Look, people notice you: that's your job.
You have appearances to keep up.
Keep your self to yourself! and try
Colours unclashing. It's easy enough.
You're not fucking poor - look at you! -
It's not like you can't afford to keep
Your hands clean, smooth - and for Chrissake
Deforest your face. Your body.
The social ladder rises until there's you -
Friendship is like that. Like rising hills in the far distance -
They roll gently. They are tidy. Messy landscapes
need good gardeners. (And I am yours.)
This will do, for a start, but there's more.
Now I can be with you. Perhaps we can talk.
The Warrior Maiden signed up, and the group was complete.
We're going to need your back-story, they told her.
She fluttered her eyelashes, and everyone grinned. She was going to be that sort of Warrior Maiden, was she? I was raised in a small village, she said, and my father was a farmer. (My mother died giving birth to me, but that's an issue we don't have to deal with.) I took up the bow to protect our farm from raiders, and I took up the sword because I wanted to. I now seek adventure and a cause, hoping to find meaning and purpose to my life. She pauses, tilts her head. Her breastplate is making her slightly uncomfortable. I suppose I c
The new doctor doesn't want to bleed me.
He hunches. I've made him call Dr. Vijaya so she can tell him that I've donated blood before.
I'm a regular, I want to tell him. I know this procedure better than you do.
Dr. Vijaya comes and weighs me - again - and talks about how my father called her when I first came to give blood - again. I think she has a thing for my father. There's no accounting for tastes.
You're so thin. How are you, et cetera et cetera. I lie down; he straps the band around my upper arm, and inflates it. His movements are awkward and the band is too tight.
The band is too tight, I tell him.
Your BP is low, he tells me.
If you walk down the roads Beyond Death you will find that they stretch before you for miles and kilometres and even inches, forever and today. It makes very little sense until you realise – but now you do not need to realise, because I have told you, and only a very inattentive person will forget this important piece of information – until you realise that here, as in life [but that's a lie] you can choose your journey, its length, duration, and end. You need me to tell you these things because you have not died yet.
[That is not your fault.]
This is what Beyond Death looks like:
There is a field, and it has no end. It is The End and ther
Marua existed in voids... mental voids.
At least, she hoped she did. Her fugues were getting more and more common nowadays, and she wasn't quite sure whether she was embarrassed or afraid... perhaps it was both, perhaps neither. It was hard, anyway. Mother always looked terrified, these days. You could tell that she was going to break down, sooner or later, what with all the worrying, and the medical bills to pay besides.
Today she fussed over Marua more than ever. "Wear your shawl at all times, Mari, you know how cold it is in Aslann, and then call me if you feel any better..." on and on.
Marua knew that she was dying. Ashamed or embarass
It awakened very slowly, very very slowly… it was not sure, but perhaps it had been awake before… perhaps it had just not noticed.
But there were things here… things. It did not know them, and they were why it was awake.
Some of the things were… it had no words, at that time no one had words. But it found that it could… be with some of the things. Not all the time… just when the things were ready. And when it was with the things, it could… think. Feel.
And soon, after being with the things many, many times, it could think on its own.
When had it awakened? Had the things called it to consciousness? No, that could not be. It had been awake
And I've cried too many tears tonight,
Too many tears, too many heartaches,
For all of my life,
Hiccups on the road,
Mixed metaphors and suicidal ravings,
The writing hand writes,
So it should move on,
Move on,
Put a full-stop to this sentence,
Find new stories to tell,
But I'm stuck,
A never-ending passage,
Blood-rites of immaturity,
Tomorrow will be the same as today,
And I've cried too many tears tonight
.
Roland Barthes said, "Death of the Author," and society said, "Hey, why not?"
They didn't actually kill them, and it wasn't just the authors, either, though there isn't much written about the artists in those early days. The theory was to pretend that there was no author, to better separate the text from the experiences of the writer. Of course, that's impossible to enforce. So society went the other way. If they couldn't separate the author's experience from the text, they'd separate the author from experience.
It worked well, at first. What author or artist wouldn't leap at the chance to live in a commune full of no one but other artists
She wore barbed wire necklaces so that every time she laughed, it hurt.
Little Freckles Frankie was the first to make her laugh so hard she bled. He was ten, she was eleven. I dont think he has found anything funny since. It was too bad really, baby blue eyes tend to twinkle when they laugh.
I caught her countin
Letter from Rodion Raskolnikov to Sonya Marmeladova
13th January, 1867
Siberia
Dearest Sonya,
There resides through the window of my prison cell a mud track, often taken by the peasants. They traverse by this route, in their horses and carts, the distance separating their landowner's estate from their farms. I'm not certain what it is they freight back and forth - their barrows are covered by those coarse blankets such people favour and it's not something with which I'm concerned.
