Haiku for You.

Well, the sun’s real warm.
Wind smells like pollen and grass.
Summer: let’s live it.

A Plate of Fear?

So I was at a bit of a loss as to what to write about today. So I thought I’d search writing prompts on google and this is what I found: http://www.creativewritingprompts.com/

I texted my friend Hannah to pick a random number and she chose 234 which is “create a story, poem, or any piece based on this metaphor: a plate of fear.”

So here goes nothing.

 &&&&&&&&&&

Johnny collected plates. No one knew why he did it or what his obsession with them was, but by the ripe age of sixty-four, he’d procured thousands.

I remember sitting in his room when we were just fourteen and seeing just drawers and drawers full of dinner plates, tea saucers, and china sets. Some he’d bought for ten cents at the flea market or pawn shop, some he’d stolen out of his own kitchen.

Johnny and I dated that summer we were fourteen. He’d been collecting ever since I’d known him, a few years give or take. He’d always been a little off. You know, in the way he carried his head or how he counted the soda bottles in the grocer’s every time he went. But he had a great mind, a beautiful smile, and some sort of love for me that I could never quite understand.

But I was the one who had to ask him to go steady. It was in Levi’s Pawn Shop just off Stellhorn with the promises and kisses of a newborn summer sun upon our backs. He’d traded baseball cards with Clint Jeevers that morning just so he could pawn them for a nice cerulean saucer with a daisy pattern along the rim.

Being the wild and brash young thing I was, I asked him outright, in the middle of the store. We were hunting through racks of gold rings and Singers to find where he’d hidden that dang saucer the day before.

I saw the way his cheeks colored when I asked; pink as rosebuds. He didn’t answer, not verbally. But a few seconds later I felt his sweaty hand reach for mine. He held it the entire time we were in that store; finding, discussing, and trading for the cerulean saucer. He even held it the whole walk home. It wasn’t bliss but it was blissful, and it made me love him just a little more than I already did.

It was that fall that Johnny got scared. Scared of me, scared of everybody, scared of everything. Everything, but his plates. Those plates kept him calm. His mamma had to keep dragging him to the doctor, praying by his bedside, and calling her sister in Jackson every night just to cry. She held his hand as he shook and stared at his stacks of china.

He wouldn’t let me come in his room anymore. Not after that. I tried to buy him plates, just to do something, anything I could to help. He wouldn’t take them from me, his mamma had to do it. She’d come to the door trying to smile and seem like a regular woman, but I could see her dismay in every lipstick smudge and imperfect curl.

“Just let me see him, maybe today he’ll be better,” I’d say.

But after the first couple times, she thought it was best to keep my distance.

It was when I saw a plain white plate at Sears when I had that idea.

My sister complained when I stole her paint set.

Johnny’s mother looked at me skeptically when I pleaded to see him again.

His door creaked as it swung on its hinges.

My pulse picked up when I saw him staring at the cerulean plate with the daisy pattern.

I talked over his protests, loud and violent as they were, “Johnny, this plate is for you! I bought it and I painted it. Well- I wrote a list in paint! A list, Johnny! Johnny listen! It’s all the things I’m afraid of! Every single thing, it goes all the way on the back too cause I needed more room.”

He’d stopped screaming and turned his head to stare at the wall, his fist clutching the faded fabric of his sheets.

 “Johnny, everyone’s afraid. You’re not alone.”

Introversion.

“Why?
Why won’t you tell me?”
…
This room, 
Gray
Silver
Pewter if you will.
I sigh.
And glance around,
This standstill again.
He has a small set of Newton balls,
They click, clack, tick
Silver.
“I won’t tell you because…”
Click, clack, tick
“Inside me
Everything 
Is romantically beautiful.
It is lace and silk.
It is 
Parchment and ivory and rosebuds.
The world has a sheer and sultry
Haze about it.
Sunlight,
The sunlight is
A perfect blend of
Cream and gold.
Everything
Is dramatic, weighty
Impactful.
Nothing flighty, nothing stupid.
Everything
Is simple and perfect.
It looks as if peered at through
Film.
But step into the real world,
Even a slow,
Maybe tentative step,
And it is harsh.
Everything
Has sharp edges,
Nothing sounds the same or
Looks the same.
The sunlight
Is sinlight
In an unforgiving white.
There is grit and grime
Everywhere.
Stalking,waiting for an inner secret 
From this inner world
To pounce on,
And deface,
Blemish,
Corrupt,
Tarnish
Its wholesomeness and truth.
No, no
Everything
Is safer on the inside.”

Young, white, and well-off.

