Instructions for the Locating of a (Charming) Prince

I posted a version of this ages ago, but took it down because it seemed unfinished. This is the final (I hope) version.

Instructions for the Locating of a (Charming) Prince

Did no one tell you,
dear, about the prince?
It is a well-kept secret
I will share with you:
squander your fortune,
set out alone,
turn left at the swamp,
and faint.
He will turn up
like clockwork or the turning
of the sun -
predictable
as ants
at a picnic.

There are other ways:
prick your finger and waste
your life in waiting.
Sell your voice for the chance
to hear him speak.
Suck in your stomach
thrust out that chest
and smile.
Suffer for love
my dear, because
even if he's green
or seems
a beast,
there's nothing that
some kissing cannot cure.

Have faith
be true,
pay heed and you
are guaranteed
your very own
home-grown
organic
trademarked, sealed
stamped with an expiry date,
(pre-nuptual agreement
signed in advance)
fat-free
(for a limited time only)
happy
ever
after.

The Night of my Conception

I would like to stress that this poem is not my fault. The last thing I want to think about is the night that I was conceived. And if you don't want to think about it either, please feel free to skip over this poem. But it was an assignment, so I had to write it, and to be honest...I found it really interesting once I got past the squick factor. So:

The Night of My Conception

When I ask her, my mother says
she knew I was there. She says,
I don't really believe those kinds of things - I think
they sound new-aged
and flaky, but...
she pauses and
with quiet certainty, she says,
I knew.

There is a secret, though,
I cannot bring myself to say:
the truth about the night
of that conception
is that it wasn't mine.

The little girl
with chubby cheeks
and a rolling grin
who was born some
nine months
later,
well...
she
died.

It was an accident - she was too
breakable.
She thought the world
was safe, and kind,
but it was not.

So. She died.
I was born fully-formed
into thin air, to the sounds
of a slamming door
and my father's fading
footsteps.

I was conceived by the smell
of alcohol,
the cold hard touch of anger,
and the warm wet wealth of
my mother's
tears.

Pud-Muddle Poem

There's a little
muddle - puddle
in the middle
of the park
and it's huddled
in a hollow
and it's happy
as a lark.

It is catching
al the people
that it's splashing
by surprise,
cause that little
puddle-muddle
is a big one
in disguise.

If you're quick
and oh-so-careful
you can
hop
right
past,
but the old-pokes
and the slow-folks
they get
sssplash
sssplash
splashed!

The Art of Procrastination

The assignment for this was to look at a published piece of work and write a poem that followed its form exactly. The second one is mine, and the first is 'Comfort' by Robert Service, who loaned me the rhythm and rhyme. My poem was written (very obviously) at the absolute last minute, in a state of desperation.

Comfort
by Robert Service

Say! You've struck a heap of trouble -
Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don't care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
Health is failing, wish you'd die -
Why you've still the sunshine left you
And the big, blue sky.

Sky so blue it makes you wonder
If it's heaven shining through;
Earth so smiling way out yonder,
Sun so bright it dazzles you;
Birds a-singing, flowers a-flinging
All their fragrance on the breeze;
Dancing shadows, green, still meadows -
Don't you mope, you've still got these.

These, and none can take them from you;
These, and none can weigh their worth.
What! you're tired and broke and beaten? -
Why, you're rich - you've got the earth!
Yes if you're a tramp in tatters,
While the blue sky bends above
You've got nearly all that matters -
You've got God, and God is love.

The Art of Procrastination
by me

Well it's midnight and the weather
is as nasty as can be;
dreary throughts are all around you -
they are all that you can see;
you're left without inspiration,
fingers frozen at your sides -
but your wrist is still a-ticking,
and you know you've got to try.

So with desperate desperation
and a steely stubborn will,
you find determination
and the pages start to fill.
Words a-flowing, verses a-growing,
tossing caution to the breeze,
you are typing up a whirlwind
till your thoughts begin to freeze.

Freeze, and still the rain is falling -
freeze and none can lend a hand.
What! You're on the verge of failing!
(this is more than you can stand)
Still at heart you are a poet,
and you'll find that rhythm yet -
it's so close you nearly know it:
once you do, you won't forget.

Civilization

........................

For a moment I am
home again
on the hillside;
hearing the marmot whistle
alarm
through the rock-pile ruckus,
feeling the shale
slip away
beneath my soles.
For a moment.
Then again
it is simply
the shriek of my neglected
kettle -
the kiss of cashmere
against my soul.

Prose Poem - Nobody Has Ever Died of a Panic Attack

...................

Nobody Has Ever Died of a Panic Attack

she says as she strips herself, sits naked on the edge of tub and trembles. It is soothing-cool and solid against her thighs, but she knows it is just atoms jostling together, and that there is no real reason (indefinable facts of quantum physics aside) that they should not simply choose to slide apart. Her nails slip across slick porcelain as she grips tighter.

Three Pieces of Advice to New Dishwashers at the Eldorado Hotel

.........................................................


It is easier if you can be friendly
to the face of the embittered French-Canadian
(with the gotee)
who owns you.
Do not tell him you are a poet:
once
he was a poet too.
Smile and say - Absolutely! Right away!
(Inside your head you can
sentence him to fifty years hard labour
in the stone mines.
It helps.)
At any rate, after a month he will stop
making you scrub the ceiling
and the grungy wall behind the deep-fryer.
He will,
I promie,
stop laughing when you burn yourself.

Sometimes it is easier if you can be angry.
Mopping the long linoleum floor
at midnight
when your hair is thick and wet with
steam and sweat and grease,
it is easier
if you can hate him.
Or someone.
Anyone, to be honest, to whom
you can direct the thought,
"I'll show that so-and-so
I will get out."

(It is easier still
if that is true.)

Missing In Action

A short-short story I wrote for my fiction class, ages ago.

Missing In Action

She cut her heart out in the morning beside the kitchen sink. It was the only sensible thing to do. Afterwards she lit a cigarette and smoked it standing up, and the grey ashes fell onto the grey linoleum floor without a sound. She flicked the butt into the crowded sink and it hissed.

Once upon a time the floor was white and the dishes got washed twice a day and she didn’t smoke because of the children.

Once upon a time, before Jim got shipped overseas and the phone calls stopped coming and MIA turned out to mean something. After that she stopped noticing colours, and the dishes didn’t matter so much, and the kids smoked pot and locked their doors to keep the smell inside.

Last night’s coffee catches like sand in her throat. All the sugar from the cracked tin on the counter doesn’t help, and the milk has gone sour, so she drinks it black and bitter and cold, and the caffeine makes her shiver.

Six steps from the kitchen to the living room. Today her feet drag and make it seven, and her trailing toe snags on the unravelled edge of carpet.

Three more steps to the bathroom cabinet with the little bottle full of nothing-matters.

She cut her heart out in the morning beside the kitchen sink because the dishes weren’t done and she didn’t care. She cut her heart out in the grey morning beside the dirty dishes because last night’s coffee choked her and there was no sugar left in the world.

She cut her heart out because it was broken anyway.

Afterwards she smoked a cigarette and went on with her life – what was left of it – and nobody noticed the difference.

Definitive Proof I am Living

See? When I pick
at the sensitive slips of the skin
at my fingertips,
I bleed.
You see? When I breathe
in the cold, it is there
in the air,
to be seen.
You see? When I sleep
and I twist in my sheets
I am dreaming.
Please.
Doesn’t that mean
I am here?
Shouldn’t pain
be proof
of living?
Shouldn’t the wonder of warmth
and the depth of my dreaming
(I-think-therefore-I-am)
be decisive
definitive
proof?
I breathe and I bleed
and I dream
but still
I wonder.

poems

These are a few poems I found while clearing off my desk (a monumental project, believe you me) in preparation for moving out.

................

Taking Responsibility

Am I right to believe
that the butterflies in my stomach
belong to you?
I suspect you set them loose
when first we met
for fear
I should forget…
now, in the absence
of you
they are fluttering
to death.
They drift
to the walls
of my insides,
crumble to dust
discreetly
one by one.
they are making me sick
and sad
and lonely,
and you see,
I do not want a stomach that is full
of dead butterflies,
my friend – you’d better
come
collect them.

