Tuesday, December 28, 2010

On milky skin my tongue is sand until The ever distant band begins to play

I wrote this at the beginning of the school year. It is a study on issues of conflicting justice. It's kind of hard to understand, and I feel like I should expand it to include flashback, dialogue, character development. But, you know me. too lazy. I hope it makes sense in it's current state.

Tabitha Martinez settled her rather large rump upon the greyhound bus seat and pushed her hand bag between her legs while emitting a weary sigh. She looked to her right and found a man holding himself as tightly as she herself was, in the window seat beside her. He had large circles under his eyes and a little red scruff on his chin. She noticed his Red Sox hat and sighed. Despite being native Bostonites themselves, Tabitha and her son had always been partial to the Royals. Tabitha thought bitterly about her son now, turning from the man and staring hard at the the seat in front of her. Her son's name was George de Seguvia Martinez, he was twenty seven, weighed one hundred and sixty-two pounds, and was currently awaiting trial on charges of kidnapping and murder. Tabitha was on her way to testify for him right now, with only her worn leather handbag and her bewilderment to comfort her.

George, her little Georgey, he would never do such a thing! Since Tabitha had been notified of his predicament two days ago, she could do nothing but recount his happy upbringing and grounded lifestyle to herself. Whatsmore, the woman he was suspected of murdering was Alia Zohar, his girlfriend of the past three years, and the kid he was accused of napping was the same woman's seven year old son, from a previous attachment! Sometimes Tabitha had worried about Alia's relationship with George, but he always wearily brushed her speculations aside with “No, Ma”s, and “We're just fine”s. But the woman seemed glinty of eye and tight of lip to Tabitha, who had never fully trusted her. She couldn't believe her Georgey had did what they said, and it wasn't just because she was his mother.

Tabitha kept puzzling over this in her mind, until after an hour or so of rolling past grey buildings and highways, she felt warm breath upon her bare shoulder. She slowly, warily, turned so that she could face the breath. She had to lean her neck back so that her nose did not brush upon her intruder. She saw the man next to her slumped over, with his baseball cap now fallen to the floor, fast asleep. He was rocking forwards, forwards, forwards to her and then snapped back up, eyes still closed. Then he relaxed again, and his body swayed closer, closer, closer, until his nose just brushed Tabitha's hair, and then back again towards the window he leaned. Tabitha watched him, entranced. He looked about 30, 35, and a slight stomach spilled out over his belt. Each time he swayed, he swayed closer to Tabitha before snapping back, until finally he came so close that his head came into contact with her shoulder. Tabitha froze, but the man just breathed out a little and settled in. His weight disturbed her. He had never said a word to her in her life, yet his thoughts now rested upon her shoulder. Tabitha didn't know what to do. She certainly didn't want to wake the man, but then there he was, asleep against her side!

She told herself that he would probably lift himself in a couple minutes, or wake on his own, and gingerly, she sat back once more, now with a slight weight to her right.. Another hour passed, and still the man did not move. In about fifteen minutes, Tabitha would have to get off for her stop. It was crucial she be there for her son's trial. But just as she resolved to shake the sleeping man, she found tears begin to slip from his closed eyelids. She saw his thick graying eyebrows press together, and felt a warmness as his salt water wet her skin. Startled, Tabitha did only what she knew as a mother; she pulled the man to her ample lap and murmured reassuringly to him as he wimpered and cried. “Shh, hijo,” she whispered to him. “What could you possibly be dreaming about?” The man groaned but stayed asleep, nestled in Tabitha's thighs. “It will be all right, everything will be ok, don't worry now, I have you,” she soothed, and the man's eyebrows eased and his face softened.

What were his dreams, Tabitha had wondered? He dreamt of a woman named Alia Zohar, and of her child Benji, her child and his. He dreamt of Alia's incessant cursing and of her command to never see her or Benji again, and he dreamt of the bruises and cigarette burns on Benji's arms and the flatness in his dark eyes. He dreamt about a dark room and a window opened from the outside, about a little boy still sleeping as Daddy carried him away in the moonlight and tucked him safely in the tan Buick. Then he dreamt about Alia's scream at an empty bed and an open window with a ladder beneath it, about Alia with a knife glinting with abuse alcohol anger ineptitude danger. He dreamt about the pain from a flying knife that grazed his arm, he dreamt about picking up the knife that now glinted with possibility hope solution justice and walking forwards. He dreamed Alia's second and last scream of the night and forever. Then he dreamed about the short drive to his mother's where Benji would stay with Grandmama, until Daddy was safe. In his dreams floated a greyhound bus ticket, the stub of which sat in his pocket. Now Mommy will never hurt Benji again, he had promised his son as he fled.

