Hum and hurt, hum and hurt the hummingbird pluck-winged, with fleshy spine and flushed chest coughing phlegm up through choking throats and huffed cheeks.
Woodland bird, feathered friend or nasty little night-time schemers, wide-eyed flicklets skimming grass and nicking at the small, the wounds.
In Autumn with trees divorced of leaves and summer set in murky stone, beaks peaked and plunged into ice, with barely a wriggle or squirm of dirty worm. Scarce, berries left and gone with oft-alluded male aplomb, scoffed or left to rot in the death season.
November, never better or brighter for an artist's easel; but yet to set kindly in the pit of my stomach.
Dull, dull the thump of
callous wooden boxes beat,
ringed with morbid age and
a spoilt inheritance.
Deeper, down and dull
the deathly thump bubbles up
and burns out in blackened
matchsticks, sparked out,
dead as a log on the forest floor.
And then the fear - taller trees
both up and across the crests
have fallen further, burnt harder,
more darkly dealt in swipes of
axes, nicks and slices; what chance
has this young sprout to branch
and hold out strong, welcoming arms?
A liittle water - no, a little sunlight,
the wish to let it cascade slowly simmers.
Underneath this canopy shade lies rot
and gutted hollows, scar and bone.
Divorced from the network of roots
they swelled dry and slowly they
drooped and dropped down to the ground,
dead.
So dull, dull comes the inevitable thump
of blame, confusion, fear. Deal in
deathly books and read what's here;
note only the darkness, and forget
that maybe all's not lost forever,
save death's endeavour.
They called it the rock; a looming hill where on the top sits a house, a bouncing baby on a mother's knee.
In the dull night I climbed the steep side and snuck upon her, her curtains dimming the spirit lit inside. Stellar, dark and unrevealing in a blank dress, blackness.
I eye in the top window with a steady aim, and flick a grit of gravel from between my forefinger and my thumb. Snug as a gun, I count slowly.
One, two, three, and listen for the crinkle, the gentle tunk of small grain on ice, then turn and flee. I glance back to see one great eye shattered, only a jagged edge jutting out from her top lid.
They called it the rock, you see. A looming hill that sits upon a crust that's ever creaking.
It starts well, with head held high and throat clear, terse. Sweatless forehead, careful breathing. Slow heartbeat. Without trembling I flick through the various papers in my hand one last time. I notice when I had replaced the ink on page eighteen.
What lies on the tip of this strangers tongue? A pearl, glistening and dense in wealth, riches, or a pebble, paperweight, cold and heavy. Tense.
Sniff, shallow breath and welcome them to the auditorium. The speakers crackle, a natural gain. I see the eyes.
Nothing? Where he can lift the mist from our eyes, where with a twist of phrase or glint of wit he could light up this dull darkness, he chooses instead to not speak. Flat.
There was near eighteen pages of doodles, scribbles. Arbitary wording. Eighteen pages not enough. I know.
So having learned from past mistakes
we'll build this wall with better bricks,
and many storms will have blown and gone
but our wall still stands, now tall and strong.
I was really feeling the pressure going back to school, of keeping up to the good grades and that, and also of being a good boyfriend around my girlfriends 18th, of being a role model to the younger new staff at work - this piece is based ona lot of that frustration, that "I know what to do, just let me do it" mood when you do indeed know what to do, but wait and either go with the flow or waitl til the right thing happens. It also deals with critisiscm, and hype, how the two can combine to become rather frustrating, stressful.
The whole sea thing came with how some people comment how relaxed a fish looks in a goldifsh bowl, compared to our hectic. I've also liked "the seas of change" line or whatver, and thought that was a cool idea for the current time. I sort of mushed up all this frustration, all this feeling and emotion into this flowing, beating rhythm, and put in nods to all the ideas, plus some satire of the hype involved in the tabloid papers and the exagerrations that happen etc.
The piece is quite witty, there were a lot of in-joke sin there and a couple of repeated jibes at certain things. There's a lot of odd onomatopoeia-like words, too, which helped keep this flow and the image of this fat, bloated fish thing. The ending is supposed to just reenforce the earlier thoughts, about how you have to dodge everything if you are going to get somewhere, although the starts/fin pun at the end hints that you might never get to the desired end anyway, it's just always going to be a struggle.
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Jammydude44's blogs, last updated : November 19, 2008
