Blue for Boys

Britain, 60

“If I do not return tomorrow,” Boudicca said, “you will be Queen of the Iceni.”

            Her youngest daughter looked up at her, tangled red hair washed in muddy rain that day and hanging like a wedding veil around her face. “I know.” There was fear to speak of, but neither spoke it. “Can’t I go with you?” The woman hesitated in sharpening the long knife in her torn hands grown too quickly into leather, so they cracked and bled when she moved them. She gave her daughter a thoughtful frown. “It’s just this,” the girl said in quick explanation. “If you and Erein don’t return tomorrow… then I would rather not go on living.” The mother did not answer. “Please, let me fight for my people as you do.”

            The mother took a slow, deep breath, conflicted no doubt as he was. And then she reached her cracked hand to pick up a dish of thick woad on the packed ground. She knelt in front of her red-haired daughter, the girl’s eyes alight with excitement and with the dread that morning would bring. The mother pressed her thumb into the woad and smeared it across her daughter’s face. She painted her neck, her shoulders, her arms and her legs. When she was done it looked as though she had twirled in a spray of celestial mud. The cracked hand pressed the young shoulder.

            “Blue, for your strength in battle tomorrow.”

            The morning found blue bodies sprawled out on the battlefield, and the red cloaks of Rome stood triumphant.

Jamaica, 1761

            Escaped indentured servants and criminals were sent there to get their hands dirty in indigo. Princes and rich men must have blue for coats, and criminals must be put to good use.

            They came in several different colors, those hands that picked the weed-plant that would slowly kill them. They came in shades of blue and purple, depending on the shade of skin. A whole history of the world was painted on that canvas, and after they died were buried to let the history be stripped by the earthworms and time.

            A girl escaped. It was unheard of. But escape she did, and stowed away on a ship, and then raced north, into the colonies, where she stole a pair of gloves to cover the recognizable marks of a criminal, of a slave.

            The criminal stopped by a stream to wash, to scrub until her skin was raw. She did not know that the riders that came to water their horses were men of the law. They saw her hands and knew her for what she was, grasped her wrist and hair and pulled her out of the stream, dripping-wet and half naked. “This,” snarled the man, his freed belt in his free hand, “is the work you were made for.” He twisted the criminal’s purple wrist. They abused her and then they sent her back to the indigo plantation.

New York, 1918

            “We’ll be back with the Metropolitan Songbirds in just a moment. And now, ladies and gentlemen, a message from our sponsor.”

            “Louise, turn off that racket,” said the husband in the chair. He took a deep breath of the curdling smoke heavy in his pipe. “I’m trying to read.”

            “Well, I happen to like the Songbirds,” the wife said matter-of-factly, and turned up the volume dial. She leaned over her protruding belly into the speaker, rapt in her attention.

            “ – to say congratulations to all those women out there in the blush of new motherhood.”

            She blushed, and looked at her husband as though she’d just proved a point.

            The radio crackled on. “We’ve got all of your new-baby needs. Buy soft plush dolls, lightweight blue fabric for your little boy’s jumper or pink for your little girl.”

            The wife frowned, sitting up. “I thought blue was for girls?”

            “Hm?” The husband looked up from his book. “What’s that?”

            “All the girls told me that I should get blue curtains for the baby’s room if it’s going to be a girl.” Her brow knitted in distress, wringing her hands. “You know I had that dream last week. And I just finished all those pretty blue curtains…”

            “It was just a dream,” the husband grunted, and turned the page of his history book, and smoked his pipe. “Who knows? We might have a baby boy. And then it’ll be blue for boys.”

Washington, D.C., 2012

            The slut sat before Congress and presented an argument on behalf of women for birth control.

            The following week found more than a handful of stones cast at her. They cut red blood from her blue veins. We want to watch, they said, The point is reproduction, why would you do it without wanting babies, this is what you were made for, you woman, you slut…

            In her navy blue coat the slut straightened her back and drew strength around her as though preparing for battle. She scoffed at the labels they threatened to tag her toes with. The slut was made for more than carrying blue-bonneted babies.

