Synesthesia and Other Tragedies - Short Story

Yet another prompt from Becausewe'repoets - and one which struck fear in my heart. Fan fiction, a thing that makes my blood curdle to a jelly in my veins. Fan fiction. Suffocating and strained and cross-medium skull-splitting prepubescent sex-scene-ladened fan fiction. The highest artform of the lowest circles of hell. Fan fiction. Here is Ninevah. Here is Sodom. Here there is no salvation.

So there's a challenge - new rules - new nets to fly by. Stinging, tumblr back-linked nets which make my eyes twitch and my bowels churn. There's something to be said for going outside of one's comfort zone. If anything, I only write one way, so it's just a topic served with a side of universe and mythos - not so bad right? It's not a heroin needle. It's not a life sentence.

Synesthesia and Other Tragedies:

The branch of an almond tree scraped against the plastic wrap window of an old mobile home. A grey pot was boiling on a stove beside chipped blue Formica counter tops. A boy stretched his legs along three dryrotted steps in the Temecula sunlight, wringing out the stiffness.

He looked out across a field of similar homes dipping into the valley up to a freeway full to roaring with stopped cars. Some houses looked like shanties and others kept little gardens growing and looked pristine with fresh paint and short grass. The sun faced the boy as it lowed to the horizon, just beginning to color the sky.

A sound like coughing ground against the foundations under the steps. The boy gave a few quick smacks to the discolored wood beams.

"Let him go, comeon. Don't eat him. Come here." Amid scratching, a dog rustled through a hole of lattice in the foundation, tufts of rabbit hair in his teeth. The boy rubbed the dogs ears, brushing off the thick grime of mold and dust from his face past his blind eye. For a moment the grey eye guessed at its former blue and then reverted.

"What am I going to do with you?" said the boy, pulling himself up to glance at the stove's clock.

"I can be late" he said, walking inside the open door to take the pot off the stove. He turned and fished for some time in the freezer before dumping a few handfuls of ice into the pot. He swirled the pot as it crackled gently and set it down in the doorway at the top of the steps.

The dog ran to it, but the boy caught his snout in his hand.

"Watch the house, and you - don't burn yourself." The dog turned immediately to lap up the water, recoiling for a moment and then proceeding unhindered.

"Ugh, you're never going to learn. Love you. Watch the house."

He tucked a lighter into his jacket pocket and headed down the road. For a while he kicked his feet against the ground to hear the crunch of the gravel beside the pavement, and to see the rocks turn from grey to red-brown in the light. He saw the grass sometimes weeded and sometimes wild dotted here and there with little mushrooms growing out bleach white, looking out of place. They ought to have been red to match their poison.

 As he came closer to the main drag he stopped, looking up and tugging at his coat to keep it straight and clean and black. He spied an old woman leaning out of her window for a smoke eyeing him.

"Keep watching lady. Get all angry about it." He smiled as he curled his fingers. The woman gave a choked gasp and fell back. By the time he came to the bus stop she was rubbing the glare from her eyes. He could nearly see her there clawing dizzily for a phone - world's always ending when kids walk down the street.

On the bus he watched the sun set and turn the sky a violent set of colors. An accident of air particles and the angles of light. Another bus, slower because of everyone coming off the freeway. Another set of colors, from red to blue with flutters of green neon haze. Not much to think about. He imagined people walking alongside the bus between the glares, and of his father looking out from bus windows glaring.

"You're going to have to deal with a lot of people who want to tag along. There's nothing worse than that." Of course there was never anything worse than whatever topic he had in mind at the moment.

"People at the stop just wait, they don't read, they don't better themselves. No one's going to help people who wait." Indistinct grumbling. "No one wants an honest days work if they think they've got the power. People like them and people like us. There are men who can move mountains. You should be one of those men."

He'd curl his hand around his books and shake his head. He could get mad about anything but nothing made him quite so uniquely mad as people waiting around. He hated wasted time. Soviet efficiency still drilled into his head or something.

The boy slid his hand along the shadow of his own breath on the windowpane, leaving a trail of yellow smoke dissipating into the blue of the nighttime.

Even this many years later he still didn't understand what his father stood for - which revolution he was waiting for. Always telling him to read the Fountainhead, while he waited for the world to work itself out.

Another bus stop. He walked the rest of the way through the neat grass of an apartment building, well lit and sour smelling.

"Hey man, wondered when you'd show up" came a voice half wheezing from a balcony one floor up.

"Took the scenic route" the boy replied, speeding his pace around the corner and up the stairwell, opening the door without hesitation. A few people lounging around, sour smell in the smoke filled air - introductions.

"That crash on the freeway, was that?"
The man from the balcony nodded,
"Yeah, Sam's always looking to make a scene. Did you see the concrete?"
"No I just saw the gridlock"
"Well what he did - it's a work of art - man. I'm glad he's on our side, you know."
"Hey I've had a long day can I get somethi-" the boy said, interrupted with a pat on the back by his host, medicine in hand.

"Already rolled it for you. Aren't I nice?" a cocky smile.
"Yeah, yeah. How much do I owe you?" he said.

A new face butted in, his left front tooth jutting out his mouth past his chin. Lisping harshly past his fang he said,
"Malik here said he owes you. He said your sister grew him shrooms that could pay off a mortgage."

Malik, giving the boy a light, nodded.

"He's not wrong, man. That was crazy stuff. No one's seen anything like them, if you can get your 'sister' growing them again we could be in business." He provided one hand of genteel air quotes with the word "sister."

The boy smiled exhaling slowly lungfuls of smoke. "That's not how it works, it was a lucky break, she's-"
"You told me that before and you came through for me. I think you don't give yourself credit. She's - volatile - I understand that. But anyone can be controlled."

The boy held the smoke in his mouth this time, peering around the room as it started to shift, gently, like a painted backdrop on a Hollywood backlot.

Malik pulled a pipe from his sleeve, filled with a dull looking slime.

"I didn't believe you the first time, when you said it could make you feel anyway you like. I thought you just didn't know about shrooms but god knows you've got gold with this. Make you feel anyway you want - there's money in that."

The boy chewed the stink from his teeth.

"Think about it. What do you have to lose? Remember the first time? Remember we went to that club."

He did remember - bits and pieces. A girl putting her fingers to his skin, burning with fire that didn't burn. A dart game played straight onto a man's back, bent over the bar, as he took shots and laughed unfazed. He remembered everyone there with a different type of scale or sinew or bone extruding. People with their whole bodies looking like stretched rubber, dribbling spittle which drifted off into the air like balloons. Beer mugs that frosted over when a woman walked by. Peoples voices in your head - more than there were people in the place.

Malik gave a sweeping gesture to the other men sitting in the den.

"We were the talk of the place. I'm telling you - they took us in the back. The girls, you know Jerry's girls, I swear to you when they saw him they took him by the hand, all they had on was their wings. Covering themselves and laughing. I swear I wasn't even making them do it - no mind tricks here."

"You make a good argument" said the boy, sitting down on an ottoman in the den, rubbing his forehead. He wondered if Malik had gotten better at working over his mind, or if he hadn't tried at all this time. Normally he heard a ringing noise. That was how he got his way, somehow. He knew that if he heard bells ringing it was too late and he couldn't say no. He couldn't say no to Malik, but there weren't any bells ringing now.

Malik crouched, handing the boy his pipe.

"It's time you got to work, man. You've got something here that no one else has."

"We all do. We're all just so special" said the boy.

"Yeah but this is something useful. Something that can get you a little further in life than making pretty colors show up when you want them to."

"Alright man - just - I'll see what I can do."

Malik offered the boy a light, but he recoiled, pulling his own lighter from his jacket pocket. He stayed a while. He blew smoke in rings of orange and red, avocado green as it trailed from his nostrils. He made the fire of his lighter turn blue - and then every light in the room. He showed how he whitened his teeth and made his hair dark or light.

The others talked for a while about their plans - about Sam's display on the freeway - no news on where he ended up after that. The man with the fang showed he could bite through a phonebook - another man disappeared entirely into a cloud of smoke. This was the company to keep, for understanding, for protection.

He left in the dark with the stars spinning overhead. A bus, the long way round - he saw the cars still stuck on the freeway. At the second change he knew a walk would clear his head. Up past the familiar mobile homes going dim - past the mushrooms red on the ground like spilled paint. Finally he came to his steps. The door was closed. The pot of water still sat on the steps - the water floating an island of fuzzing grime. He picked it up and walked to the kitchen, his stomach buckling with the memory of food.

He dumped out the water and filled the pot again in the sink, turning the stove as hot as it could muster. He fished in a cabinet full of cans. Corned beef with a red label. Can opener. He sat down at the kitchen table twisting away at the can like he was whittling wood.

