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patchwork narrative - Love
Love
I wasn’t raised with love.
It is not a sentiment I am familiar with.
Unless you mean a synonym for sex,
making love, what does that mean?
Noble emotion that might involve
self-sacrifice, or even beautiful adoration,
smiling eyes of grateful awe for that beloved,
these are acts of fiction, lying artists
creating with smoke and splendor.
I have felt attractions, not physical
in the common sense, not love in the sense
of lust, but an essence pulled out from me,
an existential urge to touch, not in the
common physical sense.
I feel an importance of that person,
a lingering in my thoughts,
a presence beyond their immediate form
before me.
It is not that I want them to notice me,
or that I even want to notice them.
It is not this love I read of or hear cried
over in popular songs.
It is more like curiosity, a desire
to know more.
It is harmless. Just one more temporary
amusement, idle reflection to pass time.
It passes.
They pass.
People pass from view, from time, into
the vast enormity of then.
It is good not to be attached to a phantom
emotion, dependent on fragile ephemerality.
I read somewhere, and was impressed enough
to remember, that real Love, not the euphemism,
or the phantom longing, is made up of
attraction, attachment, and attunement.
All those ats.
I like the stories where true love heals all,
breaks all curses. Who wouldn’t?
That’s why stories sell.
Love will never bring me alive.
Not by any definition.
I like to think that somewhere there are children
who are loved, really loved – all the ats --
just for being in the lives brought alive
by their being together, lives brought alive
in a place of loving regard.
That’s why fantasy sells.
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Feb/25/2013, 4:32 pm
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patchwork narrative - Service
Service
Abjectly caught up in escape to greater power,
was I compliant, emboldened to succumb
to my deadly ascension?
Did I dare to believe eternal damnation
a better salvation than what I knew
of religious life?
No.
I was but as always supplicant servant
to my master, whatever master sought
whatever service.
There was no trade in compliance.
If silently I questioned assignments
based on strangeness, such wonderings
would have long ceased to entertain.
This master desired blood ritual.
He chose to intoxicate with drug injection
delivered in personal intimacy.
I, as always, did as bidden.
I did not expect the power.
I did not fear the damnation.
I expected, hoped to die, quietly.
I had not agreed, nor desired, to be reborn
as a monster.
I did not understand what I had become.
My sire teased me.
He wanted an acolyte, a minion, a fawning
admirer of his wit, charm, depravity.
I listened to his boasting stories unmoved.
When the hunger hit with such brutal clarity,
slavering instinct, he rejoiced with callous stabs
at camaraderie. He expected we would bond
in the hunt, guru and chela.
I had tasted blood in rituals, piously shared
from a common cup the spoils of sacrifice.
Almost zombie-like, bound servant, my consciousness
separate from my acts, I did as I had been
meticulously taught. I served, without luxury
of opinion, without context in which to question.
Appreciation, admiration, obsequious adoration
had not been among that curriculum. Perhaps those
inculcations would have come later, if I were so
to be groomed.
The vampire who captured me had not thought beyond
the ease of acquisition. Perhaps it was my passivity
that attracted him; yet his desire was for more active
participation in his fantasy.
I accepted his lead out of habit, stealthily into the night.
We approached a tipsy companionship of two young men
passing an alley as they headed out from partying.
Certainly they expected robbery, and defense from their
trusty revolvers.
I was as surprised as they appeared when their bullets
passed through me without comment.
I think they were more surprised when we bodily attacked,
took more precious fare than cash.
Invigorated with fresh blood, devastated by rumination,
the implications of what I had done, become, reeling
between feeling so much better and so much worse,
I began to imagine options. I began to approach understanding
that I might become free of abject servitude to powerful masters,
from that definition.
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Mar/3/2013, 4:44 pm
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patchwork narrative - Tryst
Tryst
Autumn’s stories sooth me,
though they are not of good deeds
nor merriment.
Her voice is calm, deeply clear,
etched with a fragility of presence.
Her mannerisms, bold or fluttery,
graceful as dance, she fascinates
my attention.
We have nothing, no things, but
our self-created stories to make
a party, celebration.
She has returned to walk and muse
along the river beach, where I had
carried her in rescue. I had left
her to find her way home as she
promised, disappeared from
the approach of dawn.
This solitary place of association
aligns with merging time as place
of meeting. We are both immediately
pleased, a merry fortune. Valence fits.
Energy flows.
Yet, this time is brief.
Though early in my night’s outing,
Autumn must soon be in her mother’s
sight, in their apartment, in her fixed routine.
To carry our tryst into tomorrow, I suggest
she walk me to my settlement, so she might
find me fixed in daylight hours. She shows
no disquiet at sight of my habitat, happy
to anticipate familiarity. We complete
the map, walk and talk like old chums to
her door.
As she departs from my world of night,
I feel high in transition.
I do not dare to preminisce.
Forcefully, I send my imaginings to mix
with memories that faithfully disturb,
chastise, punish with horror.
I know I must scourge myself, immerse
in Hell’s flame.
Pleasure must take its balance in pain.
I have assimilated this lesson over eons
of roaring ironies. Self-anointed thrashing
may hold the Gods’ at bay. There is no
escape from reminders of nature’s price.
Perhaps Autumn, on night’s reflection,
will save us both from further association.
Anticipation will dissipate; reason, repellence,
will set in, dispel fantasy of treasured friendship.
Or, perhaps, there is more to this story.
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Mar/6/2013, 8:05 pm
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patchwork narrative - Shame
Shame
Trained to menial service in the Name of
a sacred Lord too often taken in sacrilege,
how do I possess a moral core?
What instinct for revulsion guides my
internal tally? How does a child of sin
define evil,
or good?
Is it okay if I have no choice?
Does compulsion render me blameless?
The hunger corrupts me, invades my skin
and sinew. My tongue craves succulent
intoxication. My sense glands seek prey.
I am nothing, only all-consuming need.
Yet, I can choose.
I can become the hunger, submit to crippling misery.
No hope of death as pain worsens, debilitates,
worsens, debilitates more. Forests burn, seethe
through every nerve; sewers burst their rot to putrefy
throughout my consciousness; evil imps brutally sting
like angry wasps. Suppurating
beyond pain, wordless whimper.
No end, ever exceeding so there is no break of forgetting.
I choose again, what seems a lesser sentence.
I choose to feed on the next vessel of blood
I see. A homeless man sleeps against a building
near my entrance from my erstwhile hellhole
onto the street. I hope his dreams were of beauty.
I hope he floats buoyant dreams forever.
He forever haunts what I try to cast as dreams.
My sire had drilled in the importance of clean up.