Middle class white girls, we are. Identical, suburban heroines who watched SNL at the foot of our parents’ bed. We’ve always been loved and told things like “We believe in you,” and “You can do anything you set your mind to.” Anything, except sex, drugs, and suicide.

We were always those girls with scabby knees. The ones with and tee shirts with monkeys on them making beaded bracelets in our garages. We ran wild and stupid in our little perimeter, talking and dreaming about the boyfriends we’d have in high school. It was a good life, everything a childhood should be. We were fashionably challenged, awkward, annoying but oblivious. Oblivion that crashes down the day we watch an old home movie.

We were the envy of kids with broken homes, the ones that smelled like old wood and bad air freshener. We played soccer and thought Britney Spears was a demigod, fiddled around for the meaning of life in our Barbie purses and bedazzled jeans.

Individuals in our ubiquity, life shifted. Such a subtle change and we were thinking like adults and wishing our hair was shinier. Maybe we’d never go back, but without it we would have never made it forward.

The Beautiful Moritican.

The beautiful mortician they call me. I weave the toe of my shoe into the dirt. Trees conceal me, everywhere I turn a wall of trees closes me in. I cannot be beautiful if no one can see me.

My obsession with death had started young, I lived in a world where my parents were everything, they filled up my young life like water fills a fishbowl. Yet, a second later, kissed with cancer, they were gone, leaving two empty shells to dispose of in some glorified landfill.

I clenched my eyes shut, recalling those pearly white cheeks stretched hollowly against curious cheekbones.

                backpedaling through time
                                when translucent membranes
                                replaced yesterday’s smile lines

I had been advised to convert feelings into words. A friend once told me poetry was like vomiting your emotions. I needed my emotions out, but I was hardly regurgitating them. They dribbled laboriously and contemptuously from my fingers.  

                generations passed
                                too many flies on the ground
                                effervescence beat out of them
                                swiftly, cursedly

I was the constant in a succession of death. Perhaps I was the catalyst, perhaps I was the curse.

I pressed down into the fleshy base of which my thumb grows from, barely detecting the steady chant of life singing from my veins with my pointer and middle fingers. I then remembered a boyfriend, a link in a chain that could stretch to the moon and back. This boy was one of the better ones. He’d held my small South American body into the curve of his own and quietly shared his seventeen year old wisdom.

                “while your heart still beats, you shouldn’t concern yourself with death
                                you are amazing
                                you are not a curse.”
                                sentiments sweet, like cotton candy
                                luscious pink taste that disappeared faster than he did

Here I sat, on some glorified tree root crushing a ballpoint pen between my fingers. I was back home in the jungles of Peru, back into the jungles of the mind, toying with emotions as if I controlled them. As if.

                                first my parents, a friend, a beloved goldfish,
                            a boyfriend, a teacher, two grandparents
                             they all fell.
                           One after the other after the other.

                I absolutely boiled in the thick, soupy air. My hair had fused itself to my neck through the adherence of my own sweat. Death is a funny thing, I realized, sometimes devastating, horrible, shocking, sometimes commonplace, natural, the circle of life. Death weaves its black cord regardless and blind, twisting itself through the abundance of life.

                                I seem to wear the curse of death like a pair of gloves.
                                yet it will always be alluring to me, romantic, mysterious
                                beautiful, it will always be beautiful
                                seems fitting, for I am the beautiful mortician.

Stressed? Me too.

It’s a little like masochism, this stress. Both consciously and unconsciously heaped upon me. These short hours of half-dreaming, half-suffering lend themselves to late nights and bad penmanship. My hair falls out and I go to sleep blind and stinging and way past exhausted.

                Why can’t every culture adopt the Spanish way of life? The two o’clock siesta, the meandering pace of time. I could find every blessing of life behind my eyelids at two o’clock pm.

                Maybe when life’s uncertain, maybe when we’re uncertain, staying busy keeps a daunting future in a little box.

                However, no matter how many nights I spend memorizing, copying, and typing. I always feel better when I’m writing. Life just makes more sense flowing out of ballpoint.

Under Pressure

In the style of ‘O Me! O Life!’ by Walt Whitman



Dear airlessness, that you are so unattainable:
to those clutched within the doldrums of an unvarying pressure.
Of a ghost-like spirit to which the pen depends,
of never ceasing, half-hearted attempts
and legions of almost blind, almost deaf naysayers.
Of a tightness and a hopelessness.
Doses of time dreaming of catharsis,
of midnight rampages and a draining of life’s marrow.
Answer.
Take it, take it all.
Dispose of weariness, the mind is a gracious organ.

Character Bios

This is late... sorry. But Blogger was down on Thursday and Friday was CRAZY. So here it is now.

