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[15 Sep 2008|06:29pm] |
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music |
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dirty three - sad sexy |
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I hated my family on the Christmases they couldn't be bothered to cut up the canned cranberries
and there they laid on a dish, obvious during my Grandmother's epically hypocritical graces. A fat, shiny burgundy tube wrung with rings from pressing tin - -
plebeian, simple and reeking of classlessness, despite our upper-Bourgeois imaginings. There is a better way honestly.
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[15 Sep 2008|05:59pm] |
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music |
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carpet musics - sleeping (on trains) |
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The time came when shopping didn't help and all that my Mother had taught me was like a meal of sand. The curve of a heel and a perfection of leather only scraped me out. Then I became resigned to a life of emotions the equivalent of being tied bare to the nose of a speeding subway train.
My body goes through these motions. My breasts inflate with dying pride, my guts roll, but it's myths.
My body bleeds like a murder scene and nothing comes of anything.
My Mother pushed me into the wake.
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[25 Aug 2008|01:50pm] |
My Mother told me about myself when she was telling the neighbor.
I didn't want any more children. I got rid of the space between she and her brother. I thought it was what I was supposed to do.
Later she went crazy from memories she said she had and spent ten years on a floor and three without leaving the house.
She is pretty but the Doctor says has an unending desire to cut her face a checkerboard pattern.
The neighbor's arm was in the Formica. It lifted and I could see how the skin clung longer to the surface
than the muscles had moved the arm up. I imagined her skin went 'boing' a little when it peeled off finally.
I thought: I wouldn't want to be her.
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[12 Feb 2008|12:47am] |
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music |
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tom waits - hoist that rag |
] |
Learn.
The twins
one's lost everything and still an architectured city's intricacies more than the other:
spattered primaries of obviousness stunted somewhere after thumbsucking and before stockings. She's mine.
The other in those two days of her perpetual heart detonation did not stop looking at me only me, my greatest privilege to watch: How to walk through apocalypse like a kitten, lion.
Sister said she heard them behind a closed door in Summer once, brother verified. I shook and my idealistic child's imaginings of immaculate, or the milkman, fell off a high forgotten place.
My thoughts are elegant enough to have thought long out of why or unfair, but hit a skip at simplicity: she will never be in rooms.
I will never feel you in a room.
My signature grief. And past movies.
Her hair.
The girl's smile.
Her hair.
If I could choose my life: Bearing witness.
I never feel more useful.
We lost our girl.
"Your feet,
in your boots,
on the mud,
of the grave.
The way we refuse
to be saved." - castanets
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[21 Sep 2007|12:31pm] |
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music |
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crown of the lost |
] |
The night settles down in the water. The feathers of sun gather in. The trees wave their ways to the morning. The birds think about what they'll sing.
I have dreams in which you're a nightmare. I have dreams in which you're unfair. But angels still dance in your garden. And flowers still grow in your hair.
My tears leave a skull on my pillow. My tooth leaves my blood on the sheet. My heart sways the way of the willow. My heart sways the way of the wheat.
But you are the Queen of the Lowlands. You have the Crown of the Lost. I found you broke up like a shipwreck. I found you broke up on the rocks.
The horses come in from the cliff-tops, their shadows upsetting the sea. The waves swim their way to the bottom. And stay there until they're forgotten.
And you know about birds when they're dying, how they know that they're going to die, how they hide in the heart of the forest, and sleep until death chances by.
You know that. You know that.
- piano magic/glen johnson
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[11 Jul 2007|12:07pm] |
we record 'thus far' over
in the dark at each other, sewing detail to one another's speaking.
everything before this is sharp.
bent-doubling at the edge, crushed to you at
the center like a soft doll.