            Until one day when the man said sorry, we don’t cover that, and she was trapped in servitude. But they blamed her for that, too. So the slut became the mother, and dreamed of a day for her daughter when blue would be for girls again.

Query Letter Draft

Dear Agent,

When an unlikely crew from Earth sets out to make first contact with a mysterious alien race, no one could have predicted the supernatural war they accidentally incite between extraterrestrials and the gods who are eager to put the mortals back in their place.

Major Hugo Dunstan sees ghosts. To be specific, the ghosts of his pregnant wife and young child, recently deceased in a car crash. Able to see but unable to touch them, he is faced with two options: suicide or embarking on the dangerous mission the government has employed him on. He and his unlikely crew, including a straight-laced anthropologist and an unlikely hero of an android, set out to meet a distant alien race Earth has recently come into contact with. After being thrown off course and kidnapped by extraterrestrial slave traders, things go from bad to worse when they uncover a plot to enslave humankind. War with neighboring planets soon becomes the least of their problems when a host of gods decide the mortals’ time is up.

MASTER OF NOTHING is a science fiction/fantasy novel complete at 121,000 words. While it is my first finished novel, I have two separate novels I am currently working on in the fantasy genre. I also have published poetry in Images Magazine and in Yemassee Magazine.

March 2-11: Editing Madness!

I'm writing it down here so I can hold myself accountable.

I'm about 2/5 of the way done through editing Master of Nothing.  That is, my favorite kind of editing: Line edits, word changes, finding all the places where I put (INSERT DIALOGUE HERE). You know. The fun stuff.

What terrifies me is the hard editing that is to come: Cutting scenes, cutting characters, cutting subplots. "But why?" writer-me says, on the verge of tears. "The story isn't what it is without that subplot. Every good narrative has to have bird plague in it." True story.

"Because. Not every agent in the world is going to understand that you are certifiably insane." Editor-me heads off the emotional outburst, sitting stiffly in a rolly-chair (Her one solace). She taps her pen on the manuscript. It is covered in red lines. "Nobody is going to pick up this book thinking, 'What I need right now is just a nice, complex, metaphorical romp.'"

"B-but... there's some action in there... there's some plot and good relatable themes to everyone..."

"Right. After you kill off all your main characters." Dang. Another true story.

"Don't readers like that? When everyone dies?" Writer-me looks at the manuscript in dismay, watches it bleeding.

Editor-me takes a covert sip of beer. She's going to need it. "I'll let you answer that one for yourself."

And so begins the week of editing, or as I like to call, NaNoEdWe...ek. (Not an actual thing). I've got the cork board, the highlighters, pens, sticky notes, manuscript all printed out and looking pretty in a binder. I know there is serious work to be done. I just wish that it was done already... You know. When I wrote the dang thing.

Considering this is my first completed novel, I'm actually pretty proud of myself thus far. But I suppose the reason I'm writing in a blog and not editing is because I'm scared witless. I don't want to cut out whole scenes. Hell, I'm not even sure I want to read the thing again.

But it must be done.

And so, with pens and stickies and highlighters, etc. etc., in hand, on March 2 I shall begin finishing editing. My goal is to be completely done by March 11 (I do well with due dates). After that, I begin querying. That's another gauntlet in itself, but Writer-me refuses to face that yet. She's still trying to stitch up the wounded manuscript in a way that won't make her look like an over-protective mother.