The Frustrations of Dealing With Me

It should be simple when two people
have this peculiar electricity
particular to
us.
It should be as simple as one plus one –
you and I together make
a certain something
which is certainly
something more
than nothing,
although
that is the only certain thing
about it.
This should be simple but you see
it’s not
particularly when one of these two people
is me.
You see?
I am incapable
of making this easy.


(This next one is still a fragment. It needs another stanza, and I'm not sure if this first one should be in past or present tense. It also (as bloody usual) needs a title.)

Inexplicable

What is it I need?
I have fallen out of the habit
of breathing – all the clovers
on the lawn
are four-leaved
but they bring only
grief.
Sometimes I wonder
why it was
that the Tin Man wanted a heart.

Seasoning

We cook with silence
in the kitchen – it clings to our fingers
like bread dough,
pools on the polished counters and drips
to the floor
slips
to the door.
It has become
the one ingredient
we use in everything –
we used to say that was love,
and laugh,
do you remember?
Silence was stowed away at the back
of the cupboard of spices
half-hidden always
by thyme.
Now you and I
are connoisseurs
of silence,
but even we
can see
how bad it tastes.

dreams

A description of the last five dreams I've had. I'd typed them out to send to my cousin, so I thought I'd post them here and see if anyone had any kind of...I don't know...interpretation? I find them a little creepy, but very intriguing, too. Any thoughts at all? Does anyone have dreams that are remotely like this, ever? Mine are usually really intense, but they've never followed a theme before.

Also - I have no idea why the Almost Man calls me Kate. No idea.

Dream # 1

I wake with the memory of an old woman, some coins, and the words ‘the place where dreams are made (born?) and stories go to die’ in my mind. There is a terrible, lingering longing to find this place.

Dream # 2

I’m walking along a smooth stone road that passes through a desert. All is gray, and there is nothing to be seen anywhere but the long flat road stretching into the distance. The wind is strong, and in some places has blown drifts of sand across my path.

I am wearing loose dark gray pants that billow around my ankles, and an old-fashioned white shirt that fastens at my wrists with pearl buttons. One is missing. The shirt ought to lace up at the front, from about my navel, but has come undone. My skin is very pale, not tanned at all. There is a scarf around my head. Under one arm is a rolled-up rug, and across my other shoulder is a waterskin. I can hear it sloshing, half-empty, against my side.

There is no other sound except for the wind – my footsteps are muffled by the sand.

I am dreadfully thirsty and tired. I walk steadily, not hurrying, as if I know that the place I’m going to is very far away.

In fact I have no idea where it is, except that it is almost certainly not at the end of this road.

I am going to the place where dreams are made and stories go to die.

I walk and walk and walk, all night, but nothing happens.

When I wake up, I am refreshed, but filled with longing to see the place I am going in my dream. I have to go there. But how?

Dream # 3

It is night time. I am standing in the street in Dawson, and it is raining. The rain is beautiful – sparkling and deep black all at once, as it falls around me. It is like crystal tar. Some of the drops catch on my lashes, and I see the world for a moment in a haze of light. But more and more drops catch my eyelashes, and they are so very heavy, and so very dark that I am a little frightened. My eyelids are steadily dragged down, and I can feel the rain sliding thickly down my cheeks and my bare arms, and down my ribs, coating me. I don’t raise my hands to wipe away the water, but I try to blink it away and fail.

Then, suddenly, Matthew is in front of me. I can hear him breathing.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I’m standing in the rain in the street,” I say.

There is a pause and a sigh. “How silly,” he says, and suddenly my face is in his hands, and his thumbs are brushing gently at my eyelashes, and I can see again.

His eyes are brown. My face is cold and his hands are soft and warm.

The rain looks harmless again, like crystal sliding down his face. He might be crying, except that the would-be tears run up against his smile, which is as wolfish as always.

“Come inside,” he says. “It’s warm.”

Between his hands, my face is burning. I want nothing more than to follow him, but instead I gasp out, “I can’t!” and tear myself away, and run.

The streets are slick with tar, now, and I slip but keep my footing. I pass lampposts smothered in black, oozing with it.

I must find the place. The place where dreams are made and stories go to die. I must go there because it is the only safe place left to be – the rain is painting the windows of houses black, walling them off from the world. I must go there, but I don’t know the way, and this is suddenly like the old dream, the familiar dream, the night terror. I am running and running, gasping for breath, and everything is crisp with fear, and somehow I am not moving, and my feet are caught in a pool of blackness, and I am stumbling, falling, and waking...

Dream # 4

I am back on the road. My feet are bare and blistered, and the sand-covered stone is cool against them. My waterskin is nearly empty, and the rug is so very heavy. It drags my arm down so that I must balance it against my hip. I have been walking for nights without end.

The moon is over my shoulder. It is a sliver of silver in a gray sky.

Nothing but desert forever, and the wind blows through it, and I walk.

Dream # 5

I am alone in a subway station, and I am studying the map on the wall, but instead of being two-dimensional, it is a three-dimensional model made out of brightly coloured yarn. Each colour represents a different train, and it is impossibly intricate and knotted. I am trying to find a train that will take me to the place where dreams are made and stories go to die, but none of the strings are labelled, and several of them change colour as I watch.

I reach out and touch a strand, thinking to untangle it, but it is so sticky that I recoil, and have to wrench my hand free of it.

As I do, the lights flicker off. I gasp.

From behind me, someone says, “That’s just a train leaving from upstairs. They take the lights by mistake sometimes. It won’t be a moment and they’ll be back.”

Before I can ask who the person is, the lights flicker back on. The platform is bathed in light, and I look around it for the first time.

The walls are gray stone, and a thick black line is painted on the floor about three feet from the drop to the tracks. The tunnel itself stretches left and right into blackness.

The model on the wall is the only colour. A ways to my right, a bench is set against the wall, and a man is sitting on it. He is wearing a wrinkled suit, scuffed shoes, and a shabby bowler hat. His newspaper is held in front of his face.

I look down at myself and see that I am dressed in a light gray sundress, although I feel very strongly that it ought to be blue. This worries me.

I turn back to the map, but the man says, “You’ll never find that place that way.”

I look at him again.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “Do you know something?”

He shrugs, and suddenly I am on my knees beside the bench where he’s sitting.

“Please,” I tell him. “I’m trying to get to the place where dreams are made and stories go to die.”

He grabs hold of my wrist with one hand and then lowers the paper slowly. His face is somehow very hard to look at. I look at his hand on my wrist, instead, and notice that his nails are dirty.

“Well,” he says, “I know a thing or two, but it isn’t free, is it? Nothing’s free in dream-time.”

I stand up and try to pull away, but he pulls on my wrist so that I’m bending down towards him.

“Everything costs, doesn’t it?” he asks. “Tell you what. Give us a kiss and I’ll show you how to get to this place of yours.”

His breath smells very strongly of fish. I lean forwards and kiss him on the forehead, but he snarls at me.

“How about a proper one?” he says.

His skin, although it looked gritty and wrinkled, was very smooth against my lips.

I shake my head and try to pull away again, and his expression becomes very ugly.

“Oh no?” he asks. “What if I looked like this, then?”

Suddenly the person holding my wrist is a tall young man with black hair and a french beret on his head. A cigarette burns in his hand.

“Hey Kate,” he says, and stands and pulls me closer. But his breath still smells like fish, and I lean away, upset.

“No?” he says, raising his eyebrow. There is a silver piercing in it, with a dice on the end.

“No,” I say.

Then he changes again. A girl in her early twenties, dressed in a low-cut black dress, with long wild black curls, has her hand lightly on my wrist. She smiles and slides her hand up my arm. Her eyes are all pupil.

“Stop it,” I say, and the wrinkled man is himself again. “Oh,” he says. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t kiss her.”

He sneers down at me, and then laughs.

“I know what you want,” he says, and changes again. This time the face is mine. It is like looking in a mirror.

“It’s really yourself, isn’t it?” he asks, and grins cheekily with my lips.

I stare.

There is a slight rumbling noise, from down the tunnel, that has been growing louder over the past few minutes without my noticing it. He hears it at the same time as I do, and turns his head, changing back into himself as he does so. The last expression I see on my face is a worried one.