It turned and turned on the magnet and creaked and sputtered a little pink congealed fat. Half opened he wrestled with the slip of an opening he had. Welded shut three quarters of the way, just enough open to let the air in to spoil the can. He wrenched with his hands, his fingers turning blue and the can's red label fading to white suddenly. Dammit. The opener couldn't catch the edge, it turned and turned. His face reddened as he pressed hard against the metal. Damn damn. Wedge something in, peel it like a sardine lid. Nothing. Constant pressure just to bend the metal - nothing to give, the fat slipping out and his hands can't grip. Nothing. Dammit dammit. Metal bent enough to bare its frayed teeth but not enough to see the pink contents which oozed all over. The blue Formica counter tops turned red. Red creeping out from the corners came up everywhere. Veins bulged in the boys neck in the red light in the red room.

"Damn" he spat, as his greased fingers slipped past the ragged opening. Blood. He got up and tossed the can at the stove. He sucked at his fingers - the iron taste of blood and the heavy dulling flavor of the fat on his fingers. The red color receded from the walls. He wiped his forehead with the arm of his coat.

The pot, half on the stove, began to just shimmer with heat. He gave the can of corned beef a cursory spin but turned, continuing to suck the juice from his fingers. He stood for a while before he heard rustling from the floorboards. He'd woken her. He stepped out the door to sit on the steps.

From the hole in the lattice foundation a hand extended, followed, serpentlike by a mudcaked arm and the face of a young girl spotted with mushrooms growing from her cheeks. As she stood slender caps of morels sprung up around her feet.

"Hey sis. Come here." he said, patting the wood next to him on the steps. The girl moved to sit with him, the wood curling with soft moss as she did. He put his arm around her. The grass in front of them turned pink and purple, and the girl giggled. The boy moved his hand slowly back and forth in the air as the colors shifted.

"So sis - did you make anything today?" He asked. The girl tucked her head into her shoulder, pointing with one toe.

The body of a rabbit sat a few feet away, perforated with little buds of mushrooms.

"That's what you two were fighting over." He felt the air getting thick, as it always did with her.

The girl gave a gummy half-open grin and shook herself side to side. The boy started to cough and the girl stood up, walking backwards to look at her brother. Between her toes mushroom caps squirmed. Her legs were matted with mud and sick smelling mold. Not wanting to turn away she tripped, catching herself with a shocked expression, before erupting into giggles.

The boy, still coughing harshly, waved her off, before she got to her knees and slithered through the hole in the foundation.

He got up and turned back to the boiling pot. He got a knife to try and tear out corned beef from the torn opening of the can. He coughed and wiped his red eyes - the assault of spores was never pleasant. He dipped his knife into the can's slim opening and licked the tip.

You should be one of those men. There are men who can move mountains. Men who can tear down the bridges on freeways and put thoughts in you head with a ringing bell. Men whose reaction to a half-opened can isn't changing the color of the label. No one's going to help people who wait.

The boy poured the boiling water into a mug, touching it with his finger to turn it rich coffee brown. He sniffed it, expecting a scent.  He turned the sticky can of corned beef over in his hand, leaning back in his chair. Little golden figures appeared on the walls - glinting white stars and trees heavy with silhouetted blossoms. A parade of candy-colored animals swirling swiftly into night. He watched the shadows turn to purple and green and yellow on the walls, and move in brilliant surges through the house for his delight.

Review:

Not particularly functional as fan fiction.

The original point of view for this story was actually going to be Malik. I might still write that if the mood struck me - it was a look at how life is for someone who can literally control minds, and how rapidly it overtakes one's life - until you're not so much a God as someone trapped in a world without variety and find yourself completely alone because you won't allow other people to act as free agents - they become simply mirrors of yourself. In the periphery of that story was a young boy convinced without said mind control to do something vaguely sinister and it spiraled out from there.

The major theme? Life is unfair. We hit the ground running - the opening scene is the opening scene of the Book of Jeremiah, where God politely tells the eponymous prophet Jeremiah that everything is going to go to shit and it's up to Jeremiah to spread the word. The boiling pot to the north is the wrath which is going to be unleashed. I like the image of Jeremiah because he's a prophet that's unfit for prophethood, and knows it. He fears the powers that be more than he loves them - it's a fairly unhealthy relationship. Of course, I would have a thing for "the weeping prophet."

So we have our Jeremiah facing some future wrath in a mobile home park in Temecula - as mundane a place as there is on this Earth. Parts of Temecula are gorgeous - the mobile home park which inspired this location I can assure you is not. It's among the blandest locations I've ever seen in my life, and I'm currently living in an unbroken series of wheat farms, so I know bland.

There's a fair amount of ambiguity - you wouldn't realize at the beginning that he's not talking to his dog - he's talking to his sister. His sister's presence is first foreshadowed by the mold on the dog's eye. Mold is inherently off putting for whatever reason - it only grows on dead things and curls its tendrils through the humus - it travels via invisible spores and it's a symbol of decay and unceasing corruption. He's boiling the water to kill off the spores just to give the dog something to drink - but even if you didn't know of his sister's influence it serves to show that he doesn't live in a place with clean water to drink. Coupled with a plastic wrap window it's a vision of poverty.

The dog's blind eye is the first example of the boy's preternatural ability, which is merely changing the color of things. This is about as subtle as it gets, and about as maddeningly unhelpful a power as any person could be given.

He takes his lighter as a small amulet against future evils - but he knows where he's going and why.

Kid walking down the street - that could be fairly topical if you've got a political slant, though that's a bit of a stretch. We only see the woman from his perspective, so whatever he does to make her fall (a sudden change of color to disorient her? a shadow moving suddenly across the ground? the possibilities are endless) doesn't get fully shown. He's not a saint, here, but he's done nothing terribly wrong so far.

The freeway, looming in the distance as it does in literally any vantage point in the cities of Southern California, has been stopped by something, slowing the already slothlike trip this boy is taking. We have time for a J. Alfred Prufrock reference (and another example of the boy's power) and memories of a father. The boy's current age is indistinct.

We only see the father as the boy remembers him - perpetually bitter. He's fond of Ayn Rand which is enough to make any man a certain type of villain but here he just comes off as bitter. Whatever vision he had for his son has not been matched by reality. The boy, it seems, does little else but wait. He believes his father to be a hypocrite, similarly waiting for the world to change somehow. We have no idea if his father had any inhuman power.

 We come to a smoke-filled den - a setting that brings its own air of disrepute. The man with the fang is fairly devilish, but Malik is the one making offers. As drug dealers go he's calm and fairly polite. He has confidence enough to be patient. He promises resources without needing to rely on threats, which to me fits the psychology of someone who doesn't have to deal with no.

For a moment he reminds the boy about some former deal or tryst that made him the toast of a mutant club. The girls wearing nothing but wings brings up another judaic parallel, this time Isaiah, who was touched on the lips by a burning coal. Isaiah was then given the fun job of telling the world that... no one would listen to him. More futility.

Why do I call them Jerry's girls? Is this a reference to the musical compilation of the works of Jerry Herman? Is this an implication that the winged women were drag queens? Does this have any relevance on the plot? So many questions.

We see that Malik has a power of persuasion - strangely absent here. We also learn about the boy's sister and her penchant for mushrooms (a variation of the traditional psylocibin  variety which inspires so many a kooky hallucinatory drug trip in various comedies - I should mention those mushrooms aren't a big money drug)

Here things come to the real crux of the matter - this is a world where people have power to change  things. Our protagonist has, at best, an extension of synesthesia. Sucks.

The return trip drives the point home. We find the mushrooms have turned red (another execution of the boy's power), but otherwise it's a long and lonely and calm trip. We see why he has to boil the water - in the time he's been away it's turned stagnant and fungal. A good symbol of the caustic properties of poverty. You can't just let things be and just "go and make money" as so many people insist - if you leave you'll come back to things decaying and breaking down because they aren't of sufficient quality.

When he gets home, hungry and conflicted, he gets to take it out on a can of corned beef - the utter depths of the futility of his existence.

But we get a slight reprieve. We meet the sister - living beneath the house - emerging like a Dryad or nature goddess, things growing at her feet. She is mute and perhaps not well. It's a short meeting, as he immediately begins to cough and wheeze. Not only is he stuck with powers that do him little good, he lives alongside a person who's powers are an active detriment to his life. She seems sweet enough - but where was her sympathy for the rabbit? Since she doesn't speak it's hard to gauge her intelligence or self awareness or even her humanity. She's literally kept under the floorboards, but is seemingly still kind with her brother - she may be only slightly more functional than the dog.

The boiling pot from the beginning has been turned into insipid tasteless coffee. That is the wrath of god that's waiting. It's not been a good day, but we're left with a visage of Mardi Gras colors dancing - there's some happiness still to be found here. His power is a new end of imagination, and for him as for so many - imagination can bring some joy - but can't pay the bills. Still, we end on the word delight. If we hold him to the morality of his father the boy is a failure. Perhaps he's found peace and contentedness - perhaps contentedness is the worst possible thing in the world.

