Red Wheelbarrow, a writting class essay

The rain was letting up, that he was thankful of. It had been raining last night when he had fallen asleep, it was raining as he woke up, and it had continued to rain until midday when the rat-tat-tat of drops on the window became a soft pat-pat-pat and the cool glass his face rested against warmed slightly with the sun. The clouds were passing. At least the garden was well watered.

The animals, too, recognized the change. The dog pawed the door and the cat settled down in his place beside the window to enjoy the new sun born from the dark clouds. Struggling, his boots were put on and the door was open and both man and his best friend burst into the yard and the dew and the musty air.

The dog ran off and the yard transformed in his mind. The area was a muddy trench now, the battle ground of a war to end all wards. The mud squelched under his boots as he patrolled. His men were dead. The enemy had won. Or so they thought.

As long as he survived, there was hope. A mosquito buzzed at his ear. Quickly, into the bush! Stay low, enemy aircrafts are scanning the area. The summer day turned into the darkest night. There were flashlights in the distance, people speaking foreign tongues. Two came close, their lights grazing the leaves above his head. Eyes closed, he listened carefully. “Sie Zerbrochen unter Folter. Es gibt eine links.”(Hervey, and Loughride) He checked his book for translation. They knew he was there. There was no hope.

But then…what’s that? That, across the mud and filth; an aircraft carrier half-sunk in the mud. It was one of theirs, the kind he’d flown in the first war when he was just a young man. He could remember it , but not so clearly. It seems all his memories were shot up with bullet holes and burnt along the edges like the photos his wife sent.


He had to fly the airplane alone his first time up. Other pilots have several hours of dual time in the air, with an experienced, qualified pilot in the aircraft. So for a student fighter pilot who would not get his wings for more than three more weeks, taking up this brand new kind of airplane was a challenge. (Robin)

It had toughened him, made his skin thick as leather. That’s how he’d survived this time when all the young and green were picked off so quick. The lights receded and he picked his way out of the brush slowly so as not to attract attention. It was a good twenty minutes away, but he could make it. He’d made it this far.

The boots stuck in the mud and every step was like a fight, like the hands of the men he had shot were holding him tight until he was found They had no voice to call out, but they slowed his pace. Twenty minutes could easily become thirty, forty. Maybe more. He was lucky though. With the land and weather what it was, the wet and the cold, his socks were soaked through. Trench foot was the least of his worries, but the thought was there. If he didn’t make it, he was dead anyways. But if he did there would be pretty Red Cross nurses like his wife having to saw his leg off at the knee. His pack was long gone so there was no chance to solve the problem. It was best just to push on.

More mosquito fighter planes and from afar, barking. They had brought the dogs. There wasn’t much time left. He pictured big German Shepherds with glossy black fur, teeth bared. They’d go for the throat. Maybe the rain and the scent of the dead would hold them off for a while. He was almost there. The trenches were so flooded but going above ground to the bushes and the flatter ground was too dangerous. The barking came closer, sharp like a knife through his chest. It was so close, his red beauty, and with every step she grew larger and larger until he could almost feel her cool steel under his palms, rain dripping from her propeller. He was so close, he was so close..

Mother’s calling from inside the house. His feet dry inside rain boots, the yard transforms again. The little dog chases clucking chickens. Rain drips off the rusted lip of the red wheel barrow. A letter from his father came in the mail. Maybe he’ll be flying home soon.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
Chickens (Williams)

Wild Nights, a writing class essay

Wild Nights--Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
(Dickinson)

“Shh, shh.” She hushed and the group giggled, anxious and giddy. She dug through her tote and pulled out a thermos with the name of her mother’s work printed along the side in the bold, cold letters pharmaceutical companies use in print ads in magazines for housewives. “Angelina’s having her seventh baby! Look how depressed you are!” The thermos is passed around our awkward circle. We’d crowded in the back of her mother’s van, the van she’d borrowed to get to my house. The taste and smell of cheap liquor was familiar by now. We were too young and felt too old and out the wide back window I looked out at the suburban neighborhood, quiet at this time of the night, and I wondered how many depressed housewives were washing the dinner dishes and letting tears fall onto their Lane Bryant blouses. How many told their husbands they weren’t in the mood and hid in the bathroom thumbing through the Newport News catalog? How long do I have until the life goes out of me? The radio hummed on in the background, almost like static, “What a drag it is getting old. Life’s just much too hard today.” (Rolling Stones, “Mother’s Little Helper”)

