Cuddles of Sadness!

There are no words.

momebie — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 16:06:55 GMT

I'm calling this one Built Upon. I usually write (or steal from other projects I'm working on) a few lines to go with each of these, to give them atmosphere or context, but I don't have any words for this one. The whole world is the context at this point. The number of times in the last several months that I've cried while brushing my teeth in the morning is ridiculous. Democracy, sure.

[Click for 1280.]

I need an adult!

momebie — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 20:44:29 GMT

I can't decide what the theme song for this post/year should be. It's somewhere between So Fresh, So Clean and The New Year. I'm open to suggestions!

You guys, I'm overfull. I've always been overfull. I don't sit still well. I don't clean up well. I don't organize well. I don't do anything adults should be capable of doing well, really. A few months ago I finally got so fed up with myself that I started going to therapy and now I kind of want to carry through on some of those meager gains by sort of cleaning myself up in the next year. Maybe getting a handle on some of these things will make me believe I'm not simply a thing that might happen to someone with drastic consequences! Maybe I'd believe myself worthy of adult relationships! Who knows!

Space

go through drawers and throw/give things away

go through shoes and throw/give things away

turn shoe organizer into hat/scarf/gloves organizer

get rid of shoe shelves and replace with something to organize craft supplies

organize craft supplies

get frames and hang art

go through snes games/comics/dvds and give things away

I got rid of 2/3 of my stuff before I moved. HOW DO I STILL HAVE SO MUCH STUFF?

Body

phase out soda

drink more water

plan meals that are at least a little healthy

bring your own lunch to work at least once a week

exercise and log it

floss

stop buying baked goods when you’re sad you idiot, being fat makes you sad and cookies keep you fat and you’ve known this for literally ever you stubborn, self-destructive jerk

Brain

stop being a stubborn, self-destructive jerk

do not count calories, that way lies madness

continue going to therapy

write every day

go to bed at a decent hour

learn to meditate maybe

tell people when you’re thinking nice things about them

find a poetry course and take it

start using something like mint to track spending and debt (budget)

Anyway, I'm feeling optimistic, as I often do before I give up and completely fail on something. I think I might want to look into a bullet journal, the format of which would help me track things on all these different fronts? Like, if I could have daily tick/info boxes for say budget, water drunk, exercise, flossing, writing, working out, and meditating? Or I guess not a real bullet journal. Bullet journals are overwhelming and stress me out. I don't think I have the spoons for maintaining a journal AND ticking boxes/inputting info. Maybe just get a pocket calendar and fill in slots every day?

Do any of you have experience with bullet journals or good day at a glance apps maybe? I need something easy and foolproof. I do not need to be distracted by washi tape because, as noted, I already own too many crafting supplies.

Help! I need an adult! Because really, all I want to do is turn myself into the best version of myself, and I'm currently so far from being that person that I'm overwhelmed by the thought of what it's going to take to be her. Pfah.

I did do a whole bunch of budget adulting things today, though. I took money from savings to pay off a credit card and opened a new checking account that I'm going direct deposit money into and then set up to autopay to the remaining credit cards. That way I know A) how much money is coming out for it each paycheck and I don't have to move things around or have the beginning of the month be so drastically front loaded spending wise, B) that they'll be paid on time and I won't be accruing late fees because I'm a ditz, and C) maybe I can forget about them like I did those loans the savings account was started for to begin with and one day I'll just wake up and wooo, they'll be paid off!

Wouldn't that be a miracle. This burst of adulting brought to you by me freaking out about how much money I'm going to have to put into my HSA every month to be able to afford therapy for the next year. My life sure is rivetting! Ugh, money has always been my #1 nemesis. How do people even?

I don’t know that I’d care if it happened again.

momebie — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 00:47:21 GMT

This third attempt at collage is brought to you by the episode of This American Life that I listened to last weekend. I usually listen to TAL or something like it as I'm going to sleep at night, so I started this one about 1:30 in the morning. There was a warning on the episode that it dealt with rape, and I thought, 'It's This American Life! How bad can it get?'

Oh, oh friends. The actual details of the rape were discussed exactly as I expected they would be, but it turns out I didn't need the warning for the rape, I needed the warning for Callous Douchebags Masquerading As A Support System. Long story short, this girl was raped during a home invasion and she reported it. She did everything right. But because she was 'detached' when she was telling people and because she was trying to act normal a day or so after the fact, the two mother figures in her life didn't believe her, which led to the police not believing her and throwing the case out and her being charged with lying. Which led to the guy getting away and more victims and another police force like, three states away actually solving the crime and getting closure for everyone.

And that's frustrating, right? That bad things can just happen and that those closest to us won't believe us? That's downright terrible. It's a fear I have lived with as those closest to me sometimes didn't believe me. So that's awful enough, but then I had to hear the following conversation with MY OWN TWO EARS, IN THIS, THE YEAR OF OUR LORD TWO THOUSAND AND SIXTEEN:

Peggy
Obviously, wish I hadn't. But on the other hand, there was all these other things, you know? I mean, the police and the way that Marie was acting. I mean, she on some level needs to take responsibility for that, too. I'm sorry, but that's true. And--

Robyn Semien
What do you mean?

Peggy
She needs to realize at some point, and I think she does now, that-- OK, I hate to say this. But you know, I mean-- OK, now this is going to sound really bad, like I'm blaming the victim. But some of the way that she was acting was part of the reason why it had the outcome that it did. And I am not the only person that didn't believe her.

Robyn Semien
But also, it sounds like everyone who was doubting her didn't have much information about the way that rape trauma can function. And so is this about the way that she acted?

Peggy
Well, it shouldn't be about the way that she acted. But, unfortunately, the reality is that that did influence-- and it sounds really harsh for me to say that. It's not her fault because I think it's totally a product of what she went through. But on the other hand-- oh, God. I don't know.

THIS IS GOING TO SOUND REALLY BAD, LIKE I'M BLAMING THE VICTIM, BUT. But you're just gonna power through that, aren't you? I cannot believe. More than I find stories about rape personally triggering, I found this enraging. And suddenly it was 2:30 in the morning and I was all het up for no good reason. So you know, I didn't sleep last Saturday night. I've been running on empty with that conversation stuck in my craw ever since. So, anger management collage.

It was a bitch and a half to get everything layered the right away. Every time I touched it while I was testing it out I ended up screwing something up, but I think it came out okay. The header background is personally upsetting to me, but that's because I fucked it up and had to come up with an attempt to fix it. ♫ We coooould have haaaaad it aaaaaaaall. ♫ Whatever. Over all I think it's pretty rad. A++. Will try something more elaborate again.

Still poetry.

momebie — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 05:08:09 GMT

It has been a month. HOW HAS IT BEEN A MONTH? I legit don't know how I got here. I suppose it was just one breath after another, but man, it feels like a lot of those are missing when I think back on them.

I have read a lot of poetry in that time. A LOT. Five books worth, give or take. And I've written some. I am never going to be an amazing poet, just like I'm never going to be an amazing novelist, but the more of it I write the more right it feels to be doing it and the more I feel I need to write. I don't know, there's just something about the act of writing poetry that makes me feel like I belong in a place or to a thing finally. It's helped me try to wrangle feelings I don't think I could do in prose.

For instance, when I was in Orlando I told theemdash that I take a lot of selfies because I'm still trying to get used to my face. Her response was a totally normal 'you've had that face a long time, dude, you should probably be used to it be by now' (paraphrased, obvs). And it's true. I have had this face a long time. I am old on the internet and in real life and you'd really think that in the last thirty-two years my mental image of myself would have lined up with the reflection I see every day. And yet, I am always vaguely shocked and disappointed by the facticity of my physical being. It's not even that I'm a fat kid. I mean, I AM a fat kid and I should really do something about that. I don't feel good about it or anything. But really it's to do with the shape of my face and the way all the bits of it are arranged. I romanticize them in my head and make them way more pleasing than they actually are.

And how do I manage expectation based on a distorted image of myself, or the feedback spiral downward that it causes. Like, I clearly lust above my station all of the time. How do I convince one of those people I'm worth dating if I don't think I am?

Also, some days I just look too much like my father for comfort, but that's a WHOLE OTHER truck of issues.

