ii.
The house smelled of tatter-tailed fonts and the green juice concentrate residing on the top kitchen shelf. The lampshades were all well-versed in bedsheet-tepee lore and the sofas renowned actors in any game requiring hospital beds or tiger ages. The television, speckled in black and white snow, served not as a centerpiece, but rather as a background that flickered cartoon ducks and mice into the epic battles or threat-riddled journeys that took places on the carpets and desks.
The tables were littered with crayons and old paper, all arranged in deceptively precarious piles. “Get Well Soon” cards, all scrawled in a childish hand, butterflied from surface to surface, leaving a wake of home-made envelopes tripping over cellotape in pursuit.
The corridors were always drenched in shadow and any aspiring adventurer needed to hop from one rug of light to the next to avoid the unforgiving carpet-marshes. These, however, had to be braved to reach the coveted islands of The Study or Bedroom, where cateye-green bedding silked from beds onto the floor and infinite fields of shoes; where wardrobes capped in boxes and socked with bags housed apparently endless reserviours of chocolate and yellowed, lacy frocks.

iii.
Phrases threadbare and colourless or measled with fluffballs from over-wearing and overwashing; the syllables strung onto the bangles of words I wear are no more than costume jewelry that please for only one or two occasions (or perhaps I’m just overly fickle).
Metaphors strewn over the floors like plastic novelties with their newness wrung out; plotlines and storylines draped over margins like feathers over bedposts or ties triangled from closet handles: it all seems trite or, at least, entirely unoriginal. Perhaps this is because what I write are common observations to me (I don’t know)?
Perhaps, that is what makes writing read-worthy: hearing life alluded to in order to explain itself – but in various approaches and eye-glassed through different states of minds.
I write so that someday I might still find a handful of the veined, withered scribblings I press in dictionaries and textbooks beautiful.

*Three completely unrelated pieces of prose that I’m posting together because they have nowhere else to go

The first is disjointed and written in a style that simply slaps whatever the speaker is thinking down on the page. I don’t think that the theme was hard to get (infatuation, lol, just in case you didn’t catch it), so that’s where this explanation ends.
The second is about a child’s grandparent’s house and the child’s experiences and memories of the place. Yeah, I used completely taboo words such as ‘unforgiving,’ ‘coveted’ and ‘epic’ regardless of the way I wince every time I read them. They need to be there, however, to get the tone I’m using right, so if you’re also suffering, I apologize *grins*
I think that I like the third one best, but that’s probably just because I wrote it the most recently. It’s my rantings regarding over-used words and phrases (the ones that I exploited so shamefully in the piece just before it, lol) and how I fear for the day that I can no longer enjoy my writing because it’ll consist of ideas that have already been concieved and words that have already been used in that context.*

Mist alight in streetlamps and castanets
bright-red-fingernail
past your nose and the carpet stains.

Like “rebellious” and “harlot” and “charlatan”
your mouth tastes crimson and gold.
Sobbing through chokes of laughter,
dragging bedsheets,
you dance-tripped down the roads.

In those moments when
life is nothing but caterwaul
seeping from battered speakers
and when
you watch the ceiling distort in your coffee
and when
the air dissolves into black and pink and turqoise
and you sit down again, repentantly,

your blue is my orange

When you’re nothing more than
hot breath like zinc-roof houses
or kisses pooled in collarbones
and when
words are disobedient
and
your words are just empty boxes
of papercuts and pen-chewing

my blue is your crimson

* Okay. Decidedly personal, which means that you probably won’t fathom some of the things in here, but then, poetry is subjective, so I’m sure you’ll come up with some explaination for them
fyi, Bright-red-fingernail is used as a verb.
Blue is a colour is often associated with depth, trust and truth.
In my opinion, orange is a light-hearted, yet distracted and subtly frustrated colour.
We all know what red and crimson is associated with.

Apparently, I’ve stopped showing up on some people’s RSS feed. I have nothing to do with this (to my knowledge at least, lol),  so I apologize if you happen to be one of the people who’s feeds are being dodgy. I haven’t blocked or blacklisted you or anything, promise *grins*

You say you feel alone –
refer to chapter six.
It discusses one’s affection drive,
self-esteem, peer pressure and cliques.

Now, you mentioned voices
could you tell me more about them?
Ah. I see…
I think we’ll ascribe it to past trauma.

But don’t worry:
There was a paper written on this
in year that, by so and so.
I assure you you’re in good hands
Drink this three times a day,
only with meals, starting tomorrow.

I’ll need to see you twice a week
unless it falls on Fridays
(that’s my appointment with Mr. Green;
even I need a break).

If you come by tomorrow,
we can touch on your fear and emotional flaws.

And, yes you’re special
but, Darling, aren’t we all?

Here’s some writing… (yeah, finally, lol)**

Sunday Nights

Restless lethargy glitters with the dust speckles
strung onto the washing lines of lightrays
spun across the room.

Past once-white curtains and sprinkler-stained glass
troops of trees and roofs loom against the emptied sun
-like strangers
against streetlights –
as the battered cauldron pours its contents onto the horizon.

