http://oracle-
That's where most of my arty stuff goes now. Photography, poetry, microfiction and nonfiction -- it's all there. I shifted sometime during the school year, and decided to stay there. Sorry. You guys should really check the site out though, it's pretty top-notch.
Of the man who cared
- Jonathan Edward T. Best
He sits alone and rubs on his face
the expressions go numb
He's running out of ways
ways to say, ways to express
All these words don't mean a thing
He's looking at the ocean
it's staring back at him
All these memories have gone
lost in the sand
Everything I hold dear, everything I am
all just washes away, cleanses my hands
Gonna wait and watch the sunset
watch it with you
Gonna wait while the world turns
til darkness consumes
I'm gonna wait until you realize
there's nobody there
I'm gonna wait until its too late
but you didn't care
As I sit and watch you leave me
I wonder why
and as I stand to leave this twilight
I feel us die
What was once called immortal
is no longer mine
And what it was that I breathed for
I guess I'll just sigh
He still sits alone,
alone in his chair
Just a creeping shell,
a shell of the man
Of the man who cared,
but look what that did
It utterly destroyed him,
and that's how this ends.
How many wishes do you get? He ran out of things to wish for last night: "I wish the stars would stop falling. It's depressing."
She wanted to be in that field, looking at the stars, all those falling, shooting stars. She wanted to be standing in the ocean, feeling like she was free, like there was no life she had to live, no rules, just the poetry of existing. She knew she couldn't hide from the goodbye anymore. She untied the blue ribbon she got from the waves and let her hair catch the tears. The words all fell through.
"'Cause all of the stars have faded away. Just try not to worry, you'll see them someday..." Keep him safe...protect him...let there be someone who understands him... "I know you'll be a star in somebody else's life, but why, why, why can't it be, can't it be mine?" God...that day at the beach, our footprints, and the way he ran over the sand like a little kid... "He knows it's gonna break his heart, so of course he's going to try to avoid it, it's a human instinct." "Not for me. Mine's broken." Remember... her stomach heaved with silent sobs ...Remember me.
"Stop Cryin’ Your Heart Out" by Oasis
Hold up
Hold on
Don't be scared,
You'll never change what's been and gone
May your smile, (may your smile)
Shine on, (shine on)
Don't be scared, (don't be scared)
Your destiny may keep you warm,
'Cause all of the stars,
Have faded away
Just try not to worry,
You'll see them someday,
Take what you need,
And be on your way and
Stop crying your heart out
Get up, (get up)
Come on, (come on)
Why you scared? (I'm not scared)
You'll never change what's been and gone
'Cause all of the stars,
Have faded away
Just try not to worry,
You'll see them some day,
Take what you need,
And be on your way and
Stop crying your heart out
'Cause all of the stars,
Have faded away
Just try not to worry,
You'll see them someday.
Just take what you need,
And be on your way and
Stop crying your heart out
We're all of the stars,
We're fading away.
Just try not to worry,
You'll see us someday.
Just take what you need,
And be on your way and
Stop crying your heart out... [4x]
For those who like music and poetry combined, I present my "The Hollow Men" inspired playlist. If you don't know the pom, you can at least enjoy the music.
Also, if you can make it through the last two songs without crying...you'r
http://www.ime
Heading toward that deep monotone
(monochrome)
where there are no
whimpers to end the world,
we swim through each other,
sliding dripping onto
peach-stained sheets.
Never listen to Ryan Adams in the morning
when the sun reflects
on a ceiling of fog
and you lack a camera
to capture the inability
of the pink and orange to fully penetrate
the grey layer.
I wanna go back to the ocean
throwing handfulls of glass at the waves,
safe in the inevitability
of their return to the shore.
To my waiting, sandy fingers.
Don't let it stop raining.
11:11
I
I want to take pictures of you
so that people will understand
how I could spend a life
arguing
with you
happier than a life spent
smiling
at anyone else.
You're everything wrong with me
everything right about me,
the embodiment of that secret desired life
glimpsed through angsty music,
foggy blueness a theme shading
small apartment overlooking
city lights, city cars on city streets,
and I always wonder why the moon is so much larger
from city rooftops.
Small apartment introspect --
hazy blueness softens
naked angels' pale moonlit
(streetlit?)
skin
curled together, sleepy breath ruffling
silky hair,
lips pressed safely to fragile shoulders.
Ahh, to love you in that world
would be a poem.
II
Bedside table
draped in blue sarong,
covered by notebook,
covered by pen,
covered by overflowing ashtray
because he wants to
and
she gets bored.
