[phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 112: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 112: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 112: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/bbcode.php on line 112: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead ¤ milky moon ¤ • View topic - Fan Poetry, Prose and Other Forms of Literature
mmm im just finishing up a new record, so here are a few of my lyrics from it... here's some of the songs if anyone is interested, more will be uploaded soon:
BURJ ISLAM
see me; i am a wasted man. she smiles in her silent wind.
my love; i sleep upon the shore and wait for your return. i’ll save all i am from ships of men until my heart shall cease to burn
maybe i might find relief in caves. the sirens speak by wet rocks, sea salt, dawn and dusk, while luner lights move away from us, and birds crash the bells from out at sea.
i thought that i'd forget our home; but your laughter, it echos slow. it's cruel; there should be no sound but the moons pounding waves inside breaking through. you know, the light i hide is what keeps me in love with you. roving guide through the deepest brine, for all i've loved, it's all that's mine. syria's fox calls out to sea
maybe i'll just catch your sun in a jar, then slumber some. "if i wait," i wonder, "will my lighthouse make you come?" lost sea shells twist and spin as your light moves over them. if i wait here longer, will you turn back time again?
thought that i might find my dreams in caves, but all i do is sleep. glowing form in a mermaid shell. in your veil i wake, to drink my rum, sit and smoke, i know tonight you'll come through my movement's in the tide.
when the sky's free of stars at dawn; at the lurings end, i start to yawn. everything that waits for light is you.
morning could not dispel the warning of the bell. no one told me i could only reach myself. rainbows in mud filled mask couldn't match her arabesque. if i leave this temple, i will never leave her nest.
AL BURJ BEEITIN
movement inside; india's wandering daughter. poor thing! found by the water! sleeping alone in the rain, sails draped across her mane. i've lost another. india's wandering daughter.
sweetest girl, ever i've palled; spoken soft, saintly and tall. oceanic eyes and breeze rests in the sand with the bees.
IBNA’S ARABESQUE
through god she can heal you. when she found that place he hides salvation; deep inside, taught and left to wander. "i know this girl was sent to represent the tame. the masterful seas of the mask in me couldn't hide my shame from god."
watch me face the light. the sun shifts, as do shadows. i'm the ocean, i am the waves. we hug and she insists we walk alone.
he covers his body in water; the way that she was when you found her.
here is a poem i wrote about the sad times, usa that is my life.
'the stray'
The neighborhood stray and his fey attempts of escape — nay! The string from the jetty on the bay pulls him back at the end of the day. Fate, the fisherman, reels in its prey — a wandering cat, in man’s array. Alas, our fledgling feline fools no one. Although he survived winter, he’s only content when the fields are limpid, flat, open, green-backed; he wishes! Only foggy, cold, grey along the horizon where those trodding thunderclouds play. “Is this fate,” he wonders, “and may I betray?” Nay, he neighs at the verdant belt of woodland cinched ‘round the waist of the hills. He cocks his head at the honking of ducks and the audacity of their bills. He stares out at those hills as if his existence was one of distance — but, in fact, it is one of difference. Difference! Pouring out like milk into his bowl and making its bed in the pages of a book. The words are like pollen to which his whiskers had shook. “I am more alone than the tree in that play in which those travellers waited for their man all day. But, I am not waiting, nor am I waited for — and I am not a tree, but more like a door. A door unhinged, off his frame, and spat flat across the wasteland between twin peaks; Allaying the sways that a door might have and laying flat in the May of a year that lagged. Some children might stumble over me and tap on my shoulder or ring at my knob as if an answer was to be returned. There is nothing inside nor behind — there shouldn’t be! Only openness to which a door can open.” This morning, he lets the train do its talking while it washes over him with its timpani rolling. This is the sound of one hundred years folding. This is the sound of the subway lymph-noding. He now sees the train as the binding spine of a tome whose pages are plenty and variable, loosing its leaves and felling the words. One impressionist skirt bemuses him like an old Matisse. This book howls down the corridors with a song that hisses and lisps like a giddy spectre. He, our young stray, prostrates himself like a broom as he sits. The jutting of his tail says more than he admits. He is tending himself into a slender pool. His coat thickens as that of a hirsute bear. His eyes flush wan; as white as swans. There is sickness in the air. “There is sickness in the air.” The train is nothing more than a poltergeist knocking him up in his occultation — The remnant ghosts of children pounding at the door fleshless and coated in a German name and baying from the cellar for reprise. The nieghborhood stray and his fey attempts of escape and the only openness to which a door can open.