When the van had become too claustrophobic we burst out the doors like butterflies from a cocoon into the warm summer night and quietly, so quietly, we drunkenly fiddled with the gate until the latch gave way and across the yard we ran as far as we could. Out to behind the shed where man had dug a hole, a trench about ten feet wide and fifteen down. There was a tiny island in the middle with a tree standing up against the moonlight. A shadow of defiance. We stood on the edge and looked down at the dirt and gravel until someone was calling my name and I realized they’d all sat against the shed and someone was holding out a joint. This was the way our nights usually went. It didn’t matter the people, the only one I ever knew was her, but the situation was always the same. I’d get a call or a text and we’d meet and drink and smoke and they would talk about all the things you talk about when you’re drunk and high. It’s only teenage wasteland. (The Who, “Baba O’Riley”) But the best part of these nights was when I would fall back into the grass and look at the stars and feel numb and happy and enjoy the world spinning beneath me. My organic spaceship.

I had the joint and someone was calling me Kurt Cobain and the group laughed at my flannel and my cropped hair and the jeans I hadn’t washed all summer. They laughed at my silence and she told them to shut up, if I had anything worth saying I’d say it and it wouldn’t be their marijuana talk about Jesus and Batman and the vastness of vast-itude and they shut up pretty quickly until the munchies set in and off they went to the Wilson Farms down the street for whatever they could afford and beyond that whatever they could fit in their purses.

“They’re dumb, they’re so dumb,” she said, and I felt the ground beneath me shift as she crouched at my side. “I don’t know why I bother with them. It’s just…it is, you know?” And I guess I must have known because I nodded. She said that a lot at times like these. You know? You know? I guess I must have known a lot more than I realized I did because I never asked her to explain and she never asked me to contribute. Her job was to talk and mine was to listen and together we were supposed to be young and alive.

There was the sound of a lighter and she sucked in nicotine and tar. “I’ve always wanted to climb that tree. Let’s do it.” She stood and nudged my side with a bare foot until I opened my eyes and did as she asked. Together, her without shoes and me in old sneakers, we slid and scuffed down and across and up the dirt and by the end I had to help pull her up the other side and my jeans had a rip in the knee from falling and her feet were cut from bits of glass I hadn’t known were there. We stood at the bottom of that tree and stared up into it’s branches but I was too far gone to climb and her feet were too worn to do anything so we laid in the shadows and looked at the star and I listened to her heartbeat with my head on her breast as she sang songs from yesteryear.

“I can't get no satisfaction,
I can't get no girly action.
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try.
I can't get no, I can't get no.”
(Rolling Stones, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction“)

Her voice went out to the neighbors and the night and as she belted the lyrics I put my hand over her mouth and laughed and she kissed my palm and I sighed and the earth spun beneath us, hurtling us through space, and together we felt too young and too old and too small and too big and too many things that they don’t have words for. The important thing is, we felt. And that night, under the moon and the stars and huddled in the shadow of defiance, I promised myself I would always feel and god damn the supermarket magazines and the pharmaceuticals and the husbands and dishes. I was alive, and that was the way I wanted to keep it.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same
time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn,
burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders
across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop
and everybody goes “Awww!” (Kerouac)

Phone Sex and Juice in the Fridge

“Power’s out” she said
“How many fingers?” she said
I pictured her splayed out on the twin mattress, curly hair like warm earth spread around her head, bare chest heaving tiny mountains of breast in the moonlight shining through dorm window shades.
Four hours and forty-six minutes away the room slowly cools.

I sit up, drawn back to my room by the sound of a bathroom faucet. Warm light reflects off pink walls left over from a childhood of princess fantasies, creating rosy glows and a sense of innocence that feels all wrong.. The full-sized bed feels too big.