What are your thoughts on editing? What are your best methods? How many drafts do you usually go through? Is it indeed possible to come out with a sliced-and-diced (*gulp*) manuscript that writer-you still likes? Blog me or twitter me! @piratequibbles

Rhythms

I think I left my cell phone in my pocket again. It’s beating rhythmic time on the inside of the washing machine. Ba-da-DUM, ba-da-DUM, DUM, DUM. In Oceanside, Grandma has to hold each of our arms to get across the sand that collapses in tiny implosions with every step. The water numbs our legs until we don’t feel the cold. We go in anyway, because we can’t look at ourselves in the mirror if we go home and say we didn’t go in the water. DUM, DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM. The water is nothing like Neptune today. Today he is a sleepy old man, patting the shore’s arm as if to say “Thanks for holding me up, I’m going to take a nap now.” Maybe he’ll wake up later. My brother and I wade far out onto the beach, teasing little fish and anemones that make our toes tingle. With the angle of the sun splayed out over the water we look like we’re walking on it. Slosh, slosh, slosh, DUM, ba-da-DUM. Maybe I should rescue my cell phone from the washing machine instead of write about it. This beach is full of mysteries, full of lost treasures and screams. We find sea-caves and crawl into them. The sand sifts cold between our toes like the first footprints of the world’s making. The ceilings and walls are hammered-metal smooth, smoother, with slick molds clinging to them. “You can fit.” “No I can’t.” He could fit – he doesn’t have hips like mine - but he doesn’t want to, because he knows what I know and that is that there are screams in the back of those caves waiting to happen. Neither of us is Indiana Jones. Slosh. Slosh. The machine winds down and stops abruptly, with a click of the latch. Grandma is cold and tired. We take her back to the car. I’m afraid to look in the washing machine, because sturdy as it is, no cell phone could take a beating like that and survive. We crawl out of the caves and run along the beach heralding a lost Frisbee, our found artifact. Unexpectedly, the washing machine starts up again.

Update.

So you're probably wondering what happened to NaNo and what's going on now, considering my last post was two months ago.

NaNo went better than I could have expected! On November 30, just moments before my writing buddies arrived to celebrate TGIO (Thank God It's Over), I got to exactly 100,001 words on "Master of Nothing." Since then I've written about 20,000 more on it (Finished the book on December 31) and have begun editing. I can't wait until it's complete and I can start sending to agents!

As far as other writing adventures, I've had accepted two poems: "Purple" to Images Magazine and "Rotten Fruit" to Yemassee Magazine. How exciting!

I've also begun a new novel; its idea has been rattling around in my head for a little while and didn't present itself as a complete novel idea until recently. I plan on doing an impromptu 50k words in February with my trusty writing buddies - who else is in!

Day 20

'Tis the beginning of day 20, and my inspiration is quickly petering out. I know what I want to do, but not how to get there. And so there is a lot of staring at the screen happening.

I've been told that these are the days, exhausted and desperate for any words to write, with bloodshot eyes and that moment when I finally tell myself no more snacks until I write something - ANYTHING - down on paper - these are supposed to be the days when the best, most frenzied writing crawls itself up from the depths of the soul to splatter all over the page in some sort of impression on modern art.

I am hoping this is what will happen.

And if not, December is for editing. And so it shall be done.

Day 11!

It is day 11 on my 2011 NaNoWriMo journey, and I have officially got 50,000 words!!! HUZZAH! *confettis* Now, on to the second half of my journey, getting to 100,000 words....

Last night was wonderful! I got to see some old NaNo buddies and some new ones (In person!). We  had fish and chips and we wrote and it was epic!

To see my progress there's a little calendar on the right. Bright green is days when I did wondrously well on wordcuont. Yellow is above my daily mark. Orange is below my daily mark, and red is "Monumentously poorly". hehe! Hopefully I don't have too many of those days. But I've built up a steady rhythm of doing nearly 4k per day and I hope that carries me through those days when I don't do so well (Thanksgiving break is coming up - that means very little writing and more real-life things. Everything in moderation! [?])

Till later, o readers!

Day 5 of Noveling Madness

I am currently just over 22,000 words and finished with Part I (Of three parts). I'm getting into this sweeping sci-fi much more than I thought I would! (Yes, things are a little hazy on the actual science, but that's what editing in December/January is for, right?) At least I'm super intrigued with the story.