lol they;re at the right hand side, if you scroll over... if not, then i guess that sucks hahaha...
i'm also working on an opera right now, thought i'd share a piece i wrote today with peoples:
Filled my head with truth, far from truth, and winter breathing. Summer seems now but a dream. For twenty years, I’ve slept through seasons, Slumbering beneath the trees That summer set. When I start breathing, Snow is falling out from trees. Streetlights gleaming, Bats; like little black doves, Signing steel in snow around me. Back against the river, Little like the way it happens. Trigger burns black lest he forget. Buried back and burnt in sight as he'd regret. Displeasing beam of lame white light, That pierces even deepest night. Leaves him with that haunting light, That's drifting in beneath the night.
I've taken to putting all my Joanna references in my titles.
I Have Choked My Roots
While I roll the smoke out over my lips and blow it away in clouds for it to linger like a dying storm, and flick the embers to the ashen floor to beat their last, I think, "In not a month I will never see these walls again. In not a month, these bars will cease to cage me, and I will not miss you." And it is not thirty minutes before the image dissipates into the silent, noisy city air.
I wasn't really sure what to share so I just picked a random piece of writing. I wrote it over the summer. It's not a poem though, it's just a very short story. I can't write poems.
Body
Every time I turn the lights out, I can feel the body slip into bed beside me. The bed creaks under its weight and I begin to squirm as it struggles through the swathes of quilt towards me. When it arrives, so does the heat. As I settle and try to get to sleep, it moulds its shape around me. No matter how I twist and turn, I cannot shake it lose; it is like a second spine. It moves as I move, it breathes as I breathe. Its arms lock me into position and I am held. I will myself to prepare for another sleepless night, to ignore the sweat trickling down my face and the predictable heartbeat hammering against my back, hurling wave upon wave of sickly heat at me. And so the mantra pulses through my brain: ‘I want this heat. I need this heat. I can bear it because it means that I am cherished, I am held, I am loved.’
Soon after I realise that this night has to be different. I prise open the fingers clutched around my rising chest and the grip slackens. I have never got this far before. I am free. I greedily inhale and survey my situation. The arm that once clutched at my side and the leg that once coiled around my own now only lie there. They are heavy. I roll away and listen to its rhythmic breathing. It is still asleep.
Now the chill sets in. The bed seems infinite, unsympathetic. I freeze. I decide that the novelty has worn off and I pull the body back towards me, but it is now lukewarm. Its skin is slick with a cold veneer of sweat and its movements are sluggish. It can no longer offer me warmth. As I move closer it seems to be getting colder by the second. I pull it on top of me and hold it tight. Suddenly it convulses, its head lolls spastically to the side and it is empty. I grip it tighter and wait to wake up.
He stood perfectly still on the platform, equidistant from the benches on either side of him. He turns to the left, and stares. The iron tracks go on for a hundred yards and then sharply turn to the left, moving out of sight. They are flanked by the kind of sparse bushes you find next to train tracks, the only ones that can survive the pulse of trains everyday going past. He turns to the right, and stares. The tracks go on in a perfectly straight line, neatly settling under a pedestrian bridge. To the right there is only gravel and dirt.
He continues to stand and watch, waiting for his train. He doesn’t know from which side the train will come, but he is sure that once it does it will keep going in its direction. Trains cannot easily turn around.