The street lies sprawled among the houses,
tucked up in the fuzzy cotton that blankets those
sleepy, prickly towns scattered through the country-side.

The house dozes like a white-haired organ player,
filling crosswords in the last few sunlight pools
pondering a nine-letter word synonymous for some French dessert
while the brick-blocks remain empty as the week to come.

Bite a few bullets
dribble in a lullabye or two
Piece her confidence back together
– tape and staples all I have when she’s beating red and blue

Dislodge your barbs from his back,
plaster on salve and clumsy kisses
In this game of mafia, I play doctor:
inconsequential and powerless

Dab the tears
kettle on
pass an ever-ready tissue
the night is long

Fling open the windows
let the wind hack at the tension
I’m fed up with your tears,
too busy picking up sharded perfume bottles
that you forgot to mention

I promise to mime lap-and-shoulder tomorrow
but for now, bear with my mouth.

Think: if you’re supposed to be the parent,
why am I the one playing house?

*Yeah, this probably doesn’t even count as poetry, but I’m frustrated. It’s probably completely unfair too (after all, I don’t know the other party’s side), but luckily poetry can be completely biased. *grins*

Clocks that struck thirteen and silent music had never snared his interest. He cared more for the streetlight outside his window that aimed, aimed and tossed beams of orange light through the crack in his curtains and let them thud onto the floor. The predictably irregular thump-thump of pumpkin-light would leapfrog in time to the streetlight’s winking (the lamp had been squint for as long as he could remember). These very thuds were what lifted his heavy lids from his eyes somewhere around two – or perhaps just after three – that night. He brushed Sleep’s nest of cobwebs from his brain and nose with thoughts that, when enquired about afterwards, seemed to have dissipated from his memory.

Slowly and deliberately, he drew back the bed sheets and then stood up with a single fluid movement so as to keep the springs from grousing and waking the form that slept beside him. He stealthily made his way across the room, a tempo to the breathing of the woman with the sneer-spattered mouth asleep in the bed. The ginger children from the streetlamp gleefully romped about its face, pointing and laughing at the grimace tattooed into the lines around its lips and discontent pooled in the hollows under its eyes as the man slippered steadily away.

The door presented a slight problem, for its hinges always squealed upon its opening or closing. First brushing his hand against the door’s wood, the man slowly turned the handle and pushed the termite-ridden door open, holding his breath as the hinges sang their cadenzas – in perfect pitch of course. The woman did not stir. The man slowly continued on his way.

Pictures of blurred faces, closed eyes and moving limbs stared at him from the walls; he had never been photogenic. Dumbly unaware of their silent entreaties to take his clarinet from the hall cupboard and reminisce with them of better days when the sun always shone and, even when it didn’t, it was okay for the picnic blanket to get wet since it always lead to clothing that clung to thighs and hips not waterlogged with age; he padded along the hall.

Frigid air assaulted his nostrils and tumbled into his lungs like sea water into one’s sinuses. As he squelched down the garden path in sodden slippers, he watched the streetlamp’s light skidding over the snow and hurtling into the walls of the houses strewn about the road. Curtains scarfed around the houses’ eyes and mouths glowed in shades of pastel and mumbled words from television sets and stereos.

Twelve-sided, gamer’s dice seemed to determine time and addresses; eventually only time and the trees he passed. Trees like the magistrate’s creased and rumpled face, double chin and all; trees like his old school teacher’s angular jaw and skin taut from too-tight hair. Trees like the whores lining the street corners: skimpy and brittle. Trees like the pastor’s son and the washer woman and the beggar. And a solitary log.

He knelt in the decaying carpet.

He hesitantly reached out two wary fingertips, touched her bark and withdrew again sharply, eyes glued to the stump. At no sign of protest from the rotting log, he reached out once more, softly caressing his hand along her knots and bared roots.

Starting cautiously, the man picked off a patch of bark near one knot, revealing soft, flesh encapsulated in the muddy crust. Continuing with renewed fervour, he deftly peeled at the scab harbouring ivory skin.

Crack – crack – tear. Crack – crack – tear, in time with the winking of the streetlight, of course, but this was unknown to him. Wink – thump – crack – crack – tear.

Wink – thump – crack – crack – tear.

Wink – thump – crack – crack – tear.

When the street lamp was finally snuffed out for the night, a woman with grumbling eyes awoke frost-bitten in a forest, planted in a bed of rot.

When the sun finally clicked on for the day, a man awoke in a quilted bed beside a naked figure of log to the murmuring of sun rays on the floor.

*Okay, so I’m thinking that it needs a new title, but other than that I’m quite satisfied with it
It’s about a man who wakes up in the middle of the night to peel a log. He then plants his wife in the forest where the log was and wakes up the next morning with the log next to him in bed. The reference to the wife at the beginning as an ‘it’ and to the log as a ‘her’ is completely intentional.*

Notes from a piano
dropping one by one into the kitchen sink;
Notes hummed, rehummed and sung
immortalized in sprawling ink.