Here's another short excerpt from Master of Nothing, Part I

**

They had been standing there for hours, the boy slowly drawing closer to Ashland in an attempt not to get sold off alone. He looked hungry and just as cold as her. Lan gave them a sort of soggy flat bread and a rounded block of something that seemed to consist solely of herbs, and they ate quietly between moments when various aliens inspected them. It was fascinating to see the different creatures and their garbled languages. Oddly enough, for no reason whatsoever, those who interacted with Lan and haggled spoke in English or an equally Earthen language. Ashland tried to reason this out in her mind but didn’t manage it. But at the very least the concentration on the people around her and their strange cultures kept her mind off the ground a hundred feet or more below, off the fact she was soon to become a laborer for one of them completely against her will. And as much as she wanted to run after hours of being mulled over by potential buyers, she knew there was no place to go.

Eventually a slow, steady creature made its way toward her. It was most humanoid of all the creatures she had seen, with very pale, almost purely white skin covering its lean body. It wore the barest minimum of clothing. But all of this information was dimmed by a fact that made Ash’s heart leap in recognition and hope. The nearly-human creature had no eyes.

He nodded to her, and she smiled despite her weariness. “How much?” he asked politely. His voice rumbled throatily, without being guttural. There was a musical cadence to it that set Ashland’s mind immediately at ease. “For the woman.”

“Hundred ten.” Lan had hiked the price up Ashland notice but the Hume did not seem to notice or mind. He calmly took out the appropriate amount from his pocket.

The human boy beside her started crying unexpectedly, gripping Ashland’s hand. “Please, please buy me too… Please, have mercy…”

Not all alien species understood or took stock in mercy, but as it was the male Hume hesitated, cocking his ear as if listening, and then nodded. He paid for the boy, too, and then gestured. “Follow.”

The boy sniffled and skipped hurriedly ahead, eager to please his new master. Ashland, too, stayed close to him, nervous of all the others who might have had an eye on her. They walked across the sky back to the platform and into the skyscraper, then down the endless amount of rough rubble that stood in for steps. Through a tunnel, and onto the landing strip, at the side of which a small ship, hardly large enough to break atmosphere, waited for them. Not one of three of them spoke, silent and each taking the moments as they came to them. Inside the ship was small but not cramped, and clean. It was a relief after the past weeks. The planet was at best mildly polluted, not to mention the cells for the slaves they had stayed in. Even (SHIPNAME), while never dirty, had not been clean. It had been cold and sterile. But the Hume’s ship smelled like clean mountain air and nothing else. Not even the whirring of the machinery seemed to cause a change in the air.

“Come, strap in.” He stretched a long finger on a long white arm to two seats just behind the command chair. Odd that there were exactly two of them. Ashland sat and the boy followed her lead as they buckled their seatbelts for takeoff. The ship already humming, the Hume turned it down the takeoff strip. He waited a long moment, sitting in his chair. Had he eyes Ash would have thought he was staring. Eventually, with no warning, he fired up the extra engine and they were zooming off the strip up, rocketing with the now-familiar feeling of movement sickness rattling her stomach through the layers of atmosphere and into the evening sky, bright with the light of the turning suns and increasingly darker as they went. Only when things evened out, the ship stopped shaking so violently and the Hume took off his own seat belt, did Ashland do the same. The boy quickly unstrapped himself and went in the back, rushing to find a toilet to be sick in.

There was a moment of silence between them, a slow, easy smile on the Hume’s face. Ashland broke the silence. “You are Hume?”

He nodded slowly. “I am sorry I could not come sooner. Your comrades are well away by now.”

Her parched lips parted a little. “How did you know where we were? We were not scheduled to arrive for another fortnight.”

Again he nodded. “I knew.” Which didn’t answer her question at all. She remembered several chatter conversations she’s listened to in her spare moments, and those few had not made much sense at all. It seemed there was something the pair of Hume plugged into her ear knew, something fundamentally different in the way they thought about things that she simply couldn’t understand. They would have gaps in logic and continue on as though nothing had happened, or randomly change topics for no apparent reason.

