ClumsyMonkey.net

yes. i'll try that as well, though my networks are probably much more finite than yours.

i can see this growing in interesting ways though. definitely worth the effort.

hmm.

this is now a thread for my random writing. because i say so.

...

Heading towards the darkness, in the twilight of my eyes, I walk home. The black sky has a single streak of blue, and it reminds me of the hair of a young man I once knew. Horizon: a lobster glows giant - red and orange and that extra bright shade of blue that you usually only see on the car of a young man with money and rubber to burn. Closer: it is a tree with christmas lights. Down the street, lizards and dragons writhe, as invisible houses are outlined with neon colours. The world looks monsterous; an acid movie encroaching on real life. I sit and wonder why the stars have burnt out.

In my ears the crimson king stings. The world shifts; underneath my feet a tunnel leads to a thousand foreign places, or maybe just the woods down the street.

Two men vie, unbeknownst to them, for something inside me. One has my thoughts; the other, my heart. Sense or passion? Which is right? It doesn't matter. They don't need to know. (I choose the one with the shaky soul and leaden-gold mind)

Echoing down the street rings the yaps of a small canine. I picture his body jerking with each sharp-sounding exhale. The street curves on forever, and meets somewhere in the ocean.

I picture his body jerking with each sharp-sounding exhale. My mind is carried away. I see as if through raindrops; i savour the images; i will never see like this again. A headlight flashes in a darkened window: it looks like an explosion screaming from inside the anonymous walls. The cars. They rip through the colour like rampaging ... something. There is nothing as angry as an automobile. They overwhelm, bringing inexplicable saddness. They seem out of place, but they strangely belong to this surreal world of slurred colour and explicit sound. The world has melded and nothing can escape the interconnectedness of, well, everything.

I picture a river where the street lies. It gushes dark liquid pavement and creeps up the curb. I wait for the sludge to start sucking at my shoes. It never comes that close. I imagine the same runs in my veins and I feel sticky and sick inside. I imagine the same comes from a man and it explains everything.

And I'm nearly home and I feel no shame. Just a dizziness that starts around my knees and works downwards deep below where the trees took root to spite the wind. A movie kind of night. A minute long sequence that covers...how long? Maybe I've been out here since dawn. My breath forms a curtain that veils the present, but my body cannot believe that it's cold. A happy numbness warms my limbs; maybe I'm actually moonburned.

The plausibility of my life confounds me. Maybe I've been a part of it all along. My vision sharpens; I know that house.

It fades out again because I'm not home.

fuck your first paragraph nearly took my breath away

I fell in love with this line:

The street curves on forever, and meets somewhere in the ocean.

thanks guys

I love it - you are extremely talented

The clouds are the prettiest shade of nothing that ever came from the East. In his hazy car, he hardly noticed the scissors weeping under his seat. They belong to a different story, and so does he.

These clouds are not the type that divide the sky. Beneath them the ground is brown with dead prairie grass that permanently look as if they are rolling in the breeze. Dead from the weight of melted snow.

A little girl cries on the sidewalk, bleeding. The gravel embeded in her forehead was distributed for safety. Where is her mother? Parenting is fifty percent negligence. If you don't ignore your child, how can they grow up? A watched pot never boils, nor does it catch fire. Ladies and gentlemen, I put forth the proposition that it is best to leave children to their own devices. Do not, I repeat, do not intervene until they are at least fifteen.

Skip a few.

Once I met a man with a pinecone hand. That pinecone ruined a hundred women, if you know what I mean. I wish I had never met that man.

The telephone like ringing so much that one day an axe was brought down upon it. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. Three years later, the shards of that telephone managed to kill a man. I have never seen a telephone so bent on acquiring revenge.

Excuse me while I break the sky.

All the important people in my life have double initials. MM. BB. I'm onto them. No more will I be seduced by their wiley ways. Watch out, Jane Jangles, I'm onto you. They will be weeded out, I promise.

A war is going on in the next room! I can't hear it; maybe I've been blinded by the artillery fire. Watch out, don't let it get too close. Experimenting like the gonzo; i feel the sickness deep down inside. Abandonment came from an unexpected source, and suspicion runs deep.

Where does the enemy lie?

Man, I wish I could write abstractly.

You do it so very well, Claire.

A Midnight Post

...

A New Year: a new beginning. Or something. I feel inclined to make a statement along with every other fool who reads too much into a date. It's depressing - I'm exactly where I was this time last year. That's not to say nothing has changed; but the new year is the same as a birthday. You reflect on what you've done and come out disappointed. A thick warm drink fills my mouth. Trying to strip myself of awareness. It only semi-works. Could be the sad music swaying me; could be the repercussion of love. A year. More. I've loved him. From afar; from right next to him; he moves me, he stalls me. Time to forget.

I've moved away and back. Across a nation twice in a year. More. Four times. If planes don't count; once. I've seen new and distant lands crossing an ocean for the first time in my life. Seeing the home of my ancestors. The motherland. A green place; ancient and budding. It seems fresher than my home. Less raw. More like a vegetable garden than a slaughterhouse. But I was drawn back again and again with the promise of proximity.