When he turns, I am suddenly not-irrationally terrified. The back of his head – everything behind his face and ears, and under his hat – is hollow. It is as if a white mask has been balanced atop his shoulders. There is nothing but empty space where his skull should be.

“You’re the Almost Man,” I whisper.

At my voice, he comes to his senses and whirls around so that the back of his head – or lack thereof – is hidden.

“Fuck!” he snarls. “Every fucking time!”

Furious, he pulls me closer, still gripping my wrist. “Think you’re so clever, do you?” he asks, and leans down, and I can see the wall of the station through his hollow eyes, and am terrified. But the train is pulling into the station. There is a sudden rush of wind, and as it hits him, he seems to crumple.

The hand on my wrist slackens and falls through my arm, fading away into a dusty sort of nothingness. The rest of him follows, imploding into a wisp of ash that is swept immediately away by the wind, into the dark tunnel behind the train.

To the ground by my feet there clatters a white, blank mask, and the tattered bowler hat. His suit crumples empty to the ground.

There is a roar and a rush, and then the train is gone. It passes straight through without stopping, and it takes the light with it. I am left alone in the dark, and suddenly I am waking up.

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3:00 AM

The trouble with 3:00 am
is how close it is
to 7:00.
(every second it is closer –
my wrist is ticking
to remind me.)
In four hours I will
long
for sleep,
regret
each letter,
loathe the sound
of my alarm
as it needles its way
through my dreams.
3:00 am should be a world
all its own;
(a sliver of cool night,
the gravel of the drive
shifting
under my bare feet,
this breath of wind,
a quiet streetlamp on a quiet street.)
it should be a silent space
between 2:00 and 5:00
for the wakeful
to slip into
and through
and stay as long
as they like.
Instead 3:00 am
is slipping
surely
into 4:00,
and the night
is lightening
into today
whether or not
I can face it.

Rain

...........
written in my head while sitting at a bus stop in the rain with dillon and jesi.
...........

Rain
splashes to the pavement
by the cigarette butts
at our feet.
flattens the grass
that lies limp
at the curb
blurs the world
outside the shelter.
Maybe it will wash me away,
but oh well –
I will turn this umbrella
upside
down
float along the stream
that was the road
and out to sea.
Maybe there will be
sushi
on a desert island
or at least
a decent beach.
Want to come?
This is a happy rain
because
you are my friends.
I am bedraggled, but life
is beautiful.
Don’t ask me why
I’m smiling,
please…
the rain is making me
ridiculous.

Safekeeping

Safekeeping

I wore my heart on my sleeve
but it kept falling off
so I gave it away,
but she took a cheese grater
to it
till it bled,
which hurt.
So I thought
I would lock it away
for a while
but it just
got dusty
rusty
tired.
So I wondered:
If I offered it to you
(for safekeeping)
would you ever
give it back?

stupid bloody fridge magnets.

Written in a state of frustration on discovering the phrase 'have courage' on a fridge magnet at work.

Advice from Inanimate Objects

The fridge magnets tell me 'have courage'
but what do they know about that?
They live in a world that is plastic,
cliched and oppressively flat.
I wish that it could be so simple
I wish that advice was enough
but I thought I was brave till I knew you
and courage is slippery stuff.
The truth - though I cringe to admit it
- is courage is something I lack.
Though I thought to be lost in your kisses
I never quite dared to go back.

old and title-less

Help me - I need
a hand
a lift
a friend -
I need
someone
to pull me from this place
I've fallen to.
Take down these walls
and take my hands
and hold them -
and never
if you love me
let me go

Wishing on Stars I Can't See

Tonight the world is full
of people on porches
whiling the night away.
They smile and wave
but the weight
of conversation
pulls them right past
a hello.
I am sliding by streets
that go
nowhere,
watching the sun set
alone.
There is so
much
I would could should
be doing, but instead
I am only wandering -
passing by porches
and wondering.

drying strawberries for winer

we slice them paper thin;
heart-shaped slivers of sweetness
set on a screen
to lie and dry
in the sunlight.
when the edges curl we pry them off
bury them in crackling paper
and put them away.
months from now
when the world has spun
from the sun
and the ground
is frozen
we take them out
pass around the paper bag and
eat our hearts
in the darkness.
and although each slice is
a surprising burst
of sweetness,
each one is just
the memory
of a strawberry:
they are sweet but
insubstantial
as fleeting as
the taste of summer.

Teenage Wisdom

I know fifteen-year-olds
who think of love
like breathing.
In and out
and easy
as changing shoes.
They fall like
raindrops
splatting broken hearted
to the hard ground
only to rise
dry-eyed
a moment later.
pitter patter
on the pavement,
little hearts
think love
is just a game.
but who am I to say
I know the way?
At fifteen I didn't fall
like that: I fell
the way a watermelon does
from twelve tall stories -
hard and fast and
inadvisably.
Now at nineteen I am splattered
at your feet
a mess of pulp and peel
and shattered shell.
It is a loftly spot
from which to sneer
at 'silly' girls
who get back up.

one breath at a time...

............

If love is like oxygen
why can't I breathe?
You are just the same -
you smell like home
you smile like hello-I'll-never-leave-you.
You wear my ring
on the third finger
of your left hand.
Not a bit of that
is fair
because
if you haven't changed
I have.
I came a little
unravelled
and so
don't wind around your fingers
quite so smoothly
anymore.
I'm sorry.
You are bad news and beautiful
and I miss you
but - stop smiling - I thought
you'd be different.

Hormonal Delusions

................

My back is sore
my belly is cramping
and everyone is being so
fucking unreasonable
I could scream.
I am very reasonable.
I am the epitome of reasonability.
Except
It is getting hard to be reasonable
in a world that is just so
stupid.
The radio is playing that song
again
and the girl with the too-short shorts is
shouting
ohmygod there was this guy
and the fly is still stuck
in the goddamned window
and I am still stuck
in this goddamned town
and the world
is an unreasonable mess
and everyone
(but me)
is mean.

Sid

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Don’t have a rutting clue what to think.

Last time I woke up with a headache like this I was on a rickety cruiser halfway to Boros with nothing but the taste of whiskey, an empty wallet, and a cargo bay full of freeze-dried termites to tell me what the gorram hell had happened.

At least that time I could move.

When I raise my head up – which is none too easy for how heavy it feels – the room starts to spin and my stomach flips over half a dozen times, and before I know it I’m flat on my back again, eyes shut tight, breathing heavily and trying not to heave.

Well ain’t that just Jing cai.

I keep my left eye shut but ease the digital one open, letting it feed me an image of the ceiling. Which also seems to be spinning, so it can’t be the eye – it’s the head.

Shiny.

I shut it again before I can be sick.

This place smells like a hospital. Too clean and metallic for anything else. The idea is not exactly my favourite ever – waking up in a hospital don’t tend to make for a pleasant morning.

My stomach settles down a bit and my head starts to clear.

There’s something funny here, besides the way everything’s spinning this way an’ that. It takes a few minutes for it to sink in before I realize: the walls are shaking. Just a little. A vibration.

Which means that there’s either an earthquake happening under my feet, or I’m somehow on a ship.

The air tastes just recycled enough for it to be a ship.

There was nothing about a ship in the plan. Culhain would have mentioned it.

Somebody would have mentioned it.

I ease open my eyes again, make sure not to move my head too fast.

So far so good. Just no quick movements and I might be fine.

In a manner of speaking.

If I’m on a ship and it wasn’t a part of the plan, then the plan went wrong and I’m likely humped one way or another.

Gao yang zhong de gu yang.

I’m looking to be in a world of trouble, and I can’t even get off the gorram table.

Hurting or not, I can’t just lie here.

So – slowly – I tilt my head to the side and let things settle. My stomach rolls, but not as much as I was afraid of.

The place is about what I expected.

Low ceiling, off-white walls, some glass cabinets filled with pill bottles, a fairly clean floor…

And that’s when I see that I’m not alone.

Somebody’s curled up down there, head resting on a bit of sacking.

I move again, wait for the room to stand still, and then I take a closer look. And all of the sudden more’n the room is spinning.