We who don’t exist can leave no evidence.
No longer a self-organizing being, this fresh meat
is a fitting gift to feral scavengers, fellow creatures
of the night, fulfillment of nature’s wasteless cycles.
Unlike such feral beasts, I am not natural. My cycles
have no natural conclusion. Death after violent death,
never my own. Always mine.
Nightmares of falling endlessness, engraving of trauma,
what I know of eternity. Freedom’s illusion cast forward,
a conscience ever branded, bathed in fresh blood,
an endless pit of murder.
I tell myself silly stories. I maniacally laugh
at the sky, at the waves, at lively weather.
The elementals understand.
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Mar/7/2013, 3:38 pm
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patchwork narrative - Reason
Reason
There is so much that I don’t remember,
both before and after.
Perhaps memory understands what is best
deleted, edits boring bits and, if kind,
the unbearable.
I remember how I felt when I first understood
that I don’t matter. I was very young.
It was not so much revelation as
mathematical truth, practical praxis.
It has been a useful meditation,
a disinclination to connect. Better to contain
conception of my prey out of context,
disentangled from emotion, in a place of
dismissal.
Though it is not as if humanity generally
strikes me as worth consideration.
An unwholesome lot, all of us, despite
individual heritage or mewling excuse.
It’s all about who eats who, who gets to
stomp on top and call the tune.
I have never had the luxury of stature, or
charisma. Apparently the role bequeathed me
is long void.
Over so little time the landscape changes,
fashions, technologies, populations, beliefs.
Without changing, I adjust.
There are always natural victims, natural
bullies, a surfeit of people never missed
to feed on.
Is this part of Nature’s plan? Are there
sharp and hearty spawn that rise, that prosper,
while the rest struggle for every breath
in the common pit?
It’s not my world.
Neither feral instinct nor moral rectitude
are my masters. I am but another prisoner
of gravity.
There is too much time, duration;
simplicity gets tangled for effect.
I perceive signs, patterns, messages in gestures
or unexpected sensations that evoke memories.
Who I am is unimportant.
What I do is negligible.
I am my own reason for being.
How can we miss what we have never had?
What is there to know that can’t be known?
Why both with conundrum, koan or poetry?
Something has to fill the time.
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Mar/10/2013, 4:27 pm
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patchwork narrative - Practice
Practice
It can be exhilarating. The strength, the freedom from man’s rules,
the night can be glorious, a field of play.
I can, like any child, enjoy fantasy adventure.
Second senses weave bright glints and glitter through
soot and streetlights, waste and litter, make a collage of
hidden felonies, fake gaiety, the smell of fear drugged by
violence, random sex, puke and cologne.
People saunter more after dark. Relaxed by
anonymity, they fall into more primal roles.
Artificial light only adds garish color to the scene.
No actor is fooled into day’s dialog.
Hipsters, tricksters, dying stars so young,
take charge as if they create the world, as if
it were theirs alone.
I can pretend, be anything, anyone.
I am imperious, a creature apart.
Without shame, I feast on human vermin, a crusader.
But then, that tainted food repulses, even as it enlivens
with red warmth.
I lose interest in the game. It goes on too long
for sustained adoration.
Nothing pleases. Renewed energy jangles.
I have no drug to bring relief or oblivion.
I have no dear friend to call past midnight, happy to
be wakened to my voice, to be a source of love and
tethering against an abysmal brink.
What I have is the demon that I am eternally on call,
mocking.
Why should any of them care or understand or notice?
I am not meant to exist.
At best I am a joke, laughter so close to whistling at
archetypal phantom graveyards outlined in ether.
What living mind could befriend such as me?
What could I give such a friend but shame, or
perhaps callous revenge, a pet killer to vanquish
enemies, obviate fear.
I have no room to judge.
Morality has no place for me.
That beribboned box is so far away, a decorative
blip on barren landscape.
I am all I have of certain companionship, to befriend
this endless child that no one else has motive to accept
or comfort.
I am practiced at this.
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Mar/13/2013, 2:33 pm
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Re: postapocalypse
Hi libra,
I'm continuing to follow along and still finding this to be a harrowing read. The primal urges and the emotional dilemmas the N expresses are disturbing in their own right and made more so by the prison of immortality she experiences. To me this is such daunting subject matter, and again made more so by the serious but easy-to-read narrative style you are employing.
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Mar/15/2013, 11:39 am
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Re: postapocalypse
thanks, Kat, for appreciating my story
you are such a generous reader
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Mar/15/2013, 1:53 pm
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patchwork narrative - Friend
Friend
Autumn visits after school, rewarding unpleasantries
of our days.
I walk her home in the evening,
part to go about our separate business.
We learn in time together to be silly,
serious, unburdened.
Years of unshared ruminations, pretty
flights of thought, silent ideations,
troubled dreams, become presents.
No longer in held burdens, prized secrets
tumble from our lips to hungry ears.
Bubbles of lingual manna bounce freely where
shame can’t burst, break up the party.
She knows me, what I am. She is happy,
eager, to know who I am, to befriend.
I am able to be a friend with this beautiful,
lonely child. I perceive myself differently
through this unaccustomed role, through
those magical eyes that actually shine to see me.
I know not to expect. I know, I do, that any day
could not bring her ever again. I am well
versed in understanding that there is always
so much more that could go wrong than right.
She opens windows of welcome for me to see
into her bleak experience, stalwart response to
cover stigmatic confusion, stories that haunt her
and those she tells herself to create a balance
of self-made reward. So long this solitary wait has been,
she is visibly relieved to give physical voice, enjoy
safe, embracing reflection, a place of free expression,
a confidante, acceptance.
Why does this world embrace so much vileness,
leave beautiful, sad outsiders to incremental
burial in the shame of aloneness?
This is not my world. I have no ready answer.
I too have haunted stories. For my part, I rehearse
to myself, arrange words to soften, to distance
harshness. I want to let her in gently. My gifts are
dark. They need not be delivered in a manner
too heavy to absorb.
I tell her I know I am a monster.
She does not move to stop me.
She offers clear, caring, encouragement of simple
acceptance.
I tell her what she lets me understand, that I am
a child, like her, making what I can of circumstance.
When the time demands, I walk her home,
return to night and murder.
It is what I do.
Now, though, I have new stories to carry for
companionship, to focus musing on a different voice.
Autumn’s stories, fresh, flowing with scent of raw emotional
blood, awake a forgotten hunger, suppressed longings
of a frightened child.
I am eternally a monster.
That doesn’t mean I can’t be more.
I can be a giggly, giddy kid happy to anticipate
time to spend with my friend.