The title was originally going to be The Book of Thoth. I'll keep that for Malik's story.

Visions Set to Music - Trapeze Swinger

This is a very personal piece for me, because it's a result of that most cliched of young-adult experiences - the drug epiphany. My personal drug epiphany. Specifically one involving MDMA, good company, and tucking myself away for a meditative bath. Incidentally, not what one normally does on "Molly" which has an oh-my-god-let's-rave-and-get-fucked-up connotation to it, which is regrettable. While taking that bath I listened to music, finishing on a song which summoned up - all at once - this particular story.

The song in question? The Trapeze Swinger by Iron and Wine, also known as Sam Beam. Perfect, as music goes, simple and exquisite. Lyrics with poetic potency and just a tantalizing sound. It could inspire a dozen different stories - like really good music can. It could speak to incredible heartbreak or unspeakable joy. What did I see? A boy and a girl and a surreal German countryside, the familiar silhouette of Auschwitz. Remember that. That's important.

Think of it more as a prose poem than a short story. (Incidentally, it fits rather well into the current prompt at Becausewe'repoets. Utilizing simile and metaphor to describe something - simple enough, but 3,000 words is a little much to call a poem and it wasn't written with the prompt in mind).

Visions Set to Music

The Trapeze Swinger - Iron & Wine

The crest of a hill breaks with a paintbrush-like sweeping across a grey nothing. The grass and deciduous trees bleed into being - for a moment grey then to sepia - richer and richer - emerald green and a blue sky erupting and somehow grey again. There's a road unfolding like a picnic blanket beaten against the wind. A sign in German. A figure walking down.

At the bottom of a hill is a cottage - behind it there's a well - it's impossible to perceive how close or  how far the breadth between. There's a crescent of trees and heavy undergrowth beside it. The figure, a young man in appropriate brown era garb approaches the well - setting down a pack (it's got a military look) for his survival.

He lowers a rope down the well, and undresses without hesitation, before beginning a slow, calculated climb - naked - into the well. The sky remains the original empty shade of grey - the cottage stands, but is obviously abandoned. The deciduous trees are inkblots against the grey. There's no wind blowing but distantly there are liquid notes of windchimes sounding.

"Please remember me, happily

By the rosebush laughing..."

The boy sees a single unbroken circle of grey light at the mouth of the well, and he continues to look up into light as he meticulously lowers himself into encroaching darkness.

The light insists and insists - there's a little boy running around that same well in choppy little vignettes exposed - single pictures progressing like a flip book - fading again from grey to sepia to full god's own color - and somehow grey again. There's a certain aesthetic of a home movie clicking.

There's distant laughing and fragrance. He's running in circles, and again, you can't conceive the breadth of that grassy expanse between him now and then.

"With bruises on my chin, a time when

We counted every black car passing..."

In the crescent of trees a bit of mud and undergrowth comes alive in brown hair and eyes. The girl from the undergrowth blossoms up - and the boy must stop his running. An old black Mercedes rolling its way across the same hillcrest horizon that made the world, with a gruff animal sound insisting, insisting.

"Your house beneath the hill and up until

Someone caught us in the kitchen

With maps, a mountain range, a piggy bank

A vision too removed to mention..."

There's something like the clicking of typeset as the car glides across the hill - there's no quiver or bump - it exists outside the limits of wheels and fuel.

Light is insisting, insisting through a window across a breakfast nook with an old church pew as its seat against the wall. Light falls on broken ceramics through that same progression of colors - so many greens and firelight colors - all back into grey. There's young hands tracing across the table the grand tour, the orient express, Hannibal and elephants who jingle with heavy bellies full of coins and shatter in the alpine ice across a hillcrest horizon. There's a sense of an ending - suddenly there's broken ceramic in the sound of the windchimes. There's a woman in bright colors and a man in black. One in the home one in the house.

There's young hands tracing - gripping rope - lowering into the water and an unbroken circle of light heaving through colors but more and more grey.

"But please remember me, fondly

I heard from someone you're still pretty

And then they went on to say that the pearly gates

Had some eloquent graffiti..."

The boy has met the water now, and pulls sheets of it around himself as cloth - he looks forward into the damp walls of the well and looks up again - now at the base of a walled city - with a dull grey glow against the sky no longer empty but full of richly textured clouds  - in fact the city complex appears to have been cut out of the sky. The city has a familiar silhouette.

It's like those old iron shadow plays. There's a line of people along train tracks waiting with a look of dull surprise. Before the wall's one protusion - a single square tower - the train tracks extend.
There's a gate open most of its width, and the roof floats on windows with grey men in the eaves. There's no change in color here. There's a sign in German. The walls are the wellwalls and the line of people moves closer and closer to the gate one by one - impossible to perceive how close or  how far the breadth between them all.

"Like 'We'll meet again, and 'Fuck the man'

And 'Tell my mother not to worry'..."

The line moves one by one with bellies heavy with broken ceramic jingling with each step. He's come close enough now - he feels something at his feet - the ground, and something at his forehead - the cusp of the water above. There's an initial shock of the lungs. Rain falls everywhere everywhere everywhere.

They - each of the drops - don't trail like tears, they fall flat like huge pancakes and shatter like elephants in alpine ice. As they touch the walls they strike the liquid notes of windchimes and start to fall instead like fine women's dresses, falling flags, picnic blankets beaten against the wind.

There's writing on the wall that's dull grey at first - but bleeds through into the shadowplay. They say nonsensical things in many languages.

"We'll meet again" "Semper ubi? Sub ubi." "Remember to put ribbons on ocelots" "Fuck the man " Weighed, measured, diet pending" "The golden age was yesterday - who knew?" "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" "you're in my sun" "there's a problem in the garden - talking slugs" "who made all the antelopes  I've misplaced them" "The soft bray of my heart" "for a good time call Mark 3:19" "Sophie a Sophia Maria" "My words fly up - my thoughts" "why not both?" "Frei frei Freia cum Frei" "there's no one has a lighter" "Dashuria""You can see where we got it from"

"Tell my mother not to worry."

"And angels with their great handshakes

But always done in such a hurry..."

The boy walks along the tracks extending under the archway. There's a man in black who's too well dressed - clean and crisp with a smell of fine wet leather. They signal without touching hands - they hang on first syllables while they greet one another.

The gate is a circle of unbroken light, insisting, insisting through the raindrops falling flat like pancakes - falling west on his face and body awash in the cool water.

He's rising, the water is swelling. He's rising in the well.

"And please remember me, at Halloween

Making fools of all the neighbors..."

His face dips beneath the water and rises up again - the water pulls around him like silk. His face, behind a colorful mummer's mask, slips between new seams in the silver water. He's been pulled from behind a curtain, a blonde there behind him - he can't help but remember the smile. There's noises and laughter mounting and the grey sky has a colorful tent above to smother it. Brown hair and brown eyes depart just as soon behind another curtain - out of the tent. The atmosphere is heavy-bellied with light. In everything he remembers the twirling. Another eruption of color - the faint kiss of vomit and popcorn so intrinsic to a travelling show. There's lights outside from bonfires - the laughter permeates and goes on forever. He's smiling, and there's no imagining the scope of the tent or the lines and lines of people all erupting with laughter out from the grey tent in the shade of the nighttime.

"Our faces painted white, by midnight

We'd forgotten one another"

The laughter changes severely. Somehow it goes crooked. The laughter erupts from faces of dull surprise. There's no shouting nor any kind of gunfire, just something terribly, cosmically wrong with the laughter - it's not really different - something in the context.

There's yet another quake of colors and they're all wrong. Green grass gets swallowed up in orange and red -ruddy complexions - but every living face goes flush - every expression terribly blank. Dull surprise. The carnival music is again drowned in laughter, and people step into a long long line stretching on along the traintracks to a fortress and to a city with a familiar silhouette.

The boy looks around wide eyed - his face draining of color, a hand from the melting, fluid cloth pulls him back. He sinks again into the water - or rather the well water is swelling - he's swallowed up by the rain. The shock of the lungs. He's rising in the well.

There's the liquid tongues of cloth again, falling like fine dresses on hillcrests groaning, heaving like a picnic blanket beaten against the wind. The flapping cough of cloth becomes the watersounds and the wellwalls.  He's rising in the well.

The rope remains just there - tight to the wall below the unbroken circle of light insisting, insisting.

"and when the morning came

I was ashamed..."

He presses his hand against the wet wellwall and pulls the rope - a curtain ascends and there's people in the cellar looking cold - there's a flash of color - but so labored  so different their grey clothes just for a moment hint at their colorful beads and tambourines. Tucked together like undergrowth.

"only now it seems so silly

that season left the word and then returned

And now you're lit up by the city..."

He presses again the cold wellwall and feels the whole long wall fall flat. There's well walls extending, extending unfolding like puzzleboxes or the old ironwork shadowplays. There's a rope for a moment all red and orange and crooked - the gruff animal sound of old Mercedes behind every unique turn. Around another turn the flat rain falls west onto his face from the unbroken circle of light - and the building with a familiar silhouette.