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[21 May 2007|12:13pm] |
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music |
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tim hecker - i'm transmitting tonight |
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Half the days I wish I had been one of those girls that was just content enough to find some guy to stick it in me, and call it a day. Pop out some brats with popsicle-stained mouths in a small-named town, work under fluorescent lights among partitions sitting on my ass and changing into gym shoes to walk out to my car and drive it economically back to a home to a house that smelled like a crock-pot. I'd use my tea bags twice and have lots of processed foods. Then I could celebrate holidays with said family, go on vacations in large recreational vehicles, watch them all grow up, and then die quietly with nothing much having ever really happened. Half the time I wish I was someone content with that. Mostly though, I'm shattered like colors into my life, slitting my eyes proportionally with my wry smile-spread. And the colors wave, and my laugh tries, and my legs fold and I'm always always alone and someone sticking it in me is entirely fiction but would be enough for seconds until I can straighten my eyes and think again, about cooler things to touch, and changing. Days are colored banners waving and nights are like stars/gems falling from the folds of my skirt. And for a long time that was enough, and for a long time it has been more and more alone, so that only alone is left ringing.
___
Let me just say that in the last year my f-list has undergone many changes
and as it stands, i adore it. Every day i read through it is a new and inspiring feast for the eyes and brain. I'm very grateful.
( a slew of spring folio )
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[09 May 2007|12:46pm] |
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music |
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God's in crisis. |
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The toe of her right shoe caught on the sidewalk crack the girl had been specifically trying to avoid for the sake of her Mother's lumbar. The girl tripped, flying forward and down with her mouth and teeth meeting the concrete hard. As she stood up, blood rushed out and down the smocking on the front of her yellow dress. Her hand flew up like she was stopping herself from saying something. At the same time she felt with her tongue that two teeth were on the floor of her mouth. Her throat filled with tears. The building pressure welled her eyes up to spill.
That moment, the grey clouds in the sky parted and white sun light shone through and warmed the girl's face. She felt both things at once.
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[11 Apr 2007|10:16am] |
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music |
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arcade fire - neon bible |
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Provided Word: Print
Word Count: 100
originating post: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) anonymousblack
His Father and Mother being architects, Daniel learned to print perfectly before the age of 5.
His Father was a towering man who wore a chocolate brown felt hat and had an almost constant smile. He smelled of mint and trees. Daniel's Mother had golden curls that wreathed her face. She smelled of soap and apples and seemed to float when she moved. So when it came time to learn cursive, Daniel wasn't particularly interested.
This decision dismayed the nuns. All year they stood behind Daniel and rapt him across the head each time he refused. It was a long year.
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| spring poems |
[24 Mar 2007|03:34pm] |
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music |
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Colleen - Everyone Alive Wants Answers |
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since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
-ee cummings
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[05 Mar 2007|11:25am] |
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music |
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sinead o'connor - if you had a vineyard |
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Provided Word: Numbers
Word Count: 100
originating post: anonymousblack
While he slept, she sat down at the kitchen table and made a list of his pros and cons as a partner. She suspected she could do better, but she had to see the math.
Their years had dragged on ho-hum, neither good nor bad, never enough to justify a further move in either direction. After she completed the list with Pros such as: funny, hard working, and smells good, and cons like: forgetful, passive, and selfish, she then attributed a number value to each one, a worth in her own mind.
The numbers just didn't add up.
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[28 Feb 2007|11:55pm] |
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music |
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magnetic fields - kings |
] |
Provided Word: Still
Word Count: 100
originating post: anonymousblack
The son moved when the Father did, and when he heard his Father stop, the son stopped also. He knew how to still and soften his footfall by walking lightly on the edges of his feet. This way, he crept down the stairs, padded the halls silently. The Father wasn't aware of the son's presence or location.
Once, the Father made an unexpected, sudden turn around a corner where the son was standing. The Father, surprised, visibly jumped and had to clutch at his chest. The son noted this, and was sure to surprise his Father more often.
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[28 Feb 2007|01:15pm] |
Provided Word: Then
Word Count: 100
originating post: anonymousblack
He had the seeds sitting in water until the shells parted and something alive started to peek out. He did it like his teacher had told him last year when they grew flowers in pots by the Project Room window. His older brothers said it wouldn't work. "You can't grow oranges in Maine. Everyone knows that." He figured they were lying. They lied about everything. His Mother shook her head and said "Don't make a mess," then his Father smiled and patted his shoulder, which made him think he was on the right track.