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Mar/17/2013, 4:32 pm
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patchwork narrative - Sacrament
Sacrament
It’s not like a meal, sustenance, mere reward
of stemming hunger. Blood lust, full-on sensual
feast, a kind of timeless ecstasy, like that other
lust I know only by stories heard or read.
Death can be escape. I don’t know about souls,
reincarnations, gods’ kingdoms in other realms.
Those were not my afterdeath experience.
For my kind death is merely prologue.
Feeding is escape, if only for miniscule
duration in the long scheme,
for that thrilling moment there is nothing else.
No memories, fears or even a feeling of now.
I am all senses, overwhelmed, holy as any
transubstantiation. I am not reason or even
consciousness in such state of instinct
necessity. Hot, pumping pleasure, mystical
bliss as raw energy feeds into me.
I become as if new, as if cleansed and free.
While the spell, trance, religious experience
endures, I am existence pure without value
or judgment. Merging of nature and supernature
fill my small vessel as if I were worthy of grace.
No guilt, no loathing, abject apology silently
screamed into the consciousness that always
returns can mitigate, speak in my favor, absolve
my crimes. I always deserve worse pain,
punishment; no suffering can suffice.
Yet, no good outcome balances as result of
such retribution. No victim is compensated.
No death is undone. No sweet rush, pitiful
victory of insane joy in conquest is nullified
or prevented.
There are those of my kind who revel in their
superiority, immortal evil, gay dance of night.
It seems easy enough a trick to learn, to love
only oneself with complete acceptance and
entitlement. Who am I to judge what fate
has made? I have heard it said that happiness
is gratitude for what we have.
I have heard that salvation begins with true
repentance, with allowing a higher power
to rule one’s actions.
These mortal sayings seem to have no
relevance to my experience.
There is no salvation without some kind
of death. Does that mean I have been saved
by and for evil?
Am I an alternate angel, dark and wingless?
Can I take any comfort in the smallness of
my violence in light of mortal wars?
No, I am not soldier trained by sophisticated
propaganda. A solitary practitioner without
pressure of peers or superiors, I have only myself
to blame.
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Mar/26/2013, 4:48 pm
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patchwork narrative - Princess
Princess
Autumn has lost any structure for judgment based on moral precepts.
Her life lessons have been about chaos, not order.
“I am a warrior princess hero. But what am I fighting for?
Who is my adversary? What are my weapons?
I am a wee bean in a burning forest. Likely I’ll
be flamed into oblivion, or maybe eaten by a passing
bird once the fire’s roared through.”
She speaks in metaphor, paints with words.
Her native beauty imbues sordid history.
A toy stuffed bear had heard her early childhood
fancies and confusions those years before
her home was cast asunder. A day-bound vampire
gives better audience, different experiential
perspective for response; if not warm, more
kinetic welcoming.
“He would touch me, tell me to touch him, our
special secret ritual that no one could be told,
because I was his beautiful princess and he was
my adoring king who would protect me always.”
She barely whispers, giving voice to deep regret,
betrayal.
“Years into our ritual, in a fit of superiority, I
threw it in my mom’s face, and saw a very
different side of her. She turned lioness,
charged into his study ablaze. Really, amazing.
It was nothing to him. Strong arms, precise intent,
he increased pain beyond our submission, then
went out to solidify his alibi.
In the morning he could with commanding performance
scold. ‘Beth, I don’t know what your voices are saying
today. We all know that last night I was entertaining
important clients on the town. You were asleep by the
time I got in. Look at Alice, she’s fine. Though I have
been thinking that therapy might be helpful with this
habit of lying she seems to be picking up from you.
I know just the doctor. He seems to be doing wonderful
things with aversion therapies. Isn’t it marvelous what
we are learning about the functions of the brain.’”
No threats, genteel conversation. This man is practiced in
the art of deception, knows to inflict punishment
leaving no telltale bruises, only terror. He knows the value
of charm, authority, decisive action dressed in admired fashion.
He has turned it into all that money, all those trappings of
a happy home.
After their escape, they changed their names as part of
the plan to avoid recapture. Mother Beth became
Kathy. She advised young Alice to take a name with
personal meaning, so she could call upon herself for
support. Kathy knew what young Beth had not.
Royalty is not about fairytale romance and happy
ends; it is about control, the power to destroy.
Last edited by libramoon, Mar/27/2013, 9:09 pm
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Mar/27/2013, 4:47 pm
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patchwork narrative - Karma
Karma
I don’t remember dying.
I remember close caress without hot breath,
the sudden sharp pain, swooning numbness,
taste of unsought blood, synaptic flashes.
Back in the days before, I’d had fantasies
about the experience of dying.
People die all the time. It is expected,
normal, for death to take regular sacrifice.
What final thoughts, sensations, might be
fitting on such grim occasion?
I don’t recall thinking, more like hoping
for quick release.
Too simple in my ignorance to realize
release of my old existence into this new,
undead, would not be the end my hope
desired. All that I understood then was a
transfer of allegiance.
Over so many walks through past scenes,
I find awareness. I am no slave, no dependent.
I continue neither alive nor dead. No wonder
I remember no grand transition.
Existential limbo is only half a death, neither
here nor there.
It has been a very long time now since I
encountered others of my kind.
Perhaps we are truly dying out as a class of
undead creature. More likely it is that I do not
seek such company, don’t curry or expect their
appearance. We who do not exist are not obvious.
There were times, decades, when I thought I might
belong with those others like myself. I told myself it must
be that among similar monsters I would feel at home.
We are not similar, beyond the obvious stigmata.
Like any deviant subgroup, we are each monsters
in our own fashion, diverse hideous idiosyncrasies.
Yes, some travel in packs or pairs or tribes.
I tried. I find no natural allies for long.
Perhaps gods are meddling,
taking peculiar interest, claiming my destiny.
They are jealous gods. They want me unencumbered,
that they may have free reign over my affections.
Perhaps loneliness is the ultimate labor, curriculum
of stoic purity. Perhaps only pure self confrontation
pleases these gods, prepares their slaves for
eternal service, what will come.
I think too much, feel too much, with no acceptable
escape. It doesn’t matter that no one could possibly
deserve the karma dealt me. Such theories don’t
impress my gods.
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Mar/30/2013, 4:20 pm
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patchwork narrative - Resilience
Resilience
While in our time together, I feast on
Autumn’s presence, a more wholesome
and unfamiliar pleasure than my custom.
“That night, when you rescued me, when we met,
I had to tell Kathy something, why I was out
past dawn. I told her me and another girl
from school had been stalked and waylaid
by a gang of bullies. We had to evade them,
and wound up at her place because it was
closest. Her mom wanted to call the cops.