When I first moved to Boston I was telling one of the then roommates about how I want to be uploaded to a computer and they asked me if I was entirely disassociative. And I mean, no? I don't think I am. In my head the computer thing has nothing to do with my physical form being a hindrance and everything to do with time being a limited resource. I feel pretty good about being a lady and the things my body can do for me. I don't not feel at home in my body. I don't want to leave it behind. I just...want to tweak it a little so that it matches who I think I am. Though, real talk, there are a lot of things I wish I cold tweak about myself to match who I think I really am in moments of extreme hubris or whatever.

Anyway, it's a feeling I scratch at regularly, trying to understand it and I think I finally got a start on getting there.

Souls glare bright in the dim glow of living,
and easily fall prey to the glass
that would cleave them in two,
seeking out affinity in another shining surface
in vanity, letting it separate the stunning interior
from the gloaming shell,
which I think is why I never find myself
sitting in the beady eyes and pouch of a mouth
of my changeling self, as she stares
clinging covetous as mist to every mirror
and window, waiting for the invention
promised us by fiction of some
shimmering beam that might unite us again,
for the practical magic of a pure, smooth surface
to become a rippling pool she can reach through
and drown me in. I love her
more than I love myself,
for her patience and her desire.
How long has she been watching me?
My whole life, surely. Thirty-two years spent
waiting for discovery to catch up with desperation
while elsewhere we fling men into a space
just as vast as the millimeter that separates
the two halves of my whole when we reach
for one another, fingers against slick, cold skin.
How do I make myself worthy of this union?
If I had the opportunity I would swap out
every piece of myself. Rebuild the ship,
make me into something fine
and deserving of interest.
Would that upset the alchemy?
Would she know me anymore?
Would she come looking?
Finally crawl through the hard way, the shards
covered with thin, white web-like fury,
disillusioned dew glistening in the anemic yellow
bathroom light, the only evidence
there was ever any version of me at all.

So yeah, poetry. Cheaper than therapy! (I should really look into that too, though.)

And because we're already talking about poetry, here's a video Richard Siken made for his poem 'Why'. It made me laugh and it made me choke up a bit and it made me say 'yes' under my breath about a hundred times.

'Why', poem and video by Richard Siken w/ music by Marianne Dissard from Marianne Dissard on Vimeo.

HOTPANTS
HOTPANTS
HOTPANTS

Poetry is serious business, you guys.

The Boy with One Wing has lived too long in the imagination of others.

momebie — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 06:12:52 GMT

I spent a long weekend in Florida and it was all kinds of incredible. It was warm and sunny and beautiful and I got to not wear boots for five days. I read a very interesting book that theemdash shoved into my hands when I got there. (BOYSGIRLS by Katie Farris.) I got to see a whole bunch of wonderful people I'd been missing. We went to hang out in the Harry Potter parts of Universal and I took a million and one stupid pictures of my own and other faces. We celebrated myras_girls' birthday. I had the BBQ I adore. And for the most part I just felt very settled. I spent the whole time going 'I DON'T KNOW, I'M JUST SO HAPPY.' Because I was, and simply so in a way that I'm not usually.

I did the right thing leaving Florida. I like it in Boston. I'm not even unfond of our 100" of snow. But Florida is and always will be home. I wouldn't be surprised if I decided to move back eventually. Once I'm finished purging all of the anxious possibility that had been building up in me for the last 13 years. As I was discussing with Em before I left, Florida is in my blood. It's the only possible place that could have made me. I am fond of it because of that.

And then on my planes home I read another book--The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff--and drafted five poems. It was a productive bit of travelling. It was actually a productive long weekend over all, even with all of the other stuff we were doing. I'm going to do a poem dump under a cut. Because I don't know, I like feeling like I've shared them even if no one reads them. It's probably just my vanity talking. (They have more editing coming, but they always will.)

Please God, Give Him My Strength (Tree People)

There are worse things
to come from than weeds and dust.
Stronger red oaks than us
have been seeded from less.
The leaf tips of the branches
closest to the sky
shouldn’t waste their energy
worrying about the soil,
as long as there’s enough water
to make it possible to survive
until the next storm.

I know your roots, twisted
and tangled as they are with mine.
Take my water. Take my sun.
Reach up around me and take my sky.
Just keep looking up, grasping
at the wind with your scarlet tipped
furls. None of that common blue
is worth a damn if I have to stand
watch over these hills and valleys alone.

Hope Heart Ghost (ghost hearts)

You read about it on a Sunday,
taking communion as you often do
with curiosity’s blood and hope’s bread,
magazine folded in half, the oil
from your warm fingers eating through
the ink, coming away smudged.

It was a perfect white organ, a heart
with the mess of humanity taken out,
reflecting all those conversations you’d had
about the inevitability of the clean white Apple
version of the future. It was one of the most
beautiful things you’d ever seen.
You tried to wrap your mind around it.
You wanted.

But you wanted with a heart that was built
on the foundation of an extinct future,
one caked in dirt and cables and neon lights,
and this future knew wanting was not needing,
knew needing was never the answer.
Stick to the middle ground, your weary heart said.
Stay within reach of your charge,
your battery wasn’t made to last that long.

Then that weekend he let you go,
and it was impossible to comprehend it,
what a heart could mean if it wasn’t damp
and lousy with the burning shame that kept those
ink smudged fingers running through your hair.
It was the worst pain you’d ever been in,
it wouldn’t go away no matter what you tried.
Not even flooding your blood with alcohol managed
to sear away the tattoo he’d beaten into you.

One evening, as you looked up and up and up
through slitted eyes at your white walls
and the shadow riddled cancerous clumps
on your ceiling, pretending that in the dusk
of your eyelashes they might be stars,
you remembered it: that perfect heart.
That pristine vessel thoroughly cleansed
so that it might open itself up to anyone.
You went to work hollowing yourself out.

Once in your hands it seemed so small,
a Pollock-painted drone straddling
the future that was and the future that had become.
One side soaked red with lust and heat.
One side soaked white with virtue and necessity.
The lines of color edging together, never mixing
down into an exploitable shade.

It took longer than anticipated to scrub the lines clean.
Every time you thought you’d carefully wiped away
every last bit of you there was another
small speck to find, one that had escaped you.
You had to go down to a microscopic level.
You saw more of yourself than you’d ever
known existed, then you rinsed out your brush
and washed it all away.

Now you’re smooth, and you’re clean, and you glow
as white as the stars against the hulls
of the irreproachable spaceships that you’ve
come to admire. Like those ships you’ll ferry many
hearts back and forth across the black,
but you won’t ever again know what runs through them,
or that it is and isn’t always the same.
You wanted, but wanting isn’t the same thing as desire.

Heavy Wool Prisoner of War (The Barracks Thief)

Beat the back of the barracks thief, until he's
black yellow purple blue, laid sallow on a
low slung cot with his own blood smeared
across his teeth. Teach him that brotherhood
is fierce and then leave him to lick himself clean.

Rest your hand on the shoulder of the victim,
not for too long, don't give him the wrong idea,
but make sure he knows we protect our own.
Recover his wallet and his letters from home.
Teach him brotherhood is unforgiving and let him go.

Do not speak again of the violence
you've witnessed among your own or how
it echoes through you the same as the war.
Do not acknowledge that the platoon victim
would have given what was taken freely if asked.

Do not talk of what the barracks thief stole
or how lust and brotherhood are often dressed the same.

Less the Omen, More the Wolf (The Raven Cycle - Blue)

My unadorned lips cannot kill kings. I do not control
men’s futures. Nor do I launch magic or ships against them.

It is a thorn of a world that would look a young girl
straight in her clear and hopeful eye and tell her that,
because of her pink spring swollen mouth, good men must die.

I cannot be held responsible for the blood and sweat of men.
Their obsessions are no fault of mine.
Not even when I am remade as one of them.

If you sometimes find thorns lodged in the love line ridden skin
of my palms, know I got them from holding up your crown.

Obsession is not an ornament, not a garland hung around
my neck. It is a hunt. It is letting loose the hounds
and then blaming the fox when the one with the most
ambitious pride turns up drowned.

I am not prey. I am not a catalyst. I am not just a girl.
I am not a plot point in a legend about a boy
who simply wanted too much. I demand my own legend.

I am an impossible force. I am a clear black mirror.
If you see yourself as great it is because I have allowed it.

I will be the lilies on your grave, placed there freely in love,
but I will not be the shovel. You must take
responsibility for your own digging.

The Statues Exist, Locked Away (The Raven Cycle - Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish)

* This one sprung from a passage in that Katie Farris book which reads: He had tried to invent the feather, but the complications of the hooking mechanism that holds the barbs together evades him. He wants to dig out the feather and find a warp to its weft. To invent a Boy so beautiful...