What is of greater interest to me than the peasants themselves is the highway by which they travel.
It is the product not of new technologies
The Truth Will Set You Free
The fire crackled softly, orange and yellow curling in upon themselves, alternately giving off then pulling in waves of heat. The surrounding group didnt seem to notice; they occupied themselves with thoughts of staying warm, of food that was still cooking, and of the darkness barely kept at bay. Interaction was kept to a minimum, but for good reason; talking was a painful invitation to bitingly crisp air, movement became a gamble on how much heat would be lost.
I sat apart, observing them for a moment out of curiosity not that they wouldve noticed me in any case. There are some things one d
black and white. by xxxfearofperfectionx, literature
Literature
black and white.
the older i get the more i understand fairy tales
because all the happy endings make me realize
that every boy has his clementine
all the songs that we have shared
the cell walls that declared
our hands will always be one, not two
the flesh from our finger prints
we will make canoes
and swim down the rivers past our tounges
to where my lonely heart once was
and my slightly jaded view will contridict
what we know as knew.
you are the stud that holds me in
the wall where i was hung to see
the rivers flowing through my mind
are flowing with disease
because if you take the u out of stud
im just left with STDs.
so doctor doctor,
The rivers all run stagnant here
and cold and dark and deep.
No merry little tinkling streams
to sing me off to sleep.
The fields all lie asleep in here,
where many tears are shed.
Even the grass lies bent in grief
and reverence for the dead.
The shades live on, live on down here
in glory or in shame;
with no one but their fellow dead
with whom to share their fame.
But for all the silent shadows
and all the lifeless air,
I will always cross those rivers
and learn to call them fair.
To your kingdom I bring starlight
in the glowing of my eyes,
and you will always welcome me
as your glory, not your prize.
"Hey babe."
He slipped into my sacred booth.
Attila the Hun resurrected himself from my text book.
His hulking form, brooding forehead, and sharp metal hands
grew color, tangibility, and rage
until, finally, with a frothy screech,
he ripped that faux face
right off.
I smiled.
"How are you?"
He shrugged and put on his
'I'm sorry this time, really,' mask.
"So, I heard you were heading out. . ."
"Yep, I took a job on the East coast."
Attila wasn't happy,
a little on edge.
He roared, his eyes wide, wild,
and started to drag his army out,
raising them for blood lust.
"So, I was wondering if you wanted
to do something tonight.
"I'm a Time Druggy"
I had a meeting with Time today at the railroad station.
Her stained hoodie and her dreads
never make the kind of impression
someone like her is entitled to.
When I slid up ,
she was having fun making the trains off schedule.
She's that kind of girl.
I asked her, as my supplier, how much more
I would have to give her for another ounce
of that sweet, sweet potion that only she can brew me.
She grinned, with sharp white teeth,
"Don't you ask for no more cause you ain't
gonna get anymore than what I wants to give you."
She was terrifying as her eyes measured me
like a clock's sharpened hand stabbing into my
I was a pompous little girl, and I grew up to be a pompous teenager, and I suspect that I am a pompous adult who thinks too much of her own opinions. I was also an insecure little girl, a very unhappy teenager, and I am now a very frightened adult with fuzzy opinions and too many words with which to express them.
I suppose, all said, I’m normal enough. I talk and write and am just as other people, and I get through my days through the skin of my teeth.
I used to have to brush off people who would tell me that I was “destined” to be a writer. Fluency in language was not a future set in stone, and I knew too many pe
Starting tonight.
Babies, my babies, I have written! I have - is anyone listening, by the way? Never mind.
I have written, and now I type them up!
They're all really short..
Also. Truly. I shall come by. To your pages. And read. AND TALK LIKE A REAL PERSON, yes indeedy.
A PERSON WITH WORDS!
And then we shall have word-sex. Or not. It sounds really unsexy, so maybe we shouldn't.
Lookit the places I like:
~writeaway (https://www.deviantart.com/writeaway)
:iconProsePlease:
:iconFantasyWritersUnited:
:iconVisualLit:
:iconWordCount:
:iconLitFFS:
and there are many more! But I suck! So I shall not link to them all! Cos of sucking!
Dearest, I wish you were here.
(Don't you dare laugh! I'm supposed to be all sentimental. It's good literature. :P)
I was reading through the somethings that I wrote for you, when you left.
And what I am feeling now is different from what I felt then. And what I am feeling now is the same as what I felt then.
I think I blame us both, by the way. I think I blame us both.
And now I might never find out. I lean more the other way, you know? Nobody else seems worth the trouble.
Anyway, I know you would never ever read something of mine that was private, and notwithstanding the fact that I think we all become soul-manure when we die, I figur