Thanks, Georgia O'Keefe. Free cookies to anyone who figures out what this one's about.

Kissing A Rose

There blooms within a sultry blackness
A flower quite immune to darkness
A blossom that a lover chose
For here there blooms a hidden rose

Scarlet petals flushing deeper
Like maiden blushes, climbing steeper
Crimson edges gaping like jaws
Petals grasping out like claws

I have kissed the hands of men

Catherine and the Pirate

There's many a tale that's told or sung
Upon the salt sea air
But none can match the ballad here
Of sweet Catherine and her pirate fair
For they did sail the fickle sea
With a lusty breeze in their hair

Sweet Catherine left her father's house
His belt and fist to flee
And she did dress in man's array
And steal away to sea
She left upon a merchant's ship
And so a man was she

It's 2:01 AM in California right now. And it's cold, at least here it is. I think I'm going to try to stay up until the sun comes up. I'm not really sure why, but it seems like a good idea, despite my homework, which I have to do tomorrow, and buying school supplies, which also has to happen tomorrow.

I wonder if I'll make it to sunrise. I kinda want to do it just so I can say I did. So far I've been doing computer stuff, and listening to music. Maybe I'll write something. Hm.

This was inspired by spending way too much time is bookstores, comic stores, and the like.

The Ballad Of The Comic Book People

Our world is a comic book written by a madman, where all the superheros hide in their caves and the ordinary people have to save the world on their own, where the sky is transparent sometimes and God looks down on us and laughs.

Our tears smudge the ink bordering the panels, and they run together with no discernible order, the heroes and villains forced together in an unholy copulation of colour and words, choked sounds held captive by the ink and pencil chains drawn in for them.

I have decided that henceforth, all my titles will be somewhat strange, more out of coincidence than effort. Hence this title.

Some writers have empty wine bottles scattered on their battered desks. Some have absinthe bottles. Some have vodka or cognac or Coca Cola bottles. But me, I have water and blood orange soda bottles. Empty bottles are oddly inspiring, which may be why so many writers don't bother to get rid of them. I see them as vessels of unfound poems, untold stories, and really, really irritating when they fall of the desk. I think I have now rambled enough about empty bottles.

A strange little stream of conciousness piece I did last night and this morning.

Black Coffee

I stumbled out of the house, my rage departing uneasily
And crashed through three doors to the bicycle I didn't remember
I climbed across it and pedalled fiercely, but with little conviction
I'd said I was going for coffee, but I wasn't sure where I really wanted to go
Away, but nowhere more specific

Disclaimer: The following is a rant, and therefore illogical, biased, and more than a little bitchy. You have been warned.

My family is frustrating, therefore, I will take this lovely opportunity to bitch about them. Admittedly, some of my angst in their direction is to be expected, they are family, I am ruthlessly independent whenever possible. But I believe it is reasonable to not want one's mother to fight with one's brother to the point of scaring the bloody hell out of me! My mother used to be viciously unstable, but a while after Dad moved out, she got better. Now, she's back to the drama queen "Oh I'm Such A Terrible Mother, My Son Is A Monster, My Daughter Hates Me, I Should Just Die And The World Would Be Better." What the hell happened!?!? Why is she suddenly the falling apart teenager minded bitch she used to be? I don't want to have to be the adult in my mother's house. I don't want to have to call Dad because my mother and brother are breaking things and screaming. This entire exchange makes it sound like my brother is an older, wife-beater type, but he's only nine years old!!!!! He isn't a monster!!! He's a kid, and his (and my) mother should realise that if she didn't fight on his level, this wouldn't happen! Is a little sanity too much to ask? After the fight, I left to get coffee and avoid Mom. She didn't want me to go, and tried to force-feed me some "I Need Our Family To Be Together Right Now, Please Don't Just Walk Out, Are You Really Going To Get Coffee, Or Are You Leaving For Good" drivel. Family? What family, pray tell? Side Dish (my brother) and I are a family, we look out for each other, take care of each other, and Dad is family, we could go to him for help if we needed to, but really! The person who split up our family to begin with has no business bitching about our lack of togetherness. I am tired of dealing with her drama. I have enough drama of my own, thank you very much! I don't need any more! Ever since she and Dad got divorced, she's been completely insane. She doesn't listen to me, or Side Dish, and she's become a puppet for her right-wing country club soulless close minded parents who hate Dad and any traits in me and my brother even vaguely related to him. She's gone from the open-minded cool mom who understood that it didn't matter what was on our heads, what was in them was more important, to the mom who told me not to get a buzz cut because we were going on a trip with my grandmother (hereafter referred to as Madame Botox), just because Madame Botox would object. Excuse me! It's a goddess-damn haircut! And it's my hair, so why the bloody hell should my grandmother care!? It doesn't look scruffy, it doesn't look bad, it just looks different, and she can't deal with that. Urgh. So what happened to my mother, exactly? Since when did she care what Madame Botox thinks of my hair, or Side Dish's hair? She let him grow his hair out long, and she knows damn well Madame Botox and Daddy Fatass (grandfather) will hate it. But I can't shave my head? Again, I am forced to point out, that it's my head! It's attached to my shoulders, and it's ultimately my decision. In the end, I got the haircut before the trip, on Dad's watch, and Madame Botox hated it, true to prophecy, but I didn't start any fights about it, so she couldn't do anything. Returning to my original point, I don't think it is unreasonable to ask that my mother not act like a complete drama queen idiot and put me and Side Dish in danger. Rant over.