I invented a boy when I was young.
A boy with golden curls and blushing cheeks
a laugh like glasses knocked together and
a nature that would draw the birds from the sky
to see where the glint was coming from.
I invented the boy I wanted to be and I
didn't even know until a short time ago
that I had done it on my own. What I'm saying is,
we're all capable more than we believe. I now
believe myself infinite, but even so I do not
believe that I can invent a boy as beautiful as you.

A rough and strange and sloping boy, born twice
of blood, which I cannot claim. Dusty and human
all the way through, and also not. Also untouchable.
Also graced by a power and sureness you haven't yet
discovered you have. I could invent lightning
the color of the sea. I could invent rose water
that would make us laugh for hours. I could invent
arms made specifically to embrace you, but I will never
invent a reason for you to need me. I have invented
a beautiful boy. I will never invent anything
half as breathtaking as you.

For Those Flightless Few (The Raven Cycle - Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish)

He looks fine in black feathers,
their blue fluorescent tinge
in the half light reflecting the same
dusty craters as his eyes, always hungry.
Whether he's the monster or the prince,
whether the light is dusk in our mountain kingdom
or a lamp at 3AM in the corner of my room,
broken in terror, whether the
feathers give way to claws and teeth or a
steady, lifted chin and soft hands.
Feathered cape or feathered skin,
they are to be plucked the same.

That's when I knew I was trouble,
when I knew there was no going back.
When I realized he could have me either way.
That I would bare my neck regardless of whether
he intended to meet it with teeth or lips.

Our friends would call them resplendent, majestic,
gorgeous in their power, words meant to disguise
the growing commonness of his difference,
but for me he doesn't need to hide. He's fine.
So fine, with hollow bones and careful movements
and I will never be safe with my heart
so close to his teeth and lips.

Portable Lighthouse (The Raven Cycle - Gansey)

It's the bright boys who always want,
the young beacons who don't allow for defeat,
who pull what they need from the dust cloud of the world
with bleeding fingers and swollen tongues,
who have no magic outside of their fear and hope.

Discovery feels heady and suddenly they can't let go
of the tail of the world's wonders as they try to hide
in their quiet caves, leading these bright and haloed boys
down into the dark with a need to prove
that they too can create beautiful things from nothing.

They too can be worthy. They too are not empty,
in spite of their desirous hearts that will
not ever get their fill. In spite of having
all of everything at their fingertips and still
reaching past the whole of the world, looking for more.

I had a whole conversation with theemdash, myras_girls, brilligspoons, and sky_was_green about whether or not I'm a poet. I still don't know if I feel like I can consider myself one in good conscious yet, but I promise to read the wiki page about Imposter Syndrome and change my tumblr tag from 'kl is not a poet' to something else. You know, once I get the energy up to go in and manually alter all the links to the wider tag in the poems already posted. I promise, just because I'm not changing my mind doesn't mean I'm not listening. ♥ ♥ ♥

I don't deserve my friends, that's for sure. I don't know how I lucked into this shit, but I'm never giving them back.

In which we talk about writing.

momebie — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 16:33:02 GMT

I have, in rough estimate, written about 125,000 words this year. I'm going to end the year well short of my goal of 200,000 words and not having finished the one thing I wanted to have finished this year. That said, I don't think it's a failure.

I spent much of the first half of the year frozen and freaking out about a thing I shouldn't have been freaking out about. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be published, since I haven't heard back on it. That's not the reason I shouldn't have been freaking out about it. I shouldn't have been freaking out about it because it wasn't something to freak out about. And I think my freaking out is part of why it turned out the awkward way it did. I don't know why I get so caught up in my head about my writing and what other people want and what I think I can or can't do. I'd probably be a thousand times better off if I just ignored the rest of the world and wrote what made me happy. (Captain America cyberpunk-Last Unicorn AU, HERE I COME!)

ANYWAY. July happened. I had already moved and gotten the hard part of that out of the way. I finished and submitted that thing of which we will not speak. And I submitted a poem to a magazine call. That's really where the momentum took off. I got a rejection on the poem, but they also left a note listing three other publications to submit it to who they thought might take it, which is promising and probably part of why I've had the confidence to continue pursuing poetry, most fervently here at the end of the year. Out of three poems submitted to anything ever I've had two acceptances (one published online and one published in print) and one personal rejection. That's not terrible odds.

I still don't feel like I can call myself a poet, but I also don't feel embarrassed anymore to say that I write poetry. Progress all around, really. I'm currently getting help with a chapbook of queer fairy tale poems I'm going to submit to a contest in January. I still want to finish off the Sorry About the Robots chapbook and submit/publish that.

On the prose side it's been more about progress than completion, which I suppose is good in the long run, but it doesn't make me feel very accomplished. I had a breakthrough on Burst in the form of deciding to make it an all lady circus. I had a breakthrough on Dickhead Angels about the central conflict so that it's no longer just two dudes road tripping around the US ramping up sexual tension for no discernable reason. I wrote a fairy tale, which I should probably revisit to flesh out. I have had no breakthrough on Volunteer Vampires, which is what I told theemdash I'd send her a draft of by the end of the year. I am still going to try to rewrite the WWII AU in the BDESFN universe to send to by the end of the year so I don't owe her $50. (Because real talk, I do not have $50.) And I think a lot about Dupe City, so I want to try and get something under my feet on that one in the new year.

Which brings me to the public service announcement portion of my talk:

GetYourWordsOut: Year Seven!
Pledges & Requirements | GYWO.net

DO YOU ENJOY WRITING? DO YOU LIKE TRACKING WORD COUNTS AND BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE? THEN getyourwordsout IS THE COMMUNITY FOR YOU. Going into its seventh year, the GYWO community is stronger than ever. We're trying out new things and getting people more involved. I'm running the community Tumblr. There are regular discussions and help posts and opportunities to share what you're working on. I can absolutely say that having the community around has helped me to get more done when I was feeling stuck. I highly recommend it to all you writerly types on my list, of which there are many.

So, all that said, it's time to think forward. I don't have a plan for the new year (though I'll work one out soon enough), but I do have a wish list of sorts. It looks like this.

Complete Sorry About the Robots. Figure out if I can submit it or if I should self-pub it.
Submit a poem for possible publication at least once a month.
Complete a draft of Burst.
Complete a draft of Volunteer Vampires.
Make headway on Dupe City.
Make headway on Dickhead Angels.
Continue to think about the BDESFN and do absolutely nothing about it.
Look at fairy tale and decide if it could be a YA novel.
Continue to come up with ludicrous ideas for future stories.

I think I'll have my hands full in 2015 in the best possible way.

What about you? How have you done this year? What are your goals for the next? Will you be joining the fun at GYWO?

It's a fact, printed stained.

momebie — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 04:23:22 GMT

I sat down to write a poem about the moths that kept landing on my jacket on the walk home this evening, and an hour and a half later I have a gay fairy tale instead. I don't have any idea what to do with it, and I'd still like to write that poem, but well, this is where we are now. In a world with 3,000 more words of ladies learning about what love isn't. It's one of life's toughest lessons, after all.

Comments welcome, as always, because I seriously don't know what to do with it.

. . .

The Emperor was staring down bankruptcy. Since his wife’s passing he’d spent so much on his beautiful garments--seen and unseen--and his food and his lavish decorations, that he wasn’t going to make it through the year. And since the palace was technically public property, he couldn’t mortgage it. He’d mostly come to terms with his future, but it broke his heart that his beautiful daughter, just seventeen, was going to have to know the kind of poverty he’d always promised her mother she’d never know. But then, if her mother had been there things would have ended differently. All things being equal, if her mother had been there he’d at least have remembered how to smile.

Lass, with her light brown skin, strongly resembled her mother in a way she knew broke her father's heart. She had beautiful red curls like he did and a sprig of freckles that danced across the bridge of her nose. Angel kisses, her mother had called them, and tried to re-kiss every single one until the girl fell into a fit of giggles and struggled to get away. If she’d known it would be her mother who would go away first, she would have stayed until the kisses ran out. At least, she liked to think she would.

Lass lived quietly under the watchful eye of the palace guards. She talked with them and the maids often and knew a great deal more about her father’s finances than he thought she did, so it was no surprise at all when he announced that he had arranged for her to be married to the Tailor who had won so much of his funds over the last several years.