We were scared and didn’t want a confrontation.
I said I would call and tell you where I was.
In all the confusion, that didn’t happen. Sorry.
We are all, you know, upset, keyed up, talked
it out all night like old friends, comforting, you know,
too focused to think beyond, to be considerate of
what you must have been worrying.
I told her this story. Of course she bought it.
She is so defeated, so empty, I think, used up by
the life she never had but had believed in,
a reality too sad and way too heavy to move beyond.
But, you know, I included enough truth to make it
believable, real. I told her, bright silver lining,
I thought I had finally found a real friend.
She likes that hope, a sliver of happy thought
to lift her day.”
Autumn calls her mother Kathy. It is unclear
which role she assumes in their dyad of
mother and child. She speaks of feeling
guilty for their life on the run, away from their
once fine home. She resents the dreary limbo
that life has become. She is thirteen, an awkward
age, uprooted and aware of the crumbling foundation
of danger. I, strangely, can be a strength of
stability, a dependable constant. Strange
realization, I am not broken and defeated like
Kathy, Autumn’s long abused, irrevocably scarred,
single parent. Maybe because I have endured so
many more years, because I never had better
expectations, because I have supernatural powers
and so much practice in invisibility, and remorse?
Is this resilience?
Autumn is fierce. She throws herself full force
into defense against all self-appointed enemies.
She exudes readiness for battle like a repelling
perfume. Fingernails enameled green and glittered,
she files into sharp weapons. She protects herself
in reputation as too crazy to mess with among her
daily peers. Intelligence learned to guile, she
presents to teachers as an adequate student, quiet,
shy, unobtrusive, unremarkable.
I alone have the privilege to know her better.
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Apr/3/2013, 3:04 pm
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patchwork narrative - Dark
Dark
It is easy to become absorbed in routine,
habitual places and behaviors. Small variances
feel like treats. Little pings of awareness that
different choices are possible, even minor ones,
are welcome diversions. To be strongly here and now
allows respite from that liquid fire of unwanted
memories, worse, contemplation of unrelenting
continuation.
Night creatures are skittish, unwilling to be seen.
Our stories are not for friendly campfires.
Our songs are silent, not of valor nor love,
simple cadences to drown out less pleasant sounds.
Night is more constrained in cities coldly lit
by technologies serving commerce than in
the ever more theoretical wild. Still, artificial
light reaches only where it is paid for.
People of means know the value of judicious darkness.
The dark is an element, as strong a force as water,
fire, wind, chthonic earth. Even when, where,
we can see the starry firmament, those distant suns
are but shining points in vast darkness.
What is more fitting to believe in? Those who
worship light are doomed to disappointments.
Perhaps I would be less constrained, more wild
and free, even healing my constant wounds,
in what is left of more natural terrains.
Can the dead heal?
I have dwelt so long, for all my endless years,
among these low lifes of man, in these urban
jungles of guns, knives, desperation.
This is how I know to be.
With eternity to contemplate, it might make sense
to experience that natural world while it still
exists.
Strangely, I am neither tempted nor compelled
by reason. What I am is not comfortable,
not secure, not rational. I am accepting this
existence by instinct. I move through, day by
night, an inevitability. I am caught in the force
of darkness, tumbled, shaped, made whole.
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Apr/7/2013, 4:23 pm
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patchwork narrative - Imagination
Imagination
Saturdays Autumn does her and Kathy’s laundry, buys their
weekly groceries and household items in a better
neighborhood several bus stops away.
She plays at mysterious stranger, strolling the main fair,
window-shops, browses, loses herself in displayed art,
secondhand books, street performances, circus of
the shopping district.
She tells of her adventures, at first self-deprecating,
wry half-smile, hands out as if to hold off ridicule,
though she knows that is not my style.
As she speaks, falls into story, defense disappears.
I can feel with her secret mix of magic and sadness.
Kathy works excruciating hours for little pay, jobs she
can get without questions, references, resume.
She leaves early, while Autumn is readying for school,
returns well after dark, exhausted, carrying her
nightly bottle in its local liquor store bag.
“She says the drinking helps her sleep.
She doesn’t talk about the nightmares.
It can’t be that she doesn’t want to frighten me,
or remind me. I think she is ashamed of her own fear.
She tells me she is so sorry, so tired. She needs
to sleep; the drinking soothes her, a ritual
against her demons, her demon lover who scarred
her dreams.
I don’t mind nightmares, violent vivid movies that
grip me in sleep. Fragmented horror scenes
can’t hurt me. They are a safe place to practice,
work out strategies for facing horrors.
We never know how we will react, act against
those shocking surprises, unexpected loss,
brutal confrontation, even the occasional triumph.
I guess that’s how we find out who we are.
You would think, you know, that wouldn’t be
a mystery. I mean, here I am, all the time,
wherever I go, me. I’m not like them, the people
who made me. Maybe in some ways, colorations,
attitudes I don’t know I have. That’s the point.
It’s not like I’m in charge, creating the present me
to make my life easier or what I want it to be.
I get to watch, experience, figure out who I am and
what this world is that I react to.
Me, me, me. Ellie, you let me go on and on, like
all this bs matters.”
What could matter more?
My silly issues with eternity, situational morality,
so old, flavor chewed out of them.
Autumn is so achingly brief, so damaged and yet
young enough to absorb and grow beyond
temporary limitation.
Children grow entrapped in the world of their keepers.
Kathy once believed in thrilling possibilities, in
out distancing her familial restraints, admonitions,
religion’s curse.
I don’t know her, only secondhand in vari-colored
glimpses. I think about her, though, who she might
have been, who life has made her, what unconscious
legacy she wills forward.
Autumn is becoming my obsession, a complex
bittersweet journey out of my own self-conscious misery.
Whatever of her I can carry with me makes me more,
gives me vicarious mortality.
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Apr/9/2013, 4:15 pm
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patchwork narrative - Silence
Silence
These men who think they prey on me,
who desire to defile childhood,
who become mine for their brief transition
into lifeless eternity, what is their compelling
story?
They too are hunters, are monsters.
Perhaps, they too were made such without
consent.
Why would a sexually motivated male who
could pay for willing receptacle or even play mate
take on the shame, the venality of demanding
satisfaction from bodies not yet ready for
that trade?
Perhaps it is the power thing again. Patriarchs,
fearless fathers herding familial flocks,
facing wolves and bandits. All’s right through
the dangerous night because I am between
thee and them.
Daddy deserves some sugar, a sweet taste of
my little dependent. Daddy is big and strong and
throbbing. Daddy has an itch, an irritation needing
tending. Daddy wants. There is no practical reason
not to have. We who are strong take from the flock
as we will. We rely on their weakness, keep them
enslaved in ignorance, keep them alive at our pleasure.