The man waits there for a long time. He has no concept of this time, only awareness of it. When he turns to look the other way, he feels that he is missing the view in the alternate direction. Sometimes he looks straight ahead, but this is also unsatisfactory.
A light breeze lifts the curtains of his coat and plays around his ankles. It is cold where he is.
Sometimes he forgets why he is waiting. Sometimes he thinks he knows from which direction the train will come. He never stops thinking about the train.
His skin begins to flake away, and a fine powder of his flesh is tossed by the wind. His bones, too, shift and separate until they are weather. His shoes remain.
The line in Epilogue "I've woken up I'm in our bed / but there's no breathing body there beside me" has always fascinated me as a concept, that her absence is so physical and real to him it takes on the form of a corpse. I worked out recently that that core idea, absence and what remains, is what everything I've ever written is really about.
I met a writer at work and it inspired me to write a few bits and pieces. The following comes from part of a story I'm writing. Joanna's influence is always there. It's bound to be: I've listen to her music so much over the past four years.
Day dreamt that a black hole had formed in the bottom corner of his bedroom. At first the hole was the size of a pinprick and caused the lightest of items around his room to quiver and then be drawn into it: a single sheet of paper, loose thread from the carpet nearby, a piece of red ribbon that had been draped over his chair. The black hole’s appetite then began to get stronger: his CDs started to shake on their shelves, pens and pencils tapped to a silent tune within the holder on his desk before stopping suddenly and then being pulled away as if to attend to a more important task. And when they were pulled away from their holder on Day’s desk, it was done with a violence that that told Day that nothing else could wait. All of his stationary disappeared from his desk within the space of five seconds. This black hole was becoming an inconvenience for Day.
Then the CDs on his shelf gave way to this greater rule as the black hole’s dominance began to spread to larger items. As each of his CDs was pulled in, it seemed as if this void knew what each album had meant to him and increased its size accordingly. If the piece of music on a disc held particular resonance to him, the black hole would grow much larger. Photographs and gifts seemed to cause the void to expand more dramatically than any other single item.
When all the small items had been consumed, he was left with a black hole the size of beach ball and the larger pieces of his bedroom furniture. The clothes hangers within his wardrobe knocked against the inside of the doors, smothered by the cushion of hanging clothes, yet all the more desperate to get out. Day watched with an unnerving clarity how his left wardrobe door swung open. Each item of clothing tangled themselves around one another as they stood in a queue exactly one garment deep. Each one false started in turn, then came muted accusations of queue jumping, forgotten manners by new clothes to older ones, a gentle shoulder to show who’s boss. They all wrapped around one another with drunken disorder. Stood in front of them might have been the last remaining open kiosk at the end of the day or the last taxi home on new year’s morning or mothers vying for that single doll on the shelf as each one peers through the closed glass doors of the department store. His wardrobe hung like twenty-four mothers with twenty-four daughters who covet that single doll for Christmas. It’s almost time: 8:56, 8:57, 8:58, 8:59 and then the open-doored rush. Like a cold war heated abruptly. And the clothes were pulled from the wardrobe with savage assurance, torn from their hanging frames and into the vacuum. Some of the hangers were flung across the room, others rattled violently within an echo of a half-open shell.