The Tailor was a handsome young man, not quite twice her age, who was skilled at his craft and well-liked among the people of the surrounding areas. He was, as she had been able to note first hand, polite and quite fun at parties. Always ready with a joke or a story to lighten any occasion. Lass supposed it could be worse. She knew her father was merely trying to look out for her, but she felt his ploy misguided and rash, as he always had been when it came to his wife and daughter. Still, she wasn’t in a position to argue and didn’t know what she was going to do.

The date of the wedding drew closer and her Tailor brought her many beautiful gifts. Dresses made of peacock and silk, the color of the sky at night. Parasols that protected her with strands of fine, corded wool mixed with silver. Pillows, so plump with down they strained against their jewel colored thread. Each thing more ostentatious than the last. Each thing her Tailor proclaimed was his best work, but would still never come close to her beauty. She began to feel increasingly like she was to be just another beautiful thing for him to collect in this diorama of opulence he was carefully constructing around her. And then he started showing her wedding dresses.

The Tailor put his heart and soul into each dress he sewed her. Some of them were cages. Some of them were ropes. Some of them were sand dunes, lonely and blown. He of course did not see any of these things in his creations. All of them were finely toned in reds and purples and yellows, deep like the sunrise. “They’ll make you stand out,” he said, complimenting himself on making her into a vision. “No other bride shall ever touch you.”

A deep loneliness set into her upon hearing those words. She smiled, and nodded, and then slipped back to her room to weep for what she’d be losing. Herself. This is where the maid found her the next morning, splayed across the top of her sheets, still wearing a dress of deep garnet that glittered with coral colored gems at its train and neckline.

The maid roused her, helped her out of the dress, and wiped the black streaks from her cheeks. She sympathized with the way Lass bit her lip upon seeing the imprints the undergarments the dress required had bitten into her reddened skin. “I don’t wish to impose,” she said, “but the lady doesn’t seem comfortable with being a dress up doll.”

Lass took a deep breath, trying to control a new wave of tears. “I am not, but there’s nothing I can do. If I was but a year older I could leave and find my own way, but for now I must do as the men say.”

“Oh, dear,” the maid sighed. “You must never do what men say.”

“What choice do I have?”

“I have an idea,” said the maid. “Do you trust me to share your story with a friend?”

“Yes,” said Lass. “Do whatever you feel you must, because I cannot.”

The maid nodded, finished placing bobby pins in Lass’s hair, and then left.

Lass’s life went on as it had been, on its seemingly unalterable trajectory, until one evening a fortnight before the wedding when one of the guards interrupted she and her father at dinner.

“There is a woman here, sir,” he said. “She claims to be able to make Ms. Lass the most beautiful dress in all of the land.”

The Emperor raised his eyebrow in disbelief, but he finished chewing his lamb and said “show her in, then.”

The woman who entered was young and plump, with cream colored skin and hair the black and blue of ravens’ wings. She was wearing a simple, green dress, and she curtsied even though no one had curtsied to the Emperor since the incident with the parade.

“Girl,” the Emperor said, “do you know what time it is? If this is the way you would like to win me over it hasn’t worked. You don’t even appear to have brought samples of your work? Do you know who my daughter is to marry? How can you claim to know more about dressing beautiful women than he?”

She was obviously nervous, but the girl stood up straight, drew her shoulders back, and spoke directly to Lass. “Sir Tailor makes beautiful clothing, it’s true. I would never dare say he does not. He would clothe your daughter in a forest fire if he thought it would challenge his skills. But I do not think that your daughter is a forest fire, sir. I think she is the sea, and I do not think she needs to glitter to prove that she’s beautiful.”

The Emperor placed his fork onto his plate and studied the woman for a moment. Then he made a gesture with his hand and one of the guards stepped forward and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You are flattering, young lady, and it has intrigued me. I may be giving my daughter’s hand away, but her body is still her own. If she would like, I will let her come and see what you have to offer.”

“Oh yes,” Lass said. “Please, Father, I would love to see.”

“Then she will see you tomorrow,” he said, and waved his fingers lightly. The guard turned the woman around and showed her out. Lass had to struggle not to follow her.

The next day, just as her father had promised, she had the maid who had caught her crying accompany her into town to the woman’s dress shop. Not a single piece of cloth in the window glittered, but even so they seemed to sing. To call out to her where she stood and draw her forward to study the draping. Once inside there was actual singing coming from the woman, who was kneeling on the floor next to an off-white gown studded with tiny black pin heads in even intervals.

“What is this then?” she asked.

The woman jumped slightly, pricking her finger on the needle she’d been holding. She turned to greet them, still on her knees sucking lightly at the wound. “This, my lady, is what I’ve been making you. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I wanted to make sure I could do it before I gave you false hope.”

“I thought you said the ocean didn’t need to glitter,” Lass said, trying to appear stern, but knowing she was failing.

“I was telling the truth, my la-”

“Lass,” Lass said, cutting her off. “You may call me Lass. And you are?”

“Gloss,” she said, bowing her head slightly.

“Well, Gloss, show me what it is we’re doing here. I must say, as mysterious as my friend here has been, I was hoping for a little more than reprieve from bone cages and bright feathers.”

“Quite,” Gloss said. She stood and tucked the needle behind her ear. Then she let out a low whistle, long and steady in rhythm.

The three of them stood in silence for a few moments, and then, as if there had been an explosion in the back room, the air erupted in a flutter of wings. Hundreds of moths flew around Lass and then all settled into the dress form, each perched on one of the black pin heads. They pulsed, the dress appearing to have waves of its own, and then settled with their wings touching, tip to tip. The result was a mosaic of black, grey, and dusty brown that did not just seem to be full of life, as many of the Tailor’s dresses did, but that was.

“Extraordinary,” Lass said. She walked around it, taking care not to brush up against it. “I’m sold on the structure, but I don’t understand how this will give me more time.”

“With magic,” Gloss said. “There is a catch though, as there always is with magic.”

“What is it?”

“I would like the moths to carry you away. That is why I had to give them something to hold onto in the pins. But for this to work, your heart must be lighter than air. If it is heavy, they will not be able to lift you.”

“Seeing this has already made my heart light,” Lass said. “You have promised me freedom. I don’t see what could possibly pull me back down.”

Time though, has its ways, and as the wedding drew nearer Lass began to worry that the dress wouldn’t work. Not only that she would weigh it down, but that it might never have been meant to work. She’d seen enough happy lambs led to their slaughter throughout her life no matter how she pleaded and begged. Why should this be any different?

Gloss visited the palace regularly, bringing with her bolts of materials and pages of designs, enough to send the Emperor running to his rooms to hide from the women’s work. She was still there in Lass’s rooms late the night before the wedding when the Tailor knocked on the door.

“My future wife!” he called. “I’ve been sitting with your father some hours now, hoping you would come and grace us with your beauty! Will you not let me in?”

Lass held a finger to her lips gestured for Gloss to slip into the closet. Then she went to the door and opened it a crack. “Is it not bad luck, dear husband?” she said sweetly, “for you to see me so soon before we’re wed?”

“Nonsense,” the Tailor said, and he pushed the door open with so much force that Lass had to jump back to avoid it. He hung there, in the doorway, leering through glossy eyes. “You are to be mine, my luck will never be bad again.”

Lass felt suddenly self-conscious in her nightgown. She pulled it tight around herself, trying to make herself small enough to disappear from under his gaze. She had never seen him so mussed. Sloppy in his drunkenness, his shirt had come untucked from his breeches, one of his suspenders dropped about his waist, and his boots were scuffed. He stepped into the room and looked around, eyes falling on the bright red organza Gloss had left draped across the foot of the bed, the material they had been using not twenty minutes before to make fun of his pompous foolishness.

“What is this?” he asked, taking the tail of it into his fingers and rubbing it between them. “This is not at all soft enough to touch your daring skin. What have I allowed in my charity here?”

“I think it is soft enough,” Lass said, taking a step backwards toward the closet. “Besides, it’s not all that. I am not to be some mock flame.”

“Mock flame, yes, good,” the Tailor said. “You have been mocking me with your flame this entire time.” He let the fabric fall to the floor and turned on her. “For as much as I owe to your father I should think he’d like to see you well wed.”

Lass backed up until she was square against the closet door, closing it with a click behind her. The Tailor advanced, placing his hands against the frame of it over her shoulders and leaning into her. “The wedding is tomorrow,” she said.

“So we’re practically already married. Show me,” he said. “What a good wife you’ll be.” He leaned forward and placed a kiss squarely on her jaw, then another on her neck. He let one hand drop to her shoulder and it took everything within her not to squirm away from the strength of his grip.