Tabitha watched as her stop came and went. She knew she was needed here by this sleeping child in men's clothes, this two hundred-fifty pound child, so she stayed. But an hour later, the man's damp eyelashes fluttered open, and he bolted upright, looking angrily at astonished Tabitha as she jerked back to reality and realized her mistake. She rushed for the closing doors of the current stop and pushed herself out from the dim, fateful greyhound bus. Leather handbag in one hand, grey skirt held up in the other, Tabitha ran desperately backwards, to Georgey and his trial, as rain filled the clouds above. Mistake mistake mistake mistake Tabitha thought shouted, as she rushed and tumbled back, miles away from the law court. Mistake mistake mistake mistake, she went. Or was it? The thought flashed bright pink, scattering the grey mistakes in her mind. Tabitha need to stop and rest and hail a cab. 

Monday, October 11, 2010

Paper sails in the breakers We buried treasure There was nothing to take

Nun's Voice


You say a
kiss
means everything
stepping stone opening door
to walk forwards But
I've never kissed
him, never toughed
his lips
in dimly lit rooms
in Pale Moonlight in
tarry dark where eyes
are no use.
Yet I've already walked through
his open door, I already
have thought his lemon-yellow thoughts
and I've reached inside
a roiling gut it was I
who soothed those knots.
I know him more than
girls wrapped in lace
know the tilt of their hips
yet never have our lips pressed
jet and mauve, ink and pink
like the white lining of a black habit.


Title Quote: Elysian Fields, Lady in the Lake

Saturday, September 11, 2010

And accept it that soon You'll be drenched to the bone.

Marmalade


This orange honey burned gloppy
upon my fingers I scream
how to capture fire beneath skin and blood
how to walk without hips swaying
pendulous body feet pointed in
She can breathe and think at the same time she can
walk at dusk and foggy dawn bleary
eyed, she sees her feet reflected over the subway grate
comma inward; paragraph out
growing like a tree flaming leaves
Can you count them all? everything
labels the names for all things tossed
through my head forcing lips
to become chapped and burned fingers
to become blistered
the mind is not pink, but gray
I love the way people look when they're asleep.


By the way, I've started a new blog, with realtime prosaic rants and updates on my new high school life.
Blackberry Crowns, for you.

Title Quote: Bob Dylan, Times They are a Changing

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

I got sunshine in a bag I'm useless, but not for long the future is comin' on

This is the continuing tale of Bay and Tulya. Haven't read it yet? Catch up here:
and now, part 4:

Arriving home, they found a very agitated Duluth snuffling at the screen door. His snout pushed against the walls, and then Tulya and Bay. Tulya sighed with pity, for herself and for the pig, and stood outside the house, her long brown fingers resting on the latch to open the polished white gate. She stayed this way for a couple of minutes, and her mind seemed to be in another place. Finally, Tulya started a little, and her eyes focused again, and her fingers, trembling ever so slightly, lifted the latch up and stepped through the gate. She beckoned for Duluth to come in, and she lay out his food in a bright orange bowl on the kitchen floor, which he gratefully vacuumed up. She looked up at Bay. “I'm gonna change and then we'll go, 'kay?” Tulya walked up the stairs, with Bay trailing quietly after. She came to her room, and stepped in, shutting the door firmly behind her. Bay turned around from outside the door and padded to the bathroom.  A couple minutes later,  Tulya emerged, dressed now in a clean shirt and a pair of baggy gypsy pants. Tulya had not graduated, like Bay had, so she still had about a week or so before school got out. Both knew this, but neither made any suggestion that Tulya go to school. Bay really didn't care much, and in her current distressed state, neither did Tulya, despite the fact that she was the girl who never came late or missed a day of schoolwork. Instead, the pair headed back to Abi's hospital. 