Day’s bed began to lurch towards the black hole as it negotiations with a more powerful party had fallen through. The usual forces within his room were jumping ship. The Absolute Void Party was smothering the voice and rubbishing the policies and ideals of The Pine Effect Single Bed Party with decided ease. Day had never considered the durability of headboards before, but now gave just thought to the only thing that stood between him and oblivion as he leant almost his full weight against it. He clawed and scrabbled at it like a piece of upturned flotsam. Day felt a snap of the first heave from an invisible rope and his blue carpet was forced to crumple under a very real object, but under the confusion of invisible forces that pulled it. The carpet rose up like a slow wave while the slats in the bed bowed and splintered for being moved so carelessly. As the bed began to gain ground towards the boot-black swell, he made a split decision and took the initiative to pull the mirror off the wall above his bed in an attempt to scare the black hole with its own reflection. If on the wall he had found a sequence of porcelain ducks in flight, he would have attempted to scare the black hole with the ducks’ instinctive pattern formation or the way in which the ducks seemed to follow you around the room with their eyes or simply through the glaze of mid-twentieth century porcelain. Unfortunately for Day, those ducks had been on the other wall and they had long-since migrated into the black hole towards unexplored climes. However, Day was as happy with his - albeit limited – choice as he could be. “Mirrors often scare off vampires so why shouldn’t black holes be afraid by them?” Day thought. .He also reasoned that if he chomped on everything in sight (this, in fact, wasn’t far from the truth) – including a fine set of porcelain ducks (though Day drew the line at crispy duck) – then he might be a little hesitant towards looking into a mirror. His very final theory as he grasped the mirror and said a garbled prayer was that no one would be stupid enough to think that a mirror from Argos would put a black hole off its food through the devastation of its own reflection. Day shrugged his shoulders as he considered that this theory may have up till now gone completely untested. He was happy to recall that he’d cleaned and polished his mirror the previous day so he was relatively safe in the event of a black hole criticising the cleanliness of a mirror, which – you never know, he thought – may actually make the black hole angrier.
After what felt like an hour had passed, and long after the point at which Day’s arms started to shake under the weight of the mirror, he opened his eyes. He found that he was no longer perched at the top of his bed or within the confines of a room frisked of its possessions by a phantom force. All of his disappearing belongings had disappeared completely, but not in the way that he had expected. He was now stood on the edge of what appeared to be an open shoe box. A fascination of colours poured from every direction and he felt almost drunk by the way his eyes constantly had to adjust to them. The rolling light turned in formations he wanted to study and sketch, but the light made him giddy and Day had to concentrate on keeping his balance. The air coming from the shoebox smelt stale, suggesting that its lid had just been taken off. Day thought he could see the bottom of the box, but feared that if he had tried to focus his eyes onto one specific point, he’d lose his balance and fall inside, and the box that had just been opened would once again be sealed shut.
The kaleidoscope effect continued to roll around Day’s new universe as he tried to maintain his balance. He realised that merely being surrounded by these patterns and transitions made him feel light-headed, and he began to be captivated, then slowly seduced by its charm. He slowly turned on the shoe box edge and observed as he did so that he was stood at one end of the box. He became aware that to ignore the effects surrounding him just made the colours more exotic, its transitions more seamless and the patterns it created all the more inviting to marvel over. Day now faced outwards and his resistance to the charm of the changing patterns broke down almost immediately. He looked upwards and saw symmetrical flames of indigo leap towards hues of olive green, then the green shifted to a cool mint and appeared to douse the flames. This encounter of colours gave way to a stunning rose pink that spun towards Day as countless overlapping circles amid a sea of cream. These circles span so quickly that he thought the colour would be lifted from them. Just as Day thought the design had come close enough to be touched, they trailed off and dissolved away in a rich formula as if a great chocolatier had mixed it himself. Then began a stunning new pattern, then another. An appetite for these images began to rage behind his eyes and he lapped each one up wholeheartedly. He considered each newly-formed pattern to be the most beautiful design he’d ever seen and as the images mounted, it came to him that he’d witnessed a dozen of the most entrancing sights without even a single blink to separate them.
The sweetness of so much symmetry had made Day drunk. He held his head and rubbed his eyes of the tears he had strained to keep them open. He looked back up and found that the patterns began to mould and rust. The designs that had looked so perfect just a moment ago began to form imperfections; shapes weren’t fusing as they should and one line of symmetry was slightly cracked. From this crack came an image of his room from the perspective of the black hole. He almost couldn’t see his bed for the carpet had been torn from its tack strips and had amassed in front of it in a slow-moving heap. A figure on top of his bed stood trembling with a mirror held out in front of him. He feared for his own reflection as well as the face of the man who stood behind the mirror, because he considered neither image at this point his own. Day kept his eyes closed with as much force as he had done previously to keep them open. He then felt a heavy weight against him, and then came a much lighter one, but it seemed of a similar intention. The lighter touch came to unbalance him and Day felt himself falling through the stale air. He fell down further and then further still inside the open box. Day thought it felt like leaning against a series of open doors; the shock of each one never allowed him time to catch his breath. Each consecutive door felt as if they were being closed in front of him.