Cosmetics and cadences
littering the armoir.
Lyrics  clogging the air vents
and trapped in the scuff marks that ice the floor.

Crescendoes and diminuendoes hanging by ribbons
and shoelaces from the clef-stained ceiling.
Lyrics twinkling with the steam and phosphenes
that dance when you get up too quickly.

Lyrics in the mirror cracks
and under the green paint flaking the walls.
Lyrics in the shadows that
finger the picture frames in the halls.

Refrains pool with water
around mounds of sodden towels
And lilting melodies are in drawers that won’t open
tangled in wool, knitting needles and vowels.

Lyrics swaddled under the rumpled sheets
smeared along the bed.
Lyrics fished in the corner cobwebs
and moulding with the bread.

And through all this clutter
weaves a tattered song,
coaxed from the discord,
piangevole past the throng.
A tattered song about holed skies
that, when held up to the light,
shine through so you can peer into them
and – shamefacedly – watch the night
as the holes we name stars,
sashaying from one lover to the next,
slip their clothing on and off
with grace captured only in sextets.

Poetry is music
half a spoon of sugar short

Music is the product
of estinto, yearning afterthought

*Hello world. Testing 1 2 3… *sneaks in quietly* Sorry I have been so inactive. I have very many excuses involving broken computers, work and heartache, but I’m too happy to be back to go into them right now. Yes, I tossed about rather a lot pf jargon up there, didn’t I? Well, I enjoyed writing it at least
Some definitions:
estinto – Italian music term that means ‘as softly as possible, extinguished, dying away’
paingevole – another Italian music term (Italian is just such a beautiful language) that means plaintively, softly, sadly
sextet – a group of six musicians
crescendoes – pretty little signs on sheet music that tell you to play louder
diminuendoes – the same as crescendoes except that they tell you to go softer
clef – a gorgeous, twirly little sign (also on sheet music) to tell you where on a piano to play (and usually with which hand)
cadence – a group of notes played together and grouped around a central note; like a chord (if that helps at all)

Hope you guys enjoyed (and understood, lol, I’ve been told that I’m terrible at explanations) Once again, my apologies for disappearing. Long story.*

Dirt on the windows that
fleck colour on your arms
like the clouds pooling shadow
over crop-ridden farms

White stippled on the black as
constant as the childish scrawl
marring the car ceiling
from drives too-dark and too-long

Cerulean haze
-from turning closed eyes to the sun
’till the lids bake warm, see red –
haloes all and none

Shreds of Pick ‘n Pay bags
snared by the wing on barbwire;
tattered plastic fingers
clenched around beguiling steel wire

Hours of tracing pinkie-tips
over the numbers in the window’s bottom right
as though they would perhaps,
somehow, disclose the answer in the headlights

*Powercuts are my greatest bane, I tell you. I am suffering from withdrawals from not being online enough this week. *grins* Terribly sorry, but it really was no choice of mine. Um… the numbers from the title aren’t the real ones yet, lol, I still need to go get them from the car, but it’s getting serviced atm, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed *
*edit, the right number is now present, lol*

I stumble up in the morning,
my glance brushes the mirror
And, before I can stop myself,
I sleepily drift closer

I look at the figure before me,
her hair a knotted tangle,
a piece of E-shaped porcelain
dangling; pulled at an angle

Faint outlines of ink run up her arms
And die –
like blown lightbulbs
– once they reach her palms

A birthmark on her inner thigh
A tan-coloured cloud
snagged on a skin sky

There’s a rubber band encirling
red fingerprints numbering five;
A rubber band around my wrist
to remind me that I’m alive

*I only have the courage to post this now (a good few months after writing it). I think I might have broken up the rhythm rather badly with the second and third last stanzas (opinions, please :)), but I think it flowed much better than I expected it would. So yeah. This one has a lot more personal meaning than the ones I have been writing lately. Hope you enjoy*

Concrete rays
jutting
from clouded mirror of cloudless clay
Shrouded, awkward angles and bones
cracks akimbo
ridges splayed

Blow a trail of white
Watch it dagger through the sky
Pull a line of smoke
Let it settle; Let it dry

Towel-drops
flung down
by rough hands, kicking into dust,
Cratered perforations along
star-bleached flour smears
ashen crusts

Charcoal strokes across
Leave the edges running
Contoured ridges lost
–
Look, moon rocks are ugly.

*Yes, I know that the poem is named “The Sun” and yet it’s all about the moon, no mistake. Think about it… if you want a hint, continue reading, if not, don’t readhe next line :P.
The other people I subjected this to didn’t have much clue what the catch was. You see, we are always telling each other how gorgeous the moon is and what a magical atmosphere it makes, yadda yadda yadda. But, as you can see, without the sun, the moon is horribly ugly. So, in essence, this poem is an ode to the sun.
So, from this, you should be able to read many more, deep messages that I’m not going to bother explaining because a) it will be a whole lot of work and b) it means something different to everyone. lol.
And, lol, thank you for ‘akimbo’ Bindo I just couldn’t resist using it *grins*