“Tulya Simmons, to see Abigail Simmons, please,” Tulya politely told the woman at the front desk. “Second floor, room 212,” she answered, after running her eyes down a list on her computer screen. “Thank you.” Tulya and Bay marched on to the elevators. There was a long corridor between the elevators on the second floor and room 212. It was off-white, with a a grayed out pastel green stripe running horizontal at head hight along the walls. “Sickening,” Tulya muttered. “Why does the hospital have to be painted so depressingly?” Bay stayed silent, and she knew he was saving all of his strength for Abi and Tulya's reaction to her. She decided to steel herself so she would not need to lean on him when he was clearly being crippled. Her words echoed dumbly through the hallway in her mind. Abi lay peacefully in a paper gown with the scratchy white blanket pulled up past her breast. Hospital corners, thought Tulya. Abi had a clear oxygen tube pushed up her nose which made Tulya shudder, and Bay noticed that alongside an IV pump attatched to her wrist, there was also a bag tucked under the bed that was connected to Abi, and was filled with a dark brown red fluid. He shuddered as well, and he needed to know, but was far too afraid to ask, even if there was anyone around who would know. But the doctor from before was not in sight, neither any other hospital personnel. 


Title Quote: Gorillaz, Clint Eastwood

Friday, August 20, 2010

We can't slow down, We can't hold back Though you know we wish we could

Invasion of the Mind

On my humble travels I
once came across
a red brick house
red stolen from a
cock's tail feathers
lips bitten bloody and
the fire engine on 83rd
street
the walls were strong but I
 found a chink 
light cascaded out
peering in, though
I found
complete darkness
but for a black
iridescent shining
glinting dangerously from
the miscellany strewn 
about.

I wanted to get in
I needed to get in
into that secret brick
house where almost decipherable 
murmurs escaped 
from the chimney 
like smoke.

I clawed at the walls
at the chink 
the bricks
the fissures around this
mind
I kicked and bit
until my teeth 
broke up
my fingernails cracked 
and bled
until my feet 
were crippled
         still no dent upon this fortress.

And the walls
they were strong, but
they wanted me to
break in so
I went around to
the back
and tried the door
       it was unlocked. 

On my knees
I crawled through
this dungeon 
but
I knew that it was
Heaven,
too.

I found a teddy bear
with its paws rubbed
raw
a curled lock of
graying hair with copper strands
still glinting out faintly
I found stretched out
jumpers and worn out sun hats
a bag of dried tears I found
heart breaks
headaches
fake smiles 
angry, unheard cries
embarrassment
regret 
deep, stabbing
pain
splashed red 
upon the dusty carpets
woven with unsaid 
and forgotten words.

I found I could not
rise from my knees
and so I sunk
to a prayer postion
my third eye
kissing ground.
My clothes were ripped
ragged they were
moths; ghost white
with holey lace wings
they fluttered away
away
I was naked and my skin
parted to allow the
ground to push up craggy furniture
and shape my inner 
terrain.

I knew the outside
of this inside, but
not what lay beneath 
it
became massaging
hands
soft as Rose's petals
with nails sharp as
her thorns
I was the secret
enclosed in every
flower's center;
now I was just a figment
of this mind's
imagination.


Title Quote: Ain't No Rest For the Wicked, Cage the Elephant

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

After the flood all the colors came out

water pooling in my 
bellybutton
warm breathing 
life 
gravel ground
smeared wet arching back
torso flopping 
fish-like beatingbeating
hands open heart open jump 
up
bare feet through dripping grass and
saturated smoke from a suddenly 
extinguished 
fire it's
raining!


Title Quote: U2, Beautiful Day

Friday, July 2, 2010

I ride the tiger in the light, I roll in with the dealer's high

I'm going off to technology free camp, so I guess this will be my last post for at least a month. Let's make it good... I wrote this last summer, in collaboration with flower. We used the same simple plot idea, but communicated no more to eachother than the basics. This is one half of the story, one side of the world, one of the two sets of eyes. If you'd like to read hers, it's posted here.

They said that before I could walk, I was dancing. They said that I sang in my sleep, wordless rhythmmelodies, much before I said my first words. They say that even now, if you listen close while I sleep, my breathing has a tune. I was born with music in my veins.

My name is Sef. Short for Josef I guess, though no one has ever used that name. Not that I know too many people. When I was just a baby, my mother and father, immigrants from Jamaica, died. They had won a cruise in a lottery sweepstakes, and then the ship went down on a stormy night. Neither could swim. My aunt came and took me to look after me then. My parents had had no other children before me, and Auntie neither, so I was alone. Didn't bother me. I had lots of company; the music in my head. I moved in with her next to the beach, out in Jacksonville, Florida, and every day after school I would run there. I loved it especially in winter. The cold had never stopped me, all I needed was a wetsuit and some string to tie back my dreadlocks and I was in the water. And in winter, no one was there, crowding up the beach. Since I was a child, I have swum, learning as soon as I began to dance. I was always in awe of the wave's power, the way you could just wade in and it would swirl about your hips, inviting you in. . . And then you were in the thick of it. The waves crashed and shivered over you, and could fling you straight out, water droplets flying everywhere. I loved being right by the breakers, feeling the wave's full strength smooth over me, feel it break by my toes as I dived through, knowing that much power was rushing past me. It made me feel special. And it wasn't the only attractive thing about the water. 