It is simple, while the illusion is maintained.
Or so I imagine in this spin into historic scenario.
I have not experienced the pressures, motivations,
imperatives biological or psychological, that inhabit
mortal men. I will never be one, only a monster in
a child’s body, with only the mortal experience of
a servant child. I felt the glorious defilement
offered by my mortal masters as pain. I was not
grateful for their attention. I did not feel honored
to be their momentary reward for all their
self-appointed responsibilities. I understood my
place because it was self-evident. I did not
understand why it should be mine.
Children are given no choice, no social contract.
The adults who grow through their initiations,
ritual scars, climb into manhood, womanhood,
know only a temporal ladder to ordered positions,
attitudes; what contract did they sign?
Of course there is personal responsibility, payment
for choices. But who sets the price? Who really pays?
We all know that game of selling the price forward,
like a hot potato. Those who accept the ultimate
price are so often the poorest. Nothing to pay but
pounds of misery that please no one.
So, yes, I am guilty. I steal life to feed my
unnatural death. I am by definition perversion
itself. I have no excuse. I have no socially useful
reason for being. I can not compare my case to
human waste and expect acquittal or lenient
judgment.
I can wonder why designated victims don’t rise up,
demand the power of self-sovereignty.
No, I understand, too self-involved, cut off from
solidarity, cut off from realizing the possibility of
self-determination or the energy of purposeful
fusion. Dark, furtive, shamed by unavoidable
sin, the voiceless stay silent.
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Apr/10/2013, 1:31 pm
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patchwork narrative - Fear
Fear
Outrage kept at screeching pitch becomes
just another background drone. Enough practice
can habituate us to any substance, any shadow,
any persuasion.
Drowsing through the days, energy on hold;
hiding, hyper alert, in the night, striking, aroused
to the kill, absolutely enthralled. Every moment
is itself, unique, irreproducible. Moments gathered,
sewing circles of gossips repeating their comedic roles,
sloppily, slatternly, as time rolls by.
Time has been escalating around me. Faster changes,
denser crowds, extremes in expressive array.
Cycles of human behavior seem more like tightening
spirals. Perhaps the accustomed order is cracking toward
disintegration as self-proclaimed prophets shout,
as advocates of revolution hope, as beaten curbside
dreamers plead.
Adjustments to population pressure, but that doesn’t
mean those adjustments won’t be harsh, or devastating
in large, small, unknown ways. I am apart; but I am
affected by new arrangements, amplified emotions.
My natural habitat is encroached upon, much like any
wild creatures’. It becomes more difficult to not be seen,
targeted, vilified; what is looked for regulated by fear,
adrenalin excitement.
What is seen is the target, not the potential friend or
complicated enriching story.
Not my story. Or maybe every story, no matter how
impoverished it may be to the teller. Maybe every story
has its natural audience, its complement of listeners
twisted by life’s experiences that leave trails so
beautifully fitting like custom locks to the tale’s key.
Kind gods would do that. Kind auxiliary gods who could
sneak in at night, bountifully play with the day gods’
creations.
I walk along my habitual river beach, enjoy rippling
deepness of water, earnest city lights beyond.
Light does not yet encroach on my private darkness
here, now, this elongated finite moment. Any day
the growing ranks of homeless, the endlessly grasping
developers, the flash alarm of the body politic, could
change my habit, opportunities.
Fortune favors the adaptable.
The moment favors the truly present, senses connected,
each scent a symphony, each sight aglow in layers
of data.
My habit is to wander. Yet, I am ever wary, ever worried
and cognizant. What I fear, guard against so intensely,
is not death or pain, but discovery by those who can’t
possibly understand or accept, and what that might mean.
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Apr/13/2013, 5:37 pm
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patchwork narrative - Experience
Experience
"There ought to be sorting out places,
like, when it all comes crashing down, or, you know, gets too confusing
like it might for anyone in the wrong circumstances.
They ought to have this public service station
where people are trained to help you sort it out.
They tried to do that at the shelters, group and private therapies,
counseling.
So, your life you thought you knew is over;
where are you going to go from here?
Because you can’t stay sheltered for very long.
We don’t have the resources.
We have to figure out what you can do, where you can go,
how you can make a new life.
So, they were motivated, I guess. But shouldn’t everyone be motivated,
to have that kind of sorting out place. You never know
when it might be what you need to get on, or what kind
of horrible downward mess vortex could be prevented.”
Autumn, awhirl in energy, pontificates while drawing arcane
shapes on found fabrics.
She cuts them free, sews in quick, sharp stitches onto
larger found fabric of other texture. She is decorating,
making this space part of her larger fabric, taking us
into her imagination’s sphere.
“I learned to figure out how to recreate myself, you know,
took on skills, from people sheltered like we were,
working out their own transitions.
There was this woman, Kate, kept to herself in a corner she claimed,
cut out patches for her worn through clothes that made her
into her own work of art.
You know, I always liked drawing, collaging with glued on
pictures from magazines painted through with dripping words and symbols.
The school my dad chose for me included regular classes in art,
dance, poetry, to bring out our creativity, make us well-rounded
for elite social intercourse. Dad liked to brag about my talent,
show off to those associates who visited his home. He was
proud of me.”
She trails off, eyes less bright, voice small and inward.
Her inner eyes relive less savory fatherly remnants.
“All those dramas, all the unexpected inflictions, all I get to live through,
life experience, like layered collage, building the background, the base
of received knowledge. That’s the structure where all the information
coming in, everything I see, feel, think gets processed.
At least I am moving forward, working through the confusion,
using that structure and information to make myself stronger.”
Kathy, Autumn’s passive mother, still not so far along in natural
lifespan, is old, used up. Her overbearing suffering, defeating sorrow,
is more disillusion than painful daily hardship which she merely
accepts. She suffers so relentlessly that pain no longer registers,
is expected norm. Always exhausted, dragged down, every moment
a dark zen koan of futility.
Constant pressure is normal pressure, is the minituae
of carbon’s metamorphosis toward rough, dense stone.
Kathy’s truncated awareness refuses to admit her daughter’s
plight. Their flight from sadistic terror has taken them to
terror’s shadow streets built up of shame, violence,
dead ends.
Once so bright, lovely, lively, a child of graceful delight,
ready to embrace a fairy-tale life, little Kathy had no inkling
that fairies can be deadly fiends, their tales dark, relentless.