Because I know this girl.

What’s it been? Three years now?

Don’t matter none – I know her like I know the workings of the first gun I ever held. You could put me on the other side of a dark room and I’d know it was her by the way she breathed. Hell even if she weren’t breathing I’d know. I’d know.

Well hell.

That explains the hospital, but not the ship.

My neck is aching from the way it’s tilted, but I can’t seem to look away.

It ain’t like I thought about her, ‘tween then and now, but if I had I’d have remembered her hair a bit darker. A bit shorter. Shoulders are tanned now, and she’s got freckles I know weren’t there before.

Same long lashes.

Did she look this young three years ago?

I remember she blushed.

I remember a hell of a lot more than that.

My stomach’s a bit less than pleased, and I know I should close my eyes, but I don’t just yet. She could wake up, and who knows…she might be a danger, state I’m in.

Can’t remember why I left, but I must have had a damned good reason.

Could have had something to do with the way it’s real hard to breathe in here.

Could have had something to do with that blush of hers.

Or it could even have been this. The way she stirs, blinks sleepily up at me and smiles so sweetly I just about forget I’m about to hurl all over her infirmary.

I still don’t know what the rutting hell is going on, but I can’t help but give her a grin.

“Morning bao bei.” I choke out.

That sleepy smile spins off faster than a feather in a wind storm, and before I know it she’s on her feet, spitting out a string of curses a mile long and glaring like I killed her cat.

When she walks out the door it’s with that heavy stride I forgot all about. Little thing like her sure makes an awful lot of noise.

When a woman walks off like that you don’t follow her, but it’s a good thing I’m so gorram tangle-headed, cause otherwise I think I might.

Instead I shut my eyes, rest my head back down on the gurney and say her name, just to remember the taste.

Ayla.

Well hell.

She sure beats the gou shi out of freeze-dried termites.

My Goals: Essay for Scholarship Application

......
Because I know you all really want to read this nonsense.
......

It would not be true to say that I have always wanted to be a writer, because there was a time when I did not know what that was. It would, however, be true to say that I have always been a writer.
As a small child I spent much of my time on a trapline in the Ogilvie mountains, traveling by dogsled. There were long hours in which I had to sit very still, wrapped tightly in my sleeping bag with my older sister. Even when we reached our cabins, there was no tv, no computer, no real form of ready-made entertainment. I learned to entertain myself on those long journeys, and my entertainment invariably came in the form of a tale.
Once upon a time, they all began, but where they went from there – besides the ultimate and expected happy ever after – was anybody’s guess.
Those years of being cooped up in a dogsled had a profound impact on me. Because of them, storytelling became as much a part of me as the need to eat and walk and converse; without it I am hungry, restless and lonely.
There has never been any doubt that I want my life to be about writing, but just how to go about making it that way has been somewhat of a sticking point.
There is, of course, the small matter of being able to feed and clothe myself.
It is important for me to balance being sensible (it’s all very well to devote your life to art, but how are you going to eat?) with being artistic (but writing is all I ever want to do!). The compromise that struck a chord with me was to pick a field of writing where it was possible to make a reliable living while still doing what I love.
The career that best fits that description is editing. As long as I can work with literature (and still have time to write and attempt to publish) I will be more than content – I will be happy.
And that, of course, is the way the stories are meant to end.

Ayla

href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5Cadmin%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml">

........

NOW its done, Jesi.

I am halfway through writing what Sid thinks of the next morning, but am not sure when I might get finished.

We shall see.

........

Put the syringe down real soft because a doctor is never rough with his instruments or his patients, take one last look at the sleeping merc who’s draped across my gurney like a hound-dog across an old porch, strip off the blood-stained gloves and hang up the apron, walk down the hallway and into my tiny room, shut the door softly and then punch the wall so hard they’ll hear the crack away up in the bridge.

Zhu fuen chse!

Does every single thing on this gorram ship have to be made of metal?

Hell.

They just brought him aboard.

Because he’s a ‘friend’.

Anybody else they’d have left him there to bleed to death, which wouldn’t have taken too long, scalp wound like that.

But since ol’ Sidney Xou is a friend of theirs, they couldn’t just leave him planet-side. Not when they have such a reliable doctor on board to patch him up.

Headboard of the bed ain’t metal. Course it just splits in half when I kick it, which don’t help none.

Since when do Culhain and George even have friends? Not since I’ve seen, anyhow, and if they have to start, why start with him?

Hell.

When I watched them wheel him in and I saw all that blood, wo de ma if I wasn’t scared for the bastard.

I slowed the bleeding down and started to go for the anaesthetic and then just stopped and looked.

Three years can add a lot of scars, I bet, but his face looks just the same.

Which don’t matter.

He was just…Sid was just…

Hell.

All out of things to hit.

He woke up just when I slipped the needle home, opened his eye and saw me.

Three years can add a lot of women too, I bet.

I was all set to scowl at him, but he just smiled, and then I couldn’t.

Just smiled, like three years hadn’t gone by and he was waking up and seeing me next to him, liking the sight.

Never happened. He skipped out before I ever opened my eyes, never to be seen again.

Till now.

He smiled and then he blacked out again, but before he did, he said something.

Something. He didn’t he did not he did not he did not he did NOT say my name.

Gorram it.

It was a mumble.

He’d hit his head.

What he tried to say was ai ya. Damn. Not Ayla.

Like as not he wouldn’t even remember my name, man of as many worlds as he is.

I’ll have to go in there in the morning.

I’ll have to check his vitals and make sure the scanner didn’t miss anything important.

I’ll have to talk to him and there’s not a thing in the ‘verse I’ll know how to say.

He’ll like as not call me bao bei.

Hell.

I want to break something, but there’s nothing breakable left.

Not here anyway.

Lots in the infirmary, though.

I don’t let myself think too much about that idea, just pick up my boots from the floor, flick the light off and slip out into the hall.

Nobody’s out and about at this hour but me. Empty humming hallway is all there is between there and here.

When I shut the door behind me, I don’t look at him, just grab a bandage for my hand and wrap it up, and then sit down on the floor because I’m liable to fall anyhow.

Not a thing in this gorram galaxy ever goes the way it ought.

His seabag’s beside me, and I reach for it, wanting to count his guns and find an excuse to hate him – not that I need one – but all of the sudden I’m tired, so tired, and it’s easier to lie down than it was to sit.

Easier to shut my eyes than to keep staring at Sid.

Second last thing I think as I slip off into sleep is that I’m going to feel all manner of foolish when he wakes up and sees me stretched out on the floor with my head on his seabag.

Last thing I think is that it smells like him.

Hell.

Acacia (2506, on Shadow)

.........
Something different this time. I guess people's childhoods and pasts were on my mind. But anyway, hope you had a good day at work, Jesi :)

.........