It deafened the senses, so that I could hear what I was always listening for within me: the heartbeat. The beat drummed on in my head, a steady thunk~thunk~thunk, day and night. It was as constant as the waves, pulling in, out, in, with the tide. I relied on that beat, to keep me breathing, to keep my spirit alive. I don't know how, but I knew it was a heartbeat, and I knew it was mine. I knew it was someone else's heart beating along inside their own chest, this endless drumbeat echoing inside the cavity of my mind. I had thought that everyone had a beat inside their head, just as they had one on the left side of their chest. But when I talked of it with Auntie, she just dismissed it as a young, lonely boy's overactive imagination, saying "I have no time for this now. Go play in the beach, Sef." So i would go down to the sands and warm my feet and dance to the beat, thunk~thunk~thunk.

When I finally figured out that no one else heard a heartbeat aside from their own, I learned not to mention it in front of Auntie. To keep it to myself, and to keep myself to myself, and just be at the beach. Auntie didn't mind letting me run wild, she had other things to bother about. One of those days at the beach, dancing to myself with the wind whispering other people's secrets in my ear, the Drummers found me. The Drummers were all at least 17; I was 8. But when they saw me, they saw my talent, they saw what no one else could, or would see. "Kid," Baz, the ringleader, told me, "Kid, do you know the rhythm! Can ya drum?" Dumbly, I shook my head no, but the look in my eyes said teach me, and he saw them. Baz, with his short spiky blonde hair and graygray eyes, spent that summer teaching me. He was short, but when he leaned over his drum and pounded his life out into it, he was the tallest of them all. He told me I had the strongest natural talent in anyone he had ever taught. I never told him about the heartbeat. The Drummers, all six of them, not including me--spent their nights lighting incense, and playing out a beat, a song, an offering to the night goddess, as the waves lapped at their tapping feet. I spun to their rhythm some nights, others, I created my own, the moon lighting my brownbrown skin from the inside out, lifting me up to where it shone in the sky.

Fast forward nine years. All the drummers had left, after graduating college and heading off for deadbeat jobs during the day in the middle of nowhere, having wild drum sessions at night. For the past few years, it had been only me here, me and Fiona. She was the younger sister of Ria, one of the Drummers. She was a year older than me, and she didn't drum. But could she sing! She would get into these trances and just sing in tongues all night, her green cat eyes becoming filled with light, her face becoming flushed, her graceful fingers rising and falling with my beat. When people danced to my music (which was always based on the underlying rhythm of the heartbeat) I felt more like the rest of the world, as if instead of becoming like them, which was impossible, they had become like me, and they could hear the heartbeat as well, as long as I played it to them. I was convinced that I was the best drummer there was, and Fiona told me so too.

At seventeen, I had just finished high school, barely passed. School had never interested me. Even music class, because it had rules, and times, and everyone-work-together-just-as-we-rehearsed-it. That's not what music's about: it's about spontaneity, about just doing your thing and everyone else does their thing and when you work with the right person, the things you're doing just mesh, without having to plan it all out. My music teacher did not agree, nor did this philosophy work in any of my other classes. Needless to say, I was not going to college. I thought I had taught myself all I ever needed to know, so there was no use for "higher education". Fiona and I decided to go to the mixing pot of America--if there were anyplace my talent would be appreciated, it would be New York City, which thrummed with so many separate beats enmeshed to form one big working hustling bustling city. And so at seventeen, Fiona and I headed to NYC.

And that's how I found myself in the underbelly of the greatest city awake. Fiona and I had used our life's savings to get here, and now we worked for our meals playing an echoing beat that found its way to the ears and hopefully the hearts of the commuters constantly coming, going, this way, that way, little ants in stiff black suits. Joey, 21, had found us feebly trying to set up in a corner at Grand Central Station. He showed us the way to sit in the thick of it all, to smile, to hold out your hat for donations, to look exotic to these people who came from everywhere but here. Joey played a soulful sax at the 51st street station, and was always on the lookout for newcomers at Grand Central and Times Square. After a week or two of playing in the subways, Fiona showed up less and less to accompany me with her transcendent tongue, and after a month, she was gone. She had probably run off with Joey, the old badger. 