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[25 Feb 2007|02:36pm] |
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music |
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joy division - she's lost control |
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Provided Word: Table
Word Count: 100
originating post: anonymousblack
A meet-for-breakfast wasn't so odd. It was her bedtime and his day start. She looked lightly worn from a graveyard shift. He had pressed sleep marks by his eyes. The tables around them were silent with slow-day-starters working their way though coffee. The waitresses were pert, buzzing efficiently.
He leaned in while she dressed her plate with syrup."I'd like to see you some other time, you know, that isn't in a diner eating flapjacks."
She wore small smile and red sweater. She answered him with a slid blade in the jam jar.
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[25 Feb 2007|11:31am] |
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music |
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jolie holland - mexican blue |
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Provided Word: Radius
Word Count: 100
originating post: anonymousblack
"When we die we lose our identities and just become a consciousness, which has its benefits," he sniffed. "But when you lay down tonight, close your eyes and consider not being you. None of the things that make you individual. And then also, no trees, no flowers, no dogs such as they are, none of your favorite music, no making out in cars, no glass objects, no paintings, no scents."
"I think people are born with that sort of value for life." She said.
He encircled her forearm with his finger and thumb.
"Not all of them."
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[24 Feb 2007|02:13pm] |
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music |
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bloc party - so here we are (four tet remix) |
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Provided Word: Cough
Word Count: 100
originating post: anonymousblack
When blood started coming up with the cough, it scared him. It had happened first in Spanish class when he was identifying farm animals on a hand out and writing in the proper names. Just as he wrote, "El Caballo," he felt the irrepressible tickle in his chest and didn't get his hand to his mouth in time. Specks and drops of blood splattered over his paper. He felt his face drain of color and slowly raised his hand. Camille Porter was sitting at the desk on his right and was staring with her eyes bloomed widely at him.
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[20 Feb 2007|02:57pm] |
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music |
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jolie holland - springtime can kill you |
] |
( untitled )
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[02 Feb 2007|01:37am] |
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mood |
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the onliest one |
] |
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music |
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camera obscura - razzle dazzle rose |
] |
Provided Word: Stairwell
Word Count: 100
originating post: anonymousblack
There was a disagreement, and words spoken closely so the other could feel warm breath and emotion, but it was about something else, of course. In those moments of half-listening and studying each other's clothing - waiting for the break in speaking, a cue - she thought about Summer days growing up: the feeling after playing hard outside and right before going in to dinner. He thought about learning to drive and taking open roads the first time, the feeling of the air rushing in the windows.
They made love in the stair well a good while.
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[30 Jan 2007|02:51pm] |
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music |
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elvis presley - baby, let's play house |
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Provided Word: Revelation
Word Count: 100
originating post: anonymousblack
The car was surprisingly crowded for the time before rush hour. The man smashed himself next to a woman, threaded his hand in a strap, and held on while they lurched forth in pulses. What he noticed first was that she smelled good. Better than even most women. Like apricots, cinnamon, and white flowers. He turned himself around and said, "Er, sorry. Am I crowding you?" The woman twisted and tilted her face up at the man. What she noticed first was that he smelled good. Like Autumn, cedar, and camp fires.
Their conversation on the train was a revelation.
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[30 Jan 2007|02:49pm] |
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music |
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Camera Obscura - Razzle Dazzle Rose |
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Provided Word: Contrast
Word Count: 100
originating post: anonymousblack
Question 3 was: "Compare and contrast the roles of Darcy and Bingley as the pursued and as pursuers in 'Pride and Prejudice.' " Her head filled with every color of the answer, but she didn't care to make her hand transcribe it. Outside the window it was warm, early Summer.
She pictured her lover, when they had sat on the grass and shared water, and raisins. It had been hot and his hairline was damp. She had said something when he took a sip of water that made him sputter and smile. It was the way his eyebrows had raised.
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