On the other side of the room, I open a window, letting winter chill greet skin overheated.

ramble rimble rabble

1|

A man full of guts sat on the stoop
In front of my house with a briefcase in one hand and
His heart in the other

“It was my civil duty,” he said
And set the heart in the dirt and leftover autumn leaves




2|

The banana tree felt alone.
It cried to the birds.
It cried to the bugs.
It cried to the animals.
It cried to itself.

Nobody answered.




3|

She beat the piano!
Black and white keys bleeding red
Music screaming from inside a gaping wooden mouth
Somebody’s out of tune,
But we danced until daybreak in a haze of alcohol misty eyes and cigarette smoke.





4|

The hills don’t have eyes.
They can’t see the couple screwing in the dense woods.
The hills don’t have tongues.
They can’t taste the sweat from heated, passionate bodies.
The hills don’t have fingers.
They can’t probe her soft insides, feel her soft skin, feel his tensing ass midthrust.
The hills don’t have ears.
They can’t hear the moans and whimpers and soft cries of bleary ecstasy.
The hills don’t have mouths.
They can’t speak to her like he does, pleading filthy fuckery and hissing burning cumslop into virgin ears

Or so she’d have him think.





5|

The bear can stare
Its plastic eyes slightly askew
Its false furs matted with age
It’s mouth wide open, hole cut inside, filth from yesteryear
This is why we have yardsales


6|

I roared.
He roared.
She roared.
They roared.
We roared.

They audience applaud, we bowed, and the dinosaur orgy came to an end.




7|

“Bow to me.”
They pushed me down, but my eyes were still clinging to his.
“Your majesty!”
I cried to the king of the deer, his antlers mighty topped with a crown of acorns from the ambassador of squirrels
“I shall fasten you a salt lick sceptre! I shall fasten a cloak of fall leaves! We shall all be awed by your presence!”

He scoffed and rubbed his rack on the tree.




8|

The arrows rained down and we clutched the umbrella around us tight
The weatherman was wrong
He’d said they had orange feathers
Still, we kissed and streaks of blue pierced our livers and lungs and gizzards galore.




9|

The sea sang seashells to the dawn
And the whales carried the choir
And the shore caught the tune in salt and foam
And the hermit crab said, “Fuck this rock and roll.”



10|

“Hello mister fox.”
“Hello mister bear.”
“Hello mister owl.”
“Hello mister bat.”
Her shoes dragged dirt into the house, hair akimbo and dress askew
Her mother just hoped she was using protection.

I have secrets, secrets and a sick, sick stomach

1

I have secrets, secrets and a sick, sick stomach
That twists and turns and wraps around your words

I have heartache, heartbreak and wasted time
With other that never saw me like you do

I have scabs and scars, inside and out
Wounds picked at, opened again and again

But I have hope
And love

And maybe you can save my soul, though no one’s ever tried.

_____

2

A faint trace
Of stale cigarettes mingling with
Chocolate and mint
Dance across your tongue, tease my senses
Make me beg for more

Grey eyes
Gone in an instant
Like second hand smoke
I’m addicted to your love

_____

3

Author’s Word:

Perhaps it’s a little strange to write the author’s word first. I don’t really know, I’ve never attempted to write a book before, so try to understand.. It’s only my first try. If you’re even reading this, it means I’m finally succeeded in sticking with something long enough to finish it, and that it was actually good enough to get published. Hopefully, pigs aren’t flying. Actually, scratch that. Flying pigs would be kind of cool, if a bit messy. If this book has been written, published, and is getting good reviews, well, maybe I’ll even get a boyfriend. And I suppose that’s the first sign of the Apocalypse, so I suggest you hold onto your hats, grab a can of soup and your electric toothbrush, and run for the hills, a storms a’brewin’.

Anyways, I suppose this is really unconventional in that I don’t have an idea yet. No beginning, middle, or end. No characters, plot, summary, nothing. I’m just going to type, and see where it leads me. Hopefully, to the Apocalypse. Whether it’s a drama, or a mystery, a romance or sci-fi, once thing is for certain;

Like all great stories, it’ll start with ‘Once upon a time..’