So I moved out of the one room apartment we had been renting at the end of that month, and went underground full time. I played somewhere different each day, taking the train to whichever stop it led me to, and settling there for the day and night. Winter came, and I just curled tighter into the forgotten crannies and nooks of the city. I never minded the cold. By spring, I was able to go swimming in the hudson river, where people would stare at me as though I were crazy, and move away. I probably looked crazy too, My dreds reaching to my hips, a wispy soul patch starting on my chin, my trusted beat-on drum always tucked under my arm. No one else swam in the river, but I liked things best that way, just the water and me. The heartbeat still kept me company, fading in and out to the comings and goings of my life. I called Auntie once a month, jammed during the day, spent a few dollars on food each night, and saved the rest. This schedule went on for some time until one day I just sort of woke up.

Every time that I drum it is with the beat--thunk~thunk~thunk, ba dum, ba dum, ba de de dum. I never play unless I'm feeling it, which is why the sound is always so glorious. But one day I woke up and realized it had been almost a year of this, and that I had to stop. I had to go somewhere and do something, something with an actual purpose. But the only purpose I could find in life was the heartbeat. I was never free of it, and so it habituated my thoughts and movements thoroughly. The mystery of it, who it belonged to, called to me with every beat. This resounding question had really never occurred to me before, I was so wrapped up in myself. I had always just accepted the heartbeat as much as I did my right leg. But now I needed to know. What controlled it? Who was on the other end? Could they hear my heartbeat, just as I heard theirs? And the last, most important question of all: If my heart stopped, would theirs as well?

This last question consumed me, until all my time was spent puzzling over the answer and its implications, or trying to lose myself in my music. But to no avail. The days wore on, burned in my mind, hotter and hotter, until I could bear it no longer. I knew that I must find out for sure, though I was almost positive I knew the answer, to that last, crucial question. I was in denial. At around this time, I found that my Auntie was sick, and almost certainly on her deathbed. I made plans to see her as soon as possible, and hoping that the change of scenery would do me well.

With what little money I had saved, I bought a plane ticket to Jacksonville and boarded it that evening. The quiet chatter amongst the cabin thrummed in time with the heartbeat in my head, with my restless fingers, and with the relentless question that hounded me night after night. By now I had almost turned myself face-to-face with the answer, and boy did I not like it. My new, even more urgent question was: Which heartbeat would stop first--the one in my head or the one in my heart? I arrived at Auntie's in time to bid her one last loving farewell before she ascended the golden staircase heavenwards. In grief, having lost everyone I had ever loved, and knowing no one nor anyone knowing me, truly, I blindly stumbled to the beach.

And there I realized: what was the use of staying on this world, to be lonely and only hear the lonely heartbeat in response, when my family waited for me in paradise, in Zion? Why have to worry about dying because the heartbeat's owner died? I could end it now myself, and that's what I was going to do. I loaded rocks from the surf into my pockets and prepared to swim out and never return, my body weighted to the ocean floor. How foolish I had been to not even consider the life of the other person connected to me, how their heart would stop when mine resounded its last beat in their head. How foolish I had been, but no matter, for at the moment I was readying myself to be flung out at mercy to the crashing waves, I heard something. Or more rather, I didn't. The heartbeat no longer screamed it's threat within my mind. I cocked my head to one side, listening; but it was true: it was gone! I was overjoyed, in ecstasy, and then I remembered that when it failed to beat out its presence in the world, then so most definitely would I. And at that very moment I felt a pang in my chest; I gasped for breath--and then everything fell black.

It might have been an old woman, slowly slipping away while she slept, it might have been connected to a youth born the same day as I all the way across the world, hit by a car, or it may have been someone as troubled as I by the heartbeat and its implications that he or she ended our lives before I had the chance to. Perhaps I will never know, all I know is that now, the heartbeat is gone.

The newspapers said I had died the night before from sudden cardiac arrest alone on the beach, but there was no one on this earth who knew the true reason, no one who cared but the sea, which left its rhythm roaring in place of mine heartless yet full of heart.

Title Quote: Luscious Jackson, Sexy Hypnotist

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

I stand in a wide flat land No shadow or shade of a doubt

I know this is not my fiction, nor is it entirely fiction, nor is it literally written, but I wanted to show it to you anyhow. It tells a story, and a great one at that. I love it. It's a short film called plastic bag, and it is narrated by Werner Herzog. Amazing.


