Sunday, January 31, 2010

I am your mermaid Tangled but blissful

When I grow older, I want a child. And I know what he will look like. He will be my little boy, dark Caribbean skin, glowing from within. He will have long kinky brown hair, that I will back-comb for hours until they form fuzzy swaying caterpillar dreadlocks, that hang to his shoulders. And he will have dark, glowering eyes, and a round, button nose, that I will rub in greeting. His dark wide lips will smile slowly, revealing happy gapped teeth. He will have the most perfect toes and fingers, that are continually filling pockets with the treasures of the earth. 

I will teach him to make music, so he can bring emotions into the air, and then my wild little child will run, screaming off into our backyard. I will smile and make cinnamon cookies, and when I'm done, I'll go looking for him, and all I'll hear is the throat songs he will have left trailing behind himself for me. The trail will lead me through a hole in our fence, and into the woods, into the thickest part. And I will be standing there, with a bag of warm cookies, and I will look up, and there he will be, his naked brown body swinging from the rough bark, his miniature clothes piled over the roots at the bottom of the tree. He will sing a taunting monkey song to me, and climb higher. So, barefoot, I will climb myself up up up until I reach him, and we will find the biggest branch there and I will lie upon it on my back, and he will curl up on my stomach, and we will fall asleep, naked monkeys high up on a naked tree bough. 

When the night tickles us awake, his eyes will open, luminescent beacons attached to a body with grasping fingers that pull me down and forwards, back to home, where he will steal the bag of cookies from my open palms and run off to my bed, to warm it for me, and when I come back after retrieving our clothes, he will have eaten all the cookies but one, for me, and there will be crumbs in his hair. I will sing a little song beneath my breath, until it swells larger and larger, and he will get up and dance to it, his little arms akimbo, his hair reaching up and outwards, and he will spin and spin and spin until his eyes will close mid spin, and I will pick up his soft skinny body and deposit him beneath warm patchwork covers. That is what will happen when I grow older.

Title Quote: Elysian Fields, Mermaid

Thursday, January 28, 2010

River of Orchids, winding our way Want to walk into London on my hands one day

Roadside Thistle

She leaned over the
roadside, and found
a flower
snipped it gently between
thumbnail and forefinger
raised herself and 
delicately placed it
between the fold of her ear
a curve 
an overlap
a furl
purple petals
pushing against the
edge of pale skin

with the
flower
secured, she sighed
the wind blowing her raven hair
back, away from the 
flower
its bloom     pushing
up for air 
amidst this sea of dark
just a roadside
thistle, purple petals
bloom even when 
there's no one to see

but she saw
the plain beauty of 
an ordinary unique
creation
purple speck
amongst so many other colors.


Title Quote: River of Orchids, XTC

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Purple haze all in my eyes Don't know if it's day or night

There was a girl. She must have been around 17 or 18, and she had skin the color of coffee with rich cream mixed in. She had a small nose, which must have been like a button when she was little, but had now grown to a point, giving her whole face a defined manner. Her lips were darker brown than her skin, and she wore no makeup. Her face seemed without a mask. Her eyebrows were pronounced, yet they were soft at the edges, and her eyes were the color of a black cat's at night, sparkling with a secret. The girl's face was made even more vibrant by the scene of her hair behind her. It was wiry, and tightly curled, hanging at different lengths along her shoulders and back. Each ringlet was a different color, one the color of honey when light streams through it, one the color of a dusty antique oakwood cabinet, and one the color of rich amber beer when held up to a window. Her hair was only just held back by a colorful sash, full of lapis lazuli blue, eggplant purple, and a dull ochre, woven with binding silk threads. The sash was wide as a headband at the front, and crinkled thin where it was tied at the back, trailing down to the girl's hips. At the very bottoms dangled little worn brass bells, about three a piece for each end. They must have tinkled like a dream does, if only people would stop to listen.
  The girl was wearing a baby blue cotton shirt, worn at the edges, the sleeves coming down halfway between her shoulder and her elbow, and banded at the bottom, with the tops blooming out slightly. The neckline had been, presumably by her, cut into a ragged V, and there was a symbol, or writing on her shirt, in black, though the way she was twisted there was no hope of deciphering what it said. The bottom of her shirt dipped low in in the front and the back, and the sides were shortened to her hips. The bottoms fell over her skirt, which was a beautiful gypsy piece, hidden with patterned patches, stolen from mandalas and persian curtains. It was a tiered skirt, but it was not the kind where the tier evenly circles around the whole length, it was more each pice for their own, and the effect was of more shingles than anything else. Where the patterns flapped up, you would catch a glimpse of fuchsia silk from a sari, and bits of it trailed and fluttered with he rest of the skirt in ringlets. The hem came to about her calves, but just then, the girl ran over a subway grate, past crowds of people, and because of the breeze, the skirt hovered around her knees, exposing, long, thin legs made for jumping on trampolines and dancing the tango. 
Now, her features had been molded to form a look of defiance, and determination, even though her obligation that she was determined to fulfill was a hard one. Her hair had been blown back momentarily from the breeze, exposing the eye of a peacock feather dangling from each ear, swirling in emerald and the darkest of blues. And now I saw, too, that the girl was clutching a shoulder bag, made of woven hemp the color of beaten straw that was held to her waist. The tip of a book nosed out. Then, the girl continued on her dash past the subway grate, and disappeared in the tumult of people, off to haunt someone else's vision.