Finally, she responded, dropping that subject as long as it was going to be fruitless. “Thank you much for your help,” she said in his language. She’d been practicing. “I am Doctor Ashland Hart.”

“I am Anath.” He smiled a little, leaning back against his chair as the stars hurtled around them. “You have taken time to learn our language, Ashland.”

She blushed a little with the praise, grinning back. “Of course. You are our hosts, I would not think of doing anything less.”

The boy returned from the toilet, a little pale but otherwise looking well. He sat down in the chair again, eyes averted as he cast curious glances at the Hume.

“I am Anath,” the alien said again in French. “What are you called?” There was a tone of politeness in his voice Ash recognized, something similar in the way she had heard the Hume speak to children.

“Luksin.” He looked up, a little hopefully. “Where are we going, sir?”

“Home, Luksin.” He smiled a little gently, and then stood and went to a set of cabinets locked during takeoff. He pulled the lock loose now and opened a drawer, lithe hand opalescent in the clean light as he removed a small jar. He fastidiously closed the door and opened the jar, offering its contents to the young man. “It will help your stomach.”

After only a moment’s hesitation the boy hurriedly emptied the contents of the jar, a strange green flecked paste, into his hands and then licked the thick, stringent texture off his fingers. Anath corked the jar and put it back in its place before returning to his seat. Ashland barely managed to keep from protesting. She should have some of that, too. She shot a look at the young man, but he looked so starved and pathetic she instantly eased her swift judgment of him.

“I must admit,” she said at length, turning to her rescuer. “I am relieved to speak to someone relatively intelligent, after the rest of them.”

“We are all intelligent in our own ways,” he said easily, that loose smile on his face. “But our intelligence is most like yours, so your feeling of familiarity is understandable.”

She nodded, not entirely sure she agreed with him. Ashland had always been able to empathize with human beings, no matter what culture they came from or what strange rituals they attached themselves to. Aliens were different. At least the Hume made some sense…

“I meant to ask you something.”

“You mean to ask me many things,” the Hume replied evenly. “You may ask one before you are tired.”

Ash frowned a little, curious at the way he phrased it. She felt a little tired, but certainly not compared with all the unanswered questions she needed addressed. She cleared her throat, leaning forward a little and speaking carefully in his language. “Luksin said there were more humans here, in this galaxy. How can that be, when we have sent no more from Earth?”

            Anath was still for a moment. She knew that he knew the answer, somehow. It was just that he was deciding whether to give it to her or not. “You have sent none,” he said in that calming voice. “But they have come.”

            Ash yawned, the back of her hand to her mouth. His answer made no sense, much like much of the speech of the Hume. “How?” What day was it, she wondered? How long had they been on that planet, in the marketplace in the air? Several lifetimes seemed to have passed in the course of however many days since they had been abducted from their (SHIPNAME).

            “Ah, that is another question.” He smiled. “You have been awake for very long. There is a bed down the hall and down the stairs.”

            She didn’t bother to ponder at the accuracy of his earlier sentiment. She was tired enough that the mention of the bed was the single best metaphor she could think of for necessary happiness at the moment, and she found her feet following the path of his directions. Her feet clinked lightly against the punctured metal of the stairs and she fell into the bed at the bottom. It was soft but practically so, and she was asleep before she was aware how clean the bed in the hold of a ship was.

Day 2: NaNo Progress and Excerpt

Novel is coming along quite well! Our Halloween party was successful in that for hours and hours after midnight we wrote. We woke, we wrote. We ate, we wrote. We went home, took naps, and wrote. I am currently 1,000 words away from my 10,000 word goal for the night.