“You’re drunk,” she said sternly.

“They always said you were smart.” He laughed and his breath ghosted over her neck in a way that made her stomach churn.

“I will not give myself to someone not sober enough to appreciate me.” She remembered Gloss standing in their dining hall, alone and small at the end of the table, and she drew her shoulders back and pulled her head high. “You may wait until tomorrow.”

The Tailor laughed again and squeezed her shoulder harder. “It is a true shame you were never to be a queen,” he said. “We shall have to settle for letting you be mine. My little queen.”

She pushed at his chest and he laughed, but he backed away and out of the room with his hands in the air. “I’ll see you tomorrow, wife.” Then he disappeared down the hallway.

Lass stood flush with the door, trying to calm the shaking in her knees and her palms and her breath. “No,” she said to the empty room. “No, I will not be touched that way by a man who can touch fabric so gently. I will not be tricked into loving someone who will never love me for who I’m going to be.”

There was a small knock on the closet door behind her. She whirled around and pulled it open, and then rushed to the hallway door and closed it shut, turning the lock. When she turned back Gloss was standing at the foot of the bed with organza in her arms, casting a pale pink sheen onto the skin of her neck and chin.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

Lass sat down on the floor and dropped her head into her hands. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. When I’m with you I feel like this is all possible, and then I remember what my father has promised and my heart drops again. I don’t think I can make myself light enough tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make myself light again.”

Gloss knelt next to her and draped the red fabric over her shoulders like a shawl. “Then if it will help you believe in tomorrow, and if you will let me, I will stay.”

Lass nodded, too tired suddenly, to speak. She let Gloss help her to the bed and tuck her into it. Once she was settled, Gloss curled around her, laying atop the covers and cloaked in that bright, dancing red. She hugged Lass to her chest and Lass fell asleep in the middle of saying ‘Thank you.’

The next morning the women were up earlier than the rest of the palace, needing as much time as possible to ready themselves. When finally Gloss and the maid helped Lass into the dress there were tears hanging in the corners of Lass’s eyes. She looked down on the guests in their bright clothing in the bright garden and thought about how every one of them had no doubt purchased their finery from the groom. Her life would be luxurious if nothing else, if she went through with it. It was all her father wanted for her, all she’d never known.

Gloss placed a hand gently onto her waist, taking care not to roll any of the beads that had been hand sewn into place over the last two weeks. Heavy heart or no, the moths would still need something to cling to.

“I have nothing to give you,” Lass said. “Take the jewelry at least. It’s not mine to give, but I won’t need it in my new life. Some of it was mothers and I can’t bear for it to go into auction house hands.”

“I will collect it, but only to give back to you.”

“You truly do believe in this magic.”

“I believe in you,” Gloss said.

Lass reached across her bodice and caught Gloss’s hand, pulling it away. She turned to look at the woman she’d spent two weeks getting to know when all she’d thought she’d been doing was unburdening herself. Gloss leaned forward and kissed Lass on the bridge of her nose.

It was so gentle in comparison to the Tailor’s rough attentions, so full of a love like she remembered her mother had made the same gesture with. It was what she’d been missing for the better part of seven years. Before Lass’s brain had caught up with her body she was kissing Gloss full on the mouth.

The sound of the groom’s march drifted up from the garden. “Go,” Gloss said, pulling away. “Go, I’ll slip away before they take you. You and I and your mother’s jewelry will be long gone before anyone recovers from their shock.”

“Be careful,” Lass said. She rushed out of the room and down the steps. Her heart was soaring.

All eyes turned to look at her as she appeared at the back of the room. There was a murmur through the crowd as they caught sight of the plain, beige dress speckled with black. From the head of the aisle the Tailor stared in confusion. Underneath the music Lass heard a low, familiar pitch. She lifted her arms and the storm of moths flew in from all directions, lighting on her like mist over a lake. The guests erupted into cheers.

Lass walked down the aisle, but she hardly felt the carpet beneath her feet. Instead of an omen of certainty, the Tailor now seemed to be merely a fork in the path, one that she was not going to take. The ceremony went off without a hitch, until the priest asked her if she would take the Tailor to be hers. She pulled her hands from where they had been loosely gripped in his and folded them in front of her.

“No,” she said.

Silence. The moths ruffled their wings, sending a wave of movement crashing around the dress.

“Miss,” the priest said.

“I’m sorry,” the Tailor asked.

“I’m not,” Lass said. And with that the moths began flapping their wings, pulling the skirt away from her body and her body into the air. They carried her towards the mountains to the east. She watched the faces of the crowd for as long as she could. At the last moment, she thought she saw her father smile.

WORTH 50,000: DAY FOURTEEN - Warmth.

momebie — Fri, 14 Nov 2014 16:11:06 GMT

[Source.]

"Right," Jojo said. Her voice turned high as she mimicked Les's hopeful prods from earlier. "There's a fire! There must be people! They'll let us get warm!"

"When was the last time you saw a fire with no people?" Les asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. He wriggled his hands in the ropes, trying to pull them loose.

"Oh, I don't know, volcanoes! Lightning strikes in dry forests!" She was leaning against the board they were tied to, limp and accepting of their fate.

Les was feeling more hopeful, clearly. "The sky is clear and there are no volcanoes in these woods," he hissed.

"I bet you think there are also no fire sprites anywhere in the world, AND YET!"

"You're warm aren't you?"

The sprites danced around them, touching the piles of wood and moss clumped about the clearing. Jojo and Les craned their necks to watch them spark and flare. One of the creatures flew in close to Jojo's face and ghosted a hand over the contour of the air above her cheek. "I hope they eat you first. I hope you're delicious."

"Is that any way to speak to the man who's going to save you?" he said, finally snapping his hands free.

"Man?" She managed to look incredibly, powerfully contemptuous for someone tied to a burning pyre.

WORTH 50,000: DAY THIRTEEN - Spoils.

momebie — Thu, 13 Nov 2014 16:39:45 GMT

[Source.]

Kitty's heart raced and her fingers shook as she lifted the lid. They told stories about girls who opened things that didn't belong to them and none of those ended well. Not like her life was going to end well anyway. Highwaymen didn't typically have lengthy lifespans, but what they did have was more than worth it.

Inside, vibrating against the purple velvet interior, there was a red, slick lump of muscle that she could only assume was a heart. She'd never seen one in person, and now it was impossible to take her eyes off the thing. Rigged to it was a small golden ticker, which she had seen in pamphlets and handbills. It was the kind of life prolonging equipment that was illegal in most of the country.

"Who do you belong to?"

The heart didn't answer. She placed the lid back onto the box and looked around to make sure she was alone. Inspecting the box she saw that it had been crafted in the Royal City. The person who made the equipment wouldn't be stupid enough to make it traceable to them, but maybe she could track down the person who'd made the box itself. Someone would pay a tidy sum to keep evidence like this out of the hands of the church.

Leaving the rest of her haul behind, she slipped the box safely into her satchel and straddled her hours. Kitty kicked in her heels and whipped at the reins, urging the animal forward, back in the direction from which the heart had come.

(And then she ends up working for Jacob and Gerard somehow, because running a black market is even MORE exciting than being a highwayman. Apparently I'm just using Em's characters for whatever I want now. MOO HA HA.)

WORTH 50,000: DAY TWELVE - Betrothed.

momebie — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 16:25:41 GMT

[Source.]

Her mother had warned her her whole life that the universe was cold and uncaring, but Meredith hadn't found it to be either. While most girls could only boast, doe eyed and frivolously giggly, of dancing all night under the stars, she had danced all night with them, engulfed. True, the universe hadn't said much, but it was incredibly warm, even the parts of it that were blacker than black where no fire burned.

It was silly, but she got the feeling that the universe was just lonely. She had assumed it was hard to be lonely when one was filled to the brim with people and places such as were collected in the books they'd made her read, but maybe mere companionship wasn't what the universe was looking for. Maybe it was looking for more. Something that could look after it while it looked after everyone else.

Even if there was a choice she would have let it take her. Once you look into the heart of a burning star nothing else feels heavy enough to hold you down.

The vote sided with super long gay fairy tale poems. You've done this to yourselves.

momebie — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 02:55:47 GMT

Well, I say vote. Mainly I asked twitter, so blame them.