She walks right inside without taking her shoes off – a thing she never used to do – through the kitchen with the sink full of dishes, past the living room that looked nice six months ago, and into the room where she used to sleep with her husband. When she had one.
She shuts the door very quietly, sits down on the soft mattress and begins to cry.
She cries often now, although never when the children can see. Marcus would weep too, climb onto her lap and suck on his thumb, blue-eyed and angelic and sad for Mummy. Ayla would stamp off to shout at the cattle, red-faced and uncertain.
What do you do with a girl who doesn’t know how to cry? Acacia doesn’t know the answer to that any more than she knows what to do with a boy who won’t do much else.
She looks down at her hands – folded on her lap just as properly as they ought to be – sees the calouses on the palms and despairs.
Oh she knows it could be worse. Barret isn’t gone for good – she’s not a war widow, not yet. She’ll have him back just as soon as there’s been Unification, just as soon as the Alliance has done with him.
She can’t help it: she seethes. Wives of high-ranking military men should be patriotic, she knows, but since when does the state have a better right to her husband than she does? They need him for the war, and she can have him when they’re done, but she needs him now, and besides, when will the war end? Six months he’s been gone, and no sign of a good solid leave in sight.
The Alliance sets up a vid session once a month, sure as clockwork. She puts her hair up the way he likes it, rubs cream onto her rough cheeks so he won’t see how sun-hardened they’ve become. She tries to soften her eyes, too, but she worries that he sees the accusation in them.
“Cacy,” he said, the last time, “I know you didn’t marry me for this, Bao bei. I never meant it to happen.”
It’s rare, this quiet tenderness. New. Her husband has always been loud and boisterous. She never felt smothered by him, just protected. She doesn’t know how to respond to his apologies.
So she’d smiled and shaken her head, told him she was perfectly capable of running the ranch, and besides, the farm-hands, those young men from across town, they were helping so much…
They steal from her, she knows, but what can she say? A woman alone like this, she can count herself lucky they don’t do more. And Barret would be murderous if he knew, but how could he help from there? She won’t make him feel powerless.
And so she is up before the sun, pumping water to fill the troughs for the cattle, mixing their food, herding them into the fields and back to the barn before the children are awake. She walks into town, her skirts gray to the knee with mud and dust, buys what she can afford and carries it home in time to cook breakfast.
Ayla helps, as much as a twelve-year-old girl can do, but the work is endless.
Acacia sees her out the window now, ordering the farm-hands about with an ease that impresses even them. It breaks her heart to watch this girl, this daughter of hers with the boy-short hair and deep-down vulnerability, try to fill the shoes her father left empty.
Quite literally, in fact. Ayla is wearing heavy boots that reach her knees, has stuffed socks inside the toes, does not seem to mind the weight of them. Acacia doesn’t know where she found Barret’s old boots.
“Give them their good feed tonight,” the girl’s saying, her clear voice drifting through the open window. “And don’t let me catch you skimming off the top the way you were last week. Gan mang! How much time you think we’ve got?”
There’s a twang of rim-speech to her voice that Acacia doesn’t think should be there. She tries to teach her children to speak right, but she even finds herself slipping into common speech sometimes these days.
The burly young men march off, grinning at each other.
Does the girl see she’s being humoured? Acacia doubts it. Ayla is squaring her shoulders and walking towards Marcus now, who has been sitting on a nearby fence watching the proceedings with wide eyes. She holds out her hand, says something to him that their mother can’t hear, and helps the little boy climb down.
They are coming back to the house. Acacia pulls out her handkerchief, pats away the tears and composes herself. He will come back, her husband. The state will give him back, and he will come home and he will marvel at the children, and he will not see the new lines on her face or the gray in her hair. They will make up for the time stolen from them, and this will only be a bad memory. It will be alright.
She listens to the muffled voices of the children, and then, impossibly, the noise of the pump and a splash of water in the sink.
The dishes, she thinks. My children are washing the dishes.
She should get up – the work is endless and she is behind – but instead she sits, listening to her children. Marcus is talking loudly, exclaiming that he doesn’t understand why Mummy isn’t here, but she’ll be so happy when she sees the flowers he found.
It will be alright, Acacia thinks, but it doesn’t ring true.
Berret was right say she wasn’t meant for this. She twists the ring on her finger and reminds herself things she can’t quite believe anymore: how much she loves her husband, and how much better things will be when the war is over and he comes back.
Sometime later, there is a knock on the door, and she stands up, smoothing her skirts and shaking away her gloom. They mustn’t see she’s been crying.
There is a knock again, polite and nearly quiet. Acacia opens the door, a smile ready for Marcus and his flowers, and has to adjust her expression for Ayla. The smile slips for a moment, and she knows her daughter sees it. Sees it, as she sees everything, but does not understand that it did not slip out of disappointment but out of surprise.
We don’t understand each other, my daughter and I, she thinks, and spontaneously pulls the girl into a hug.
“Xie xie, Ayla. You worked hard today, love.”
The girl is stiff for a moment, but softens into her arms with something like a sigh.
Too hard, Acacia thinks, but does not say. You worked too hard, my darling girl.
Something is burning in the other room, and Marcus is beginning to shout, but they stand for a moment, each drawing strength from the other.
It will be alright, Acacia thinks again, and this time she nearly believes it.

Manditory Writing (much thanks to my mother)

............
It's amazing how motivating threats can be.
This is what my mother told me to write about, so I'm just obeying her. I suppose there'll be more at some point.
............

The sun is coming up somewhere in the world, but here it is ten o’clock in the morning and looks like midnight. Or nearly. In the past five minutes I have noticed the slightest lightening of sky over the mountaintops to the east. They are suddenly blue-black, and the stars are fading into the backdrop of sky. I have been snowshoeing for two and a half hours already, through this dark mountain pass, and it is astonishingly peaceful to be so alone. I picture a camera zooming out from me, taking in the hundreds of miles of wilderness all around.
Gilles is somewhere not too far behind me, having stayed behind to boil water for the thermoses. He walks faster, and should be catching up quickly.
I am the happiest person in the world.
My knees ache, my ankle is sprained, and I hauled myself out of my snow-trench at five in the morning to spend a day from sunrise to sunset pulling a sled.
But it is beautiful here, and it is worth every second of pain and cold and discomfort.
A snowshoe hare races across the snow ahead of me, its too-large feet so much better than what I’ve got strapped to my moccasins that it just seems to float on the surface. It doesn’t so much as glance at me, and I don’t blame it – the rate I’m moving at the moment doesn’t make me much of a threat to it.
Morning, when it comes, is sudden. That pool of light slinks across the sky, and suddenly the mountains are pink and orange, and the ptarmigan in the shrubs around me are beginning to wake up, rustling their feathers and cackling loudly into the morning.
The sun never shines properly in the Ogilvie mountains in January. Over the next month, it will slowly creep higher in the sky, till we can see it and feel it on our faces. It will feel like our skin is drinking in light, like the return of a long-gone loved one. We will close our eyes and smile and tip our faces upwards to be kissed. For now, though, all we get is a gray sort of half-light, and the sight of sunlight on mountaintops far away.
Gilles is coming up behind me now. When he reaches my spot atop the ridge we stop for lunch, taking out the trail mix and dutifully passing the water bottle back and forth. Neither of us is really thirsty, but we know we should drink more. Snow melt is curiously metallic. It tastes like campfire smoke and the inside of the bottle. Chocolate and dried fruit and nuts taste like heaven.
“Did you see the sunrise?” I ask, although he must have.
He nods. “The camera froze after a few pictures, though.”
Our camera does not like the cold, and makes its objections plain by dying as soon as we expose it to the air. Only by holding it against the warmth of our stomachs and cradling the batteries in our hands is it possible to coax it back to life.
A few minutes of sitting is enough to numb our fingers and chill our faces, so we stand up, repack our sleds, and start on.
Gilles is soon out of sight along the trail, and the going is a little easier, following in his tracks.
We are several days from the Depmster Highway, but at this time of year there is nearly no traffic. One vehicle every few hours if you’re lucky, and if you’re not, a long stretch of snow-blown empty road as far as the eye can see.
Apart from the ptarmigan and snowshoe hares, we are very alone.

stream of consciousness - writers' block

..........
This is something I wrote last week, in a moment of extreme frustration and misery. Actually the whole week was kind of like that.
Anyway.
..........