To those of you who are curious, here is an excerpt from my work in progress:

***

“You look ridiculous. You know this.” Dice glanced up at Ashland before kneeling beside the bloody pool of the Captain. His eyes stared up, shocked beyond anything he could have expected, at the hot light of the ceiling. The medic took his pulse. It pumped once over the course of two minutes. She shook her head. “Dead.” She took a pen from her pocket and pushed it into his throat, holding aside the gore to look at the source of the death. “Larynx is torn. Jugular also, obviously.” The blood was still pouring out of him.

 “My God…”

"It’s a clean swipe. I wonder if the thing has teeth. Looks more like a knife wound than an animal bite.”

 “No more details, please.” Ashland looked positively pallid, even considering her normally pale complexion. She’d turned away, as far away from the blood as she could manage.

 “I told you!” Marc laughed almost giddily, wildly. “Nobody listened. Please, let’s go home…”
There was a silence then as it sunk in. Their Captain was dead. NASA would be pissed. Who knew what might come of the bad media coverage.

 Then again, NASA might never know he’d died, or that they were now hurtling in an alien ship toward whatever fate said creatures had awaiting them.

 Boris’ machinery buzzed, beeped a little as he blinked and looked around. “If it would help he may have my spare larynx.”

 They all looked at him, uncertain what to say. Dice laughed darkly. “No, I’m afraid that won’t help.”
“It is within easy reach. I suppose we can wait until a proper doctor with replacement parts can look at him.” He shifted, as though he were uncomfortable, frowning slightly.

 “I take offense to that,” Dice said.

 “I meant none,” he replied.

"You know he’s dead, right? He’s not like you. He doesn’t get to have replacement parts.”

 Boris frowned, eyes scanning those around him, and then landing on the body in the middle of the room. They were quiet, letting the facts sink into him, though none were sure just how much he could understand. Did he feel grief like the rest of them? Perhaps they would never know. He jerked suddenly, blinking a little. “There is something wrong near my batteries.” He jerked again, catching himself before he could fall over. “Does anyone have a screwdriver?”

 Hugo did. It was on a small clip in his pocket, among other handy things. He didn’t know if it was big enough to try to fight the wild bird-thing if it came back in, but it could at least do what it was made for. He knelt on the ground next to Boris, lifted the shirt up around his chest, and deftly unscrewed the four tiny screws in Boris’ lower back. The plate, soft and fleshlike to the touch, came off. Hugo reached into the cavern, felt the myriad of wires and compartment of warm batteries, and something soft. And tiny teeth. He hissed, drawing his hand back in surprise, before slowly reaching in again and lifting the ball off furry black fuzz out of the android.

Ashland let out a cry and laughed. Dice grinned, and even Marc was wide-eyed, smiling a little. “Imagine that,” Hugo murmured. The black kitten mewled, digging its claws into Hugo’s vest as it clung to it. He returned the plate to Boris’ lower back and screwed it back in place, before pulling the kitten from his vest and handing it to someone who had a greater affinity for animals. It was Boris who took it, cupping it carefully with both hands.

 “I thought my wiring was a little off.”

 “Mew,” said the kitten.

NaNoWriMo and Halloween

Today is Halloween, and you know what that means - NaNo is tomorrow! (tonight at midnight). I have a little over 12 hours left to finalize my ideas. I've been working on this sci-fi plan (a little out of my comfort zone) for about a month now and I've got all kinds of notes and books.

Tonight, we WRITE!

After our Halloween party we shall begin at midnight.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/superbecca

The Ritual

Behind a pair of glasses his glazed eyes speak words like ‘processing’ and ‘organization.’ I am sure, at one point, he begins to repeat himself. But as I stand he speaks still, staring at the chair I leave, and the record spinning around his kidneys skips a note. “Processing,” he says. “Process-process-process-progress-process-progress-progress.” The heel of my black boot crashes into the broken record, breaking it. Fluorescent lights flicker. Something oily and primal grips my ankle and laughs and laughs and bends my back to its will, saying, “Sex and wine and candles and chants. Now! Chant!” Its fingertips have lit like waxy wicks, spinning hypnotically in cold light. In my next breath my knees are pressed into the stone of an altar, I feel the strains of ritual humming in the pit of my stomach, I breathe the stench of rusted metal and cruel laughter.