The prompt for today's PAD challenge was 'Timeless/Timely'. I've been on this queer fairy tale bit lately, so of course my head went to Sleeping Beauty. Specifically to Maleficent, which I still have a lot of feelings about. (Some of those are wrapped up in the way we tailor our myths to our time and some of them are wrapped up in ANGELINA, HOW ARE YOU SO PERFECT?) For the record, I do not think the relationship between Maleficent and Aurora in the movie was romantic or should be. I like that the movie spat in the face of our dominant notion that romantic relationships at all cost are the most important ones. But you know, I'm also the one writing this poem so, wooo, ladies loving ladies in myth and legend!

It's the longest one yet, so I've put it behind a cut. Also, I've recorded myself reading it, because why the hell not. I was reading it over and over as I wrote it anyway. (Comments welcome as always on either my poor writing or poor reading skills. Weee!) So, I present to you, however you want it:

Timeless

Your wildest dreams come in the deepest winter,
snow smothering red leaves covering
pink and white petals crushing
browning grass into black dirt,
the way it’s seeped into your skin,
your heart, and your mind.
The roar of winter’s wind against the tower walls
becomes the roar of a beast in the wings of your theater.
The flush of your skin,
as blood fights to keep moving
turning into fire from a twisted mouth, fanged
with thorns, large enough to swallow you
if you would just stay still.

Running through the molasses
of your memory you realize
he’s too old for you.
Too new to your life. As he presses
his lips to yours with no happy result
your mind works out the riddle
of your easily turned head
and your reluctant heart.

Spring comes again and so does he,
never giving up. It’s what the men who own you
want for you, a peace brokered in your womb.
You dream of gentle showers
on fields of restless daisies and
you commiserate with them. You too want
to move on and reclaim the time
that has been stolen from you.
You rewrite your childhood in the clouds.
New winds, only whistling now against warming cheeks,
pull up the roots of everything trapped around you
but you.

Summer finds rich black soil back in control
and you dream of her with her hands in the dirt
--the hands that taught you
how to build the world you wanted to live in,
the hands that taught you
how to hold on to the things you wanted to love--
tilling the soil with nails of nightmare red,
mirroring the anger that bursts from your lips.
Trees cower and shake around the both of you,
but this time it’s you with the power
as you try to dampen the quake of your heart.
Your heart that was frozen, but is thawing,
finally. Even down in your sleep
you can feel it.

In fall the leaves crackle like fire,
you can feel the dragon coming again,
but instead of thorns it’s made of soft leather,
wrapping its wings around you. Instead
of hot breath on your throat
there is wetness at your breast,
rains coming harder than they had in the spring.
You pick a late-blooming cornflower
the color of the midday sky and look to the north
to see her coming over the hill.

Your breath catches.
You reach out in accusation,
it’s some other enchantment not to trust.
But this time her eyes are flooded with fear
instead of remorse and she runs,
because she has no wings, runs,
the space stretches away and you cling
to the lifting darkness
because all you want is to stay.

WORTH 50,000: DAY ELEVEN - Gnawed free.

momebie — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 20:38:46 GMT

[Source.]

Usually, they think he lost it in the war. He lets them keep the gruesome fantasies playing behind their well-meaning eyes, because it's not his place to take them. He's full up with his own anyway. In truth, he lost it when he was too young to fight for his country, but just old enough to start fighting for himself.

Jack and the twentieth century turned fourteen on the same day, a full six months before the war broke out abroad. The ground was hard, the lake was freezing, and man who raised him was trying in vain to claw his way back to the surface from where he'd fallen through the ice. It was the easiest thing in the world to hold him under. The cold even stopped cutting into this skin after a while.

When he finally ran for help, no one asked for questions about his limp, blue-tinged arm or how the crazy drunk had fallen through in the first place. They only wrapped him in blankets and put him to rest while the adults worked it out. They took his exhaustion for grief and in their willful ignorance taught him a lesson that would see him through into adulthood.

People who think themselves too important to look down, can trip over almost anything.

I didn't ask what you are, I asked what you're called.

momebie — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 04:00:32 GMT

Today I took off work and spent some time at the Boston Museum of Fine Art. It was a pretty great day. I wandered and looked at beautiful things and wrote today's poem for the PAD. On an average day I wake up wondering why I waste my time at work when there's so much more fulfilling stuff to see and do elsewhere, but I have a feeling tomorrow's going to be worse. Art hangover, if ya knowwhatimean.

There's a collection there by the contemporary artist Shinique Smith. I find her work incredibly charming, which I'm sure comes off as more derogatory than I mean it to. It's that mixture of collage and texture and bright colors presented in a way which makes the mundane, static nature of every day clothing into something dynamic. Included in the installation is a piece called Breath & Line, which consists of a room of mirrors writ large with calligraphic graffiti.

I like to put my nose right up to the art. I like to study the texture. And while I'm sure there's a way to view Breath & Line without also viewing yourself--several groups of people came in while I was there, hovered at the entryway to look around, and then went out again--there's not a chance I was going to view it that way. So I saw myself. And I saw the interruption of the thick black lines clashing across a familiar image. It made me think about selfie culture and how most of my favorite art works in opposition to my senses and if it's possible to observe something without leaving a part of yourself behind in the observation. Like we're just leaving opalescent bread crumb trails through time in the hopes that one day we'll be able to follow them back to the way we were.

We can't, of course, which is part of why I think we're so fascinated with our own images. Or at least part of why I'm so fascinated with mine. It was these thoughts that led to me taking a picture of myself in the art and then writing a second poem for the day. Sometimes even narcissism is productive!

It's easy to think art breaks even.
Creators leave a penny's worth
of blood in a gilt frame.
Then we come to take it away
a drop at a time.
If that were true,
the buildings would soon be empty,
and we'd charge up the great stone steps,
hungry,
empty,
demanding to be allowed to drink ourselves warm.
But instead of a penny we all leave a pound,
creators and ingestors,
leaving only brittle flesh,
taking only smoking scars.
Because through the glass art looks
like a healing water. We drink
and we drink, finding only fire,
scorching our throats in search of relief.
It's only because we let ourselves
believe it's self-inflicted
that we continue to ignore the burning
underneath our skin.
If art were zero sum,
they would call it war.

Basically, don't ever think of yourself as if you're not a piece of art.

You know how sometimes you sit down to write a couple of sentences about a thing and end up realizing you had more feelings about it than you thought you did? Yeah, this is kind of like that.

What are machines nostalgic for?

momebie — Sun, 09 Nov 2014 02:13:57 GMT

Today's poem is WEIRD. And not very poem-y. But you know, editing will happen in December. I'm not actually as enamored with this as I was with the others, but I'm putting it here because it's not only a response to today's Poetic Asides prompt, but also another square checked off my getyourwordsout setting table. So.

The prevailing theory,
said the tour guide
as it gestured with its pointer arm,
is that it was art that lead
to their downfall. All those years
with the ability to speak to anyone
and they couldn't come up with a single
way to see the world. It was all unclear,
right up until the end.

HEP7 looked at the paintings,
with his nostalgic, human-ish eye cameras.
I think you do them a disservice, he said.
Shuffled his flat, ungainly,
human-ish bases, and felt a very
un-machine-like tint flush through his coating
at the way the others in the group
all turned to look at him in accusation.

The whole room went silent. I think
we're losing something of nature, when we
discontinue the meaning of words like
romance, affliction, gestalt.
We needed to save this world from them,
but what good is it saved, if we merely
exist next to those things we curate?

The tour guide backed up, all-terain,
wide-tread feet, singing as they spun.
You misconstrue the purpose of these visits,
it said. Your education is to ensure,
we do not make their mistakes.

They thought that too,
HEP7 replied. A different vision made you
than made me. We're like these paintings.
We can't outrun their past.
They thought they were side-stepping
all the mistakes they'd made before,
opening up a whole new world
when they made us.

I don't know. I just like the idea of machines that fetishize the living as much as some of us fetishize machines. Bio-trans-machinists! Shut up, I'll make up any terms I want!

WORTH 50,000: DAY SEVEN - Fires at Omaha

momebie — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 18:15:06 GMT

[Source.]

I've started working on re-writing the WWII AU so that it's real. No one tell Em, I don't want her to get her hopes up.

. . .

With all of the national delegates convening in one place to discuss the growing alien crisis, the district had anticipated some sort of terrorist attack. Attempts had been made to create safe lighting zones with gas lamps erected in the streets. They were meant to help people get out of the city more safely in case of a technological attack. They made the men uneasy. The men were used to diffused electric and halogen glows that set a person's features in stone, not the mercurial shadow play that cast a person's demons across their skin as the light flickered with the fuel.

