February 2012
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A hush cricket
Meet a girl who reads in Veda, not prose, because she seems wholly foreign to you. Find a girl who speaks an ancient tongue. Be baffled—her words turn yours to doggerel, and her rhymes feel something anapest—one, one, two—let her chamoisee locks fall upon her scrolls—watch them undulate as she speaks at you. Call her Golden Blossom, Moonbreeze—something cryptic like...
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Doxemesis
A moth is drawn to flame as sword is drawn to fight, art is drawn to please, and Moon is drawn by Night, a bite, of aconite, to ward away the wolf who chases you, down a mottled road—a bed of snow forebodes a sleepless night, a sight of silver moon who looms about, in white, of vestal flight—your mournful eyes that flicker left and right, and droop to a pitch, to no avail.
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Stop
I know you. I know the subtle trance about your traipse—the heavy perfumed lilac fog—your lonely hand atop the corner of a table set for two—your itching apprehension—waiting to be waited on in your black blouse—lighting dim to fade out scars, caked about your face in mascara. I am well acquainted with your face—young lady—though, I doubt you are...
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Inspire
It is a dreadful feeling—the night—a tinfoil sheet that glistens on the skin, listens to the pucker of searing crimson shisha coals—salvation—It is dreadfully cold, dreadfully bitter, here. And I run the heat through my fingers as I sit without a touch. Inspire. Inspire, and let it be—the saccharine rush of honeyed smokes, drenched in the thump-thumping patter of Jack...
January 2012
11 posts
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Dreamwalk
Your breaths span the course of hours in your mind—and all around becomes a pale orange. Your steps are imprecise, but necessary—because you are going, gone, far gone from the realm of smokes. Your stomach reels because you are sick, legitimately sick to the core—sick of breath—drunk, perhaps.
You spin and, at once, your eyes focus on a stray lamppost—the most...
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Curse
For the years before her death, my grandfather cursed her out, mournfully, as she lay on her deathbed, condemned to a fate of emptiness—“She should just pass on already”—he said, with blankness that rivaled hers—he sighed. It took me years after her death to find out it was I who brought her to such a place, stripped of memories, speech. I fear beyond dread the lack...
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“A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the...”
– Robert Frost, A Question (from A Witness Tree)
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Flamberge
I call her Keris because of the way she looks at me. It’s not her eyes, but something behind them—bounded in her retinas—that piques me. When she looks, I can feel it undulate, pendulate across my cheek. Her gaze is like a whipped sword, dancing in the forge, puckering to the scraping of the cinders. She is like ash—soot—the tuyere, ever-huffing the smoky circles...
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December 2011
18 posts
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“No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and...”
– Vladimir Nabokov
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Mind fog
There is a veil above my mind, made of tweed and conifers, Nocturnal as she comes—hail Nocturnal, hail Nocturnal. I hold a pencil in my hand in uttered silence, in defiance, in vain. For, not words, but Nocturnal escapes me. She is Nocturnal—madness, no doubt—, that scraping graphite on paper, never how she promises in my mind, imperfection. She draws me in with imperfection; I...
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“I like cigarettes … I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand....”
– Dagny Taggart; Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
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“Someone finds salvation in everyone; another only pain. Someone tries to hide...”
– Audioslave, Be Yourself
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Fleeting
It’s that fleeting moment when he stands before you—you exchange hellos and catch each other’s smile. Your heart beats quickly as if to defrost your body—because, indeed, your body feels like rime and your tongue like stone. Your feet at once begin to pace and time itself begins to race through the thick expanse between the two of you.
You are near, but the words...
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“I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.”
– Guard, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
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November 2011
19 posts
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Farewell
I watched the sunrise just now, in the catnip cold of metropolis. It grates to admit it was beautiful, a last glimpse before I return to the north. This city is one of tragedy, a promise of remission, reminiscing. To me it seems absurd to say this place is worth living in—but, now, it seems absurd to also call it dead.
It’s nearing 7 AM as I speak—because I stayed up all night,...
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Arch
Not even the most potent anecdote could cure me of the affliction of your verbal diarrhea, some noxious slur of not syllables, but gutter. For you are tiresome, a mouth full of base, disquiet, disquieting, some caustic concoction of the vilest.
Surely, you are blessed for such an ability? The air itself is toxic in your midst and I find it little better than to keel over and die, lest your voice...
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Shard
Today I broke a liter glass bottle and the shards flew everywhere, each a scintilla in the glower of the floor, each a voiceless aspiration about the lips, that final O of awe, the stunned stupor of a truly stupid mind, too slow to process the muddy slough, of air that broke under the weight of glass, a picturesque spiral that caves into a trough, as though it were a slow descent, one of...
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Crushin'
I haven’t been this caught in a while. There’s just something about him that piques my interest. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s tall and fit—or the way he dresses—or maybe it’s how his face seems a form I’ve only dreamed of—or, perhaps, it’s the depth of his eyes—I could stare into them until the end of time.
Maybe it’s the...
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“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and...”
– Oscar Wilde
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Confession II
You have me feeling in a way that makes me scared—as I’m wont to be. You’ve had me running back and forth through my mind, as if I’m a lunatic. And you’ve had me this way for a while. I haven’t thought straight since the last time I saw you—but, even so, you keep me sane.
In the past few months, I haven’t felt right. I’m high—and I...
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