Title Quote: Suzanne Vega, Fat Man & Dancing Girl

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Wrought iron cobwebbing over thin windowpanes


Mine

Bird of prey
who's circling 
rhythm
darkly bends.

Above roads; enmeshed
that burn through
autumnal sprouts.

Corrupted
wishes
spear time
with grief tipped arrows.

Worn roses
silently bleed their color
until all is 
threadbare.

Continue the feathers
to fall from up above
 breezily down
past the earth, le monde, the earth.

Title Quote: Emancipated Minor, Ani DiFranco

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Soon I'll be holding you instead of this machine gun

Here's something I started without any idea where it will go. This all I have of it at the moment:


You are a gypsy man. You wax the edges of your handlebar mustache every morning, curling them upwards. You dance yourself to sleep at night around a fire, wearing bells that jangle against your knobbly ankles, jangle up down up down, as if trying to keep the moon awake, so that her eyes will never close and she will never drop out of sight, so that the sun will not dawn nor a new day begin. You dance yourself to sleep, trying to keep the night awake forever. 

You are a gypsy man. Music runs in your veins, your heart pumps out blood to a beat. When you pass the gypsy women, with big gold hoops in their ears and missing teeth, they waggle their hips at you, the ragged edges of their skirts lifting and jerking. You waggle your hips back, and continue walking barefoot down the path. There is dirt beneath your toenails, but so is there the earth your people have lived on for as many years as your grandmother's grandmother can count. 

You have two goats, Valeria and Jaakov. You milk Valeria every mid-afternoon, and hang her milk in a cloth over a cracked blue bucket to curdle for cheese. You fondle Jaakov's twisted horns, feeling the grain beneath your thumb, and look into his eyes knowingly, to which he jerks back and tries to butt you. Such is life. You are a gypsy man, you are Ukrainian, your name is Andrij. 

After you milk the goats, you decide to head to town, a little ramshackle main street with shops on either side that serves all your purposes for getting food, and supplies. There is a grocery store, barely lit with dusty cans of beans on the shelves and barely refrigerated chunks of meat and bundles of greens. There is a garden behind your little house, with carrots that you pull from the earth and crunch on with dirt still clinging to the tips, and with spinach and kale and leeks. For meat, your goats will do, but Valeria and Jaakov are not for eating. Valeria gives you milk and children, and Jaakov by now would be much to hard and stringy to eat—he is very old, your trusty goat who you chose from a litter of kids many years ago. Valeria has recently had children though, and that is where your nutrition will come from. 

As well as a grocery store, there is a small clothing store with fancy machine made clothing, and fabric in the back. You stop by and pick up some purple muslin for your sister so she can make herself a skirt, stringing coins and beads along the waist, to chime and sing for her when she dances. There is a little run down restaurant for the few tourists who wander through, that has pierogies and borscht and not much else. Next tot he restaurant are a bunch of little businesses that are always opening and closing the next month, continually switching between grand opening sales and going out of business sales. The gypsies don't often pay these stores much attention. Then, there is the last store.

Title Quote: Izabella, Jimi Hendrix

Sunday, June 6, 2010

The trees on the hill had nothing to say They would keep their dreams till another day

Interpretation of a Dream


summer came
and i wished 
i was there
cool valleys, rollicking water
instead of 
the hot city
where he 
stood at the corner and wooed 
the wind 
instead of me
but she did not even come
only sending 
a gentle breeze as a reminder
of her power

there was 
no enveloping tan sand
nor glistening leaves of green
here
it was just 
sticky sweet hot
and the wind never came
because 
i never called it
though he 
coaxed his voice dry.


Title Quote: Nick Drake, Time of No Reply

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Now that you know who you are What do you want to be?

, bThis is the third part of the Bay and Tulya story. It's coming out well, don't you think? You can read the previous two parts here and here.

