Since I'm bored and I have these handy (over at
myspace...>_>) I decided to share a bit of my poetry and a couple of my short stories that I like...Since my comp has been down I originally wrote all of this in longhand...except a tiny bit of the second short story...
Here's a sonnet (abab/cdcd/efef/gg) I wrote for a writing class back in '03...I don't like it that much, but it's one of the only sonnets I've ever written, so don't judge too harshly...
Love Through a Glass WindowEach day we all continue our decay
We all just die a little more
In each and every way
Physically drained, mentally scarred and the emotional whore
Heart's promises are lone and afraid
Brains break down and melt
Everything lost and nothing made
Nothing, not pain, is felt
Continue with so much hope
Washing away so many teardrops
Tying the tight-looped rope
Struggling with, but it never stops
The heart is where it hides and chooses to stay
The mind, it destroys, with love's decay
Actually, it looks like I kind of broke the sonnet scheme w/those last two lines because those wouldn't be GG, those would be AA...Hell, I even reuse the word "decay"...What the hell...Here's another sonnet that I think I like better (also from '03)...
Love LiesLove is no dove
It has no white, feathered wings
More like death from above
Like a bee that stings
There are no heart-eyes
To tell who loves who
Sometimes emotion dies
Not knowing what to do
It doesn't happen instantly
It may not be returned
Movements are made hesitantly
No one wants to get burned
It can build you up and tear you down each day
For love is no happy cliché
Here's a poem that was supposed to be about "My Future" (again from that Writing class in '03)...
Robots and RainbowsRobots rain rambunctiously
Down unto the ground
Rainbows spring forth
In a bright, gleaming sound
The gravestone's marked
With my name
A list of things
Tell of my fame
Just under that
It says, "He smelled of pee"
The body rotting
In the coffin's me
At night I jump out
Dig to the sky
Pick off the worms
Plop out my eye
I run and dance
Live one more time
Fighting robots
Making rainbows rhyme
The "He smelled of pee" was from something a friend (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) wrote in one of my notebooks (that I smell like pee...there was a picture of a puddle marked "pee" and "the way Pat [me] smells")...I like it mainly for the last stanza. So, now here's some newer stuff, mostly fragments of things-that-could-be and mostly unnamed, in a notebook I titled "Written Greed, Wealthy Words" (for no other reason than I thought it sounded cool)...
untitledif loss is a hole
breaking this heart
if it's my fault
i'll tear it apart
if i saw you
and let you go
if it's for the best
then you don't know
if i'm too weak
i don't deserve it
Current StateYou make me crazy
You make me mad
Wish I couldn't see
Wish I had...
Done something
Said what I didn't
Or anything
But I couldn't
So I'm here
You are spared me
And I fear
That now I'm crazy
The SportI see no grace in these clouds
There is no warmth in this sun
And the heart of the crowd
Is now on the run
And so the lights burn low
The moon rises high
Time begins to slow
And they let out a sigh
For those on the field
Are giving their lives
The souls that they wield
Like a thousand glistening knives
And at the end of it all
When the dust is clear
Who'll have taken the fall?
Who's side will chear?
untitledI do not bleed for the blood I've bled
I do not cry for the tears I've shed
I do not die for the life I've led
untitledI feel like some kind of Demon
Trapped in some kind of Hell
I feel like I'm screamin
In this room that's my cell
The thunder is rollin
All through my head
My life has been stolen
My insides are dead
Well, that's about everything that isn't, like, one stanza (or less)...
This story has hardly been edited at all...
Sierra In RedI woke up and I didn't know where I was. There was something wet runing down my forehead, but it was too dark to tell what it was. As I stood up, a dizzy spell struck me and I bent to one knee to get my bearings.
The floor was old wood and the room smelled musty and ancient, full of history and memories, like an attic. Thick boots covered my feet and I wondered whose they were and how I ended up with them on. I felt my pants but they were just jeans. I noted a small hole in them at the right ankle, but it didn't seem important.
A light flooded the room and at first I thought my eyes were adjusting, but the light didn't reveal anything in the room. It just expanded like the light of an oncoming train.
And I began to remember...
---
Sierra, heh, that was her. She was named after a place she had only ever seen in books. I had been to that desert a long time ago as an awe-struck teenager out to save the world and spread a message of peace. In turn, it almost killed me with dehydration. I told her all of this. The only thing was that it was only a half-truth; it was Death Valley and I was fried on acid and trying to balance the trip with mushrooms. So the peace-freak and the dehydration parts were painfully accurate.
Back then, I was sure she bought all of it, but looking back now, I'm not so sure. She was too into it and her laughter sounds too forced in my memory's ear. It would have made sense, I suppose.
But why was I trying so hard? I hadn't felt the need for a relationship in over two years. Oh, right, and then there was the thirteen year age gap. Just my luck, it seems.
