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October 26th, 2009
02:19 pm - I’ll Make Sure I See White Sails
Called her back to my bed.
It’s not enough to say there are no spaces
In between.
I once knew a girl who carried great storm clouds with her.
( This Is What The World Is For; Making Electricity )
First thing in five weeks. Wow.
Current Music: No More Runnin, Animal Collective
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September 14th, 2009
12:12 pm - As It Reflects You
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
- H. P. Lovecraft
Synaesthesia
They call it a curse.
Difficult, extraordinary colour,
Textures melded;
Woolly, sharp.
A malady that offers no prescription,
But isn’t it the crutch and not the break?
Sometimes a superpower,
Creating strands of poetry
To splice with cautious incisors,
The colours jumping in the fray
And rainbow memories of friends in motion;
Mostly drawn back to that
Volatile red
Tinged with smooth, warm steel
And spindles of sunset orange, inviting.
Sometimes as a sweet, cold twinge,
Sometimes a pulsating truth below the senses,
But mostly not reality
Until the need for it uncurls or the pressure contaminates,
A sunflower of loneliness and skill.
Synaesthesia:- a mental condition where people, numbers, dates etc are associated with other stimuli.
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September 6th, 2009
03:06 pm - Forget About Your House Of Cards
The Cold War on the sofa
Is getting closer.
Dear You, When I listen to this band I will always remember our walk in the snow, When you mumbled (sheepishly) That, to you, these lyrics were about me, And I proclaimed this ‘Our Song’. Sometimes, it’s strange how Most of my childhood memories are You, just you, All painting a panorama of how we grew up together In this simple little cobbled-stoned suburb in the North; About our struggle to make contact (online, on a school field, on a hotel bed, with your flatmates next door) And all involving some kind of punch-up for worth, Instead of just letting our feelings be. Sometimes, that’s not odd at all. You were the yang to my yin, I suppose, And when we matured There was always that shadow of passion And touch That frustrated us – Bothered me, at least, Because you were so tender and So unmoved. Still, we would indulge together and share ourselves Until we came to miss who we were with the other near. Well, I suppose I am just writing to say That you are the one Who made this song Superb. Thank you. Me x x x
Current Music: Learn to Keep Your Mouth Shut, Owen Pallet - Final Fantasy
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August 28th, 2009
06:26 pm - And When The Battle Was Done
If I looked you in the eye
and made my
ambitions
very clear,
would you come with me,
leaving only
an unmade bed
behind?
Tip-Toe Through Our Shiny City, originally uploaded by yourswithcaution.
Current Music: With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept - Explosions in the Sky
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August 23rd, 2009
11:56 pm - A Grand Tradition
I’m gonna call every girl I ever met,
Tell them they haven’t seen nothing yet.
The way he looks at me is the way I look at this painting, I think. The bright, smudged sweep of the hull in the harsh darkness of the river; my eyes windows, trying to breathe it in. It takes me back to my evening as a muse, as a piece of interesting furniture, four standing poses and two sitting down. Seeing those pictures had changed everything about how I saw myself. In some, I was shapely, with a Greek arc, all chalky-smooth lines and curves. In others I was almost all belly; one big, round circle, shaded in with heavy, experimental colours. In both, I suppose, I was startling and amusing and satisfying.
I smile, and I turn away from the painting, and I see her. She is looking at a bright canvas of the Humber Bridge. She studies it with wide eyes and the freckles on her nose are brightened by the soft lamps. When she is finished she rocks past me with red hair and coral lips, and I stare at her back as she walks past, and the poison hits my heart like a barb.
It is, quite possibly, my greatest fear; that I will already consider myself an old and ugly soul, and that I will slouch through life, tutting and looking wistfully at the self-indulgent faces of my friends; and, at long last, find that I am one of those, those sleepwalkers who follow drums and rattling hearts, until there is no more youth and beauty to admire.
N.B. http://www.the-ropewalk.co.uk/
Current Music: Skeleton Boy, Friendly Fires
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August 15th, 2009
05:11 pm - When I See Myself, I Always Know Where You Are
But it’s like
We’re not made for this world,
Though I wouldn’t really want to meet
Someone who was.