Finally a nurse came and led the pair to Abi's room. she smiled at them, but there was no comfort in her eyes. The walls of her room were beige, and the lone window looked out at a gray office building across from the hospital. Tulya reached forward but didn't touch Abi. She just looked at her hands and ran them through her hair, then placed them together and began to slide them back and forth nervously. She whispered to the doctor “So? How is she?” She looked angry but it was like an angry with the red replaced with blue. The doctor, a thin, debonair sort of man with clear gray-blue eyes, looked at her, and then at Bay. “She's your grandmother?” he asked. “You're not answering my question,” she said, almost menacingly. The doctor smiled at her knowingly. “Well, then I will assume you are her grandchild,” he mused aloud. “Please. Just tell me. Will she be ok?” Tulya pleaded now, she looked at Bay, and he would not look back. She looked at Abi, who seemed not to be registering anyone or anything, and she looked the doctor again, who sighed. “Dove--” he began, and then started a little from the fierce glare he had evinced from Tulya. He looked at her straight, then, and his eyes were wide enough that Tulya could see the frieze of his irises. They looked like little snowflakes, circling around his pupil. “Pneumonia,” he said. “The scientific term is lobar pneumonia—caused by the bacteria Streptococcus Pneumoniae.” Tulya tried to swallow, but found that there was no saliva left in her mouth to allow her to do so. She had studied this particular bacterium in science class last semester. It affected the elderly much more so than other ages, and could lead to complications, death, even. But no, thought Tulya. That was rare. It happened mostly in developing countries, not America. Abi was a strong woman, she would recover just fine. “We're going to put her on Amoxicillin, alright, honey?” The doctor's voice cut short her thoughts. “I'm sure she'll recover just fine under our care. For now,” --he looked down at his clipboard to check her name-- “Mrs. Simmons needs to rest and let us care for her. You may visit her tomorrow morning.” The doctor picked up his stethoscope and tightened the hold on his clipboard, then spun around and left. Tulya looked to Bay. “Take me home.” she whispered. 

But when the pair arrived home, Tulya could find no comfort in the bright rooms. “It smells like her too much here,” she moaned. Bay took her off in the car, and they drove down to Venice Beach. The sunlight was turning purple, and while the world was slowly dimming and cooling for the night, the rocky sand was still warm from the rays of the day. Tulya slid off her converses and sat on the beach. Bay followed, and watched as she buried her feet into two little mounds on the shore. Slowly, she lay down and Bay began to cover her, heaping warm mother earth sand on her body, until only her head stuck out, and her black curls were tan with sand. Tulya closed her eyes and was soon asleep. Bay lay beside her and found that his dreams were fast to come as well. He had swift, vicious dreams, of monkeys falling from their trees, of hollow painted statues, of Tulya, dancing the tarantella, spinning faster and faster until he could no longer bear it, and he opened his eyes. Looking up, he found no moon, but there were many stars in the sky, and they lit up the night with promises of very far away. He saw that Tulya was softly breathing beside him, still covered in cool sand, that had little fissures and cracks from where she had stirred in her sleep. He got up quietly and went to the car. Lying there were the blankets they had wrapped Abi in, forgotten on the back seat. He took them and brought them back to the shore. Gently, Bay brushed the sand from Tulya and placed the blankets around her. Then, he lay beside her  and slid beneath the blankets as well, and buried his nose in her neck. Tulya murmured, but did not wake.  Bay dreamed again, this time of boats sailing over the horizon line, and of colorful balloons dotting the skies, and of he and Tulya waltzing in the school gym. 

He woke at morning, while the dawn was still gray and the air was soft and dewy and salty. Bay let Tulya sleep and washed his feet in the ocean. Then, he picked up two hotdogs from the man on the boardwalk who was just setting up. They had neglected to eat dinner, yet Bay found that he was not hungry. He returned to find Tulya sitting up and twirling her hair, staring at the waves as they rolled in and out, splashing lace foam along the wet sand. She accepted the hotdog, and they ate together. When she was finished, Tulya turned to Bay. “I want to go back to see her,” she said. “Let's just stop at home first.” Bay nodded and she lifted her feet up from the sand, brushing at her toes, and stepped lightly to the car, collecting her discarded shoes along the way. They got in the car and drove back down the side roads.  

Title Quote: Baby You're a Rich Man, The Beatles

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Look what I built for you This tower to the sky