---
A line of white cut down my world of black and memories. The outline of a man filled the doorway of light and suddenly all of the dark, brightness, and memory was replaced with an ex-angel. Or at least that's how I remembered him. His dark red hair burned with color and his eyes were hidden behind his horn-rimmed glasses, which never reminded me of my hippy days no matter what color lenses he had. This time they were clear and in the sterile backlight, he reminded me of a mad scientist in one of the old Fright Night Double Features I used to go see as a kid. I called him Lucifer; his name was Lucien.
"The Fallen One, come to save me from the darkness? Isn't that ironic or something?" I asked him. His lips split open and he showed his teeth, but he didn't smile. Then I noticed the gun in his left hand, "Oh."
His empty hand beconned me upward and toward him and when I didn't immediately rise, the metal of the weapon twisted and glinted to remind me of it's presence.
"Okay." I said as I lifted myself up off of my knees, "But one thing...You got a smoke?"
---
The quick glances around her and back to me made me think she wanted out of the club. When she asked if I had driven there, that made things clearer. Then she saw someone in the crowd at the entrance and took my wrist and began to drag me to the back room.
"C'mon, let's get out of here." She said. As we went through the strings of beads that seperated the noisier drinking audience from the quieter, younger, social group, I got my first glance at the devil with the rainbow glasses and the burning, wavy red hair. His black suit made him a floating head and hands and I was reminded of another monster movie: The Invisible Man.
If it had been someone else, I would have been wary of her. Something about her made me think differently. It wasn't her trim figure, her mousy brown hair, or even her emerald green eyes. Maybe it was her voice; cheery, but not annoying, soft, but not quiet. But when I look back, I like to think it was that cute, innocent look she gave me when I asked who the man in the glasses was.
"I call him Lucifer." She told me. Her smile was faultering, but I didn't stop her when she led me out the back door, "I guess you could call him the keeper."
Of course that reminded me of the Crypt Keeper and when I first heard him laugh I found out how true the comparison was.
When I got in my car I stuck my last cigarette in my mouth-it was bent-and before I could ask her if it was alright if I smoked, she handed me a silver butane lighter with a rose etched on the side. I smiled as I took it from her and it seemed to re-energize her own.
For no reason at all, the smell of the smoke made me think of brimstone.
---
The man whose given name was Lucien led me through a hall lit with bright fluorescent lights. There were doors spaced evenly apart going down the hall both ways. Each door was a different color and-surprise, surprise-the color of the room I just left was black. At the end of the hall was one sad looking window; dirty, stained, and with a gnarly crack running from the left to the bottom. I didn't like it when we stopped at the red door and the devil pushed me through.
There was nothing on the walls but another filthy window opposite the door. A rusty fire escape was tilting outside. It seemed as though if there was a fire in the building, people would die. Since this window wasn't as dirty as the one in the hall, I got my first glance outside, but it wasn't much and it wasn't for long because Satan twirled me around and sat me on the room's one red stool.
Red light from overhead bathed us and turned his eyes into little pools of blood dotted with drops of ink. One of the boots I had on clunked against something and I wasn't encouraged-or surprised-by the drain I saw between the legs of the stool.
"Seriously, though," I started, "You got a moke I can bum?"
He pointed to his ear and then to mine. Although the Devil may have a silver tongue, he doesn't always use it. I felt, and sure enough, there was a half-used, bent cigarette in the crook of my ear. I patted down my chest and saw I was still wearing my jacket over a white t-shirt. The jacket was empty, but there was something hard in the jeans pocket. I took out the lighter with the rose on it that Sierra had handed me.
I grunted a laugh at this as I lit and inhaled that stale burnt taste of a saved smoke. It didn't seem like he moved it, but another gleam shone on the gun in his hand anyways and the red light turned it into the carona of the sun.
"Last request?" The devil finally spoke. A bottle of Bacardi appeared in his previously empty hand and I remembered how I had blacked out and forgot everything in the first place; it was two-thirds empty. I would say one-third full, but the situation didn't seem to call for such positive thinking.
Then the last few hours before the black room came flooding back to me. And no positive thinking came with it.
---
It must have been over fourty minutes of the devil's interrogation. We were in a blue room with long mirrors on the walls. Every couple of questions, Lucifer would put his hand to his ear. He made no real effort to hide the fact that he was speaking to his superiors on the other side of the two-way mirror.
Even at that point, my memory was blurred. I remembered the girl-Sierra-and focused on her, but like I told the devil when he asked, I didn't know where she was or what happened to her. I had been drugged. At first I thought the devil had done it (such a common excuse, right?) but that came after and I realized that she had done it, that I had insisted that she do it. The last real thing I remembered of her was the loose protest she gave. Then I smiled and told her it was necessary for her own protection.