Atop the central tower there's the well dressed man in black and a smell of vomit and popcorn so intrinsic to a travelling show.

"So please remember me, mistakenly

In the window of the tallest tower

Call, then pass us by, but much too high

To see the empty road at happy hour..."

A paintbrush-like sweeping soars overhead - leaving rope trailing down from the sky along the traintracks extending - a breadth of unbroken rope you can't conceive, that's rooted somewhere beyond the gate in the dark of a familiar silhouette. Men and women in lines depart into raindrops billowing like fine dresses against the unbroken circle of light.

"Gleam and resonate just like the gates

Around the Holy Kingdom

With words, like 'Lost and Found'

and 'Don't look Down'

and 'Someone save temptation'..."

The rain is coming from every direction - converging on the boy. He's rising in the well. The walls of the city bleed through - an odd well-wall wallpaper peels and drifts away with the jingling of broken ceramic - there's words, nothing but words from pinnacle to foundation.

"Lost and found" "Siuil a ruin" "Will there be good fruit?" "Male, Age 21, seeking imaginary friend"
Quoth the Raven" "Etre ou pas - etre Ca c'est" "yes I said yes I will. Yes" "Don't look down" "Hold your breath" "you'd be surprised" "The incompatible multitudes be" "Cogito Ergo Es" "I had roses" "She's not alone" "People who need people are the luckiest people" "silence says" "the minor fall, the major lift" "open your eyes" "l'infer est l'autre" "don't drop the lighter, Prometheus" "We'll meet at the bar after" "after time you'll hear me say that I'm so lucky" "Things fall apart" "lost child, pick up at exit" "anyone got a light? need to smoke" "people's revolution - inquire within" "this space intentionally left blank" "alliesthesia" "there was time" "Galahad go back"Au fil de mes jours t'ai-je rencontre" "no pets allowed" "no poets allowed" "someone save temptation"

"And please remember me as in the dream

We had as rug burned babies

Among the fallen trees and fast asleep..."

He's rising in the well - brambles fall alongside the rain like falling flags, like fine women's dresses. They cover him completely in their thorns and leaves - he climbs out from this undergrowth before a brilliant tent - all colors now - every brilliant orange and red. Without hesitation he dives beneath a fold of cloth and elephants who jingle with tambourines on their heavy bellies cast shadows on the silken walls. Brown eyes blink out of sight under twirling brown hair. He pushes back the silk in pursuit as everything is somehow grey again.

"Besides the lions and the ladies"

A hand pulls him in to twirl with her. Laughter erupts richly, drowning out the carnival song and dances. There's long blue shadows on orange cloth walls - and labored breathing of shocked lungs - it's difficult not to laugh at the colors so intensely mounting.

"That called you what you like and even might

Give a gift for your behavior..."

There's a shift and everything is wrong. They keep spinning until they fall into one another. They've wrung the color out of the walls somehow, their shadows turn everything to gears and old ironwork shadowplays. There's young hands tracing over cheeks and laughter and lips and song and grey light and the same but somehow gone crooked insisting, insisting.

"A fleeting chance to see a trapeze

Swinger high as any savior..."

As they fall - lips breaking into the broken chorus of laughs - he catches a bit of the tent wall - pulling it down with him - everything's in grey. He looks up just in time to see a paintbrush-like sweeping - a trapeze marks the horizon that made the world. Collapsing he sinks beneath the cloth as his hand grasps the falling rope - as it becomes taut - the cloth becomes water again - engulfed he's gasping for air. He's rising in the well.

"But please remember me my misery
And how it lost me all I wanted..."

The rain is thundering against the water in the well - it finally drowns the laughter.
He's tucked in the back of an old black Mercedes - the window is glared by an unbroken circle of light. Brown eyes look to him under old the shade of the nighttime. There's young hands tracing and the liquid tones of broken ceramic swallowed up in the clicking of typeset. Light's insisting, insisting in her brown eyes, and there's warmth and a triumph of color all losing itself in grey - everything, everything that's been before, he sees again.

"Those dogs that love the rain
and chasing trains
the colored birds above their running..."

There's the hushed sound of rain and gruff sound in the footsoles of Dobermans against mud. The Brown eyes blink out of sight into a sudden eruption of bramble and undergrowth. Smoke rises lazily above a new horizon in a paintbrush-like sweeping and a young boy stoops behind the well to see the people all muddied and suddenly overcome with colors bright and frightening. The crooked sounds of their tambourines fall like picnic blankets beaten against the wind - there's brown eyes unbroken insisting insisting.

"In circles round the well and where it spells
On the wall behind St. Peter
So bright on cinder grey in spray paint
Who the hell can see forever?"

The boy looks up. He's rising in the well. There's the gruff animal sounds of an old Mercedes skirting along the ground - falling west, unburdened by bump or fault. Just behind on the horizon there's a familiar silhouette. A well dressed man swings his cane like a pendulum and there is - tucked into a corner - near a well before a crescent of undergrowth behind a single square tower the words " who the hell can see forever?"

"And please remember me, seldomly
In the car behind the carnival
My hand between your knees
You turn from me..."

He trips into the undergrowth, gasping for air. He's rising in the well - there's young hands tracing the peripheries of the unbroken circle of light - just there at length - just too close to know the scope.

"and said the Trapeze act was wonderful
But never meant to last, the clowns that passed
saw me just come up with anger..."

Brown eyes blink out of sight behind an erupting bramble of brown hair, and there's a light crooked girl's laughter. A torrent of rain comes crashing down - drowning the gruff animal noise of a gliding Mercedes and gear-shadow dogs.

"When it filled with circus dogs
the parking lot
had an element of danger..."

There's young hands tracing the wellwall and its labyrinths - the long horizons sweeping on for ages but there's nothing left at all. He falls out of a black Mercedes car - soaked in the rain - falling west - against the hard well walls.

"So please remember me finally
And all my uphill clawing..."

He lays against the well-wall, ready to sleep, and the rope rests against him. He reaches up to the rain falling west. There's the mouth of the well - jutting out crooked from the crescent of bramble and undergrowth. He crawls along the wellwall on all fours - there's young hands tracing now the free air just outside the familiar silhouette - the world goes crooked, or somehow right again and he rolls out of the well to the ground - looking up at a world less-topsy-turvy than before. In the sky there's a paintbrush-like sweeping of a trapeze and the bleeding through of a familiar silhouette.

"My dear, but if I make the Pearly Gates
I'll do my best to make a drawing of God
and Lucifer, a boy and girl
An angel kissin' on a sinner
A monkey and a man, a marching band..."

The boy gets up and all the world pulses through color it seems for the last time. He walks along the wall - as the rain falls and the words bleed away and fade. His young hands tracing the well wall wallpaper folding itself back into place. He leaves the walls behind and walks along the hillcrest over cottage and crescent of undergrowth trees. The clouds for a second are rich in texture - monkeys, angels, musical instruments forming and unforming in luscious cumulus sex. A paintbrush like sweeping of the horizon that made the world - and everything lost in empty grey.

"And all around a frightened Trapeze Swinger"

He's gliding over the hillcrest horizon along the traintracks unfolding like a fine dress beaten against the wind. He's rising in the well. There's brown eyes insisting, insisting and it's all caught up in the colors he remembers all melting into a grey unbroken circle of light - insisting, insisting.

Postpoem Review Preface:

This review will likely take the rest of my life. I'll have to go paragraph by paragraph (and god knows grammatically it's a mess but that's hardly the point, you know? I know it's rhythms by heart so it's very difficult to see the misplaced dashes, periods, apostrophes, and other such abominations).

I think this would make the most delightful surreal-animation-music-video-tribute sort of thing. If I had any sort of artistic talent that's how this would have turned out.

Anyway. On to the navel contemplation. When I discussed this song with a friend he was appalled by this particular interpretation. He heard love and loss and all that, but it was thoroughly suburban, even classic Americana. What does it say about me that I can darken anything? Easier to snuff out a fire than build one I suppose. There's certainly nothing in the song to imply whatever I've inferred from it.

 Of course that leads to another thought - how exactly does one go about fictionalizing the holocaust? I'm fairly certain you can. I'm utterly certain you shouldn't. It's already mythical enough simply by being both remote and inspiring. The second it becomes a backdrop for anyone's fucking song interpretation is the second it's not being taken seriously. It takes its place alongside civil wars and romanticized medieval villages as a whitewashed and quaint backdrop of sufficient sadness to drive home a point. This gives me no end of personal conflict.

So instead of attempting to rewrite it in a less offensive way I'll simply say mea culpa - I've done a bad thing, and move on to unraveling it.