Character bios, I love these things. I also like hyphens.

1. Name: Lorelei Winters

2. Age: 24

3. Height: 5’6

4. Eye color: Brunette

5. Physical appearance: Hair the epitome of brunette and eyes a clear, untarnished aqua blue. She has a plain face that takes make-up well. She always looks extremely put together and in control of herself.

6. Strange or unique physical attributes: a birthmark that looks like a lightning bolt on her shoulder.

7. Hobbies/interests: Loves to knit, loves yoga, and making banana smoothies after class.

8. Where does he or she live? What is it like there? Seattle, Washington. She lives in a tiny apartment just off the campus of UW where she’s studying orthodontia.

9. Special skills/abilities: Immaculate at applying make-up, showing sympathy, and Mario Kart.

10. Family: Socially inept father, mother left when she was eleven, right after having her younger brother Derrick.

11. Description of his or her house: Her apartment’s not much more than a sitting room, bedroom/bathroom, and kitchenette. She’s tried to decorate it in her favorite color combination (black, white, and teal) but she can’t do too much with her measly income working at the desk of a local physical therapist’s office.

12. Description of his or her bedroom: Her bedspread is white with decorations of black flowers and teal birds. The walls are white, the carpet is slightly coloring from age but was at one point, white. Pictures of Derrick, her father, and some friends are framed on the walls. She has a small desk and a small window that looks out onto the street. It’s so meticulously organized it hints at OCD.

13. Favorite bands/songs/type of music: She loves R&B and jazz. Singers like Aretha, Whitney Houston, and Billie Holiday

14. Favorite movies: She likes artistic films and frequents film festivals often.

15. Favorite TV shows: She never watched TV much growing up and at present doesn’t even own one.

16. Favorite books: Classics like Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and East of Eden

17. Favorite foods: She adores Mexican food as well as shrimp cocktail.

18. Favorite sports/sports teams: She doesn’t follow any teams except for her brother’s lacrosse team.

19. Any interesting philosophies on life? Still figuring that out.

20. Physical health: Very good. She makes it a priority to stay in good shape even though her workload is enormous.

21. Pet peeves: Tardiness, roadkill, bitemarks on pencils, crying babies.

1. Name: Rosa Clare Reynolds

2. Age: 18

3. Height: 5’9

4. Eye color: Honey blonde

5. Physical appearance: Extremely pretty in the interesting, can’t-put-your-finger-on-it, model-esque sort of way. Tall, thin, but looks like she could hold her own in a fight.

6. Strange or unique physical attributes: Almond-shaped, brown eyes and full, red mouth.

7. Hobbies/interests: Debate, student council, basketball, art.

8. Where does he or she live? What is it like there? Flagstaff, Arizona. It’s hot and dry, but she loves it.

9. Special skills/abilities: She’s extremely talented at art, has an ear for the piano, an amazing conversationalist

10. Family: Two loving parents, one older sister named Hazel in college and an enormous extended family.

11. Description of his or her house: A-style two story. Medium sized with all the walls painted in bright, fresh colors.

12. Description of his or her bedroom: Wide with a sloping ceiling. Painted white with a spring green outline and a large window opposite the door that looks out onto the backyard. Neat, but not too tidy.

13. Favorite bands/songs/type of music: She loves both alternative rock and Spanish music.

14. Favorite movies: Romantic comedies like 27 Dresses or There’s Something About Mary.

15. Favorite TV shows: She likes all the popular ones: Glee, American Idol, America’s Next Top Model.

16. Favorite books: The Harry Potter books.

17. Favorite foods: Sushi.

18. Favorite sports/sports teams: The Suns

19. Any interesting philosophies on life? Have fun, but not too much. Be crazy, but be careful.

20. Physical health: Commendable.

21. Pet peeves: Country music and paper cuts.

1. Name: Rebecca ‘Becky’ Beverly Wilks

2. Age: 17

3. Height: 5’5

4. Eye color: Dirty blond

5. Physical appearance: Exceptionally thin, navy eyes, bumped nose, mediocre face.

6. Strange or unique physical attributes: Tiny ears

7. Hobbies/interests: Likes to make bracelets out of string and read paranormal fiction.

8. Where does he or she live? What is it like there? She lives in Flagstaff.

9. Special skills/abilities: Can list off the first one hundred digits of pi and do a backbend.

10. Family: Exceptionally rich father and high class mother. Two older brothers, Aaron and Patrick and one younger sister, Julia.

11. Description of his or her house: An enormous, modern-style house in Flagstaff’s gated community.

12. Description of his or her bedroom: Large and spacious with mahogany and dark metal furniture. Red bedding and curtains. White, shag carpet and a walk-in closet.