Oppression

of heat, thick like fog but hotter

sticking to the inside of wailing lungs 

You kissed

but not to give, a

selfish kiss of taking

breath

like the stealing of

her first 

Apathy

in cold hands that touch

too much

too little, scraping razor-

smooth surfaces 

You cut a little

deeper in every

righteous scream, until

she was a huddled mass

of trembling blood

Hate

is hate. No symbol suits

raw enough

at least

better than

swallowing a rock 

Did you feed

it to her knowing, or

ignorant?  She didn’t

crush her teeth, but

that rock settled in

her stomach and

poisoned her slowly

from the inside

Did you know

she loved you? She

could have mothered you

and you smothered

the rain dance before

it began

Why Not?

sometimes I find myself

thinking

Why isn’t everyone

who is thin

a model

Why if

you can use big words,

don’t you

Why if they have

pairs of lungs

don’t they pull them out

of their throats singing

and strew

them in the gutters and paint

them in the murals on big walls

forever

Why

does she dance african

barefoot on former stained

glass and laugh

when she bleeds, saying,

“you knew this would

happen and you still

didn’t stop me?”

but that only

makes her stomp harder

laugh louder

Why

if I am jealous

don’t I make

love to her and see

if a little bit of her

soul can be in

mine

Painter of Words

(For later consideration in a spoken word piece: )

Oh god, why poetry?

Oh god, you ravaged my insides

You made me bleed and bleed and bleed –

For what? Poetry?

Words don’t mean anything – things mean things,

Like spokes of a gear, like a gleaming sax

Strutting in moonlight

And as far as you are concerned,

Perhaps a parrot, perhaps

A pair of squawking heads would better suit your liking,

Making you laugh and cry easy colors, easy blue and yellow colors

You could dye your shirts with.

Oh god, can’t you understand

Red is a hard color to make,

That is,

Not to make but to keep making. You can bleed

More than once but can you do it while quaking in crippling sighs?

Can you ravage anyone else’s insides

and create till they die?

There are too many types of red.

Oh god, and orange –

Is there anything more infuriating than orange?

Screams acid and massive prisons and madness.

Orange is the color of poets.

I could have done anything else. I could have made skyscrapers ten thousand stories high, I could have gone into politics and lie, I could have solved equations, engineered fluorescent eyes, I could have eaten my fill of hot apple pie, I could have heard screams for my name – I wouldn’t be shy, I could have done any small thing just to scrape by…

No.

Oh, god.

This hill stretches up into the clouds, into the mist of limping, howling things…

Red must be eked on the top of dead peaks that were never alive.

Now all there is left is try, try, try, try, try, try…

The Dangers of Getting Too Literal

Real real real real real real real!

Nonsense Realm

Maybe it's just the archetypal/mythological/dreamlike class called "Social Poetry" I'm taking right now, but I've been thinking quite a bit about not just religion in general, but about our need for it in society. I'll be writing a paper on it soon, though in the more academic realm than I mean to touch on here.

My professor's ideology is this: That there is a serious deficiency in our ability to think 'metaphorically,' in any way other than the literal. This can be evidenced in society's way of finding other ways to see the world alternatively: Altered states.

In an article I read today, Jeremy Taylor says, "Whenever an individual, or a society as a whole, begins to seriously entertain the notion that everything that needs to be known is known and that the only remaining tasks are 'refinements of administration,' that is hubris." (The Living Labyrinth).

I worry for the future of religion. I worry not because I think people are doomed to hell without it. I worry because a vital part of our lives - the subconscious, the metaphorical, the imaginatory - seems to be quite dead.

There seems to be quite a bit of religiosity in my writing, whether I'm aware of it or not. My (not-quite) finished novel from last year was based generally around the search of a demigod for his ancestry, a desperate chase after gods. I hear deities, spirits in thunder and dry spells.