Musician dominated --
guitars lie on stands,
against postered walls;
cds in stacks or strewn
wherever stacks are tripped over.
Writer dominated --
Anne Rice and T. S. Eliot lie
facedown on tables, couch arms;
inked up papers used to be piled,
were shuffled, fall disorderly to a floor
already strewn with jeans and camo shorts,
brown Chucks and the hat
he hides his hair in.
Held together by a too small bed,
they swore to destroy time.
"Maybe her hair, it smells like cigarettes..." She sang it under her breath, staring off vacantly at her thoughts pasted on the side of an 18-wheeler, hanging in strands glued to the willow trees that looked just like her hair mussed by the wind. Smoking with the wind blowing her hair, blowing her smoke across her face, blowing, blowing, blowing -- It felt like freedom, felt like poetry, felt like the life that existed in softly spoken words, and deep, cloudy blue music, and pictures she'd found looking for her way into his arms. She took a drag on the Djarum Special - her last - and thought that she'd have to ration the next pack until he came home again.
Ahhh. There was only that mental flinch, the one neverending whimper in reply to such thoughts. It will get better, she told herself. It can't kill you forever.
Whisper in the shadows
where souls lie under cold stone
and we sit on stone tables,
feet dangling just past twilight.
We are fragile as glass,
craving the motion
that would break us together,
break us together,
stick in our hearts
like sap on the hood of his car.
This is the way my world ends --
Not with a bang, but a silent whimper
along your jaw.
Hold your dream in my hand
then give it back to you --
I'm just around
to keep you hopeful.
(Please tell me someone got the T. S. Eliot reference...)
The red light on the dash blared out their carelessness, a silent reprimand to put on their seat belts, and do as they'd been taught.
She watched his dice bob back and forth, bouncing off each other, and thought briefly of where her body would go if they got in a wreck. But she didn't feel like worrying tonight. Nothing could happen to her while she was curled across the front seat with her head on his leg. Nothing could hit them because there was nothing else, nothing else existed. There was only the gear shift in front of her, the emergency break digging into her ribs, and his hand on her side.
She heard him mumbling something, and instinctively knew he was singing. He was always singing. "What are you singing?" Her voice sounded like she'd been chain smoking for about 26 years, so she had to repeat herself: "What are you mumbling to yourself?"
"I'm singing Neil Young."
Even her chuckle was throaty. "Well, sing it louder."
"Once I thought I saw you in a crowded hazy bar, dancing on the light from star to star..." She smiled contentedly, knowing she probably wouldn't enjoy the song unless he was singing it to her, and somehow feeling that he was singing to her, not just for her. It felt like a future song, and made her think of goodbyes and "meeting again someday". It didn't make her sad though, so she didn't mind.
"Sing the one that's like, I was just a dream, but you were just a dreamer, or something like that." His hand came up for a moment to stroke her hair, the returned to rest on her side.
"I am just a dreamer, but you are just a dream, you could have been anyone to me." She loved those lines. They didn't really apply, she just always thought of him as being her dream. Not like a fairytale, because they were too cynical for that, but a cigarette smoke, cemetery kisses, and leavin' tears kind of dream. "That's 'Like a Hurricane'..."
"Oh." He cut the music on and skipped around the cd until he found the song he'd mentioned, then he sang along with Neil Young.
"You are like a hurricane, there's calm in your eye..."
He gets hungry
after they make love.
She gets tired
and wants nothing more
than to look at him.
"Your shoulders are so fragile."
Her hands slide
down his narrow waist
and she thinks of how small he is,
how breakable he seems
when he's naked in her arms.
She can't let him go.
"You've almost made me into the kind of girl
who cries after sex."
Smother herself in his hair,
close her eyes against his neck.
She can't hold him close enough
because she's so scared
of being left behind.
"I'm gonna hold you forever."
It's the most beautiful lie
he's told thus far.
Prompt: Watching him in the kitchen during dinner rush
Her hands shook as she carefully measured out 5 cups of coffee grounds. She placed her hands on the counter, applying enough pressure to turn her fingertips white. She took a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh, putting the filter into the coffee maker and pouring the water in.
She stood completely still, biting her lip, thinking of the Journey cover the band was playing, thinking of how he always said her coffee was too weak, no matter how much she put in. Anything but that this was the last coffee house he would be playing at.
She stood there waiting for the pot to finish and wondered briefly why no one had been in with orders yet. Well, it made her life easier. She wouldn't want his job in a real kitchen for anything. She remembered one night at work...
