration never wanes
——
I promise not to sell your perfumed secrets
I wrote this someplace else, some time ago. I might repost some more, we’ll see…
He smells of damsels in distress. Of mother-of-pearl moments that catch the light in a rainbow glimpse of. Purity and cleanliness are dead to me. I left them behind years ago bleeding onto white cotton sheets and pristine comforting bathtowels. Each step he takes weighs heavy on wood as a mind full of. Ending sentences with of she feels she need speak no further words. Delete as applicable, score through and add your own preferred endings. He will. She will. She will weep as a fallen angel statue caught by the thoughts of. He will retreat like a hero statue immersed in the reality of. The only thing I can be sure of is the. The greatest regret ever in my life will be the.
Off-white creamy eggshell, never quite as bright and untouched as he expects. She smells like a thousand different struggled days, rough and tumble and of plastic and cold metal. He endears himself to the thoughts of those flutter-wing faeries at the bottom of the garden, sprinkling their magic dust around the orchard, til all the trees are overflowing with delicious sleeping beauty apples. Disappointed but not surprised the grains of sand silent soft slip through grasping digits.
The words that jumble and tumble through corn fields of golden flashes. That rustle like wind through light cotton window coverings. That fall around your sullen serious head like autumn leaves of autumn colours that always provokes such a strong mental portrait. The words are. The words are not. The words will always be. The words will never be.
The words of.
——
The wanting
This time it was intentional. She wanted to know. She built up and built up in her head til it was all blown out of proportion. Blown out of all proportion. And in the end it was nothing. Nothing of any significance, or consequence. But that’s not the point. She had to know. It started off as a want, and ended as a need, borne from her hundred-mile-an-hour-mind.
There’s saying and there’s doing. There are words and then there are actions. They are two big different things. And saying the words “I will” is not the same as saying the words. There is disbelief and there is belief and then there is not knowing whether you are believing or not, because you have absolutely nothing to go on. So what do you do? Ask for more. Ask and ye might or might not receive. She doesn’t know. Still.
Time, knowledge and commitment. That’s the recipe, the ingredients, the answer to that question. Time, knowledge and commitment. Whirling round her head Time will come, as it always does, often sooner than you ever expect. Knowledge would be a start, but is that knowledge believable knowledge, or just defensive words? Commitment. Spawns knowledge. Knocks away at time. Is the key to the door. If it still fits in the lock. This dish is her one last issue. And it is not hers to cook. The ingredients have to be worked on, her food needs to be earnt.
And the question of “why not?”. With all she does know to be true. With all the wonderment, the joy, the absolute everything, with every word and every action. Still. “Why not?”. Not easy, she knows. She really really knows. But she leaves this to be the one question she would like a frank answer to. What is holding it back?
——
The Baby Girl
The baby girl is ready. She is growing up. She is taking her first few steps, before she can walk. She is making her first few sounds, before she can talk. When she can walk then she can move to running, and jumping, and skipping and hopping. When she can talk she can move to forming sentences, paragraphs, poems and novels.
The baby girl is starting. She’s starting to see what is wrong and what is right. She can have her own moral code, her life ethics. The fuzzy rules to live life if you want to be good and just. (You know, the ones you can bend if they are going to get in the way of your true happiness, but not any of the really bad ones like murder). And she’s starting to see who she could be, how her personality could develop.
She sees people on the street, this baby girl. She can see her parents, and their friends, she can see people people people everywhere. She studies them studiously. Every eccentricity, every poised move, every image out of place. She imagines them all, in her embodiment, she tries them on to see what fits.
The baby girl is growing up. And she wants to know whose skin she’s growing into. Whose suit her soul will be housed in. She tries different as frequently as most change clothes. She’s just testing, soon she will come to her conclusions, and she will be free from the uncertainty shackles.
She is growing up, the baby girl, and in her own ways is being reborn. She picks and chooses personalities like a pick and mix. She slots them all into place. She wishes to be happy-go-lucky when it safe to be, but she is not adverse to being staid and serious. She thinks sometimes she really needs to be serious, to be taken with less brevity. More gravity. She wants to be confident, and really truely not giving a fuck what other people think of her. Apart from the people that matter, of course. She wants poise, and precision, not slap-dash mistakes and tumbling trip-ups.
The baby girl is liking this resolve. This new-found freedom to express exactly what has been trapped away for so long. She will not give a damn, she has that strength, she will execute with not so much as a gasp of exersion. Strength, confidence, poise, seriousness, joyous abandon, and above all, self. Self - worth, knowledge, security. Without those trappings of selfishness. Well maybe a little bit selfish. And more, much more. MUCH more.
The baby girl is finally trying to grow up.
——
The weeping
The tree wept. I stood and watched it. Unable to help. The tears dripped down from the eye of its leaves. Melancholy but in bloom, what did it have to weep about? Other trees around unable to console its sad, slow cries. And you could tell they wanted to, as they leant towards the tree in breezy fluid movements. If only they could uproot and shuffle closer. Catch the tears flowing freely, offer a smooth branch of peace. And me? What could I do for this poor tree? Only watch on, transfixed. And wonder, wonder what makes its life such a painful experience.
——
Angel Wings
He was flying on angel wings that day. And everything she did felt so connected to him. No him. No her. Just them, together enjoying the day. Such an understatement. Both lifted high by wings of angels, soaring up to the pale blue sky. As one delicious entity. He did her proud that day. He gave and gave and took and took. And perhaps he could have gone on forever, flying through that cloudless sky. But she always leaves more for the next day.
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