Review:

The crest of a hill comes before the grey nothing, because to specify that there's nothing beforehand is sort of existentially confusing. The paintbrush-like sweeping creates a physical horizon, but it's also signalling a transition from nothingness into somethingness - and in doing so comes to define nothing itself (this particular nothing is grey). To start with "a grey nothing is broken by a paintbrush-like sweeping" is entirely inaccurate, and doesn't properly emphasize that the hill's horizon is literally all there is. The horizon remains one of the few backdrops of the story, and arguably the hardest to explain.

The horizon is seemingly the location where the "real world" exists. It's contrasted by the ethereal afterlife of the "familiar silhouette" and the hallucinatory moistness of "the well." The story is presented as occurring presently, but there's a tone of memory - frequent glimpses into the boy's past. It's difficult to tell whether the narrator (some sort of third person, omniscience questionable) is observing this or experiencing it alongside the boy. Is he awakening to this experience, is the experience opening up to him? How exactly does a conscience entity exist in the aforementioned nothingness-as-that-which-has-not-yet-been-defined? These are the things that make me roll my eyes because oh good lord just get on with it but the question of perception's an important one.

The foliage "bleeds" into being. Evocative enough, but the implication of inkpainting implies that what's being seen is an impression of reality, or somehow concealed by a film. The mounting color is a new dimension that attempts to capture a sense of synesthesia or hallucination. It's a little druggy, for lack of a better term. The "eruption" of blue is almost immediately trivialized as a passing thing. Color remains extrinsic to the story for much of it. The fact that for a while it's in sepia implies a reproduction - a memory - a treated image - an old-timey daguerreotype- a pretentious instagram filter.

Beating a picnic blanket against the wind is the first image of struggle and failure. It's a mundane activity, but it's fairly violent to picture. There's a solid fwshing crack to its sound.

A sign in german. Exceedingly unhelpful as a placemarker, but there you have it. The figure would almost certainly be the boy except at this point there's no certainty. The scene is still being set.

The distance between the cottage and the well is immeasurable - it's another image of struggle and failure, but it's also just the quality of dreams and memory - that inability to place distances and locations accurately.



----

A short compilation of the interwoven images, roughly in the order they're first mentioned:
Crest of the hill
Paintbrush-like sweeping
Grey
Bleeding
Grey to color to grey
Picnic Blanket Beaten Against the Wind
A sign in German
Impossible to perceive how close or how far
Crescent of trees
Undergrowth
the Rope
the Well
Without hesitation
Liquid notes of windchimes
Unbroken circle of light
Insisting, insisting
Clicking of typeset
Brown hair and eyes
Old black mercedes
Gruff, animal sound
Without quiver or bump
Broken ceramics
Young hands tracing
Elephants who jingle in alpine ice
Heavy bellies
Man in black
Water as sheets of cloth
Walls of the well
Familiar silhouette
Richly textured clouds
Ironwork shadowplays
Line of people along traintracks
Look of dull surprise/ dull grey grow
Single square tower
Traintracks extending
Shock of the lungs
Flat like pancakes
Fine women's dresses, falling flags
Writing on walls
Falling west
He's rising in the well
Smell of vomit and popcorn
Laughter
Twirling
the Shade of the nighttime
Gone crooked
Tambourines
Wellwall wallpaper peeling

God I hope that's all of them. 48 interwoven images (though some of them could be considered one and the same - I'll go over that in my review should I ever manage to finish it).

Matches Struck Unexpectedly in the Dark - Short Story

Another attempt at a short story prompt from Becausewe'repoets. Since my other projects are stagnating terribly, I figure a break - and more importantly - finishing something, will help break this most recent of so many funks.

The prompt: planetary (guess I can't get away from that) - namely, the effects of the recent Supermoon on life.

I'll preface this by saying, that as a person who grew up with Astrology the way other people "grow up Catholic" I do not maintain that extraterrestrial bodies actually influence anything beyond the effects of their gravity and shadows. Supermoons (as well as, you know, the moon) are accidents of perception (and frequently unimpressive ones), but as a literary symbol the moon is indispensable to me.

So here's a different story than the Rich Red Earth - focusing on dialogue instead of description, and actually involving more than one character.

Matches Struck Unexpectedly in the Dark

"-Shrkshrkshrkshrkshrkshrkshrkshrk"

went the spinner on the board, warm under the square panes of light falling through the windows. A cat bathed nearby in the glow, swiping her tail to the sound of the spinner.

"Do I have to go to college? I'd rather use the spin the other way"

"Yeah sure."

"Uh-uh no. You don't get to change your choice after you spin"

"Really? Yeah, I don't want to get too far ahead of you guys, that's all that matters."

The week had been nothing but indecisive rain and cold blue skies. June was always like this - a shy girl hanging on whatever favors the Pacific had in store. Sometimes there was even frost, and frequently there were tulips and barbecues and rivers running full of buoyant men in tubes - running gold with beer glass and urine.

Today was a bright sun tempered by a sharp cold wind. Wide under the glass of the windows the wood floors and rugs cooked in the light - unshaken by the breeze. Tomorrow would be rain and sleet and a damp aroma, but today the sun was hot indoors.

A long day had come and gone already.

"Did Lily have her shower yet?" said a girl with brown hair and eyes whose whites swelled when they caught the light. Another spin.

"No it's coming up this Saturday" said the boy cross-legged on the couch beside her, moving the blue car with its blue figurine across the tiles.

A voice from the ground rose up, "Oh crap that's Carlos' birthday, he's going to be pissed if I miss it - 21st, that's the one that matters" a hand began stroking absentmindedly the absentminded cat.

"No Lily's going to that with Gabriel and all of us" said the girl, and the boy on the floor replied

"She shouldn't be drinking, you know with th-"

"She's not pregnant, you idiot, she's just stupid and clingy" she said, "but wait, if she's going to his party then when's her shower?"

"Fuck. Mike if you made us miss that I swear to God." said the boy, uncrossing his legs

"It's fine. She wouldn't have her bridal shower in June. When have I ever let you down? I got you together, didn't I?"

The empty sky drew a short yawn of clouds low on the ground and blushed at its frayed edges. The girl started to wring the air from her lungs, stretching out her arms in a smooth crescent. Widening and filling up with air again she said,

"God I hate summer. I miss school. I need stuff to do."

"It's Sunday, you'd be here anyway. Dude take your turn." said the boy, caught up in the aroma's she gave off with each movement.

Mike on the floor gave a snort and drew himself up. The cat gave a sudden bite to his retracting hand.

"Fuck, what did I do to you?" He asked, seriously. The cat gave a dull, knowing look, and got up to depart, tail whipping side to side the way a long dress moves around corners. "Stupid animal"

"Says the stupid animal who pets the cat wagging her tail." said the boy, "Wagging tail means fuck off."

"Hey, animals should all act the same way. Wagging tail means pet me. Don't blame me cats don't understand how things work."

The girl rolled her eyes, wiping imagined hairs from her face. "We missed her shower. She is not going to let us live that down."

"We got her a gift, that's all that matters. Dude, take your turn."

Mike stretched his legs back out along the floor and took his turn. More spinning until the sun set with a harsh glare.

"Do we have anything to eat?" The boy asked, getting up from the couch.

"It's late, don't eat, you know I can't eat anything after six."

"Blood tests tomorrow, right, that sucks. Mike you got any chips or something?"

"Yeah dude, cupboard to the right of the oven."

"Guys, seriously? It's one thing I can't-" she said, but their laughter disarmed her. "Anyway, let's do something else, like anything else."

"Really? I'm rocking this though!" Said Mike, straightening up, mermaid like, against the table to look at the girl.

The boy's voice came from the kitchen, muffled by the crunch, carrying the particular aroma of corn nut. "Dude, you've been asleep this whole time, you don't really want to keep going."

Mike was unfazed, "Hey, I worked six days this week, so maybe I'm a little tired." He said, looking to the girl for her support. She smiled again despite herself and shook her head. Her smile poisoned him to smile as well. There was quiet as the room temporarily darkened, and the girl brushed her hands against her uncreased stomach.

"I'm still having fun with it" Mike said, lying back against the floor.

"Kevin-Evaline, you stop eating and get back here." said the girl, moving her legs up onto the couch.

"Baby, you cannot call me that, seriously, you've got to have something better than that." the boy returned, with a spring to his step, leaning over the girl with a predatory smile.

"No, no, no - you smell like Frito's, I'm not kissing you."

"Baby, come on, you've got to lo-ove me anyway" he sang with a loose swaying of his neck back and forth, but the squirming girl got free.

Mike rubbed the soft tooth marks on his hand. No blood, just a decade of mistrust towards felines incubating.

The girl gave a kick to the boy, square in the stomach. His smile was muddied by stained saliva and half a grimace.

Mike smiled at the sight of it. "-'atta girl, make him work for it."

She got up and ran the dry fibers of her hair through her hands. "Oh whatever."

The boy, his conquest failed, fell back on the couch, tracing the glittering dust as it fell through the light when she stood up. The room had gone cold, but the night was full and bright like day, and filled the room more evenly with soft light.

