Streamline
Tethers— roots
between you and I;an infant spring,
a streamline of woven
thoughts—
of innocence soon
scarred.
Tethers— roots
between you and I;an infant spring,
a streamline of woven
thoughts—
of innocence soon
scarred.
Lately, there has been
an influx to the number
of times I have thought
about you in between
days—
even at a more crucial
time when I try to forget
the little things that
made me write
pseudo-vignettes before.
I. Silence was her weapon;
one that broke my armor
into shattered steel.
II. And I am no smith.
III. But just a battered man.IV. Just a battered man.
Memory must be a powerful
thing— to make you remember
without you noticing it open
the backdoor
letting the ghosts march in;
a number that I am helplessly
part of.
Editor’s Note:
Burning Muse Prompt: Inspiration.
Thank you all for the amazing pieces that have been written so far!
___________
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Tick.
T
i
c
k.
“The clock on the wall has been stuck at…”
11:45 for days and days and
days. Spent
the evening in the tub, washing
the sound from my ears
and wondering why
they chose this day, why
they languished.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Drip.
D
r
i
p.
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat,”
I considered, as dreams stared back
from rippled surface of
pond. Predators lurking within
the confines of my imagination,
like wildfire gnawing at
trees, only quieted by
deluge.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Tap.
T
a
p.
“It only takes one idea … to
change everything forever.” With a stroke
on blank canvas, words
come to life, screaming
every buried secret
every waking nightmare ever
contemplated. Time,
life, written.
____________________
Quotations:
*Matchbox 20
**Jaws
***Mike Dooley
Stop telling women that we should find ourselves beautiful and that we should love ourselves when you are standing right there, judging us on how our knees look in short skirts and how prominent our boobs are in a sweater and how much makeup we are or are not wearing.
Instead of us working harder on “love your body” and “find your inner beauty”, the rest of the world should be working harder on “stop telling women their bodies are a shameful place to live but that if they’re strong enough, they will learn to embrace that shame.”
This is my body. It’s not “beautiful”. I don’t “love it”. I don’t have to. I don’t have to have any strong feelings about my body. And whatever feelings I do have are not somehow invalid if they’re not glowing reviews.
Editor’s Note:
Burning Muse Prompt: Inspiration
________________
I once tried prying my eyes open with the end of a ball point pen because I wished to see everything in the memories I have come to forget—but someone held me back and said, there was cause for me to create the moments that would be my own in the time continuum that would never doubt their existence. I wrote that night of a woman devouring her heart. I wrote of myself as I wanted, no! I needed to plunge the scalpel within my chest and taste the muscle just so that I could feel.
I lost that ability long ago, the reason still rests in the scar running between my breasts. My words though, they have become what I taste as after that first bite, I knew I could come to replicate how a burning hatred inflamed the tongue, how the lust of another dampened the apex of my legs, and how the enormity of love was so easily misshapen and overlooked till the isolation of loneliness brought the epiphanal thoughts to the surface,
I regret it once or twice but in the end, to this day, I lift the pen if only for a minute because I crave the release of needing to breathe.
Muse- Explorers
One of my favorite songs ever. Actually, possibly my favorite. It says it all.
Muse- Madness
I think the cinematography in this video is amazing, perfectly capturing the feel of the song. And I think it’s very appropriate, at least for every relationship I’ve ever been in.
The important question is: Why are we as a society so obsessed with violence?
Am I wrong in my previous lifelong assumption that relationships should not have this violent, antagonistic component? Or is that just the way things are, at least for now? Or for always?
Passion is movies is wonderful, and violence and danger are often used to heighten the sense of it, I believe. But in real life a shouting match is not even remotely fun or romantic in any of my experiences of it.
I’m honestly still trying to figure out if love, as I define it, is actually real at all, or if we’re just emotionally-trigger happy monkeys that are occasionally philosophizers, but most of the time trapped in the playground of reactive emotions, intense and fleeting, but as inclined towards destruction as any sort of creation, and not yet developed enough for the maintenance of actual healthy relationship patterns.
Thoughts?
Editor’s Note: Standout.
- When you are not in love, the tree branches swing around you like the walking sticks of the blind. The doorways are always vacant. The sky is listening to your presence.
- When you are not in grief, there is nothing— only what is.
- The starch of the night is generous with its flavors, still. Gather the rosebuds of your faith and burn them, for they are useless. Leave the hatreds and the insecurities and the bitterness to flourish—as acid mushrooms in gardens of truth.
- Nurse the concept of death. Then nurse the concept of dying. Then, when you are ready, nurse death itself. All baby-toes and button-nose death… until the stars are fertilized in death’s eyes… and he looks at you… and you understand one another enough to grow.
- Like me. Learn from my rise into lovelessness. I fermented a wasteland in my heart because it was mine (it was good). I speak it in varying tones- through laughter - through song - through kindness. Lovelessness knows the spaces of heart lost in trying. Lovelessness is the truths of survival that appear only when cleaned fully of love. The golden curtains of youth and aging, and the inherent blood of myself: these are things I pulled forth and groped, ran my fingers down the textures of.
- Learn from me. Twenty-six girls know the taste of my lips. Yet none of them know this. And the winter lights burned brightly in me as I made art, because art is death and its compromise with life… I am a boy lost in the wind. But I know myself. I know the dirt of the valleys rolling within my chest, the mountains soaring in my veins. I am becoming a man soon, still a boy, lost in the voice of the wind. I have heard it call to me and lead me to silence. I am lovelessness, love, and the life that flows through.
- The sky listens now to my presence because I took back the remainders of my heart— the parts I have forgotten in other things. I made art of it, let death nurse in its wake, carried my soul into the morning and dreamed. Learn from me. Learn how to accept.
- You are alone, but that is good enough.
This. Truth. So relevant right now. And always.
Muse- Unnatural selection