It is morning and the birds are chirping and I am writing stream of consciousness. It isn’t fair that I should be doing my own exercise. I don’t LIKE doing stream of consciousness. I don’t know if it does me any good, either, but here I am, typing away, hoping something comes out of it. I can hear the birds chirping away. They don’t know I have writers’ block and I don’t think they care much besides. I can hear cars on the road and I know they don’t care either; they just want to get where they’re going. Where am I going? Squirrels are digging insulation out of our roof for nests – I can hear them scratching away up there, and I know they don’t care either.
The trouble is, the only person breathing in this house is me, and I care an awful lot.
It is like living with a head full of angry bees. Somebody put them in a jar and shook them, and then turned them loose up there to wreak havoc. They bounce off of my skull and buzz and sting and sting and buzz, till I want to scream. The only way to let them out is to write, but I can’t…why can’t I?
Jealousy is like wads of cotton jammed in my ears and eyes. It is bread dough that clings to my fingers. I can’t write through it. It clogs up every story, every poem why can’t I write like her, why can’t I be like him?
And then it isn’t about jealousy anymore, but nothing but itself.
I can’t even write like me anymore, because what if I’m not good enough? Better to never find out.
Once upon a time there was a girl who loved stories and she died alone because she thought it was worth it but oh it wasn’t…
I go for long walks and I watch the ice jam flow down the river in chunks the size of my mother’s car. I could jump aboard and go where they take me, but they spin so fast I’d never make it.
Why do I feel as if I’m no good when I know I am?
I don’t really want to be him or her – I like the inside of my own head, even when it’s filled with bees and unwanted visitors. I’m comfy up there and I’d never move out, and these insecurities are laughable but tonight they’re not.
Tonight they’re not.
Away goes the ice without me.
My head is pounding, pounding, buzzing, buzzing, coming to pieces in all directions but nobody can see it.
Away go the birds without me.
Once upon a time there was a girl and she gave up her stories to have adventures and she met a boy…
Away go the cars without me.
…and she fell in love and she thought it was worth it, but oh it wasn’t…
Away goes the squirrel, his nest a little softer.
And the universe died a little because everyone needs stories…everyone does.
Away go the bees, and they carry me with them, past once upon a time through the forest toward the uncertainty of happiness. What is a quest without longing? Success without doubt?
What is love without belief?
Bread rises by the stove and oh it is worth it for the moments when life is easy. When art is effortless.
When the universe is spinning around a point and I spin with it, and together we spin the stories we are supposed to spin, and nobody wonders what’s worth it because everyone knows all the stories end how they were meant to.
Once upon a time there was a girl and she was not so afraid…

Sid

......

Dillon, if you object to anything, please let me know...I'm kind of just making things up now.
...........
Sid:

Life I lead, it’s none to safe to be wandering the streets with a limp and a bloody lip. In particular if those streets happen to be on Persephone, where any urchin worth a rag full of engine grease’ll pick your pocket and crack your skull within a minute of meeting you.
Life I lead ain’t none to safe at the best of times, mind you, and this seabag don’t get lighter for standing around with it.
The sun’s going down, but back on Ariel, it’d just be heading up.
Wo de ma. Space-lagged and hurting…what a pretty picture I must make.
Thought makes me grimace.
I swing my belt around so that my knife sits easy on my hip to ward off the urchins. I might look to be an easy mark, but I am feeling none too patient right about now.
City’s changed since I was here last. Time was there was enough dust to coat your throat and clog your eyes within a minute of landing. Now they’ve cleared it up some, though I can’t see how they might have done it. Some of the landing vessels are – if not exactly shiny and new – a little less rusted and fit for the scrap heap than I’m used to seeing round these parts.
I walk a few more dusty small-town blocks and then stop for a minute. My knees are afire. I want to sink to the ground and howl, but I sure as ruttin hell don’t do that. Instead I turn around and grab the collar of the kid who’s got his fingers in my seabag, slam him none too gently against the wall. His eyes go wide.
“Ni yao wo kai qiang?”
I tighten my grip and push him a little harder.
He shakes his head, and even though his eyes tear up a bit and his teeth must be a bit rattled, he don’t look none too scared.
Street kids on Persephone – specially round these parts of Persephone – are a breed their own. And they don’t scare none too easily.
I let go of his shirt and he slides a few inches down, watches me as I turn around.
Limp….limp.
Gorramit if I don’t feel like I’ve been dragged through seven hells face down and hollering. Is there anything that don’t hurt?
I go half a block, maybe, before I feel that telltale tug and whirl around to pin some other hapless piece of dirt to the wall. This time I’m mad, but surprise makes me put more weight into the shove than I meant to.
It’s the same kid.
He looks like every second rim-born brat, to tell it true. Brown hair brown eyes, healthy layer of dirt over a none-too-healthy layer of skin and bones.
But this kid is persistent, and he don’t have a clue how to steal.
“Wo de ma,” I mutter. “You are pushing your luck, kid.”
He shrugs. Gives me a level look. “Ain’t got none to push, old man. Got a spare coin?”
Old man? I grit my teeth – which don’t appreciate it, having been recently booted by an asshole in steel-toed boots – and try my hardest not to hit him.
Persephone ain’t none too kind to strangers. Any one of them can slit one of these brat’s throats – not that I’m in that foul a mood, though I am mighty miffed at this turn of events – but if a stranger so much as gives an urchin a bruise, he’s liable to meet a lynch mob.
From the way this kid is grinning, he knows that well as I do.
I can’t brain him with my seabag and leave him to bleed to death, so I do the next best thing.
“As it happens,” I tell him, “I do have a few spare coins, but I need you to do something for me first.”
His eyes flicker to my hand on his throat, and he nods.
“I’m visiting an old friend here. A Mr. Stitcher, maybe you’ve heard of him.”
Again the eyes go wide.
“Maybe you’d like to carry my seabag for me.”
Another nod, and I let go of his throat and heave the seabag onto his shoulders.
I can see when he takes it that he’s planning to do a runner with it, but as it settles over his shoulder, his eyes go wide with the weight.
I grin.
He wavers a little, straightens out with determination, and takes a few wobbly steps.
I put a hand on his shoulder – best not to let him get any ideas about running off – and lean just a little.
His knees creak and mine sigh in relief.
We shuffle the rest of the way like that.
And it all works out to the best because when we get where we’re going and I knock on Hiram Stitcher’s door with a grin full of dried blood on a face he hoped never to see again, I’ve got a free arm to use to stop him slamming the door.
We go way back, Hiram Stitcher and me.

about spring. title ideas welcomed.

The trees are rustling back
to the woken world
this week.
They shift their weight
of white
and wait,
dreaming of green.
Spring is trickling in at last,
sliding aside the snowbanks
in its own sweet time.

All in good time.

Soon enough
we are sloshing through slush
mucking through mud,
ankles to eyeballs in clouds of dust.
All the while the world is tilting,
tilting,
tipping towards the sun.

On sunshine breezes
summer birds
a-chirp, a-flirt
and a-flutter,
are winging their way
back north.
We year-round ravens squawk
our indignation
(fascination)
flap our feathers and gawk
at the gaudy colours.

Winter is dripping away
one rooftop at a time.
Wave au revoir
(it never goes for long)

Traveling Dream

.....

Although I'm sure you would notice without being told, I didn't actually write this. It's just a poem I like. And I thought I'd post it because my friends are packing (and not having fun by the sounds of it) and people who are packing should procrastinate by reading poetry about packing. It's by Marge Piercy, who's brilliant. Very.

.......

Traveling Dream

I am packing to go to the airport
but somehow I am never packed.
I keep remembering more things
I keep forgetting.

Secretly the clock is bolting
forward ten minutes at a click
instead of one. Each time
I look away, it jumps.

Now I remember I have to find
the cats. I have four cats
even when I am asleep.
One is on the bed and I slip

her into the suitcase.
One is under the sofa. I
drag him out. But the tabby
in the suitcase has vanished.

Now my tickets have run away.
Maybe the cat has my tickets.
I can only find one cat.
My purse has gone into hiding.

Now it is time to get packed.
I take the suitcase down.
There is a cat in it but no clothes.
My tickets are in the bath

tub full of water. I dry them.
One cat is in my purse
but my wallet has dissolved.
The tickets are still dripping.

I look at the clock as it leaps
forward and see I have missed
my plane. My bed is gone now.
There is one cat the size of a sofa.

another dutiful poetry post

...............

I ought to only post poetry when it's good poetry.
I shouldn't ought to post things I know perfectly well aren't very good, just because it makes somebody sad when I don't post.
But if you're friends with somebody, and they say they're sad because you haven't posted in a while - and that's pretty flattering in itself, that anybody'd be interested enough in your silly little blog to be sad when you don't post - what can you DO? When my friends are sad I'm sad, and if I'm making them sad, well...that's pretty ridiculous.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I conclude...
Blame Jesi.
That said, this is old stuff that I had kicking around. It's kicking around because it's not exactly meant to be read by other people, which means that it's icky touchy-feely love poetry.
I suppose, if you want to read it like this, it sort of chronicles a relationship.

................