Written while drinking blood orange soda.

Blood Orange

I struck a match one quiet soot stained burnt evening in a darkened room
And it burned clearly, brightly convinced of its existence
As its head and body shrivelled, I stared at it and wept
To the bitter raindrops of an out of tune piano
That stood nearby, weeping itself to pieces and discord
Its keys falling dejected in a clanging heap like bones of some great primeval protector

I realise I've been posting a lot of poetry lately, but my other outlet has been cut off for the time being, so I turn to Oasis. This was inspired by several dreams I had a while back.

Matchsmoke Dreams

A black nailed hand reaches out in the aching white light
Clawing, grasping at the fragile nicotine stained angels on their tenuous strings
The seraphim swing back and forth, like avenging, unsure pendulums

Partially inspired by a Franz Ferdinand song of the same name. Eventually it will be a song, I hope. We'll see how it works out.

Auf Asche

Mother I'm sorry but I have to go
I have to take my last bow and end the show
Make my last confession and be free
Please, Mother, forgive me

Auf Asche, auf Asche
I lie my severed head
On ashes, on ashes
I lie, for I am dead
Auf Asche, auf Asche

Vegetarian hotdogs are weird. They tast kind of like hotdogs, but at the same time they invoke feelings akin to chewing on a damp sock. Now that I've got that off my chest, on to buisness. Family dinners are painful. Not because I dislike or disvalue my family, although in the case of certain relatives, that is true. but because it just feels weird, like chewing on a vegetarian hotdog. It looks right, it almost feels right, but there's still that funny square shape and damp-sockness. I don't know what it is, it just feels like an audition combined with a dull school function.

An ode to the muse of poetry:

Erato

O, nameless temptress who I know so well
Curling madness in my very being
You are my absinthe
My stupefying liquor
Distilled from rankest poison

I tried so hard to forget you
With your coiling tentacles or cloying loveliness
But again the madness strikes
And I am powerless in your
Merciless arms

O, perfect being risen from the ashes
Long white hands curled in my hair again

I wrote this in Paris, when I was feeling tired and lonely.

Weary

The river glints away
Shining to the distance
Another quiet day
Another debt to pay

The wind blows through the trees
Singing very quietly
Another lonely sea
Another melody

The ocean crashes on the shore
Washing stones of sorrow
Another song I've heard before
Another closing door

The noose swings on the scaffold high

Oceans Apart

I lie awake another night
And weep away another day
Without you my heart's torn to pieces
So close, but yet so far away
A wretched ocean lies between us
And I lack the wings to fly
Across this tawdry sea of evil
But if you ask me to I'll try

I would swim this hateful ocean
Lying twixt us for a while
I would bleed an equal ocean
If I could only see you smile
In nightmares fierce and never-ending

This is based on a girl I know, who, last I heard, was viciously self destructive. You aren't reading this, but Sam, honey, hold on, please.

Eulogy For My Love

You're crying again
Your last distraction left for the last time
And the smokescreen drifted away
You stood there
Tearstained eyes and bloodstained arms
Waiting for the rain to stop

Please don't do this again
If I ever was your friend