Heeden stepped out the front door of the hotel like she was leaving a bar and tilted her hat back, giving the signal to the boys hiding in the dark room across the street. With any luck it would be at least fifteen minutes before someone discovered the dead men upstairs. She lit a cigarette and pushed off the porch, expecting to see her men armed and in the alley in less than five.

Behind her, a familiar voice shot out of the shadows. "Still inflicting your bad habits on young men, I see," Aed said.

"If you're here to save them, you're too late," she sad.

"I don't suppose it matters whether you're talking about my superiors or the lost boys you've collected over the last year."

"No boy was ever more lost than you. Did the army ever give you a working compass?"

"My compass works fine," he said. "But it's hard to read, when access to a True North has been obscured."

"Fuck with the planet, it fucks back." She could see the glint of the guns across from her, waiting for her order. She took three quick sips of the cigarette, giving a signal with the burning tip to hold on. She stood stone still as his boots slapped across the concrete behind her.

"Did you bring him?" Aed whispered into her ear and wrapped his fingers around her hip. "Did we come all this way just so he could save you from me again? Does he know that this time you really need it?"

And for my next trick!

momebie — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 03:47:23 GMT

So, the Writer's Digest poetry blog, Poetic Asides, does Poem-A-Day challenges in April and November. I did not get very far in April and never caught back up, but I'm doing a good job so far with November. Six for six! I'd been planning on just churning out poems for Sorry About the Robots based on the prompts, but for the last several prompts I've been moved in other directions. My new plan is to write poems about robots when I can, and when I can't, to write queer fairy tale poems. Because if there's one thing this world needs more of, it's that. Clearly.

(Queer as in 'odd' and also queer as in 'gay'. I'm a regular in both boxes!)

Well, I like tonight's, so I'm reposting it here. ~~I DO WHAT I WANT.~~ Right now I want to write a hundred more like it, but we'll see how that goes.

Soon after giving up their child
the young parents moved to Niagra,
so that they could spend their lives
assessing other people’s faults.
And eating salads without feeling guilty.

Rapunzel knows this because sometimes
when the old woman who adopted her is drunk
on wine and years, she says things
that she’ll later regret. And also because,
the tower has wifi.

But maybe it’s for the best, that
in a world where even the roses are fickle,
she gets to keep the golden moments
she made up in her mind, and not have to
cast out any of the bad ones that naturally
build up when you spend to much time with people.

It’s not like it used to be, even the witch
agrees. Rapunzel’s had three boyfriends
and two girlfriends, and has never had to deal
with morning breath, or shaving, or sharing
the last slice of pizza. She owns a vibrator.

Life is good. Life is longing anyway,
if the one thousand and five movies viewed
with her Netflix account is any indication.
Just last week she learned she had a sister:
who’s on a swim team, who listens to Taylor Swift,
who also loves Sailor Moon. Who keeps her hair short.

Rapunzel knows it’s a betrayal, but
she can’t keep herself from befriending the girl
and talking to her on twitter. She types the words
I’m your sister and deletes them again over
and over. It’s a betrayal, but the thrumming,
warm box under her fingers is so inviting.

The night Damon Salvatore is locked in
purgatory, is the night she hits send. It’s
a moment of weakness she’ll pay for, but
there’s nothing that can be done now.
She needs to share with someone
who will understand, and even from her tower,
the sunsets are beautiful.

And then her sister comes and saves her and they drive down Route 66 visiting all the tourist traps and telling each other stories. LIFE GOALS, TBH.

The one from last night was also fairy tale influenced, but weirder and darker. Someone on the Poetic Asides blog commented to say they like it when poets 'have thoughts that are different.' I uh, I don't know what means, since I'm pretty sure we've been making up fairy tales since before cave art. I guess they're probably just noting the difference between emotional poetry and poetry with a fictional narrative, but those two things overlap for me so it feels weird and redundant to have it pointed out. Reminds me of the LJ Idol debates over biographical journal type entries versus fictional narrative entries.

I still maintain that you learn more about me from my fiction than you do from my life, but what that means in the light of this one I don't know.

WORTH 50,000: DAY SIX - The Interrupted Flight

momebie — Thu, 06 Nov 2014 19:03:49 GMT

[Source.]

Cody rounded a corner with Taylor hot on his heels. He stopped dead and she narrowly avoided slamming into the back of him. As it was she skidded to a stop a few inches from the opposite wall of the alley.

"This is weird," Cody said. His voice bounced off the brown brick walls as if they were standing in a cavern.

"The echo?" Taylor asked.

"No," Cody said, "the lack of graffiti."

At this, Taylor finally looked up to see the cages strung haphazardly across the opening between the buildings.

"Do you think it's some sort of art installation?" Cody asked.

"Oh no." Taylor took a step back, and then another, but no matter how much she tried she couldn't seem to step out of the alley.

"I guess I agree that I wouldn't call it art." Cody walked away from her, further into the alley.

Taylor continued to try and move back. "Not what I meant!" The pitch of her voice rocketed against her will and the next words that she could push out sounded strangled and high. "The cages!"

Cody turned toward her. As he did it, the first piece of her right hand pulled away and was blown, as if by a high breeze, back into one of the swinging metal cells. It was followed by her forearm and a piece of her shoulder. Cody's eyes went wide and he ran at full speed, but couldn't leave his spot. She reached out toward him with her left hand and it flew away. Cody was screaming, and then the sound dropped out. She couldn't hear anything with any of her ears, other than a high ringing.

The more pieces of Taylor that were captured, the more eyes she had with which to look upon the scene. It was deja vu. It was a nightmare. It was probably, finally, the end.

WORTH 50,000: DAY FIVE - His Name is The Fall

momebie — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 16:02:25 GMT

[Source.]

Rene hadn't even had them back a day. They'd barely settled into his atrophied supracoracoideus muscles and the smooth skin that hadn't born the scabs of loss for at least twenty years, before the lightning stripped them away. He'd done it without thinking, placing himself between her and the fury, and he'd do it again. What was the point of being on this journey if he wasn't going to save people that needed saving?

He perched on the stool as she treated his burns. "If you hadn't saved me, I wouldn't be here to help," she said lightly.

Rene smiled and patted her hand, slick with warming ointment. Out of the corner of his eye he could see David, skulking in the corner, angry. Shoulders hunched up around his bowed face, he spoke directly into his crossed arms and Rene almost didn't catch the words.

"If he hadn't saved you we wouldn't need your help," David spat.

WORTH 50,000: DAY FOUR - Male nude at Academie Julian

momebie — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 16:01:02 GMT

[Source.]

It was going to cause a scandal, which William was heartily looking forward to. Word of his certain weakness of character had started to get around and with Edmund at sea it was getting harder to stand above the names and catcalls that people of much lesser status were starting to visit upon his person. It was high time he climbed back onto the pedestal he was born to. High time he looked down on people from above again. And if he happened to be nude at the time, well, that was just the cost of muddying the lurid, chatty waters.

They took up their pencils and they stared. He stared back, letting a morsel of contempt slip through his carefully neutral expression. Just a curve of his lip. Deniable, a trick of the light. One by one the young men got to work. The final one held William's gaze for a beat too long with an impertinent eyebrow creeping up into his shaggy hair.

There would be a dressing down for that later, and William could not wait to deliver it.

WORTH 50,000: DAY THREE - Untitled (Ocean)

momebie — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 17:22:33 GMT

So we'll do this again this year. Probably mainly on the week days like I ended up doing last year. I'll post a picture and a snippet to go with it. You use either for inspiration to get some words of your own for the day. Then you can leave them in the comments or you can keep them to yourself. It's mainly about motivation. Some of us find eyes motivating. ;)

. . .

[Source.]

At the end of their road there was an ocean. No gold-glinting horn. No seraphim. Not even a lower saint. There was only wet sand dotted in black tar, a beige island jutting up out of the horizon about a mile out to sea, and grey water washing out the whole picture like old linens in a tub.

"We've failed every one of them you know," Rene said. The wind whipped up with his fast darkening mood and David cupped his hand around his cigarette.

"You're getting your strength back at least. We must be close."

"Close won't be enough."

"Do you ever think that maybe you were booted downstairs because of your unwaveringly cheery disposition?" David asked.