_____





I haven't updated in a while, mostly because there was no reason for it. I've been to depressed and too busy to even write, 1 is the first thing I've written in a long time. 2 was written at least a year ago. 3 was..somewhere in between. It was just an authors not for the story I was going to write (Who is Maggie Moon?) but that never panned out. Oh, and I've found something else;

a frantic disaster,

a great calamity of human excrement dropped from a ten story building in midjuly.


I don't remember when, or why, I wrote this, but there it is. And another thing;

4

I am the static on a television screen.-m

I am the white noise of a radio broadcast failure.-a

I am the stack of newspapers piled in the garage- wrinkled, waterlogged, and browned.-m

I am the lonely library books of yesteryear, forgotten fiction musty and aged.-a

I am the love letters of soul mates dead and gone, bound by shoelaces and fine ribbon, lost in the unfinished basement of a great grand child.-m

I am the record on repeat, scratching and flickering like a candle in the wind, fighting extinction in sterilized stereo compact disc mp3 generations.-a

I am the woman on horseback surrounded by the comforting musk of earth rather than stifling exhaust stink, moving with her mount’s smooth three beat candace rather than the jarring leap of neglected potholes.-m

I am the shaking girl in her half-lit bedroom, sopping hair cut short for fear of bugs, paranoia writhing in skin like worms hours of shower-scrubbing cannot remove. Every freckle is a new disease. -a

I am the drug induced euphoria, a perception skewed by chemical- the only road to normalcy.-m

I am societies underbelly, a scavenger of truth and the unconventional filthy pleasures.-a

I am the haunted eyes of a middle aged woman- studying herself in a mirrored reflection, memorizing worry lines, crows feet, laugh lines- the time line of an inconsequential life.-m

I am the sinking realization of the meaningless existence we live, the cubicle mind and 9-to-5 brain cells dreary and hopeless and dissatisfied.-a

I am the doe, wide eyed and bright, unaware that the soft tread of cleft hooves has caught me in cross hairs.-m

I am the quivering hand clutching a cigarette in the cold, tips pink and veins blue- splashed of colour and bruised nails.-a

I am the skin of an infant, lumpy and puckered and pink where it ought to be smooth and perfect and white- flesh forever marred because of a mother leaving her unsteady offspring to fend for himself in a suburban kitchenette complete with the splattering oil of frying chicken.-m

I am the wild night, the drunken glory and camaraderie or secrets yelled out van windows to the world, warmth creating gasoline blood to set the heart on fire. -a

I am the bird in the still of the night, full moon’s sun light reflection casting the misshapen patchwork of tree branches onto frosty spring grass. I shriek into midnight. Over and over again, shattering the peace of the dead of night. It is to no avail. I am alone.-m

I am the tourniquet, strangling tendons the syringe with ignore- the veins with fill, inducing pleasure the world can no longer give, fear it will end too soon, shame you have plunged so deep, horror at the track marks and lost hours. -a

I am a decaying leaf, tumbling down a concrete path of ecstasy and comfort, dragged by whirlwinds of woe and malice, and stopped by the heel of your selfishly engineered shoe. -k

M is Marissa, A is myself, and K is Kaitlyn. This was titled Text Message SOS and when my laptop was wiped, I'd thought I'd lost it. It was recently uncovered on an expedition through my hard drive. They occurred over the span of one night, the text messages between Marissa and myself. The last one, by Kaitlyn, was added after a read through once I'd typed them all out.

About 6 weeks ago I was in a car accident. This is what was posted on my tumblr that day;

Today I was in a car accident. I was in the passenger side and the car got t-boned, smashing the whole side of the car that I was sitting in. The car is now totaled, and I just got back from the hospital. Thank got nothing is broken, but I am very very bruised and very shaken up/scared.

I cannot express how terrifying that was for me. Feeling the other car smashing into me, and then not being able to breathe, being so confused, pushing the airbag away from my face, still not being able to breathe. Just..sitting there for 10 minutes before I could crawl out the drivers side and pick the glass out of my hair and off my clothes.

It was horrible.

My brand new phone got destroyed, too. Thankfully, I still have my old one to use for now.