We’ve had the epic and the atmospheric, with the two main characters introduced.
I suppose my job, now, is to tie things together, while keeping this an individual story. The last one.
It occurred to me while writing this that I also seem to have a thing for couples discussing odd things over cups of tea or meals in otherwise normal circumstances. Strange.
It was difficult to write attractively. Did I do it right?
( A Forest’s Son, A River’s Daughter )
I am dying for a winter breakfast of hot chocolate and pancakes.
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August 11th, 2009
02:44 pm - I Like To Sleep With Him, Pushing In The Pin
Chemicals,
Don’t strangle my pen;
Chemicals,
Don’t make me sick again.
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August 6th, 2009
01:39 pm - Will You Escape With Me In The Morning?
You know I dreamed about you For twenty-nine years Before I saw you.
This serves as a younger brother to the story, ‘An Arrow in the Side of’. I came back from the highlands of Scotland with the idea of making three companion stories full of in-jokes and mysticism, with three unfinished titles (leaving out the names of those involved, in case these fables ever leave this dusty journal and see the comparative light of day).
This one is for an old friend. The third is coming soon and, selfishly enough, is for me.
( Fitter, Happier, More Productive ) Listen to ‘Slow Show’ by The National and ‘Alarm Call’ by Bjork, if it helps
Current Music: She's So, Royksopp
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August 4th, 2009
12:15 pm - We’re Running On Bravado
Somebody mentioned the score
And I went running.
My shoulders were aching after a heavy day as I crossed through the streets and watched kids roaming the avenues with their Calvin Harris sunglasses and their sullen mouths.
It is raining, I told them silently. Why do you need sunglasses in the rain?
The only answer I got was a younger, taller girl staring me down as I slouched past, my back straight but with hands in pockets and too-long-jeans dragging across the wet pavement.
I knew where I was going without thinking about the landmarks, so I turned Ave Maria up loud and crossed roads without looking. When I arrived, my jeans were soaking, but I had a warm bed and good company, so by the time I had to set off for home, they were dry.
He walked me half-way home, on his mother’s orders.
He is good to me, I thought, but I should go missing for a while. Come back tight-lipped and on my own, but with bundles of pictures and drawings and words. Leave my phone at home; throw it into the sea. It would be good to explore the world with nobody to cloud it.
My Next Big Thing might be coming soon.
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July 26th, 2009
03:06 pm - Still, The Wanting Comes In Waves
Say, for instance, my girlfriend,
She bugs me all the time;
But the irony of it all is that
She loves me all the time.
Baby, I’m Bored
Be gone,
Like seasons twitching into bursting light
And spent again in just a few short days. Stand down,
Like silver rockets clinging to their shadows,
Gaping in the darkness they have found, honeyed,
Like an ocean.
Current Music: God Bless Our Dead Marines, A Silver Mt. Zion
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July 17th, 2009
09:21 pm - If I Wrapped My Words Around You, Would You Stay?
And take my hand
To feel the pull of quicksand.
Current Music: Always, blink-182
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July 11th, 2009
02:12 pm - And I Still Think Of You On Cold Winter Mornings
You’re slipping slowly from my reach.
You grow me like an evergreen.
You never see the lonely me
At all.
I had exams to revise for, but all I could do was sit in the library and stare.
I had been lovesick lately, my heart tangled up with memories of a fire-eyed boy cooking for me and fussing to make sure I liked it. It is ridiculous, I informed myself, for a person to be lovesick when they do not even believe in love. But there I was, with butterflies too great to be soothed even by the aroma of coffee or the feel of old words between overly-moisturised fingertips.
He had beautiful wrists, when we were first together. There was something about the way his wrists were so slight and his hands so masculine. My grasp in his felt tiny; my fingers too long, wrist too thick, palm too dry and too cold. He uses his hands always; to talk, to fidget, his wrists always remarkable.
I read on about mental imagery but the letters had become hieroglyphics. I knew the rain and the darkness were at the top-floor window, even though it was out of view. The people around me had begun to get fussy with tired and cold. I skim-read the last hundred pages of that wretched book and left the library, to be met with cheerful orange streetlights and wet pavements. I splashed around in the puddles, squeaked along the wet grass, and tried to look like a mature adult to any passers-by walking back from the bar on campus.