Autumn does know this. Hope for happy childhood cut from
her early, she eschews illusion. Strong, brave, self-aware,
brilliantly adaptive, resiliently imaginative, even wise,
she understands that every day is a war to survive.
We enjoy another world here, this temporary bubble
of fantasy a deux. Autumn transforms my squalid cell
into her artist’s vision with cast out scraps of trash.
Dirty scuz of walls transform with magic curtains offering
cosmic contemplations. She furnishes our sanctuary with
sumptuous rag-stuffed pillows, mimicking arcane carpets
of myth, crafted for indulgence. She transforms enclosed
space to reflect long-accomplished whimsy, makes it hers.
So willingly I join this world, accept terms of enchantment.
Within our precious bubble, beyond conventions of ordinary
time, I am redefined. I am childhood friendship, untouched
by adult conceptions. I am a foundling of Neverland,
born of adventure. Partner by my own choosing
to this witchcraft, I am a blessed being.
As always, we part in darkness, return to separate
destinies. Yet, the magic lingers, wraps us
protectively, in anticipation of next meeting.
Is this the love I have been trying to figure out,
mutual lifting into wonder of out of time reality?
Is this happiness, fleet soaring bird of paradise taking
me into its wings?
I understand this can not last. For the first time eternity
acquires a different image in my mind.
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Apr/23/2013, 4:07 pm
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Re: patchwork narrative - Experience
"There ought to be sorting out places..."
Beautiful, discursive riff, libra,
Chris
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Apr/23/2013, 4:27 pm
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patchwork narrative - Connection
Connection
Without a reference point, pain is just sensation.
Is that the case with love as well?
Do we fixate on a concrete beloved to make
love real? Without the reference point, is it
just another inchoate emotion, free-floating
profundity shooting through like meteor light?
I have known those brief flashes of metaphoric
warmth, imagined connections based on empathy.
Street kids that tugged at my silent heart, I believed
I knew their pain, their reference point.
Alone over decades more than a century, I tell myself
stories about those I see, even briefly meet. Love is
a beautiful story to tell a frightened child.
I am a nightmare, an evil fantasy. Is love not
supposed to be my solemn foe on myth’s battle field?
I hear music on the air from a jazz club beneath this
doorway as I walk in shadow. Romance sounds,
an eerie backdrop, perhaps pealing laughter of my
jesting gods. It’s not that they do me ill maliciously,
I think. They are amused by irony.
I no longer prey on the children I had convinced myself
I was saving. I don’t know why I bought that lie.
I wanted to be close to them, to feel connection, or at
least enough of an illusion that I could believe a
pretty story.
I prey on their predators, abused kids once removed into
their metamorphosed mature stage. Or maybe sociopaths
by birth, born to be bad? Wasn’t I once born to be bad?
Have I not over-achieved that destiny?
Is malevolence born into humankind, always ready to
present and destroy?
The great love stories seem bent on destruction. Is love
more about death than life? Or is life about death
regardless of what is lived? Mortals defined by
mortality, by that inevitability?
Yet, mortality is not inevitable, as I know.
I have been so much longer undead than alive as
defined by mortality. And I could be spreading my
undeadly disease, creating endless macabre progeny.
My kind seems strangely reluctant to reproduce to capacity.
A minion here, a lover there, maybe some experiments or
amusements that soon pall. I have not succumbed to
such. The idea, if I follow its narrative, horrifies.
Do potential mothers, pregnant with potential children
who have no interest in being born, disfigured or
precognizant of earthly depredations, do they as
sympathetic hosts feel this horror of gestation’s
consequences? Are these unborn the true instigators
of abortive maternal acts? If their mothers are not able,
or sufficiently sympathetic, to comply, is suicide a
rectification, a severly late-term abortion?
What was my mother’s motivation in carrying and
birthing me, so much an abomination? How long would
I have suffered my life had fate not intervened?
Children do suicide, younger than I when I died and
resurrected by another’s will. And there are so horribly
many who live in service to death, possibilities of love
scorned, soothed by violence.
All of life feeds. The gods must love that irony.
Life as ouroboros, ever feeding on itself.
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Apr/27/2013, 4:48 pm
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Re: patchwork narrative - Experience
thanks for reading, Chris
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Apr/27/2013, 4:49 pm
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patchwork narrative - Competition
Competition
It becomes clear to me, the Earth, this whole planet, is a dynamic ecosystem
striving for unobtainable balance. If true balance could
be stabilized, there would be no push toward change,
adaptations, to move beyond a well entrenched sphere.
Without a strong push, a screaming need, disequilibrium
to the point of severe discomfort, life would be stuck in
stagnation. We change because we have no choice.
It’s not even change or die, because death is change.
Death creates space for a new beginning, a repurposing
of indestructible energy.
Is all just rippling adaptation until the game ends when
the planet destructs from within or without?
Occasional brilliant displays, adept strategies, may
offer illusion of point, meaningful calculation.
Each player gets caught up, enchanted in will to believe
we have real skin in a game, real points to be won
that bestow advantage.
Yet, if the goal is homeostatic satisfaction, of what
benefit is advantage, stacking up points that tip the scale?
My existence is simple, but not without events, angsts,
hungers propelling me forward. If I could, would I stop,
in perfect balance, forever unchanging? Would that be
different from death, the kind when energy has dissipated
to unbound chaos, unable to coalesce into a coherent whole?
My energy comes from the blood of organized life abandoned
to randomness of city streets, seeking individual balancings,
relief from hungers, emptinesses reaching for fulfillment,
to be whole.
If my wishes could muster power I would not wish them ill,
these fellow strangers, night travelers upon common roads.
I would wish us all better roads to a higher level of
disequilibrium. Still strivers, but easier in our skins, enjoying
the view we move through, without malice. Or would ease
leave us too dulled, too comfortable to endure violence
of Earth’s necessities of adjustment?
Elemental energies can be playful. Their games are not
limited by pious rules of fairness. They know no safe word,
respect no retreat or white flag.
We are born to the game.
The points are never tallied.
No one wins.
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May/1/2013, 4:05 pm
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patchwork narrative - Meaning
Meaning
She comes alive with me. I know you ironic gods
must love that.
Autumn’s natural grace, dramatic exuberance, sparkle
and charm are secrets she can expose in our safe chamber.
In public, the streets, the school rooms, buses, markets,
she hides. It takes conscious effort to close in, slump,
avoid eye contact, appear both wary and aloof.
Then it becomes habit, like appropriate attire.
Here she is the vibrant child escaped, free of
expectations of lustful predation. I am her shadow
sibling, uncomplicated confidante. She is my
amazing, unexpected gift from the living world.
She crafts us glorious gypsy dancewear, sings sly
lyrics on strong rhythm for our dancing pleasure.