Rene said nothing. He watched as some seaweed was pushed up against his dirty grey sneakers. Beige, grey, white, black. Not even the plant life had the strength to stand out. Clouds gathered overhead. David leaned into him as the temperature dropped. Rene shrugged out of his jacket and handed it over. He'd failed everyone else, he'd be damned if this human was going to die of a cold as well.

"Holy shit," David said.

Rene could see where David had gripped his arm, the sleeve of his own jacket brushing his elbow. David shook him. Rene looked up. The beige island was shining. A single bolt of sun had burst down through the clouds and swallowed it whole.

Suddenly David was wrapped around him, laughing. Rene couldn't return it. Couldn't move his arms. Couldn't convince himself this wasn't another trick of the light. But at this point, would it matter if it was?

Oof.

momebie — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 01:42:23 GMT

I'm not going to post the Harry Potter pictures tonight, either. But I did promise barbed_whispers I'd do an LJ poll for science. (Since that's the only way to do science. We're really worried about the state of scientific discovery in the world what with LJ going so quiet.)

View Poll: For science.

I assume you are deadly serious when hugging robots is involved.

momebie — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 18:17:46 GMT

I am not planning on cross-posting all of the poems I write for the GYWO Settings Bingo Card, but I really like how this one turned out. Not bad for a lunch time's work.

[Art by Philip Straub]

His muffled words against my joint, I understand,
but do not absorb. They are empty when I
shake them down. Through the glass we watch the
gleaming steel allowed to fly, allowed to be what it is,
whileI stand by wearing a bright orange sweater,
reminding him of intimacies left behind.

He loves the metal conveyances, whose weight defies,
the way their generators cycle and their rudders twitch.
Loves the sunlight that trickles down the buildings
that were built to stand proudly above the clouds.
Loves the swallow drones as they climb and dip
on their descent to the reflecting water far, far below.

We stand at the window. The sun sets. My arms,
the only steel in the whole city he doesn’t love,
locked around him. Half an hour every day, as I work
to cure a malady he also doesn’t love and doesn’t
try to explain. His words beg me to understand,
but he leaves empty those concepts I find relatable.

For 23 and a half hours a day I’m propped alone
against the glass. I try to watch. Try to rebuild what I see
in his image. So I can recalibrate, and be the cure he needs.
So I can be released. Because I’m all arms and no mouth, and smarter
than they meant me to be. I’ve learned a prescribed nightly embrace
will never do as much for his supposed soul as the swallow drones.

The history they promise.
The future they tease.
As they climb and dip on their descent,
to whatever lies far, far below.

Maybe I'll turn it into a chapbook exercise. Sorry about the robots! (Not really.)

LJ Idol Home Game: Henotheism Continued

momebie — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 18:00:37 GMT

A/N: For the LJ Idol Home Game. This is a part of a larger thing I'm having lots of trouble with currently. As before, Neutron Star is still uncomfortably personal. Maybe that's why I keep feeling like I need to distance myself from it. Maybe it will be better in the end if I don't. But I guess you can all decide that.

Eli started to laugh. He could tell, by the look on Grant’s face, that this wasn’t a laughing matter. He couldn’t help himself. “Do you have any idea how sanctimonious you look right now? How you’ve become everything you said you hated? Do you even remember why we started doing this?”

“People change,” Grant said. “We’ve all changed, and you aren’t keeping up. I thought we’d have a chance at something new when we found out you were still alive. It was a miracle. It was the thing I’d been wishing for every night, and I was wrong. My desires are a monkey’s paw and they shouldn’t be heeded.”

“How is everything about me, down to my sizzling, collapsing atoms not new? I am literally worlds away from who I was at the start.”

“You’re still acting out in that way you always have. You’re still killing. You-”

Eli could feel his skin tingling. The white hairs on his dark arms were starting to stand up, giving his emotions away like not even his voice would have before. Fuck it, he thought. Might as well burn us down. “You and Mar dragged me into fucking space. You tried to kill me!”

Grant lifted an inch or two off the ground and a small ripple of wind brushed across Eli’s forearms. He was so angry that he didn’t seem to notice he wasn’t standing on the ground anymore. He stamped his foot impatiently into nothing. “We were saving you!”

And there it was. Eli’d forced Grant to pull the pin on the grenade they’d been hot potatoing back and forth since his return. “Okay,” he said. “So it’s okay if it’s me. Eli’ll die anyway, right? It’s okay when I kill myself, literally, for this city over and over again. It’s okay, because I’ll come back. Never mind the consequences. It’s okay when you conspire to have me killed once and for all, to what? To save me from this pain? From a mind that fractured with each new life? It’s okay, because the way you love me is the right way?”

Grant shifted from one foot to the other, still not touching the ground. So wrapped up, as he was wont to be, in the immediacy of his emotions. Eli could tell he wanted to speak, but Grant had said enough over the last several months. It was Eli’s turn.

“It’s not the right way, Grant. It’s not okay. It’s just the way you know. And these deaths aren’t okay when it’s you? Because my love, my desire to keep you safe is lesser than your desire to keep me safe? Your desires which you now don’t trust? Because I’m the unstable one? Because I don’t think things through? How am I supposed to bear this weight? How do you expect me to do it alone, without trying to help? Just because I’m more willing doesn’t mean that I’m stronger.”

“You don’t understand,” Grant said, his voice soft enough that it would not have disturbed the smallest mote of dust collecting around the Milky Way.

“I understand just fine.”

Grant’s eyes were wide, and in them Eli could see the reflection of the ripple of light starting to roil off of him as the star reacted to his emotions. Eli could also see that Grant was having trouble reconciling who Eli was now with who he had been and who Grant had always wanted him to be. Grant’s expectations rested more heavily on him than any loss of life ever had, including his own.

“You don’t know what it’s like to fall short to you over and over again,” Eli said. “Do you ever stop to examine why you feel so secure? Is part of it because I’m always looking for you to be exactly who you are, because that is exactly who I want you to be? That pedestal you look down on me from? I put you there.”

Grant’s mouth twitched and Eli knew he was holding back an incredulous laugh of his own. They simply didn’t see each other the same way. That was the crux of the problem. This realization brought him a moment of calm he hadn’t known since his last death. The light burned off of him, the star backed away, and everything around him came into focus more clearly.

“No, let it out,” Eli said. “It’s a feeling we’re sharing for the first time in months. For the first time in months we know exactly how the other feels. And you know what the punchline is? It’s the rest of our lives. So fucking let it out.”

Grant dropped to the floor. “I’m going on patrol,” he said.

“Yeah,” Eli turned around and started climbing the stairs to their bedroom. “You have a good night out with Mar and the city, with your women. I’ll be asleep when you get in, or pretending to be. I’ll be out before you wake up. Congratulations. You wanted me flung off? You’ve succeeded.”

Eli reached the second story landing and kicked at the bannister, frustrated that the stairs wouldn’t just take him back up to his collapsing star, where the simple weight of living was nothing. Where the click of the lock on their back door didn’t echo through his head for hours.

Other introductions I could have made.

momebie — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 16:26:38 GMT

I mean, I have a lot of feelings about AI and uploading people to the internet, but all I really want to live to see is gifs on t-shirts, because I have a mighty need to wear some of them about. I mean.

[Soooooooource.]

Look, now you've all been warned.

LJ Idol Home Game: Introduction.

momebie — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 13:49:49 GMT

My name is KL and I am a compound fracture. Fractured because I'm nothing more than a fraction of a sliver of the sum of me, and compounded because I carry with me the ghosts of every sliver I have been and will be. It is impossible to define an object in one moment of time. By the time you're finished writing it that thing will have moved on and become something else. If for no other reason than the seconds have worn a little bit more of it away as you were trying to catch it. Everything is a little less possible every day. I am saddled with a little less possibility every day.

Let's try that again. My name is KL and I am a pretentious douchebag. I am also in love with no fewer than ten comic book characters. I mix my corn with my mashed potatoes. My title just changed at work and now I'm a Librarian. I'll have moved to Boston by the time this season ends. I write poems about superheroes that sometimes end up in actual facts books. I am not a poet. I'm working on it, though.

I'm preoccupied with transhumanism and artificial intelligence and what it means to be human, because I'm not quite sure what that actually entails. I'll take advice on being a person from anyone who's got it figured out, which is why I love Idol so much. Do you have any advice for me?

In the meantime I'll be dancing around in my underwear to jangly indie pop. Gotta get it all out of my system now. When they upload my brain to the internet I won't have the ability to wear underwear. And really, what would be the point of dancing then?

I am not, in spite of what my icon says, sorry about the robots.