I went to the hospital a few hours later because I couldn’t breathe well still and my chest/lower rib area and right arm were hurting really bad. After sitting for a few hours and getting some tests done, it turns out I’m just really badly bruised.

So yeah.

Cars are nasty.

I am scared of them.

I am never going to drive.

Now, six weeks later, I am no longer having flashbacks. I am still very anxious when in cars, and that probably will never change. However, my arm, neck, and back still have a lot of pain. If I use my right arm too much, my hand goes still and becomes very painful, and the rest of my arm starts to burn and ache. My mother says it's nerve damage. Oh, well.

In other, startling news;

I..am in love. And that sounds remarkably silly and stupid, and I know it, but there's no other word for the way I feel about her. Or the way she feels about me. I am still so terrified of it all, because as of now..,she's the only one who has never hurt me, even accidentally, and that..is something that scares me. I keep waiting for her to turn and run away. So far, so good, though. Hopefully I won't fuck this up.

There's so much I'd like to say about this matter but I simply do not have the words for it.

All I want is to go back to her bed and sleep in her arms like I did that weekend.

I've never been happier than I was in those moments.

This whole town is so fucking depressing.

It really is. There's nobody to have a goddamn decent conversation with. I mean, sure, people are talking, but they're never really saying anything. Not to you, anyways, they're just talking to themselves about themselves and using you as a goddamn medium.

The last time I had an actual conversation was with Abby a few days ago, when we talked about intellegent design and creationism and how bitter I am about all of that and how even though we disagreed, we could UNDERSTAND each other. I can't meet anyone who understands me half the time. It made me feel pretty damn good for a few hours, that conversation did.

Before that, it was with that guy I met at the party. I was pretty drunk for most of it, but damn, that was a hell of a talk. I'm sure he was a shitty guy and all, but he called me the next day and was real sweet about how drunk I was and all. Gentlemanly, I guess. Didn't really change that he was a shitty guy, but that coversation made me feel damn good, too.

And before that was the night I took shrooms and it was wasted because half the time I was crying my eyes out and the rest of the time I couldn't even speak but that was a fucking good time regardless and I was happy and warm even if I felt so fucking alone in my big old room with the lights all pink and everything looking really rosy and soft.

I'm not saying every conversation has to have a point, no. I love just fucking talking about shit with people I care about. Just talking. Texting. Whatever. But god, it gets damn lonely in my head, with all these ideas and needs and fuck I don't know. I don't know.

All I know, this town is bumming me out. I just need to stop smoking so many cigarettes and reading so much because these books are all written by people I could have a good ass conversation with and it's really fucking lonely.

Katzenklavier

Things I have done lately:

1.

It was a cold September and I’d wasted away the day chasing fairies through woods,
but they had all packed up before the winter came and blew it’s vicious wind to chill their hands
and stop their fluttering hearts mid-beat.

The night was calm but cool and I stood on my driveway,
shrouded in darkness
my feet
and teeth
and skin trembling in time to a song I couldn’t hear,
the way they did when you pulled me close and held me tight as I’d cried over a world
so unforgiving and
so complicated and
so hard.

I could never understand why you loved me.

You were so good, with your eyes so big with lashes dark and full and skin so soft,
it pained me to touch it with my own
flawed and dry and rough.

I had to leave before I broke you, too.




2.

I once met a man
or should I say, I once saw him,

terrified to move as he walked the streets at night.

Confident in his two feet
he seemed so large .

And
I so fragile with porcelain bones and paper skin and lead feet rooted to the ground,
trapping me in his gaze.

I could feel his eyes on my flesh like cold linoleum on bare feet
though in the cover of darkness hidden between cars in the driveway my insignificant form could barely be noticed.

In that moment, I became an unmoving, breathless spectre, my trembling soul caught by those eyes.

He may have seen me and known his effect, but he moved on as he had, his pace never changing,
and was gone,
leaving nothing behind.

I have never cried so hard and understood so little.



3.

Barbara could tell from where she was standing that this man was dirty, scared, and probably on some sort of illegal substance. Since they’d been in the elevator, he’d pounded on the metal doors, sobbed in the corner, paced back and forth, and talked to his dog. She was grateful for the size of the elevator, that it was a bit larger than usually as hospital elevators tend to be, because to call the brown dog large would be an understatement. It was massive.