I forget for hours, believe a fantasy of child’s joy.
Can it matter that she does this for me, creates magic
that enchants a creature who can not, ought not exist?
Is it enough for her to have secret respite? Does this
sanctuary supply ample resuscitation to help her stay
alive? There is no normality here to bind. We occupy
a temporary world of our own making.
“Why can’t they just let me be? All those leering eyes,
lewd mouths, stupid meanness, why? Just because they can?
Why am I, is anyone, fair game just for existing where we
can be seen, spit at, told ‘Missy, this is your place at the bottom
of our power base ‘cause we say so.’ All these assholes think
it’s their right and obligation to lay down the !@#$ and enjoy
the squirming. Why don’t I think that? Why don’t I get to be
the terrorizing presence? Why do I get to pretend I don’t mind
unless I’m prepared to fight against unbalanced odds?”
She rants, but not for long. She shakes out sad indignation,
a brief release of tears.
Safely tucked away from such daily torment, she wisely flies
into fantasies so much more filling and thrilling than revenge.
We are wastrels from a marvelous storm, lost in a mysterious
alien wilderness. We avidly share discoveries, suppose answers
to shared wonderings, honestly engage.
They are hero stories and metaphors, these layered games we
spin to amuse. We each become more, better learn our own
desires, capabilities, through association. Are we more able to
devise who we want to be, ideally, when not confronted by
demands of accommodation? Does admiring adoration, call forth
unacknowledged courage, obscured strength? Does love make us
lovelier to our ever chattering inner critics?
I am feeling strangely lighter while more securely solid.
I feel more real, more alive, than ever in my very long memory.
Days have taken on a different hue, meaning that breathes,
that matters.
I am aware of a feeling unlike pain.
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May/3/2013, 3:18 pm
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patchwork narrative - Acceptance
Acceptance
Her hair efficiently braided, long thick tail
of dark luxury, even darker than her eyes so deep
and brown like rich earth. She stands lithely
athletic, not noticeably tall; taller than I enough
to play protective older sister, instigator of
mischievous games. Her coloring is soothing,
her form made for dancing. My mind makes these
sketches. It collates, memorizes with clear
emotion, etched impressions. I will not take
from our time together with worry over what life
might make of her.
“I look more like dad. He would say if he were a
beautiful, charming young lady. He is good looking,
movie star handsome, attractive in that self-assured
top of the world mystique he assumes. Their woman
friends, social acquaintances really, liked to make it
clear in their faux subtleties that my mom had it
far too good.
Back then she out-classed them in looks, smarts,
natural gracefulness not bought from stylists or tutors.
She is still pretty, under all the sad fatigue, like those
beautiful corpses in horror shows. Maybe you could
see her sometime, look into our window. She sits there,
on the couch she sleeps on, drinking into the night until
she gets to unconscious release, not really sleep.
I stay out of her way mostly, read, draw, sew, write in
my journal, get through my homework, in our one
bedroom. I don’t want to deal with zombie mom.
I know, I seem pretty heartless, like I don’t care about
her. The problem is I care so much, with nothing I can
do to reach her, shake her out of it. She wants to be
that close to not living. She would probably happily,
or at least effortlessly, drink herself to death if she
didn’t feel the pressure to pay the bills, keep us going,
for me.”
Autumn is quiet, pensive. I see the film of almost tears,
the slight quiver, her facial features setting into
determination to stoicism.
“It’s not your fault,” I say. I hold her warm hands in
my cold, smaller hands. I am not experienced in
comforting. How am I to know about bonds,
responsibilities, between mother and child?
Soon Autumn will be back in contentious reality.
What can I offer to carry her, to protect her from
ravages of that love, that responsibility? I can not
guard her days out in the horrid world. I can not calm
or rectify her nights imbedded in her mother’s sad
defeat. I can be but imaginary playmate, solid
companion in our private world for the hours we share.
I can offer brief safe passage through the moments of
menacing night between here and her unhappy home.
For now I listen in intense empathy. My eyes, my words,
my hands, offer what comfort she can take from them,
can accept.
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May/6/2013, 3:56 pm
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patchwork narrative - Monster
Monster
“Maybe he does love us. Maybe it’s a kind of love that’s about ownership.
You know, you own what you can destroy. Maybe the base idea,
underlying truth, is about securing what you love with total control,
power over, complete dependency. I guess it may be that he gets a thrill
from an intimacy of pain, giving what is his to give, taking satisfaction
from that intensity of power.”
Autumn speaks of her father, the monster who in a sense devoured
her life. He is part of her creation, an overarching part. He is the
beast who devoured, destroyed her mother’s beauty and innocence,
and will to live, belief in anything like love or security or pleasure.
The need to escape his violence sent them on the run, landed them
in this dismal place. Yet Autumn loves her father, in a simple, complex
wishful desire for belonging, for family myths of entangled love.
Perhaps her primal, formative experience in monster love allows her
to feel safe with me. I am certainly dangerous to those strangers I
prey upon who seem quite at home in monstrous desire.
Perhaps I could subsist without draining, killing, could take just
enough to weaken unconscious drunks or junkies, derelicts who
would never be believed if they did remember me. Would that make
me less a monster? What if I fed on lesser animals, rats, coyotes,
feral dogs? Would that look like penance for my crimes against nature,
my unnatural afterlife?
I do as I do, among all that I can do, what feels natural to me.
Monster nature, without assured end, its own retribution, punishment,
enduring burn of caustic guilt.
No, the shame did not lessen on my experimental diets of nonhuman
vermin or hits of drug infused blood. I have walked undead long
enough to try it all, discover my vampire nature, with all of eternity
yet before me.
It’s not the loneliness, though I have often told myself, private pity
party cried that lie.
I do enjoy this amazing interval of fantasy, hours with Autumn away
from relentless confrontation with my truth. There is no real escape,
relief from the story I inhabit. I have no hope of welcoming home.
I died so very long ago. The monster who makes appointed rounds,
hides from day, becomes shadow through the night, knows this is
no way to live. There is no better future in my neverending sentence
without possibility of meaningful change, meaningful connection
with any kind of interactive social world. I fill my days with fantasy,
nights with necessity. Long since dead, mine is a parody life,
perhaps a homage to the archetypal monster vying for control.
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May/10/2013, 3:44 pm
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patchwork narrative - Theater
Theater
I appear innocent, young, without power, easy to
overwhelm with meager will. I appear in night shadows,
almost a ghost, empty of context, a slight form covered
in fascination.
There is truth to that lore, the ability to cloud and hypnotize
weak minds. They see a prize unattached to strings or
consequence. These streets are not a home to me, not
refuge of familiarity. They are hunting grounds, but also
theater.