Then, as if Day had fallen past the point of reason, he was caught by cupped hand, which allowed him to catch his breath. Day considered what the bottom felt like, and while he thought the almost endless fall had taken him some way towards it, the skill in which he was caught suggested to him that the owner of the hand had once fallen much further. The hand carried him back to the edge of the shoebox faster than the time it had taken him to fall. It released him perched almost perfectly balanced back on the edge of the box, but with an assurance that told Day that whichever way he let himself fall would be the correct direction. After a few seconds, Day could feel himself leaning forwards and knew that no correction at all would have to be made as he fell outside the box.
Day woke with a start and immediately checked his ducks, which still hung proudly on the wall. He was also glad to find that his three other walls to his bedroom remained in tact with all the relevant pieces of furniture stood against them. He made a note to sell any kaleidoscopes he owned on eBay, and he thought it wise to lay off the astronomy books for a while. He looked up and saw his mirror in its usual place, bearing none of the marks of having just reflected a grotesque nightmare.
If we're moving onto prose I actually have something to contribute. This was 10 minutes of introspection, but hey, here we go.
Concrete
I close my eyes against the warm summer breeze. I could be anywhere; the imaginary grass bristles and glows golden in the dying sunlight, though only for a second. I soon break from my short-lived reverie and again gaze upon the familiar concrete walls.
One doesn’t often speak kindly of concrete walls but I am as attached to this part of my new home as I am any other. Awkwardly angled, slouching in amongst the possibly-Edwardian architecture, like the family friend of tenuous acquaintance that inevitably has to be invited to the party. It’s a surprise to get along with them so, we hadn’t heard good things. They too are bedecked in their evening finest, the pale grey stones warmed by the orange light of dusk.
I have come out here to escape the cloying humidity of my room, and the closeness of my walls. At first I reconsider- the day begins with T, and any day beginning with a T round here seems to belong to the bellringers, but for a moment they seem to have ceased. I am perched on the wall and leaning against the pebbledashed house. A forgotten book sits in my lap.
My mind wanders. I watch the starling flitting to and fro with wattling materials from its nest hidden in the undergrowth across the courtyard. A cheeselog lopes purposefully across the step. I again close my eyes, lose myself in the sprawling meadow, or perhaps a clifftop, now a humble park- it doesn’t matter. I could be anywhere.
I consider the happenings of the day. I consider my brief offer of work, and work that may follow, and soon my mind leaps to the oft considered question of long-term career. I entwine my fingers in whips of grass and bask in the sunlight. This is all I want to do; a life wasted, in the eyes of good society, a life where one can frolic and lollop and embark upon on all sorts of frivolous verbs. I want nothing more than to spend my life in a small woodland cottage, and pick flowers and herbs, to sit under a tree and strum at some stringed instrument. I could make a fair living from making pies and cakes, surely. It would be a sound, assured, morally-concrete existence. I would like that.
The recommencement of the church bells seem to me a providencial warning. Were I a God-fearing woman; nay, could I entertain the notion at all that a God did exist- I may have considered it a challenge. As a matter of fact it only goes to irritate me and drag me back mercilessly from my private Eden. No; this will not be the life for me. I will not choose my path, at least, not how I walk it. I will start off my adult life behind a desk in a bank, or perhaps waitressing, depending on how I play the next few years. But I can sit behind the desk and imagine the office furore to be the hustling wind in the hedgerows, and I can imagine the ever-trilling telephones to be an avian cacaphony. Not for long, of course, but it will suffice as a means to an end. I hold it quietly within myself that I’ll get what I want, somehow- the days when I no longer have to imagine concrete to be gold.