"Somehow I never heard her name"

I had a dream that first she
just held smooth hands with me –
gave us time to smile and seem
and see what the seemings’d mean.

We played games without pieces or a board,
we fulfilled the promise of the Lord
when we’d smile and touch, lightly, and again,
and let ourselves be seen by our friends.

The rush upon us came in slow,
and then fast, then low, then something more –
but we were still in front of everyone,
breathless, become unexpectant of whatever-to-come.

The first moments lasted so long,
and then just never ended at all –
completely impossible and unknown to us both.
When the night came down, it took us each in full;

neither had known a moment like this,
dilating naturally, lasting for hours.
Neither mattered: strength or weakness –
the context began and ended with the warming between us.

And we never touched other than slow,
and soon enough we both began to know
that while there might be some limit to fun
neither of us could bring too much to the other one.

Smiling, she even hinted what to get her come Christmastime,
but somehow I never heard her name.
I can only hope and pray to see her again,
since, in the dream, somehow I never heard her name.

Pretties and such

I've begun posting some of my quirky and seasonal photography – links to little collections are on the right-hand column of the blog.  (I especially like the pouncy troutlog and the grizzled snake dude :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Story excerpt: "The Best Day (Alia and Marck's Olive Juice)"

Some lives don’t actually have a best day, that particular kind of day that sets a heart’s compass to true, forever.  But I’ve been lucky, and know mine exactly: it was the day I was finally forced to marry my brother.

 It seemed like we’d been waiting absolutely forever.  And while the setting might’ve been far from anyone’s first choice, the decorations were perfect, the music we’d settled on seemed to please everybody, and the room seemed packed full – everyone was so genuine, so real – despite the modest number of attendees.  

–Okay, and there was an open bar, too, but who wouldn’t want to be a little naughty when you had the legal permit to basically shoot the moon anywhere in City Hall.  (Jail included!  Ahem..)

We have a wedding video, of course, but I never end up watching it unless I’m showing it to someone else.  I just remember it so much better from where I was, … all of the dimension – the scents, the quality of the lighting, all the laughing and dancing, the sympathetic judge actually setting off small fireworks indoors (his bailiff laughing alongside), it was amazing.  It wouldn’t – couldn’t! – have been as wonderful if it hadn’t been so weird.  I knew I was living the best time of my life, and that’s enough.

My name is Alia, and I’ll try tell it like it was.  —I miss you so much, baby.  Shit, I’m already crying.

Story excerpt: "For Love, And Also Peanuts."

Jelka glanced down from her place on the couch, sighed, and nudged her father aside with a toe.  

At first he seemed confused to be facing in a new direction, but his halting, tentative steps eventually built into a somewhat-lopsided scuttle to the other side of the room.  Something over by the radiator seemed worth revisiting.

Cheerfully clomping down the stairs, Talena flounced into the living room and stopped short, blinking as she took stock of things.  Her little sister – two years mattered a lot, she was sure – was frowning, arms crossed.  Their mother looked glassily earnest, doubtless trying to impart a wooly platitude and meeting with utterly predictable but somehow unexpected resistance.  And their father was licking at the floor, or maybe along the seam where it met the baseboard.  

Talena was So Not Interested; she spun around and marched to the door, snagging a jacket as she disappeared without a word, leaving Jelka to deal with the familiar dreary nonsense by herself.  

Jelka sighed and brushed some loose hair behind her ear.  She regretted it immediately because it had been hiding part of her face, had allowed her gaze to wander in obscurity.  She’d already missed her chance to find a reason to leave with Talena – she might’ve gotten lucky; hadn’t been quick enough.  

“Jelka, honey – are you even listening to me?”  Her mother was frowning.

Jelka stalled by picking a few salted groundnuts out of the end table’s ever-present dish, eating a couple as cover.  The dish was kept stocked in the hopes that someday a guest’s hand might ever again stray towards it, but since nobody drank beer or watched the Premier League in the room any longer – or came by the house at all, really – the nuts mostly languished.  However, since they were good Dad-bait (as she thought of them), they could also be… useful.

She tossed one to the floor.  

The promising sound it made against the wood drew her father’s snuffling attention almost immediately, his nails clicking lightly against the repetitive laminate as he waddled over to repel the incursion.  Floor-level groundnuts were a singular affront to his sensibilities.

Bunch of fixes and polish

Cheers – I've been accumulating changes to nearly all of the material published here, and have finally gotten around to posting them (no net access out in the boonies!).  They're basically living documents, and my friend Mike Gatny will be rewriting things and setting some to music.

I really wish I'd found a poetry/writing blog-ring or something, to get things out more.  Some of my best work has only been read a very few times.  A bummer, really – things got tough here and so many photos and stories and music never got online.  It's hard for me to ask for attention.

I have some short stories, from which I'll publish excerpts (after William Gibson's online example).

Be well, take care, and thank you.

"Think of England"

I had a nightmare that there was a forest

with no shade, just all built of light —

holy as it was, blinking didn’t help

so everyone would cry, every night.

There was a disease that made people take back

every kiss that they’d given to you;

the worst part was that, during it all,

you could feel them coming out again.

You lost a tooth for every white-lie told –

but you’d lose two if your words made someone cry.

Nobody grew laugh-lines anymore, unused 

tongues sunburned fast in open sky;

and the water hurt your lips – so you’d gulp it fast,

blink back tears, and try to think of England.

Everyone’s hands were so cold, so you warmed them 

on the fireflies that’d just burst into flame..

Duty flaked off like dry old dead skin

because everything just led to something worse –

the better choices felt like inaction and the 

safely-fruitless bounty of sullen silence.

–So you ended up a prosthetic of yourself,

trying to calmly emulate self-mastery;

blindly wide-eyed, nerves scraped raw, 

praying to keep the well-lit predators at bay.

"Funeral moth"

You became a funeral moth,
natural and unwholesome,
drawn by will against wisdom to wool
seeing its last day in the sun.

(You rebecame a tyrant child,
riveted to an endless now –
everything handled like a toy,
ever-more sugar in the cereal;

while he filled his sails being bored,
sucked through life by things that suck,
blowing backwards against intent –
distracted, unimpassioned, dust.)

—Just then the darkness unfolds
like it might in the nighttime,
but hmm.. the space feels so small,
and no stars are shining…

And there’s an endless feast
of exactly what you ordered,
and there’s nothing else,
at all, forevermore…