So today, I was walking down Oak Avenue, and I met someone. He was this old guy, you know, the one we always see when you take me to school? Well, today he stopped me and asked me why I wasn't in school, and so I told him how it was spring break, and it was raining. I told him that I was going puddle stomping, because all the rain makes all the puddles. He said his name was Oliver, and I told him mine was Marisa, and I was six years old, so I was old enough to go puddle-stomping alone! But he said he wanted to come along, even if I was old enough to go all by myself. He said he could help me find huge stomping puddles. So we, the two of us, went walking. Oliver was so nice, he gave me a big red lollipop, because, he said, we were friends. Oliver is my best friend! I was about to eat it when we saw a super huge puddle! So I put the big red lollipop in my pocket, the one you sewed on my dress, and I went and stomped a huge stomp in the middle of the puddle. It was so much fun! Then all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a rat! Or I thought I saw a rat. But really, it was a cat. A kittycat, and she was so wet and shivery she looked like a rat! So I ran off to catch her so I could cuddle her all better. Oliver was the one who caught her though, and he said I could keep her. So then we started walking again, this time with kitty. Oliver said he lived close by, and we could go home to his house and he would give me some more candy and some nice, hot chocolate. He said he would give kitty some milk too. But, oh, no, then kitty jumped right out of my arms and scratched poor Oliver! He said all these words and then his face got really red and his face was really purple! It was really funny! So I started laughing, and I guess Oliver thought it was funny too, because he started laughing too, and his eyes bulged out so I could see all the white parts. I don't know what those words mean, but they must have been very nice because he was smiling very widely at me. And then he started walking to me, and I thought he wanted a hug. Because we were friends, and kitty had given him a boo-boo. And so I gave him a hug and he picked me up and squeezed me really hard and he was still laughing and his spit got on me, which was gross! Gro-osss! And then I heard this boy. He was shouting at Oliver! He was a big boy, and he looked funny 'cause his hat was on backwards and his pants kept falling down really low. Then Oliver saw the big boy he dropped me and started running. It hurt a little, but I guess he had someplace to be that he was late for. it's too bad he couldn't show me his house, and we would have played more, but maybe I'll see him next time I go puddle stomping.

So then the big boy came over to me and he took my hand and asked where my Mommy and Daddy were, and when I told him you and daddy were working and I was old enough to go puddle stomping alone, he smiled really wide too, just like Oliver, except different, and said he had a present for me. He said he knew where magical fairy land was, and that I was the only little girl in the whole world who could go inside it. He said that once I went there, I would be a fairy princess! He took me to this shiny silver car and told me that to get to the magical fairy land, first I had to play a game. He said I had to play hide and seek in the car, so all the bad fairies couldn't stop us from going to their land, so I got in the car and hid all the way in the backety back, where you put the suitcases. I curled myself into a little ball like a snail. The car ride was bumpety. But then, we got there! Or really, we stopped, and I kept all curled up because I was worried the fairies would find me, but then the big boy came out and told me the car had broken and then he heard a police car. It had lights and the police car noise, and the big boy got very scared. He told me to hide in the bushes from the bad fairies, and so I did, but after a while, the fairies hadn't found me and I was hungry.

So I thought I could stop hiding, and I tried to find the big boy or Oliver again, but I couldn't so I decided to go home. Too bad kitty couldn't have been there, but she ran away when I went in the car. Anyway, I walked a really long time, and my feet hurt, so I decided to climb a tree to see where home was. That took a really long time! But when I got waaay up, and then a doggy came and started barking and he was a scary doggy. He was drooling and there was white spit all around his mouth, so I stayed up in the tree. But I'm sure he was a very nice doggy. I just didn't really want to go down just then. So finally he left and I went back down the tree and I kept walking until my feet hurt sooo much, but finally I got home! And then I saw you, And I told you all about my day! And, oh, I forgot! I still have the lollipop that Oliver gave me! Mommy, why are you sshouting? Mommy! I want my lollipop back!



Title Quote: Stentaria, All For You

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

You raise your head, you beat the sun

Yesterday, the sky opened up, if only just for a moment.
Yesterday, the wind blew and the grass turned greener.
Yesterday, my hair whipped up and then soaked down.
Drops fell, drops of rain
of water and tears and the sky
fell to my feet and pooled there.


So in return I opened up
and in return I blew and I grew
and my hair dripped
and my shirt darkened with water
and from every pore and orifice I felt
myself raining
myself crying out for something
anything to happen, but I wanted nothing to happen
nothing to change, but everything to move.

And I wished that even, if only for a moment
I could fly out through my chest and my fingertips
and disappear beneath our earth to where it stopped being concrete
and began to be brown earth, molten red magma
to where there were gears turning and I could take a key and wind those gears
so the earth would groan and turn a little faster
and everyone would have to
balance up on their tip toes to keep balance.
People would find that they liked it there, poised
about to fall but not quite.


I wished I could do that, I wished I could rain upon them like the sky did
pushing their shoulder bones gently down and their faces forward
and their toes moving quicker than before but then
the clouds blew on and the sky became blue
cirrus clouds wandered in, replacing cumulus
it had stopped raining, so 
so did I, and I tied up my hair and kept walking, and dried


off.

Title Quote: Dispatch, Elias