13. Favorite bands/songs/type of music: She doesn’t listen to much music, but pop is her go-to.

14. Favorite movies: Dear John, Elf, Charlie St. Cloud

15. Favorite TV shows: Gilmore Girls and nothing else.

16. Favorite books: Anything paranormal YA.

17. Favorite foods: Spaghetti or salmon.

18. Favorite sports/sports teams: Couldn’t care less.

19. Any interesting philosophies on life? No.

20. Physical health: Could be better.

21. Pet peeves: Girls that think they know it all, wishing on stars, people who dog-ear library books.

1. Name: Eli Fuller

2. Age: 18

3. Height: 6’1

4. Eye color: Black

5. Physical appearance: Racially ambiguous. Freckled. Tall. Curly, black hair and a strong jaw.

6. Strange or unique physical attributes: His freckles.

7. Hobbies/interests: Football, building, and hiking.

8. Where does he or she live? Flagstaff.

9. Special skills/abilities: He’s really good at dancing but would never admit it.

10. Family: He has older parents and an adopted younger sister named Sarah.

11. Description of his or her house: Just an average, red-brick one story out in suburbia.

12. Description of his or her bedroom: Small and cramped with all his furniture. Painted blue jean blue. Beatles posters and album covers hung all over the walls.

13. Favorite bands/songs/type of music: The Beatles. He idolizes them.

14. Favorite movies: Across the Universe.

15. Favorite TV shows: He enjoys sports programs and Monday Night Football.

16. Favorite books: Not a big reader, but he secretly really liked Huck Finn when he was forced to read it for school.

17. Favorite foods: Pretzels, bagels, and steak.

18. Favorite sports/sports teams: Basketball and Football. The Suns and the Vikings.

19. Any interesting philosophies on life? Do what you want, or maybe not.

20. Physical health: Very fit, but not the most nutritionally nourished.

21. Pet peeves: Cats. Anything to do with them.

Running.

               It’s a red-in-the-face, monster-in-the-gut type of feeling. Something straight out of hell that damns you in sweat. Damns you in third degree burns rising from within. It’s your blood thickening and dragging you down into the pavement. It’s the last leg. It’s a fiendish phenomena.

                So, I went running today.

                As you can probably tell, I’m not too fond of running. The strain, the pain. Not necessarily my cup of tea.

                Don’t get me wrong, I like the part about halfway into it. That stretch where consequence can’t quite keep up. You’ve got a crown of sweat and a ‘can do’ attitude. It’s where the pounding of your shoes matches the pounding of your heart and fatigue is nowhere to be found.

                But that fatigue is a little devil. He waits for you until you’re almost back home. Almost coming up the drive, almost finished. He strikes and the aforementioned paragraph of dreadfulness starts to run its course.

                I just hope I can use my legs tomorrow. (:

Book Review of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time'

Today I thought I’d do a book review for ya’ll, just to shake things up a bit.

                I’ve just recently finished the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

                The story centers around Christopher John Francis Boone, a severely autistic fifteen year old living in modern England.

On a midnight walk around his neighborhood, Christopher discovers a neighbor’s dog dead, impaled by a garden fork. Due to his love of detective work and the Sherlock Holmes novels, it becomes his mission to find out the identity of the murderer. He keeps track of his progress in his own novel, which is meant to be TCIOTDITN itself.

Through this simple quest, Christopher discovers a lot about himself, his world, and secrets people keep under the pretense of making life easier.

Haddon definitely has a bit of genius in him to come up with such an honest, off-beat, smart book.  The writing is simple and clear, just as you would imagine an autistic boy to write. The simplicity is obvious, but every so often you start to see the deep thought and the finesse and the quiet power within the paragraphs.

The story itself is a bit of a blurred adventure novel. We’re forced to see things through Christopher’s eyes, but at the same time can take it all in with our own minds. The result is both frustrating and enlightening; it gives a clear-cut view into the ambiguous world of autism that I haven’t encountered anywhere else.

It was cute, thought-provoking, and a little bit heartbreaking. I’d recommend it.

My Day.

0.       I laughed in the highway today,
Chuckled really.
Not like November,
But close.

1.       Subway bags and
Dead sons.
Oh, Bobby Bobby.

2.       Film connoisseurs
Talking through a classic.
Perhaps if Mr. Williams
Were young, blond, and female

3.       A tear-jerking ‘dog story’
And for all your troubles, a maxim.
All in the forest of numbers.

4.       Didn’t make it to the finish line
Didn’t make it.
Didn’t make it.
B.
Oh God,
B.

5.       Only the Mayans were worth seeing
Don’t believe me?
Wear white
For a week.

6.       STEVE
jonnnnnnnn
Herd mentality for the twenty-first century.
Dang, forgot my club at home.

7.       “Come on Jade, power through.”
Abbreviations, calculations, desperation.
Ready to kick the woodland creature shouting timetables.
How did I get here?