She was on break, standing just outside the doorway with a full view of the kitchen. She was waiting for him to get out, since he had the cigarettes and the conversation with him. He usually took his break the same time as her, but tonight had been busy and he was rushing around in the kitchen. That was all right. She could watch him, something it seemed she didn't get to do half as often as she'd like. He had a compulsion to action, and that left little time for her to simply observe.
She smiled as he narrowly avoided adding another burn scar to the large collection forming on his hands and wrists. That boy was such a danger to himself around hot or sharp objects, it was amazing he hadn't lost a few fingers or burnt his hand off yet. It seemed like every day she found a new scar on his hand or his arm. If she didn't know better, she'd worry.
She wondered what he was thinking right now. He had told her once that he loved cooking because of all the thinking you did. He looked so focused, but then he would break out and laugh, or make a joke with one of the other cooks. She loved it when he laughed. She could always tell what he was thinking, whether he was skeptical, surprised, or honestly amused. She knew she was probably the only person in the world who could. And that had made her smile.
He’s such a beautiful mess, she thought. Just a little boy playing with new toys. He’d said that he just wanted to feel, but that he was afraid of love. She’d laughed and asked how you could want to feel, but be afraid of love. He replied that he was afraid the other person wouldn’t love him back. So vulnerable, she thought, such a little boy inside his badass body.
That thought melted her and she had to put down the coffee pot and hurriedly scrub away a renegade tear. She poured the coffee into the white pitcher and suddenly noticed that there was no music playing.
Almost the moment she realized that, the door opened and he stepped in, empty Styrofoam cup in hand and a smile on his face. She smiled halfway, and turned around to empty out the filter. He came over and stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders as he bent down to give her a covert kiss on the neck.
She smiled, and turned around to face him. “Behave; we’re in church.”
He put his hand on the back of her head and pulled her to him for a wild, quick kiss. “We’re evil anyway.”
She pulled away, smiling and rolling her eyes at him as she turned back around to refill the machine.
He put his arms around her waist and rocked her back and forth, swaying to some unknown song with his hands clasped around her stomach. She barely heard him singing their song into her ear: “Cotton candy in a rotten mouth, you know you're so fucked up, you know I couldn't help but have it for you...” He stopped swaying, and there was a moment of comfortable silence where she knew he was thinking that the world had stopped. He bent his head down to whisper onto her neck, “I’m gonna miss your shitty coffee.”
Prompt: smoky kisses, hiding from the heat, and cedar trees.
"The place where I held you and we kissed in the rain..."
She smiled sarcastically, flicking the ash off her cigarette and refusing to look at him. "I thought you said it wasn't all that?"
"Yeah, well, I said a lot of things." She snorted and took a drag on the cigarette. He looked over at her. "You're still not inhaling. I told you, these are expensive, and if you're going to smoke with me, you better fucking inhale."
She finally looked at him. "Then you'd better teach me."
He pushed off the side of the car, and gestured for her to hand him the cigarette. "Fine. Just wrap your lips completely around it." He stuck the cigarette in her mouth and held it there. "Now, inhale, just like you're trying to breathe, but through the cigarette." She inhaled deeply, and felt the smoke fill her lungs. When she started coughing, he removed the cigarette from her mouth with a triumphant smile. "You did it. Are you alright?"
She was bent over, coughing and smiling. She straightened, grinned at him, and took the cigarette back. "I'm fine."
He nodded, and finished his cigarette in one drag. Flicking it into the alligator-infe
She took her time, still trying to inhale the smoke without choking on it. When she was through, she nonchalantly followed his example. He said nothing, just walked across the cracked and deserted street to the woods lining it.
A short distance from the road, he stopped in a clearing and looked straight up at the almost perfect circle of blue sky above. She followed his example, wondering if it meant as much to him as the parking spot next to the lake, wondering if he loved it for the permeating scent of cedar, or the fresh view of the sky.
"It's nice. Not as hot as by the lake." Not that it was much better; she could still see the sweat trickling down the sides of his face. She smiled and sang under her breath: "And I watched as the sweat ran down your face, reached up, and I caught it at your chin, licked my fingertips..."
He looked back at her and smiled absentmindedly
"Not at all," she murmured, softened by this sudden confession. She hadn't been expecting any shows of emotion from him today.
"Is it bad that I want to kiss you?"
"No..." She stepped closer to him and cupped his jaw with her fingers. His mouth tasted like cigarettes and coffee, his other lovers, and it made her smile against his lips. She decided that whoever said kissing a smoker was like licking an ashtray had obviously never licked an ashtray before.
"Leaving her should be a sin. In which case I intend to be a saint."
- Jonathan "Edward" Best