He stuck me with something he assured me would make me remember, but I knew it wouldn't. Hell, it wasn't even the first time it had been used on me. Life may or may not have ever been nice to me, but it seems like there's always someone out there willing to go that extra mile to learn the secrets I've been given.
The serum did not work.
Next, a tube was being forced down my throat. It felt like a garden hose and when I gagged, he held my nose and jammed it down. That's how the alcohol got down, although I'm sure not all of it stayed there. There's a flash of me puking on my shoes. So that's what happened to them. The forced drinking actually got my hopes up. Perhaps they'd let me go and expect no one would believe me since I was so drunk, but of course, I found out later that this wasn't so.
---
"So why has it come to this, Lucifer?" I asked after drinking a shot's worth from the bottle.
"It's been decided that you've told all you can." He surprised me by responding.
By that time my cigarette had gone out. I took the rose-etched lighter from my jeans pocket. Then I swigged a mouthful from the bottle, faked a swallow, and then I burned the devil.
---
"You won't remember where I'm going." She told me.
"That's the point, Sierra." I told her.
"Yeah..." She looked dissapointed. I was sure I had seen that look on someone before, but I couldn't think of it at the time.
I lifted her chin up and did what I probably shouldn't have-it was a selfish thing-I kissed her. And that was the end of my memory.
---
I was in the next burrough over, just starting to get my bearings and sense of direction back. It seemed as though they kept me in a warehouse apartment building just west of the docks. My finger got cut as I shook the remaining glass out of my hair. This made me laugh since I hadn't gotten cut as I jumped through the window or crashed down off the collapsing, rusty fire escape. Before I jumped, I looked back at the devil. That's something you're not supposed to do, but I've never been one to follow such rules. Of course, there he was, Mr. Kreuger himself. His glasses had blackened and the red light only intensified the comparison to Freddy.
I'd have to leave all of my things behind. My car and my gun would be missed, but those things could be replaced. What couldn't be replaced would be me in case a certain burned out shell of a demon king should be waiting for me. And as far as I know, it's hard to beat the devil twice. Work is always easy to find; someone always needs the kind of help I can dig up, so that's no bother either. I also have connections that will be pleased to know I need new papers with new names...again.
I wasn't thinking about all of that then though. That last memory, that kiss was on my mind. I smiled and knew there would be other women down the line, but not another Sierra.
Like I said, it wasn't her figure, her hair, or her emerald eyes and it wasn't her voice either. I like to think it was that cute, innocent look she gave me, but who am I kidding? It was the red dress. That's what it always comes down to...in the end
Untitled: LoveThey were on an empty street, waiting for help to arrive. The boy was five and in his youth and even his blood, he was beautiful. A man, still a boy himself really, of twenty-one had the boy propped up on his knee. His hand straightened the boy's tusseled hair and his unsteady smile was reflected in the boy's.
"Will I die?" The boy asked, breaking the long silence of the night. A question, no doubt, asked throughout the ages in a multitude of languages just as the man's answer surely was.
"Everyone dies." It was at the same time the wrong and the right thing to say. Although the man knew this fact, this most obvious facet of life, and had pondered it throughout his continued youth, he knew that the boy had not. The boy, being just a boy, had never thought about mortality, "But you are a boy. You're too young to die."
And after a short time, going over the man's words in his head-he was a smart, analytical boy who could be a professor in his later years if permitted-he said, "But everyone dies."
The man looked away and found he could not do so for long. He did not want the last thing the boy saw to be his head, turned aay, did not want the boy's last thoughts to be of shame. So he turned his eyes to the boy's.
"But it is not always right." The man said, "You are a boy and you have not loved."
"I love my parents, my sister," The boy said, knowing this was not what the man was referring to, "and my friends, I love them too."
"But you have never loved a girl unconditionally. Do you know what that means?" The man asked, knowing the boy knew what he meant.
"What is love then?" The boy asked instead. The man paused, not liking to pause because he knew there wsn't time enough to pause, but doing it because the question called for it and deserved it.
"The poets, those who try to interpret love all argue over love. Some say it is soft and others say it's hard. Sometimes it is both. Love is a road, a path you don't get to choose, but that chooses you." The man started, "It comforts as much as it aggrivates and infuriates. It is at the same time hate and jealousy, greed and pride and triumph and despair. It is everything and it can leave you with nothing."
The man stopped, hoping that his definition was enough, knowing it was not. It was too artful and love is not art. But he also knew that love is not words. No amount or combination of words could ever hope to describe the feelings that are love. He cried for the boy, for himself, and most of all, he cried for love.
The boy cried and did not know why. There was no longer any pain. The truth was that the boy was crying for the same reasons.
"What an adventure love will be." The boy said before he bled to death.
If you actually read all of that...Good for you! You must have a lot of time on your hands or something...Did I trick you w/that "short" bit? I could probably scare up some other stuff later, so check back if I update...Feedback (compliments
and/or condemnations) is more than welcome!