Unfortunate Perfection

Yesterday I pretended to slip,
dipped my hands in motor oil
so I wouldn’t be tempted to touch you.
You are
so perfect.
I knew, but
I’d forgotten the effect
of the dimple in your shoulder
the way you laugh
(never with me)
when you want someone to notice.
The way you smile
(only at me)
when you know I notice
everything.
I am overwhelmed.
Even without the oil,
you are too perfect to touch.

Unfiltered

We talked about
nothing
for an hour
and then you said
you had to go
and I said
I loved you.
It slipped out so easily, as if
I’d said it a thousand times
and maybe I had;
But never out loud.
There was a moment
a stumbling.
you tried to smooth things over
and I tried to laugh
but couldn’t quite.
‘I love you’ hung between us,
waiting to be taken in
or taken back
or swept aside,
unwanted.
It was not my intention
to say it;
the truth has a way
of slipping out.

Complicated

I wake up logical
eloquent
determined,
and you
undo me
with a single breath.
What is this? That thing
called love?
I do not call this
(degrading)
business, with the pounding heart
and sweating hands
love.
I call it just
a complication
and wish it would go
away.

Sleeping Over

You make it too easy to pretend.
Your breath a whisper on my cheek
your hand in mine,
the line of your leg.
You.
Your rules are impossible.
Look but don’t touch
or do touch
but only so far
no further.
When did the line of friendship
get so crooked?
When did you?
When did I?
I press kisses to your wrists
(is this allowed?)
trace the side of your face
with fingers that shake
waiting to be told enough.
Watching for the warning in your eyes.
When you leave,
I lie in the place you left,
bury my face in the warmth
where your skin has been
and despair.
When you leave
it is hard to remember to breathe.
One day, maybe,
we will stop playing games and pretending,
and I suppose that will be the end
and I suppose I will go on breathing
and I might even be relieved,
although it doesn’t feel that way.
And one day, maybe,
I will stop wanting you,
and will be able to think
of this night
and laugh.
(but maybe, too,
the sky will fall tomorrow
and save me the trouble.)

Shooting Star

Kiss me, Sweet – tomorrow we’ll pretend
it was the rum, the music
the moonlight.
Hold me closer – we’ll pretend
the stars made us dizzy
and we stumbled
together.
It won’t be enough:
I owe you forever
not just a moment
we’ll have to regret with the morning;
It isn’t enough
but oh my sweet – the trouble with time
is it passes
Tonight is trickling
through our fingers and tomorrow
waits in the wings.
Kiss me and make me
forget…

Fun and Games

I am like mud.
You trample me down because
you like the feel of me between your toes.
I’m fun to play with but don’t forget
never forget
to wash your hands of me
when the game is done.
Don’t take me home;
scrape me off at the doormat
shake me off out the window
scrub as hard as you have to
to send me spiraling down the drain
where I belong.


Rulebound

I have an idea.
Let’s play
by my rules
for a change.
Let’s see
how you do
when it’s you
uncertain
unhappy
confused…
Or better yet
let’s just
not play –
pack up
the board
stack up
the cards
and walk
our separate
ways.
I daresay
seeing the back
of you
would do me
wonders.

Lessons

It’s easier than you might think.
Just like the Wile E. Coyote
You can run on air
but only if you don’t look down.
Here’s a tip for you
first time flyers:
don’t.
Gravity doesn’t like
being forgotten.
She packs a punch
so next time you’ll remember.
(next time I’ll remember)



Indelible

You are gone
(and yet remain)
I throw away the presents
the pictures
the memories
sweep the floor
change the sheets
paint the walls.
I scrub my skin
red and raw
(it stings like your fingers did)
till it smells like nothing
but pain,
go through my inbox
and delete you
key by key.
(It isn’t enough.)
I have washed you out
of my world
(but my soul was less
accessible –
your voice still walks
through my thoughts
and the ghosts of your hands
still slide
down the small of my back)
you are gone
and oh
why won’t you go?

Ayla: Installment 4 (I think...)

I swear, the next thing I post will be a poem. The only people who actually like these things are dillon and jesi.
.................

Call me crazy but it feels good to be working again. To be elbow-deep in somebody’s body, the smooth stretch of latex over my fingers, the operating room, the smudges of blood on my forehead.
If I close my eyes, I could be right back on Ariel, blushing all the way to the roots of my silly country-girl hair. I can feel Sid’s eyes on me, and I can remember the way my skirt brushed the calves of my legs, the way I got goosebumps, and how clumsy my fingers were, sewing up the cut he got the day before he did a runner.
I don’t close my eyes though.
What kind of surgeon would I be?
Berma rolls one of the other patients past on a gurney, covered up by a sheet. One for him, one for me, and another waiting in the hall for whoever finishes first.
I’m in no hurry, mind. Wo de ma, ain’t it enough to slice somebody open and swap all their organs for different ones without worrying about getting it done in a rush?
It’s a girl under my knife. Pretty, although she’ll have one winner of a scar when this’s done. You can’t slice someone open this way and not leave a mark. Leastways not without some better equipment than they gave me.
The one in the hall’s a woman too, drugged to the teeth just like this one. You hardly know their hearts are thumping, least you have your hand right on them.
One man, two women, Captain said, so Berma must be slicing up the man just now. Suits me fine. I’m plumb fed up with male patients.
“Looks much neater when you do it, Ayla.”
I look over my shoulder to see that Captain Gordon’s standing behind me. He come in so quiet, never mind those heavy boots of his, that I didn’t hear a thing.
“Berma’s got blood up to his eyebrows,” he keeps on. “I don’t know what he’ll have left to sew together by the end.”
I smile cause I think he means me to, and then turn back to the girl.
Oh, I spose I’m grateful to Captain for remembering me from that voyage to Osiris, and for bailing me out of this spot of trouble, but I’m leery of him all the same. He’d be rough around the edges if he weren’t so greasy.
“Keep up the good work, bao bei,” he says, and when it’s obvious I’ve got nothing to say, he leaves, the door clicking shut behind him.
I rinse off a kidney, sponge it dry and set it aside. I hope he was joking about Berma. I’m no top-class surgeon myself, but I know my stuff. I’ve got farm-rough hands and I’ll never talk pretty like some of those fancy-pants born-and-bred-to-be-rich types, but I know a thing or two about working hard, and I passed all my exams.
This feels like an autopsy, my patient’s so still.
I wonder how much she’s getting paid, and if it’s more than me. It don’t take much skill, what she’s doing, but it’s sure a damn site riskier than my job. Nobody really knows what these things’ll do to her insides, although most likely it’s safe.
I hope.
The ship rumbles a little and I steady myself against the table.
Start sewing from naval to neck, hurrying just a little now that the hard part’s done.
A half hour later, as I stretch the new woman out on my table, Berma rolls past again, finished, I guess. This time the sheet’s slipped a little, and a hand is hanging out.
And that hand, it fair breaks my heart, because whoever owns it ain’t more than a boy. Hairless and smooth and a bit sun-browned. Just a kid.
I swallow the lump of shame in my throat and turn back to the new patient, press the scalpel to the hollow below her breastbone.
I make the first cut.
Somehow it don’t feel so great anymore.

Sid: Installment 2

I have it on good authority that Dillon is not going to hate me for writing/posting this, which is really very happy-making.
For anybody who's interested in reading non-serenity writing, I'll try to post something else later tonight.
..................