From the floor, Mike began to dismantle the little plastic bridges and uproot the green mountains, back into the box they came from.

"Ha, look, the little guys are in an orgy" he lifted the bag to show the blue and pink chips of plastic in their silent debauchery, every one alike.

"You're an idiot." said the girl, smiling. The disc of her eyes were clear, bright, and overlarge. "Kev, where's my phone I need to call Lily."

"Why? Don't worry about it, you don't need to talk to her if you don't want to" He said, stretching out his arm to reach the light switch, his finger falling lazily- just out of reach.

"Just give me my phone." said the girl with a start, pulling on her legs- down, and then rubbing the veins in her arms, a clear blue in the darkness.

"Babe, it's fine. It's late, you're here with me, just forget about it."

Mike tore up the spinner and swung the board to its metered collapse. He bit his lip, suddenly feeling as though he'd forgotten something.

"Kevin, seriously. Just give me my phone."

"Why do you want it now? Why do you want to call her?"

"I'm just going to call my parents, don't be such a bitch, Kev"

"No, you want to call Lily, even though you said that whole thing was over with you."

She laughed brightly with her eyes, and gave him a soft punch.

"Oh my god, fuck you, she's getting married I can call her if I want to"

Mike rose from the floor, and piled the last of the board into the box, closing it tight.

"Is this really worth talking about, guys?" he said, taking the box out of the room.

Kevin rose up eagerly, brushing the dust off of himself.
"No, no, of course not. Let's just do something."

The girl rubbed her forehead, pulling back her hair.

"Fine, just. Fine. Let's just, watch TV or something."

"Babe, sorry, uh-your phone I think is charging on the island."

"Thanks" she said, walking past him, rubbing the blue of her veins with feigned curiosity.

Mike returned, seeing a miniature tragedy - an upturned car over a slip of blue and two of pink.

"Fuck, there's always one that gets left out" he said, scooping them up.

The girl's voice was ringing in the eaves; she examined her silhouette in a mirror as she spoke her message, incantations for a later time.

"Call me back when you get this" she concluded with a soft tone.

"Message?" said Kevin, as she returned, just to ward off the silence.

"Yeah, she's probably out or... unwrapping gifts."

"Look, Babe, I'm sorry I didn't think-"

"Oh god just drop it." She said, swiping the hair from her eyes.

"Look I don't want this to be a problem"

"It's not a problem, okay? You just, you just don't get what you're doing."

Mike exhaled, turning his eyes to the bright windows. His friend the cat was perched in the sill, eyes heavy with moonlight.

The girl began to well-up with tears, and Kevin couldn't come to meet her gaze. She held them back admirably, her pupils drawn to pinpoints.

"I didn't... I didn't want to miss her shower, because otherwise it makes it seem like I'm still... I don't know."

"Babe, it's okay, it's all in the past now" said Kevin, with a slight tremor.

"I don't want her to think that I've got a problem with her"

"Isn't that what I'm for? To show you've moved on" he replied.

The girl dropped her brow and wiped the shine from her eyes.

"No, you're not just - That's not what you're for, it's not just that."

He rolled his shoulders, unsatisfied, and speaking softly said, "Right, glad to hear I'm not just to prove your little les phase is over."

"Oh my god. Why, why the fuck. You just don't understand anything at all, do you?"

"Oh sorry, did I break one of your rules? I'm supposed to be the one you freak out over."

Mike strained to hold his breath, he was suddenly aware of his body’s weight - and every possible creak of the wood floor.

The girl held her forearms, squeezing them on and off to the beat of her heart.

"They're not rules. They're not... it's not. Sorry if I just think we could be a little happier if you weren't such a dumbshit."

"God we get it you've got problems - we can't talk about this - nobody mention this - that might upset her and oh no how terrible would that be."

"Kevin. Stop it. You're just out of control." she said, her throat drawn tight as a drum.

"Maybe if you didn't just hang on every fucking thing you'd realize I'm just looking out for you."

Mike couldn't move slowly enough. He tried to twist, to avert his eyes, but every creak of bone and muscle sounded like alarm bells. He wasn't sure his legs would both support him. Now he was drowned in a pity party - martyrs all around. He physically bit down on his tongue at its sides, trying not to make a noise by swallowing. Was it respect that kept him silent or just annoyance now? The cat looked out on the world she no doubt believed was hers to rule.

In the girl's hand her phone began to buzz lightly, her whole arm trembling. Mike ducked out, gripping the plastic car and plastic technicolor corpses to return them to the box he'd packed away. He didn't want or didn't need to help.

Kevin looked down at the light strewn floors, rubbing the back of his neck, feeling the rough fur that clung there, and licking his teeth in discontent.

The girl left the room as a bright voice rang in the eaves with a faint electric twang.

"Hey, what's up I'm so sad you couldn't make it-"

Mike tucked the last pieces he'd smuggled back into their box to disappear. He leaned against the wall to hear the house breathing. It never did take much. He saw the day he first introduced them, the stutter in his voice as her eyes lit up, and he saw the messages he'd written but never sent. To her, to him. He couldn't help because that was just how they were - that's how he'd set them up.

 Outside the window he saw the green lawn - greener still in the moonlight. The clean road and tightly bound rose heads sitting thornless on the bushes. He saw hungry, waiting mailboxes in their neat line, and windows - just as often dark as full of light, stretching out by the thousands.  He saw the contours of the driveways and the shadows of the cars fall between the thin gaps of the windows. He saw his half-reflection in the glass.

The sounds all fell to a soft din. There was nothing, not even a shout, in the street. The empty air hung full of light, and everything was smothered in its bare illumination.

Review:

I guess I have a thing for stories where nothing happens. This one was a little scattered. I needed something different (always something different) but I guess I only do things a certain way. It was scattered in part because it's the love-child of two different stories. The first was supposed to be a conversation between three people which would be a metaphorical thing between Adam, Eve, and God (I considered using the moon to show a certain permanence through time). The topic of conversation was Lilith, and it was all about morality and how difficult life is and how no one can understand eachother and we're all alone and sad. So pretty much par for the course for me. I really need to shake the Biblical allusion thing, so I thought of doing something else.

The second story was one friend observing the people in his life simmer to boiling during a bright night. He contemplates what hand he had in their difficulties, and what was out of his control, and then realizes at the end that he's alone and that just because he's above their strife doesn't mean he's superior. Also pretty much where my mind goes.

So this is what you get when you temper the first overly symbolic story with the second overly contemplative story and do your best to avoid describing anything - since you went overboard on that last time. I lack the talent to do things deftly.

So we start with an onomatopoeia. Shirking is obviously going on here, but the other interpretation is Shirk, the gravest sin of Islam, hallowing other things above god (See, that's technically not a Biblical reference, because it's from the Quran! So ha) Of course that's a pretty tangential reference - it's not that people are worshiping incorrectly, they just have a very different understanding of what matters and what's important.

A lounging cat sets a certain stage. The wagging tail simultaneously lazy and ominous (if you know the body language of cats).

It's a good day for pathetic fallacy. "A long day had passed already" both the day in question (June 23rd) and the Summer Solstice. The reign of the day is over, they're getting shorter and the night is swelling from here on out. Also, there's the fact that it's cold outside but behind the glass of the windows the house is balmy. All the tension is coming from within. I can attest that the weather here confounds every spring.

Mike is the one who was certain the shower wasn't in June. His assertion that June is somehow a bad month for Lily (Lilith) runs counter the fact it's named for Juno - the goddess of marriage in Greek Mythology and notorious grudge-holding genocidal bitch.

We get some characterization, a miscommunication with the cat that foretells future strife. In a story influenced by the moon a cat has a Witch's Familiar sort of vibe.

There's a movement from collectivity to individuality throughout the story. It begins without the voices being defined, slowly the individuals carve themselves out from the others, and in the end we're left with a single mind alone - utterly cut off from everyone and everything. What's at first a mutual burden "she's never going to let us live that down" becomes more and more personal. Blame gets shifted somehow - life just doesn't work out nicely sometimes.

I didn't want a big bright moon overhanging the story, so I tried to play on its quality as a reflector of light. A moon is only "the moon" when you see it from Earth. Silver-shining and looming and waxing into its mysterious darkness. Of course it controls the tides - and that too is an odd accident of the cosmos, pushing the the water to its break.

The girl is always pairing the wrong emotions with the wrong appearances. A swift kick with a laugh, a "fuck you" with a smile. It's eternal evasion.

The remnants - the dregs of the more metaphorical story remain. Kevin-evaline is just a funny play with syllables. It also marks him as the Eve to the girl's Adam (whose job is to name the creatures of the Earth and here doesn't succeed). Mike, who works six days (and sweeps away the mountain and the people from the board) is roughly God. Kevin as Eve sins by eating something corny (it's odd how much I hate that smell but love the taste). He's breaking the one rule. The girl is rubbing her stomach as much from hunger as to muse on her lack of a navel (and arguably there's still the question of Lily's supposedly shotgun wedding being a matter of pregnancy - women's stomachs just have that inherent richness).