Here I walk my thoughts and come upon the plays, fraught
scenes of combat, cruelty, commerce, romance.
Deep night tragedy and drama acted out by frantic
spirits unable to be held inside to recover and prepare
for day’s obligations. So many have no safe homes,
no walls and doors to shelter, muffle their rage, passion,
howls and terrified jabs of defense.
The street does not welcome. It is a trial of last resort.
It is the ground below which the only fall is to death.
Even jails have walls, extrinsic rules. Law of the street,
as nature, simplifies to do what you will until stopped.
To spite that freedom, habits take control, roles, spheres
of conduct. I return each night, watch plots twist to work
kinks out of productions, eavesdrop on rewrites of dialog
and motivation.
Old drinking partners loudly disagree about a story they
tell each other. The pain of betrayal strikes through their
long layered bond. Asunder, each wandering this lonely dark
as if the experience were new, an unexpected grief.
A shabby man hits away the crying woman running after him
demanding money, demanding he look at her. He strikes
her down, walks away. She cries where she lays, then
quickly stands, aware that she is alone but not unseen.
A jeering boy offers her a dollar in jest. She gestures
what he can do with his trash talk. I am hungry.
I turn my attention to the hunt. My senses are alert for
the solitary stranger who won’t be missed. I ignore the
cuddled lovers taking comfort in the scant privacy of
building vestibules.
Soon someone is dying, intimately in my grasp.
If the audience could but applaud and go home.
If we could all go home to safe comfort, families,
friends, a warm bed, pleasant dreams.
This is not that kind of theater.
Here we have no luxury of sets, no safety of stagecraft.
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May/13/2013, 2:46 pm
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patchwork narrative - Dream
Dream
No dream haunts my afterlife. I awakened, am awake to
disappointment of consciousness, continuance of pain,
shame. What they who do not rise, who die properly,
experience may be worse, better, Hell or Paradise.
Words, metaphors and names for referents unknown
to me.
People move about on solid planes, firm expectations.
I take in the moment. Each moment is its own answer to
eternity’s “What now?” These days with Autumn give me
wider perspective, more textures in my weaving mind.
Precious moments hidden from ordinary view.
Free of history and common law, Autumn’s warrior princess
dream can grow and play.
“Look at me, Ellie. I am strong, fierce, indomitable, even in
my secret identity as illusive little girl. Besides, someday
I’ll be grown and strong and fierce. Meanwhile, you know,
the magic keeps getting more awesome. Pretty soon I’ll
have the power to bend their minds to mine. They’ll have
no idea. Well, they’ll have my ideas as to how to behave.
Not that I’ll be mean. With real power, why bother with petty
revenge, right? I’ll make them better. Mine will be a
benevolent reign. All hail Queen Autumn the magnificent,
magnanimous monarch.
And we can build a huge underground playroom where you
can have whatever amusements you choose for your days.
You’ll be my special royal knight and wizard inspiring glorious
legends and the people’s adoration. No one will touch us
unless we deem them worthy.
My mom can be dowager Queen, most noble and revered.
Kind, loving subjects will cater to her every whim. She can
remember how to be happy.
It’s not just a fantasy. I know the monarch thing is a metaphor.
I will figure it out, how to make them mine, how to win, to
create that power of will. I know you believe in me. Look how
special we already are, you and me, how improbable.
I never could have dreamed such an amazing friend. See,
incredible things happen, to me. Not just horrible, crippling
stuff no one would want to believe, but, you know, amazing
incredible. Like I am blessed by you. I know you think you
are a monster, but don’t you see – you are so much more
than that gargoyle vision you show yourself, thick with sin.
You’ll see. We have an amazing destiny to fulfill, my friend.
Stick with me, kid. This will be a wild and magical ride.”
She hugs me. She actually hugs me, with love, attraction,
attachment, attunement, affection. If I could dream, this
would be the best of dreams imaginable.
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May/19/2013, 3:38 pm
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patchwork narrative - Apparition
Apparition
All these years, psychological time still does not accelerate.
My hours are as long as any child’s, caged or free.
These rainy nights, street life loses charm, denizens sparse,
hidden. Pickings thin, I quell my hunger in wait of the
right opportunity, because I can. I obey no clock but my
own eternity.
My mind is practiced in self-distraction. I luxuriate in
falling water, the cleanness it imparts. Soft impressionist
romance of streetlight glow through wet insistence let’s
me believe I am walking through a fantasy. Any potent image
could appear. I might find, realize myself to be in any era of
my history, transported by a dark elemental spell.
Of course time does not play these fancy tricks for me.
Only my impossible mind transports through memories,
subliminal hallucinations. I have been playing these games
for so long they become like friendly ghosts, itinerant
companions.
Urban birds reiterate their forest songs, perhaps discussing
weather and food. I teleport to a high building top and own
the city below.
Stench of wet garbage, caked soot, fowl excrement, does not
negate freshness of open sky, drenching condensation.
Strangely, from way up here, I feel the call of despair so
strongly I am drawn to a window several stories down.
Peering in I surprise a middle-aged man contemplating
a revolver. As he stares at this sudden apparition, as I
must appear to him, I simply ask that he invite me in.
Whether my hypnotic suggestion or shocked compliance,
he accepts my offer with quizzical invitation.
Though I drip a small puddle onto the floor on which
I stand, I did not bring in the water that streams from
his eyes. Or perhaps my surreal presence has triggered
permission for this release.
I see no reason we can not be of mutual aid. It is far late
into this night. I am still unfed and aware of hunger.
He tries to explain that his life is cruelly over, while time
unreasonably continues. I am considerate; I do not laugh.
Perhaps he believes me a symptom of his lapse beyond sanity.
I have over an hour until dawn’s boundary. With sincere
sympathy, I give him all the time he needs for explanation,
to rationalize away his resistance. I listen. I do not advise
or sway. I do at last suggest our secret trade, the end to
his pain, the continuance of my shameful trail.
Perhaps he told himself that none of this was real, that
he would awaken with new options.
Perhaps he simply released into acceptance, a last pleasure,
a peaceful end to unwanted time.
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May/23/2013, 1:39 pm
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Re: patchwork narrative - Apparition
Wow, Libra. "Apparition" is powerful, spell binding, hypnotic. This is quite a narrative
journey you've undertaken.
Chris
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May/23/2013, 2:50 pm
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Re: patchwork narrative - Apparition
Hey, Chris
Nice to know you're still checking in. I am so glad you continue to enjoy this meandering narrative.
L.
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May/23/2013, 4:07 pm
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