This night feels like an ending. Today was my last day of employment with a big box retailer that degraded me; exorcized my energy as it ground me into dirt. It could have been worse; I don't regret going back. I needed the closure more than the money. To see the faces; to realize I had moved on. The place had changed. Become more hectic, more strained, more desperate, less friendly. So had I. More certain, more confident, more capable, more elitist. I was above it. The strain still told.

I splutter as I gulp my drink - too strong. Apple cider and whiskey. Resist smelling it and it tastes just like apples. I want to go apple picking; smell the autumn air and a wisp of my youth. Shiny, crunchy apples waiting to be twisted off the branch. I used to rip teeth out of my mouth the same way. Twist three hundred and sixty degrees and pull. Taste the blood gushing out of the hole and down my throat. Apple juice.

Bagpipes playing on my stereo. I wanted to watch the Santa Claus Parade. My friends were in a rush and wouldn't let me stop. Or maybe I didn't want to stop. I can't recall anymore. I wish we had stopped. A longing for lost youth? Naaaah. I'm not sorry we went by. It was right at the time.

Regress past the sadness and scars. Crystalized moments of happiness. Except, they aren't really there. I remember mistakes I made, punishments recieved. I know I was a happy child; but that's not what I remember. I remember tears, sadness, feeling stupid and inadequate. Not being able to make an adult understand me because I didn't have the tools of communication at my disposal. Anger at their condescending attitude: I didn't know that word either. I knew the feeling it created though. Frustration, embarassment. Hours on end laying in bed debating what I could have said to sound smarter. I still do that. Those moments pile up in my memory, crowding out feelings of achievement from when I did say the right thing. I can't escape the gnawing nostalgia, the prattlings of the past.

It seems no matter how busy I am, there is still plenty of time to feel bored and stagnant. Periods of excitement and discovery are shortlived. I feel neither old nor young; I feel timeless - drifting through history and literature I am never quite sure what it is like if I take a walk outside and move amongst the people living in the instances we find ourselves. I am always on the outside, observing events through the eyes of a different generation, generations I have no right to claim belongance to.

A New Year: a new ending. Not a chance to start anew; not a chance to change my life. I am stuck on the tracks I was born on, having invested time, money, blood, and happiness into them. Things I will never get back if I turn away. Things I need to earn back. A New Year: another meaningless night. I'll celebrate when, and if, I survive.

aww talent.
that made me think of the day i worked picking apples
it was hot, boring and painful
i hated it
but yer talented

thanks i like picking apples!

..wait. painful??? how were you picking these apples?!?!

well, it was for a whole bunch of hours, one short break, and we were picking the fallen ones from the ground...so bending over a lot...back pain.

ahh. i understand.

yeah and the people there were kinda...well sort of..unfriendly and condescending. my brother and i were both working there, and we're both really quiet, so they were all like, 'you guys dont talk much do ya?' and annoyinglike

"Do you feel your heartstrings starting to tear?" he asked softly, looking at the fading sky.

The silence grew. Knowledge enfolded him, certainty that no, she did not feel it. She felt nothing of the kind. He had been living in a romantic masochistic fantasy.

So he severed those strings and bled to death quietly that night.


She saw no connection. She lived in a world of ice and grey inhabited by a monster coloured in amazing vivid primaries and wavering lines. Melting was never an option. The ice kept the monster in it's cage. So long as it was trapped, she could operate normally.

So long as it was trapped, she was free of the emotions of living...

Under the cold ground, he grew restless. This wasn't what he wanted; nor was it what he had imagined. The broken end never stopped hurting.

She hadn't meant for it to happen, she hadn't meant anything at all.

That was the unforgivable part.

He rose. Armed with the flame of passion he inflicted his revenge.

The monster escaped, painting her mind as it rampaged, trying to earn back years spent in caged isolation. She snapped as the world was flooded with feelings she couldnt comprehend. Sobbing like a child, she longed for her mother's arms, her mother's kiss. Guilty and incredulous, she drove into a river not under her own control.

Water rising, slowly dying, she saw him and reached out to touch the face of the boy who wasn't there. Uncaring of death, and crying, she longed for a chance to reciprocate his care. Drowning, she repented, but alone, neither of them would know. Out of her haze, she reintroduced herself to the weakness powerful feelings invoke.

In a heated panic in the cold waters of fate, her death was garnished with the brilliant hue of doom.

Variations on Facing the World:

Scales: they measure us; shedding skin repilian; tipping forever out of favour; gold standard?abolilshed: abolitionists calling for the end; abortionists creating it; gaping wounds never healing moving up the body to the brain; colourful words don't mean quite what they feel; I CAN'T MAKE THIS REAL; have you found rhythm? I think you stole mine. Move, motion, emotionless : perpetual. Slip the noose; the knot; the landmines explode inside my head and this is the result. Stop stepping all over me.

Take that cacophony.

________________


Sometimes I'm sad: blah blah blah
blah blah blah ick blah blah blah b-
lah sickly ickly icky blah blah blah
drop dead blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah drink drank drunk blah b-
lah don't feel, think, hope blah blah
blah-ah blah-ah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blobbdy-blobby blah blah
and then I give up.

you're fantastic at abstract!!