Blood tests could be HIV. It could be routine. Perhaps it explains her concerns, her state of mind. Perhaps it's a blood red herring.

Mike sees the little people pegs all crushed together in an orgy, which both reveals his unique brand of unfortunate humor and his imperfect timing. He starts out initially on the floor (the tensions always rise with the people in this story) but he also needs something to support him. He's legless, both mermaid-like against the table, swaying during the confrontation, and leaning against the wall at the end of the story. He's top-heavy in a sense.

The girl (never named) is most awash in the eery blue light of the moon. The night is "bright like day" (recalling a scene in Sonny's Blues, when a "traffic accident" occurs). The blue is in her veins, and she's drawn to fiddling and rubbing herself - there's something wrong. There's the undertone of self-harm in her vein fixation, alongside general discomfort when she's wiping her hair.

She also leaves behind a sparkling dust in the moonlight, which at first enchants Kevin alongside her aroma. He's later brushing off the dust, but not before reaching for a lightswitch in a vague Creation of Adam image. There's no artificial light in the room - just the mounting moonlight.

Kevin rubs his neck to find its fur - an uneventful lycanthropy. Mike sweeps up a mini traffic accident. A little on the nose, two girls and a guy - though Mike realizes this and has to be a little hurt that he's not represented there.

Eyes are my stand in for the moon - the pupils unnaturally contracted in the night. The cats eyes and the whites of the girl's eyes are where the moon's light is really taking hold.

Mike shuffles the victims of the car crash into a box to disappear and unto death. This isn't a story where the conflict comes to its orgasmic resolve. Like life, it's just as often interrupted - disguised by pleasantries. All that's left for him is avoidance, tucking into another room away from it all. Incidentally, that's the place where he's free from his former paralysis to look out the windows and see the vastness and closeness of the world outside. Yet here too he's staying still. He still needs support to stand. Arguably nothing at all has changed.

Like the moon, nothing's changed physically. The light's just shining a different way, showing different things, and casting new shadows.

A Poem for Bloomsday - Weaverwomen

Weaverwomen

He puts a little coffee in the cup
every morning, when I'm feigning how I sleep.
He grips it til his hands are warmed throughout,
and exhales to the tune of some old air.
There's someone's name in the soft ring of the spoon against the sides
as I roll actively about, to seem asleep.
A moment I'm bereft of coffee smells - I'm somewhere else - alone
All caught in dreams.
The stains on human sheets read like a staff
And thirds and sixteenths mark the pillows... well
The song makes little sense, but plays itself.
I'm up again to coffee smells and there
There his body was - the sheets remember.
He lies - just there - til the sheets are warmed throughout.
He seemed to be communing with the early morning light.
Oh... Ithaca comes calling again
In lines of light through windows like these.
The things we name in dreamy breath,
As songs not unlike coffee spoons -
Entrap us like a kiss that's all regret.
A glimpse of wrong colored eyes or trembling cup of coffee
Is enough to have our morning
All caught in dreams
..

Review:

Something lighter. A poem inspired by Ulysses - which takes place today, June 16th, in Dublin in 1904.

The first line is a little translation on my part of Dejeuner du Matin, a poem which says a lot without saying a lot. She's also measuring out her life in coffeespoons a la Eliot, but of course it's another person's coffee she's thinking of - it's a ritual she's merely observing, and this observance becomes her ritual. It's "the" cup - not "his" cup. It's the cup in question. Oh god it's a cup of trembling... now that's worth a finishing line, better than the rhythmic thing I've got here. It's not quite as rich as Sonny's Blues - it's not heroin here, just a quiet morning, but it feels right. There's something so terribly wrathful in the knowing deceptions taking place here.

 (Technically there's no indication that the speaker is a she - it could be taken as two men after a forbidden homosexual encounter if that interpretation pleases you. I'll refer to the speaker as a she, however.)

The weaverwomen in question though are the ones who become enamored with Odysseus on his quest - Calypso, Circe, and Penelope. All of them weavers. You could say (if you were of a certain attitude) that it's metempsychosis - the transmigration of souls. Perhaps there's just something unfailingly sexy in the movement of a woman's hands over threads. It's also a reference to the sheets on which the speaker lays and the interweaving of human lives and in this case of the interweaving of dreams and reality.

"exhales to the tune of some old air." I hoped this captured the shaking away of stale morning breath as well as that sort of half-humming so many people do when they just wake up (myself among them).

The stains on human sheets. Of course your sensibilities determine just what's staining this here. Haha. It's semen. Semen and Tears (the possible name for so many a book of teenage memoirs).

He lies. It's a little obvious. I don't like painting "him" as something terrible, but it's a biased perspective. If you take it as the perspective of Molly Bloom in Ulysses, the "him" who leaves the impression in the sheets is different than the man who's making the coffee. Scandal. But more importantly mutual heartbreak.

Not yet finished.

Ick. That repetition has been stuck in my craw all day. "This dance goes on throughout his days/ He shirks his love for another name/ and I pretend to sleep." It's unnecessary. I think I wanted to have the form of the poem reflect the weaving of the titular weaverwomen, but that final repetition didn't lend anything more. "The rest of the day" is a suitable metaphor for the rest of his life. The last three lines are overly rhythmic. It would work well if this were a song or a villanelle (I couldn't possibly write a successful villanelle)

I'm liking the last three lines less and less. It's a rhythm that comes out of nowhere. Up until then we had a relatively simple rhythm. Smooth iambs progressing. It's nearly perfect iambs after "actively about" which indicates the speaker has tricked herself into actually sleeping. The flow of iambs is dreamlike up until "there / there his body was."

There's no pattern to the stanzas. Shame. 6 lines 10 lines 6 lines? 22 lines? A duovigesimal? A new form for the ages! A broken twelve and a ten within? 2 threes 3 threes a single line and 2 threes? There's something. Except the first stanza is closer to three pairs. There's no retrofitting anything here. I think I'll forego stanzas at the moment. I'll come back and see where I think the stanzas fall.

It's a window! It's a god damn window.That passing aroma was a window metaphor come from the heavens. It's just too clear.

Sleeves of light? What? Slivers. Slivers? God. It goes away as quick as it arrives. Lines of light! How's that! Because it's poetry. Get it? God sometimes I just take a thing and sodomize it. The endings always evade. Now the Elliot thing is coming back too strong. But then, was it there in the first place? Not really.

Edit number three and the last lines are being wrangled from the mud. "A kiss that's all regret" A sensible person senses an erotic undertone. Maybe a little Jesus Christ and Judas? That's a little far even for me. But then again...

I got that trembling cup in there. Now the last line or two needs to seal it somehow. It will have to be about faking sleep. "is reason enough to feign my sleep" I 've used feign enough. It's lost its color. I can't feel the rhythm. "evokes enough to keep us to our sheets/ awake but dreaming"

Awake but dreaming. Awake.... something like that dichotomy of what they're doing and how they're longing for something else. "Born back ceaselessly into the past" sort of thing... but not really. duh DUH duh DUH duh DUH DUH duh duh DUH... is that it? Is that the rhythm? iamb iamb iamb trochee iamb?

The answer was there already in the poem! All caught in dreams. Right there. Clear as day. A morning/mourning pun and "all caught in dreams." That forces the poem to a finish by tying it up in itself like a mobius strip. Thank god. Of course it's not quite -right- somehow. I think it's the rhythm still I'm stuck on. But it does deliver the proper image and tone - the disconnect. It's not really Molly and Leo by the end of it. It's moreso Calypso and Odysseus but it hasn't all gone away. Oh well, I'll let the last lines sleep a bit. I don't feel any huge desire to separate stanzas. I ought to start chewing on some new gristly bit for a time.

On taking a fourth look. Still incomplete. A sloppy finish at best... I'll have a bad taste in my mouth for weeks.

The Rich Red Earth -Short Story

The second prompt I've attempted from Becausewerepoets. This time, a short story. The idea? One of my favorites. A vision set to music. Music I'd never encounter otherwise. Specifically

A thrilling sort of movie-theme. I listened to it carefully and immediately knew there was no hope in trying to match it's rhythm. My original intention was to write something and record myself speaking it over the music itself. But, I couldn't time it properly, and I don't think it served the work itself. My voice distracts as it is anyway.

It was Sci-Fi from the start, that much I knew, and the chanting just seems so monkish that I've got to pull some Christian imagery in.

So here it is.

The Rich Red Earth

Light from stars and moons attended the breaking of the new day. Fingers of twilight and sun had their interplay over the bare ground. The air stretched thinly over dull brown heath to a harsh horizon only momentarily. In all directions were rock, ruin and a valley of ashes – breathing austerely.