When they’d ran in here, they didn’t know that in a state of panic the elevators locked down. They didn’t know that in an asylum such as this, the elevators were industrial heavy-strength massive things. Nobody gets in or out unless the system wants you to. She’d tried everything, almost every tool in her utility belt she’d thought would work. But people who work amongst the people who are locked in these places know more than Barbara did about the strength of the mentally insane. One could argue they knew more than Bruce, but he’d been doing this far longer than Barbara. He’d dealt with a lot more. And he was the one that usually handled the clown she was sent here about.

Just after the first hour mark, when none of her tools had let to any improvement on the situation, Barbara had began questioning the man in the elevator. He hadn’t complied at first, just crying and holding his dog, but once he’d realize she wasn’t just a delusion in his stoned and panicked mind, he started answering. He’d come there with his friends. They heard the place was haunted and strange occurrences were common in the area. They were some kind of mystery team, this addict, some feminist with daddy issues, an aging prom queen and a man with severe control issues.

And the dog.

By now, having been sitting for a few hours, it was starting to smell. Rigor mortis had come and gone. This man didn’t seem to notice the state of his animal. He’d practically dragged it in, talking to it, laughing nervously, eyes darting from it’s lifeless form to Barbara’s hidden face. To the man’s credit, he couldn’t have known who was working here. He couldn’t have known how fast things would have gone down. He couldn’t have known how, over the last few months, after the death of Bruce Wayne and the disappearance of Batman, how bad Gotham had gotten.

And now this.. Shaggy, he’d said his name was, was stuck in an elevator with Barbara Gordon. It had been almost three hours. Nothing had noticeably changed. The air had gotten heavier somehow. Thirty minutes ago, Shaggy had calmed down to the point of just petting his dog and making small talk with Barbara about the places he’d been. Barbara had relaxed, too, sitting and leaning against the cool metal walls. By the time she realized they were being gassed, it was too late. The last thing she heard before she passed out was the doors sliding open and that clown’s horrible laugh.

The first thing she heard when she woke up was that same laugh coming from her.



4.

We were all pretty confused when the commercials started changing. At first, it was kind of funny. We’d chalked it up to advertising and the push in recent years to be quirkier, more memorable, more bizarre. But when the companies started coming out, suing the stations, swearing they’d never changed anything.. That’s when people started to get a little frightened. When the commercials kept changing, when it started slipping into the television shows, people started to really panic. Especially the children’s shows. A few months ago, watching Dora cry out his name would have been funny. A real fucking gas. Now? Not so much. Not when scripted shows came on in a language nobody could understand and the actors could never be expected to speak. Not when their voices came out in some alien sounding garbled tongue, deep and chanting the same lines over and over. Not when the newspapers suddenly switched to these ancient, I don’t know what. Tomes, symbols, scriptures.

I could recognize it. Of course I could, I’d read about Him on the internet all that time ago. I was a big fan. Hell, I’m so fucking out of it right now on anything, everything I could grab off the streets and out of the pharmacies and out of the liquor stores I’d probably look Him right in the face and tell him, “Hey man, I’m a big fan. You do great work.” See, the thing is, as I was learning about Him on the internet, so were They. That’s the funny bit about the internet. The exact people who shouldn’t ever, under any circumstances, get that information.. well, they usually do.

Way back when it first began, we laughed at the religious nuts who fled to underground shelters to inbreed for a few generations until they felt it safe to come back up. We laughed because we thought they were overreacting. They laughed because we’d finally all be gone. Too bad that whatever it is that comes back up, if it even gets the chance, had only just prolonged it’s fate. They’re just going to be eaten last. Right now, I can hear the people screaming. I can hear gunshots and windows being smashed. I can hear people struggling with the knowledge that shortly, He comes. I’d like to think I was smart. I have enough drugs and alcohol here to last me.. oh, a week at least. I’d like to think that I was pretty smart because, goddamn, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

I flick on the television.

“Hi! Billy Mayes here with OxiClean and Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn..”