Carnation salutations
Red ribbons of reveille —
Gaslight preachers with no repose
—
My ink knife cuts no known papyrus
syllables congregate in dry pen wells
So I adorn my lips with word play
—-
empty hall feeling
Off the wall peeling
self portraits brushed
oil paint canvas blushed
the sea escapes
To wayside dreamscapes
I always like sending postcards to my relatives at Christmas: me in a bikini, Ralph grilling a steak, the dog surfing. Ah, the perks of living close to the Equator. The only problem? Ninety degrees in mid-January. In order to beat the heat, I once dove in a pool on the first hot day. And couldn’t feel my legs for two days!
So crank up the a/c, right? Well, sure, but I’m cheap, and cheap means I’m going to try to fix it first. How hard can it be, I reasoned.
So I put on my kickaround clothes and scrambled up that rickety wood ladder to the attic. The crawl space was crowded with decorations of Christmases past and….is that a body? I creeped closer to the blackened object. It was dried up like a prune and dusty. I prodded it and stifled a scream when
There was a time in my life where I dwelled in darkness and cohabited with fear. It all began so innocently,
I had gone to bed just past 9, when I heard a clatter downstairs. Promptly, I rose with my cricket bat, and inched my way down the creaking steps.
My heart leapt in my chest, banging against the bone prison with all its might. I would that I could discover my mind was playing tricks again. I beat back at my mutinous heart with a club of logic. But at the next crack of thunder I became a shade under translucent. It took me nearly two minutes on the stairs at a crawl, but it felt like two hours.
A loud grunt, a few snorts, and a rather insistent growl gave me pause as I stood in the hall by the kitchen.
Thunder crashed above, and the lightning that chased it illuminated the figure terrorizing my dark pantry. With a horse-like head and blooded antlers and razor sharp nails, it snarled at me. I shrank away from the creature as it began to advance upon me.
I swung at the beast with my bat and it splintered like a box of matches. My hands smarted at the bite of the wood, but my eyes watered from my certain impending death. My heart had escaped from my chest and was attempting to climb out of my eye brows. My vision dived threw the dark pantry. It stomped towards me like a lame Clydesdale, foaming at the mouth and nickering.
It backed me into a corner the first night. I swung my fists and encountered no resistance. But it seized my throat with one cloven hoof and paralyzed me with fear. My limbs twitched and my heart leaped to the floor. I could not even gain the strength to move my eyes from the Nightmare.
I entered into the darkness in sheer terror and upon waking I found myself wrapped in a silken cocoon of my house coat and blankets. I laid there for an indeterminate time before I shook myself and went on with the day. Bed time came around and I blew out the candle without a thought to the previous evening’s excursions.
But that evening, and nay, the next few nights were much the same. I encountered the demon horse in my kitchen or my living room. And lately, my bedroom. I could not close my eyes without seeing a vision of it. Each time it’s appearance grew more menacing. It was taller now, covered in matted blood and quills, it’s molars became sharp. Then it had eight legs, then two legs. My Nightmare became nightmares. I ceased to bring my bat with me, and I long had lost that revolver gifted to me by my late father.
In the mornings I would wake relieved, but for the sweat I was forced to bath daily now. I balked at my own horse. I shied away from the hansoms. Instead I would alight early to town for work. But I was weary. And I woke later and later. As the nightmare took hold of my evening, my body struggled against it in the morn.
I kept to the sidewalks, for every black or bay steed became a hellion and once or twice I was lit into by some passing cloven demon. It was following me! And soon the snow fell and I welcomed it and the reprieve from town, for a time at least.
I was left to my own devices, what little I had left. Alone, exhausted, I cried out for mercy. I would make one last stand. I could not stand my half alive state. Yet the nightmare was content with taking over my days.
They were great monstrous things, the beasts that lit upon my house the night of the Hunt. The nightmare had begun like so many before it: I with my bat and self loathing and the beast waiting in the pantry. My resolve waned as I seeped down the staircase like a spilled daydream.
Lightening and thunder dueled overhead. I found myself in the kitchen with the beast. I swung my bat blindly, scattering jaws and plates to the ground. Tinkling glass and porcelain shards bit my feet. The house shook and my nose indicated I may have soiled myself. Then I heard it: Shouts and hooves in the front lawn. With the barely injured monster behind me, I scrambled out of the kitchen.I sprang to the front door and flung it aside. There I encountered a dozen giants on horseback, and they wore the skulls of ibex and were cloaked in thick furs. Rather than dismount they rush back, and through me towards the beast, which began to howl. They dragged it from my house, it clutching at the doorway at they went.