“Qiang bao hou-zi freeloader.”
Some muttered cursing, the smell of somebody else’s feet, and then I’m curled up clutching my gut because it all of a sudden hurts like hell.
There sure are softer ways ‘n this for a man to wake up.
I could be down on Ariel, listening to that blushing intern snore like a freighter engine. I could watch her wake up, see that flustered little smile that was worth getting the gou shi kicked out of me for.
I could be dosed up on pain meds for the knife-slash on my arm, ‘stead of taking a kick to the ribs after a night sleeping in a cargo hold.
“Wake up so I can throw you off my ship!”
I open my eyes and roll, looking up to see that wang ba dan of a captain winding up for another kick.
Bastard.
The guy who let me on last night – the mechanic, I figured – ain’t nowhere to be seen, and I know better than to think anybody’s raring to rescue the battered mercenary from yet another beating.
Which don’t mean I’m fixing to sit here and take it. I always was better at giving a beating than taking one.
But I’m stiffer than I thought, and I never finished that physio, so my knees give out when I try to get up, and I take a boot to the chin.
Wang ba dan has steel-toed boots.
Through a mouthful of blood for the second time this week, I spit out a string of curses and struggle to my feet.
“This how you usually treat paying passengers?” I ask.
No way is this asshole getting anything other than a broken nose from me, but as he’s currently holding a steel bar the size of my forearm, it don’t hurt none to start off polite.
“Paying passenger?” He looks me up and down with a sneer. “Riffraff like you couldn’t pay passage from here to those cargo doors.”
I look at the cargo doors. Depending on how far from planet-side we are, those doors are either escape or a death sentence. Not a risk I’m planning on taking just now. But the engines are going double-time, a sure sign that we’re coming in for a landing somewheres.
“How much?” I ask. There’s a credit disk on a chain round my neck, and I pull it out, show it to him with a smirk to match his own.
He taps the steel against his free hand. “That Tong Meng credit crap won’t work around here, cowboy.”
He’s a gorram liar, and we both know it. A ship like this should be flying back towards Osiris by the end of the week, and it’s only the outer planets that won’t take credit.
Which makes me wonder if he ain’t leading up to something unpleasant.
“Cash?” I ask. I lean down for my seabag and he cracks me with that bar, right at the base of my back, hard enough that it lays me out flat.
I bite back a scream. This ain’t my month. Son of a bitch’ll kill me with that thing.
“And have you take out that sawed-off shotgun in there?” He laughs, and I know he’s been through my bag, pawed through my stuff and taken, at very least, what money I had there. “I don’t think so.”
It’s been a while since I was laid low like this. Surprised out of sleep by some asshole with a weapon. I must be slipping. But now there’s a cold ball of hate curling up in my stomach and I don’t care what shape I’m in – I’m walking away from this better off than he is.
So I wait till he winds up for another swing, listen for the sound of that metal bar sweeping down towards me, and then I roll.
It hits the ground where my head was, and he hits the ground a heartbeat later, groaning from a kick to the back of the knees.
I follow it up with few strategic blows, mostly to the soft places on his body, and then while he’s wheezing, kick that bar out of the way and hobble to my feet.
Shen sheng de gao wan does it ever hurt.
I can feel the ship settling, lurching a bit, as we go through some planet’s atmosphere. If the mechanic told the truth, we ought to be on Persephone in about five minutes.
I take a look at the captain, who’s still having trouble getting a breath. Ginger hair, a bit sunburnt. He’s younger than me, softer around the middle but harder around the head I’ll bet. The kind likes to tell women he owns his own ship, never mentioning it’s just his older brother’s and all he does is supervise the cargo and beat up stowaways.
I spit a mouthful of blood to the deck by his head.
“You were planning on letting me off before we hit atmo, weren’t you?” I ask. It’s a death sentence to shove a man out into the black, but I’ve got not a doubt that’s what he planned. You don’t rob a man who looks like me and then let him walk away.
My eye – the one that ain’t bruised as all hell from the last fight, because you’d have to be one dumb chun zhu to try and punch a thing made mostly of metal – reads his blood pressure as 200/110. Might be the fact that he’s eaten more than a few pot-pies too many over the years, but a little hunch tells me it’s not.
“No,” he gasps. “Just rough you up a bit, I swear.”
230/125. Lying ass thinks I’m twenty-three types of stupid.
I kick aside the blanket I slept under, and pull out what is currently the love of my mercenary life. Turn it over in my hands.
260/140.
“Black matte finishes,” I tell him. “Ebony handle, .55 rounds. Those are hard to make these days.”
He scrambles up to his knees but stops moving when I flick off the safety.
“This here is Miranda,” I say, “and she don’t take kindly to some zhu bajie thinks he has more right to her than I do.”
He licks his lips, red-eyed and holding back tears.
“Your bag’s by the door,” he says. “I hadn’t had time to take anything out…it’s all there. Please…you can go…just please take the gun off me.”
Instead of answering, I roll my digital eye, which makes him flinch, and lean forward so that Miranda’s kissing his forehead.
“How much do I owe you?” I ask. “How much do you charge for passage normally, you worthless wang ba dan?”
A tear rolls down his cheek. “Thirty-five credits,” he whispers.
“Thought you didn’t deal in credits?” I ask lightly.
Another tear. He makes a little choking sound in the back of his throat, like he’s about to wail.
“Please,” he tells me. “Please you don’t need to pay. Please don’t…”
It’s irresistible.
“Thirty-five credits, eh?” I grin, no doubt treating him to the sight of my poor bleeding gums. “Incidentally, that’s what it takes to make seven rounds for this gun, my friend. And seven rounds is exactly what this chamber holds. Since you won’t take my credit, what say I pay you in something a bit more…metallic?”
The ship shakes a little and the engines whine. We’re touching down.
He licks his lips again, crying hard now. All he can do is shake his head.
This man has not endeared himself to me. He woke me up with a kick and some foul language, pawed through my seabag, and damn near broke some more of my bones. Not to mention wanting to toss me out into the vacuum of space. Most of me heartily wishes I had stayed in Ayla’s bed, and that makes me a mite more cantankerous than I’d otherwise be.
I feel a bump under my feet, and the engines cut out. Landed.
I wink at him, even though it hurts through the bruises, and he drops his gaze to the floor.
“Nice doing business with you,” I say.
Then I pop the chamber. Seven rounds of expensive ammunition clatter like dice onto the floor.
When he looks up at me in astonishment, I pull back Miranda and slam her ebony handle into his face, hard. There is a crunch of bone, a gush of blood, and he is wailing again.
“Have a nice trip back to Osiris,” I tell him, and limp away.
With a start like this, today can only get better.

a poem! after a long time without a poem! oh my poor poetry-deprived blog!

I fell and sprained
my dignity
while walking past
your door…
just tripped and fell
head over heels
and tumbled to
the floor.
You offered help,
I shook my head
and hurried on
my way.
You smiled and
you shook your head
and went about
your day.
By evening I
was limping and
I blushed to see
you smile
I would have limped
right by you but
you said
oh stay a while.
And then
and then
and then
and then
I stayed
till it
was after ten…
and you and I
and I and you,
we smiled till
the night was through…
My dignity
I am afraid
has parted ways
with me
it packed its bags
this morning and
had driven off
by three.
We watched it go
and smiled and
we brewed
a pot of tea…
My dignity and I,
I think,
were never meant
to be

Ayla again

becuase I don't REALLY want Jesi to hate me...

.............

They killed my parents.
Killed them and took their skins and splashed that gorram death-ship with blood from keel to hull. War paint. In case anybody looking at that ship wouldn’t know what come for them.
And before they killed my family they did things to them – did things a girl could go crazy trying not to imagine.
Nobody on the core planets believes in Reavers. Just ignorant rim-lore, according to the Alliance. They won’t allow as there’s anything in the ‘verse they don’t have under their thumb. But you can’t make Reavers go away by shutting your eyes and chanting about tall-tails.
It was the neighbours found the bodies. What was left of them. Pieces of Ma spread all round the kitchen, Dad’s big frame draped over the fence.
I threw up when Antoinette told me, all over the clean white sink in the surgery room, and then I wiped my lips and went to pack my bag.
Alliance likes to talk like they ain’t – aren’t – so corrupt as all the rest of us. A fair government. Everyone equal. Everyone contributing to the whole of one great society.
The Alliance talks a whole lot of xiong mao niao, if you ask me.
All the money owing, all the money that was meant to go to paying for my med training, all that – gone. Government property in exchange for the lease of land that they say expired two years ago.
They drop my father on a gou shi moon circling a gou shi planet that hasn’t turned out anything worth eating since it’s been settled. They let him make it into a prime piece of farm land, and then when he dies treat him like he was a tenant.
That farm was his life.
There come days where I don’t know who to hate more; the Reavers for killing my family, or the Alliance for screwing them over after the fact.
I petitioned them too. In debt up to my eyeballs, not a living relative in the known worlds, I pleaded with them to waive the fees.
Not a hope.
Not a stroke of pity or fellow-feeling or fairness.
So it’s up to them what I’ve come to.
Them and the gorram Reavers.