Title Quote: Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Sit and listen Sub-let your ideas Till they're broken

Atom


Cataclysmic 
words fall from
our mouths.
To inspire;
breathe in.
There is a waxed scarf
tied at  
my heart 
and hanging 
limp, fulvous 
in my mouth;
breathe in.
Where do the words
I speak behind
these closed lips 
go
when I forget 
to open them?
Speak, and all will be spoken for.
An infant's mutterings
betray the thoughts of
ideas untouched by ideas
the world untouched
by the world.
If one atom
can destroy a city
what can one word
do?




Title Quote: Cantinero, Little Princess

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The roots are shooting up through the tool shed

Hey guys, sorry to break my rule already, but this post is not my writing. I just want to alert you to this website called etsy. It is this hosting site where all sorts of people--independent users who create all sorts of independent goods--can put up the stuff they have created and made themselves, and other people browse and buy it, thus supporting people who wouldn't otherwise be able to sell this stuff, and buying handmade items. As you may notice from the sidebar on this blog, I have created an etsy account for myself, LolaBellybutton. I am selling mostly jewelry and felted things, so please check it out! If you have to get a gift for someone, this might be it! Or, you might just see something you want. Tell others about it, too! Thanks, please visit my shop.

Title Quote: Vampire Weekend, Horchata

Sunday, January 10, 2010

And all that I knew was the hole in my shoe which Was letting in water

Hungry. Oh, am I ever so hungry. And thirsty, too. I would lick the damp, moldy walls that keep me here, but I already have, hours ago, to no avail. Not a drop of water has soothed my tongue for what feels like days. My stomach has imploded. I must sit here, twisted into a fetal position, to try survive the pain, the hunger. I try not to cry, so as to conserve the little water left inside my dehydrated self. I try to close my eyes, but it is too hard not to look, not to watch. Slowly, my gaze rises and I stare, my lower lip trembling, at the table above. At the food above. My eyes stalk the food, the steaming plates set out with a glorious, gleaming banquet—I will die with the food right there, trapped like a goldfish who has jumped out onto the ground, its nose pressed to its glass bowl filled with water. Mmmm. So thirsty. . . With a last burst of effort, I get up, and run at the table, jumping on it, jumping on the food. The food to make me well again, the food to ease my pain. But yet again, like all the other nights, my fingers only touch hard, immaculate glass, sealed over the feast, my feast. I scrabble to hold on, my dry, brittle tongue presses against the glass, and I fall once more. Desperate, I throw myself again and again at the concrete door. My mind watches my body, is startled to hear a wail, an inhuman wail of the most horrible suffering, and watches as I collapse on the floor, shivering uncontrollably. To be the infant in her mother's arms, to taste the strong milk between my lips, to taste anything, to feel my belly full.

"I'll tell!" I whisper. "I'll tell!" I try to shout. To tell is to get food and water, to tell is to get mercy. I will tell them everything they ever wanted, but for a crust of bread. Why won't they hear me? I'll finally tell, I am hungry. But no one hears. My voice too weak, a thin gossamer thread against iron cables. With one final breath, my voice breaks these cables, informing the world: "I'll tell!" No more breaths are drawn. I feel darkness close in, I succumb, just as I hear the heavy footsteps of my entrapper triumphantly storm into the room. My soul—shriveled as it is—rises and watches as the man comes in with a smug grin on his face that turns to puzzledness as he reaches down to check my pulse. His expression morphs to anger, to rage, to the prize dangling there and now, only just by a hair, lost, as he finds no pulse in my lifeless body. I am much the same in life as in death; shriveled, weak, untelling. Now it is time for him to utter an inhuman scream to tell us "So close, so close!" To make suffer, as he made me. Slowly, I smile, and turn, misting through the glass, to feast on the essence of the sustenance laid on that rough table. Yet I am hungry, oh so hungry.


Title Quote: Traffic, Hole in My Shoe

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

could you please pull over for a second and breathe?

Behind the Glass (train)

Pulling out of the station
I see each painted face
petulant, expectant, grimacing
joy,
perhaps.
then a blur
each face belongs to
every body
we reach the tunnel
enshrouded by the
darkness of anonymity
our window turns
opaque, and my reflection
stares back at me.
I smile reassuringly at her
she smiles back

behind the glass.

Through wordless
nudge-grunts
my brothers make sure
I know it's our stop;
we are leaving.
I see that
they care
though they isolate their
conversations, boyspeak
one's hand grips
an edge of the door
to hold it 
open if
they were to begin 
to close
lest they separate
us 3.

I step from
the metal box into
a concrete labyrinth
we hurry
and I write this poem
in the back of my head
transforming feelings to pictures to words
on the
way
to school.


Title Quote: Summarum, Sky Falling