My Trip to the Dentist

                I went to the dentist today. Definitely not one of my favorite places to be.

It’s like time stands still in that office.  It’s been a little over a year and a half since my last check-up but it feels a little like I just stepped out for a bit. Nothing’s changed over that course of time, not the paint color, the small talk, or the papers taped up all around the examination room informing patients of the dangers of gum disease and the superiority of Oral B. They’ve even still got those translucent pictures of blue skies over the fluorescents, the one’s they’ve had since I was seven.

Lisa the dental assistant sets me down in one of those adjustable dentist chairs. The kind with the uncomfortable, curved headrests that are supposed to eliminate excess neck strain or something. She’s trying to carry on some semblance of a pleasant conversation as she readies the equipment for the exam, poking around on her computer as I stare at the rather dismal view of law offices out the window.

Maybe I hate going to the dentist because I find the process wholly undignified. There’s really no way to keep hold of your decorum as someone probes your mouth with pointy objects and has you suck out the spit and fluoride with a spit sucker.

She gives me a pair of matrix sunglasses so my delicate eyes can stand to look up at the overhead light. It’s always looked a little human to me, that light. It’s always peering over the dental assistant’s shoulder, intently watching you, silently enforcing the ‘mouth wide, tongue down’ rule.

A rule I’ve never been able to keep well. I feel a little like the tongue is an extremity that has a mind of its own. On many occasions in that hour in the dentist’s chair did I find my tongue wandering mindlessly to awkward locations, following the dental tools in their routine track, floating upward in a slow, senseless fashion. It must have been hilarious to watch.

Through the continuous scraping and power-buffing of my molars, I found myself wondering about dentists. Why do people choose careers in this field? Is it mainly for the money, or is it possible that people can honestly have a passion for teeth? And then I thought, perhaps it’s for the feeling of control. There are very few times in life when I feel so vulnerable as when I’m in that dentists chair. These people see their patients at their most unattractive and susceptible, they have the upper hand, the higher ground, the power.

The Man in the Jewlery Box. (3)

The third and final installment!
Yes, I am aware that this needs some major edits. Thanks so much for sharing.
I'll get to them. Probably not this week because I have a major paper due on Friday.
I hope you like it.
&&&&&&&

I started counting the jewelry yesterday, made it somewhere around one thousand before the piles started to blur together and I lost track. The boredom started to kick in half past breakfast on that second day. I used to think I’d keep myself busy by people watching, but even the constant procession of new subjects can’t parry the ugly gray feeling’s descent. I feel a little like giving in to the small, jarring feeling in my left foot and having a panic attack, just for something to do.
My brain feels heavier than normal as I stretch out on a bed of gold spikes. At first it would take at least ten minutes to get comfortable among the jewels, but now I barely feel anything as I sprawl out. This suit they put me in doesn’t leave much skin exposed, but I can still feel the patches of irritated flesh objecting to this abuse. My hands have become permanently red and indented. It’s a safe bet that the rest of my skin looks the same, but I’m not sure I care to find out.
Luxury died two days ago when I started to smell and lose the ability to think clearly. The only things I am able to do hygiene wise are: a. use the restroom, b. brush my teeth, and c. wash my face. The towelettes are made of some sort of Parisian cloth, but this entire box is stunningly void of a razor. I can feel the tiny hairs starting to break ground and emerge onto my face, itching like hell. I’m being stabbed in the night by bracelets literally and in my nightmares, I wake up sweating and claustrophobic in a prison of red scratches. This suit is becoming unbearable and I’m afraid it’s stuck to me forever.
I’ve lost count of the days. It hasn’t been many, I know, but you’d be surprised how quickly a person can become mad.
It’s been at least a month when I wake up out of a particularly gruesome nightmare. The moon is fuller than it’s ever been, casting the snickering little beasts in a cold, bony light. I haven’t moved in hours upon hours and the only part of me that isn’t numb is my back.
New York is still alive, but I can’t really hear it, my glittering cocoon keeps me isolated from everything.
I try to turn over to stare up at the skyscrapers, but my arms are slick with sweat and my legs are all tangled in piles of thousand dollar necklaces. I finally wrench myself into a sitting position with every muscle screaming and rioting in protest. The gold before me isn’t glittering. It’s painted in splotches of O negative. So are my forearms.