No sooner had they passed than I found myself in my bed again, though I have no recollection of how I got there. Throwing off my furs I ran down to the scene of the crime, lantern in hand.
Everything was again in its place. I ran then to the door, dashing out into the storm. It was then I found my doorway marred: ten vertical slashes, five for each side, were clawed into the wood. I ran my hand over them, the splinters drawing a tiny river of blood.
Since that night the mare has not haunted me or my house and I rejoined society, triumphant over my fears.
I wanted a perfect future, but he lived in the past tense. One can’t change yesterday anymore than one could cast a spell on tomorrow.
But there are no definitives in any tomorrow nor infinitives, just awkward pauses and run on sequences where you can’t stamp down a period with your shoe. Life is full of commas, but only if you keep writing it.
Life doesn’t have rough drafts and we’re editing our future as we wallow in the past.
But he waved me off with a red pen because this wasn’t future perfect picture.
And I type away still in present tense.
Tegan moaned as he stuck it in, knuckles pale as she gripped the cherry wood.
“Shhh,” Rufus said, dabbing blood off the thread. “Just a few more.”
The needle twanged and she sang a song of pain and woe once more.
“There.”
Tegan sighed and he adjusted his fogged spectacles.
“What do I owe you?” she asked, inspecting the stitches.
Rufus spat a wad of tobacco into the spitoon. “Stop getting yourself shot up why don’t you?”
They both laughed at the idea.
You’re supposed to write what you know
But what if you’re Jon Snow
And you’re naive and young and green
What wisdom from you can we glean?
But is not innocence lost
A story itself?
How much do you cost
What’s your wealth?
Can you pay with passion
Or is blood the real truth?
Is modesty still in fashion
Tell us forsooth!
Can you remember a time before time
Or a time before you knew
That every mistake is not a crime
That you cannot undo
So Jon Snow tell me a story
Don’t leave out the darkness or gory
Or the bits where you fumbled
With hunger or weakness you crumbled
Tell me how in pain you were humbled
How she laughed when you mumbled
How you cried when she grew cold in your arms
How you realized there is not safety from Their harms
Tell me Jon Snow
What do you know?
His cheeks were rosy red
The reindeer refused to pull his sled
He slipped in black ice
And busted his head!
The seat warmer broke twice
He cut his finger on a letter knife.
“My dear, you look a-fright!”
He said to his wife.
“Break out the whiskey,”
He said. “Cause Santa’s had a long night,
and now he’s feelin’ frisky!”
She brings with her humanity
Soft lips, her accepted vanity
Belly swollen as her ankles
Heart barren as fear rankles
the spirit of weaker beings
Third eye foreseeing
The urban fall, the rural doubt
Without her praises, eternal drought
More than a mere man
She’s a woman
Two worlds balanced on her shoulders
Her soft supple boulders,
Weighed down, but hell bent
The future and the present
Her past comes back to haunt her
Hateful words still taunt her
Hands full with children
Patience grown thin
More than a mere man
She’s a woman
A turning of the page
This ripening sage
Grown weathered and wise
Grey streaks in her autumn eyes
Never a lesson untaught or unkind
With these words spoken, so her life will bind
A sliver of magic whispered
The last straw won’t break, but whimper
And she was more than a mere man
She was a woman
Last year I vowed to write, and boy did I!
I took the year to see if I could still formulate semi-coherent thoughts. And I went through rough patches, dry spells. I found that my muse needed to be stroked gently and often [insert inappropriate comments].
So it’s time to get Sirius, er, serious about it. Why write this here? Well someone might decide to hold me accountable for this promise.
Starting January 26, I’ll be posting at least one poem a day, and a drabble or character study three times a week.
I’m currently doing the Bradbury Challenge, though honestly I haven’t written down EVERYTHING I read.
Here’s what I have documented. Not fantastic, but I’ll try to be more diligent about writing it down.
“Free verse?” cried the old man
with indignation.
“That’s just prose without
proper punctuation!”
“Give me rhyme and rhythm for the soul’s vibration.”
“The only free verse is that you pay for with pain…with elation!”
Thus he spoke of the Free Verse
Poet Proclaimation.
A Study in Equinoxes 