I think we're all looking for religion - not in an organized religion, hell and brimfire, regulation and damnation way, but in a deep-meaning kind of way. Something that'll make us understand the World with a capital W. Not just our world, not just what to get our parents for Christmas, or when we need to get tickets to the concert, or why did the boss move up the deadline, or maybe I can sleep at night if I send 25 cents a day to help a starving kid....

The World. The Cosmos, if you will.

Anyone who's had a precognitive dream will tell you there are things we just can't understand. There are things beyond our experience of the world. Trying to explain this would be like trying to hold water in a funnel.

This does not mean you leave it up to fate. This does not mean that because you can't know things, you don't involved yourself at all with them. This is a defense mechanism: "I don't get it" is not an excuse for "It's not worth my time." Because we live in a logical world is not an excuse to not think on terms of emotions and metaphors.

You need religion. Whether you like it or not.

Janine Fitzgerald (the professor in my first paragraphs) said succinctly what I have only been trying to say to both friends of devout religion and friends without religion. (I paraphrase instead. Theft is the craft of artists). We're wasting our time arguing over whether the Christ story is fact or fiction. It doesn't matter - that's not the point. Breaking things down into logical or illogical parts steals the power from any story. If it moves you - it is real.

Perhaps this doesn't make any sense. That's alright. Lack of understanding is a humbling thing, isn't it? Not only that, but inexplicable things often make more sense in the nonsense realm. After all, who would dare explain why a joke is funny? Once you explain it, doesn't it lose all its humor?

Await: Part II

Coatracks are cold, and rigid, and entirely unfriendly, but there is one thing that can be said about them – they are loyal. Except if a sloppy, distracted hand drops you on the floor.

The wool coat was a family favorite. At least, enough to keep it from going to Goodwill. It had lasted three simultaneous generations. By that I mean ten or so years. The neck of it where it rested on the coatrack for the past three of those strained to hold itself together. White cat hair from the cat that died last year clung to it. Brown wool clung desperately to each other, breaking familial wrists upon the edge of a cliff. You could even see through it in some places. At least, here and there along the tree on the back, there was the relief of red blooms, names inscribed in Sharpie that had long ago faded.

Who knows what poetry whispers in the pockets, what tea stains the front, what overeager dog tore the lower button. In case a hand wants to mend the button, or find the whispers of metaphor, the coat hangs on the coatrack by the front door.

Half

On a knoll separated by a thousand rivers deep, against the sun and knife-sleet rain, he stands. A soft hum he sings, bleakest eyes borne of battle scars. Lies and warnings he sings, singing me to cross. He has seen blood. He had shed it. It is him I fear, this man, the defender and slayer. He calls me again, but he knows no fear, and cannot know the soft thing of woman. He holds his mystery, a sage of turmoil, and whispers the third, a plea. But I cannot move, for the cavern between us is a thousand rivers deep. The scream of cacophonous symphonies tears his throat, and the statue moves, cracking off the rust from the rain. In a flash of lightning, the strong arch of his neck curves and his teeth flash something animal.

Skyscraper

You would think the sirens the shouts the mustard on hot dogs the smoke and steam were collective screams, but really it’s a quiet torture alone. There are lots of sounds, but there is only one sound; fingernails on concrete. The bodies are filled with negative charge, so they pass each other, so close and so repellent. She suffered from extra strong nails and the biggest nail file in the world is a pair of skyscrapers. They scraped through ninety five colors of graffiti, here and there made an m an n or an h an l. There are positive charges, too, like cinema or chocolate or Jesus, and these they rub against, cling to, a ravenous sandpaper standing on end. A man on the corner said no, no no give me your blood and sweat, and she scraped her nails. She was left alone, 24 hours with the windows shut and Sinatra blaring, and scraped her nails. Nobody knew that if someone asked her to wash the dishes once more she would kill them with a broken plate and paint their names on her ceramic. At the end of the skyscraping her fingertips were bloody, and the only graffiti was red ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Manipulatable