 The sky grew thick with blooming clouds of sand and smoke, trailing their dark shawls. The sun and the stars were smothered. Groans escaped from under the dunes and the mountains, and the dry plains were spattered by black. Smokey wisps along the ground drew serpents through the sand. Tufts of darkening stains swelled to pools, and heaved to torrents. Ground gave way, and ground arose.

                New drumming attended the sight – louder and louder – with new light across the darkening sky in strange fissures extending. The pangs of the ground shook mountains loose – and mountains were drowned in sudden seas. The brine crept into the fissures, and drew itself to sting at the new wounds in the rock.

                Under the hills with twice bent knees stooped a low figure before a fire, rubbing the scales from his hands.

                “The door is bolted. My fire is alight. And you, sky, can rain as much as you like.” He bounced to the words, cupping the back of his short grey neck to snuff out the sound. This is how it was. This he knew. All the gardens had gone away, and the walls around them had crumbled. The silence would come back again sometime. The soft faces wept. He saw them once a while ago, but they couldn’t live on the world. It was his world.

                “Bad sounds hold on to the memory. But silence comes back round again in kind and kindly.” He bounced to the words.

                What once was parched was quenched. The unyielding rock gave up its strength and cracked. The last blisters came crashing apart. Temples of glass with domes over the last grey lichens awaited the rupturing world.  Around them the bleached white fungus which clung to the last dustings of clay. Cotton tufts of old tapestries scattered. The posture of statues slumped. Cellophane went dancing in the breeze, and husks of rubber and steel came falling from their piles – miles high. Sealed drums of excrement came bursting. A gray grid dispersed between the shells of lost buildings. Alongside the gruff sound of the water breaking – old gramophonics sputtered old protocol in professional sounding English and French. No sirens sounded.

                The world flushed white with each great searing of light across the red, smoking sky. The shell of a sun scorched world had emptied its pollution into its skies. Alone, suspended in an endless black, the globe’s surface writhed, seething with storms and fire from its bowels. The sound did not penetrate the horizons.

                A vast net of rusted debris fell to the surface in shining tendrils. Satellites long since exhausted were finally snuffed out. Corpses of men were vomited up from shearing land, and shells of steel fell brightly into screaming nightmare.

                A scattered ring of iron, dust, and grime trailing at the waist of the world was lit to a bow of burning gold across the sky. Stars in silence contemplated this affront. Writing was washed off walls, and great concrete obstructions, orderly and tall, came crumbling down. The twisted iron bones of tall towers were ripped from their foundations to play like desert birds across the sky.

                The crouched figure drew its tail in ceaseless sweeps across the ground. The smoke was not departing, a vent had been choked by debris, and now the smoke was pooling up above.

                “No more left to burn, no way out. So the soft faces won’t kill me but the world will. My world, whose dust has fed me.” He contemplated the rendered fat which made his fire, and the soft untextured faces from which he’d drawn it. The soft faces which built tall towers and complained about the heat. They didn’t know the way the world went round; they built things to topple them, and ate too much. They went up when he went down, and now they had all gone away. They had finally gone away and now he was in the deep places choking on the smoke from their skins. They would still kill him.

                The ring of light which burned so suddenly around the world as soon was shattered – leaving chariots of fire to scatter over storms. The last evidence of an old world undone. The softening light of stars looked on in silent discontent.

                And first to break its light through the noise and haste of the dying storms was a blue star – who saw this all in silence. In the sky of the blue star, a red star greened with nausea. Women struck the footsoles of great metal ships with bottles of champagne, and metal ships departed to riotous song.

                Down from Olympus Mons came men and women with hammers and scythes. The ground was greening with blooms of algae in the rich red earth. Long hoses spilt their seeds in a thick paste on the ground, turning and turning in circles to scatter the wet green all around. Great tines dug into the soft ground to pour cement for tall towers. Poppies gave back some red to the wide fields along with gold and aromatic resin.

                In the deep, everywhere was the sound of water. Above the lone figure vents had opened up, and more water came than he had ever known. His fire stayed for some time and the water wound its way to the caves he’d made his memory. The smoke could reach the air again. The creature gripped the book they’d given him to learn the tongue. He bounced to the words.

                “And yea by the rivers of Babylon we sat down and we wept.” He read the footnotes with the same reverence. “Rivers – features of Earth, where water’s abundant, the water rolls down hills. Weeping – the falling water from the eyes of soft faces, caused by sadness or great joy.” 

Review:

The first word had to be light, as in "let there be" it is both the Genesis of this planet and the Genesis of the story itself. The plural moons is the first signal that we are not on Earth. It's also meant to depict the multiple tidal forces that are acting on Mars - the natural and the manmade.

"Rock, ruin, and the valley of ashes" a call to both Fitzgerald's "Valley of Ashes" (I saw the film and reread the book, so it's been on the mind) and the Valley of Gehenna, one of the original inspirations of the Christian Hell where children were burned to Moloch. Unpleasant.

The second paragraph is an attempt to depict the look of rain on dry rock - something I observed the other day. You don't even see the rain at first, it's just little speckles - the world grows suddenly, violently polka-dot. Then the dots swell and swell and then you've got puddles and rivulets winding their way through the street.

New drumming - thunder, lightning. At this point I realized I was way overdoing the description (I originally intended to make the story simply the story of inanimate Mars being made ready for human arrival). I added the (admittedly cliched) native life to give the story a... story. Before it was just violence. The violence is supposed to call up the idea of childbirth, what with the heaving and the crashing and the moaning and the fissures and the I don't even know.

We've got our protagonist. I figured describing him would just be overemphasizing his alien-ness. Who needs that? He's got ears on his neck, grey scaley skin, twice-bent knees, and a tail. Alien enough. My inspiration wasn't anything from Sci-Fi, but the snake in the Garden of Eden.

We see the signs of habitation. I thought you could technically take this piece to be Earth after some devastating climate change. It was going to be for a while, specifically Canada, hence the French. Some terrible future Montreal. That idea got scrapped.

Gramophonics isn't a word. Sad. I find it very evocative of the sound - that lovely scratch.

"You sky can rain as much as you like." A reference to Zorba the Greek, a well read alien? Specifically, an analogy given of the difference between a Christian Priest and a Buddha. I thought this was very heavy. I can think of three or for ways it could be interpreted. I think it lends the poor guy quite a bit of richness.

"The soft faces wept." I was very proud of that. It comes back around, of course, but in the moment it's also the faces of humans which wept the fat as he rendered their skin. He hopes for silence - a return to that "breathing austerely." Mars is normally a dry and quiet place for this little guy.

We get a little context. It's silent out in space, the planet's swirling (the image I recalled was the opening scene of The Thief and the Cobbler - a favorite movie of my youth).

Calling the ring of old satellites a "bow of burning gold" is a reference to the unspeakably beautiful hymn "Jerusalem" as in "We will build Jerusalem, in England's green and pleasant land." I think that image speaks for itself, and speaks volumes.

"Desert birds" is a very loose reference to Yeats' "The Second Coming" my very very favorite poem, and fitting here.

The local life eats dust. Because when I go for a Biblical Reference, I beat it to death with a stick. It's also supposed to imply that the native life can live on the meager bounty of Mars. The soft faces "complain about the heat" - they're warmblooded humans after all. 

The women on earth specifically beat the "footsoles" of the metal ships - the arks bearing human civilization to a terraformed Mars. This is another of my so-slight-as-to-hardly-count references to poetry. Because why make imagery when you can steal it? Anyway, the poem being referenced is Sylvia Plath's "Morning Song" one of my favorites by her, which I suggest to any new mother. It summons up ideas of post-partem depression. It goes along with the other birthing symbolism such as the not-so-subtle "gruff sound of the water breaking."

"A red star greened with nausea." This was the "one true sentence." Hemmingway said that when you've got writer's block, you should write "one true sentence" to break through. I didn't know the direction I wanted to go - but I knew that a red star would green - and it would be nauseous.

"Down From Olympus Mons" like greek gods, of course. Also the definite symbol that we're on Mars. Hammers and scythes have a nice communist feel, which I hoped would bring an odd dichotomy. In the future - equality and bounty for MAN. Humanity couldn't be happier about this colonization. The "White Settlers disposing of Natives" is cliched, but, much like the actual Genocide of the Native Americans - it's there whether we want to believe it or not.

I figure even in the future we won't be free of evangelists handing out Bibles. We'll of course need one with footnotes - and I feel the implications would be clear. I think this image sufficiently brings this home. Though this is Sci-Fi, I'm not concerned with the facts and the science of terraforming. This is an allegorical piece - a vision set to music.

I should mention. "The Rich Red Earth" is a reference to a poetic translation of the Hebrew pun that is the name of the first man. "Adam" mankind, "Adamah" earth, "adom" red, "dam" blood. There is no other title, that much I know, I can scrap the rest, but the title at least says what it needs to say.

I had more fun with this than I thought I would. Now I have to learn how to "pingback" properly.