I remember the way he laid on his back and, when fully relaxed, his whole middle section would settle down into a bowl, arcs of strong rib-bone standing like the banks either side of a great chasm. You could always see his heart beating through the skin across his sternum. When I put my head in that gap, his heartbeat was a strong, stony silver that would drum me to sleep.
Current Music: An Eluardian Existence, of Montreal
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July 10th, 2009
12:33 pm - And Ask You What You Think, Because Your Thoughts And Words Are Powerful
I could sleep
When I lived alone…
Is there a ghost in my house?
My friend Adam was twenty a few days ago. He has been a big inspiration to my writing in a lot of ways. Here are some interesting Internet facts about him:
- He’s been drawn by both Doug Frey and John Campbell.
- He’s also been the subject of a song.
- He took the picture of Hull Fair on its Wiki page.
- This is something nice that he showed me once.
- He may or may not have two penises.
11 Things That I Might Like To See More Of
• Epic concept albums
• Great expectations
• Worthy adversaries
• Stark forests
• Cold seas
• Rebels with a cause
• Civil disobedience
• Elaborate fancy dress
• Underdogs rising to the occasion
• Silver linings
• Smoking guns (figuratively)
Current Music: I Don't Wanna Die, The Unicorns
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July 2nd, 2009
04:16 pm - Took Me To The Darkest Place She Knew And Set Fire To My Heart
Everyone I know Goes away In the end. My friend Jon often told me that he would like to find a purpose in life; so I thought, where better to acquire one then over a cup of tea with the Devil?
( You May Have My Precious Bones On My Return ) I suspect this is another cautionary tale. He makes a good Dr. Faustus, I think.
For 'Carnival of Animals', click here
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June 29th, 2009
04:27 pm - I Forgot My Fear
There is something big enough to warrant an LJ cut coming, soon.
In the meantime, I have been enjoying 'The Hazards of Love', reading 'Moby Dick', and cursing the warm weather like only an Englishman can.
Current Music: On a Wire, Funeral for a Friend
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June 24th, 2009
03:16 pm - I Learn By Going Where I Have To Go
I’ll be
The dream you can have at your desk.
I’ll be
The girl in the saddest blue dress.
Once upon a time, I was sitting at her desk to thumb through her photo albums and sketches and letters, as she scurried and tidied and dressed behind me.
“I haven’t got a thing to wear” she’d whistle, her wardrobe more crammed even than mine.
Another day and it was only her and the brightness outside. We sat in her too-hot room with bare legs and messy hair, me reading her favourite book out loud, she wearing her favourite blue dress. Reaching the saddest part, her favourite part. Owen Pallett leaking from her stereo (my choice) and she just sat on the green and purple paisley bed, grey tears rolling and rolling down her thin, pale face and dripping onto the linen.
Once upon a time, I had looked over my shoulder, watching her scuttle and buzz and hum behind me, so different from my last, and thought that I would be lost without her.
Current Music: Summertime Clothes, The Animal Collective
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June 21st, 2009
02:36 pm - You Only Like Him ‘Cause He’s Sexually Appealing
Do you miss home?
And are you cool?
Thinking Loudly Master of pandiculation, Now splayed out and dreaming At the foot of his bed, Occasionally doodling on a lined pad Or flipping backward to face the sill And looking out as if to The people he has left, The people he will leave again. What does he dream of as he packs? The soft green shrubbery that gave His new friends hay fever In long walks to tall buildings, Or the crushing ocean weight Of absurdity and anxiousness Whittling a cavity so deep, Advancing?
Current Music: Riptide, Willy Mason
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June 18th, 2009
01:33 am - Stay Inside ‘Til Somebody Finds Us
Numbers are friends for me, more or less. It doesn’t mean the same for you, does it – 3,844? For you it’s just a three and an eight and a four and a four. But I say, “Hi! 62 squared."
- Wim Klein
Current Music: We Are The People, Empire of the Sun
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June 15th, 2009
09:58 pm - Made Glorious Summer By This Son Of York
Is it much that I feel I need
A solid soul and the blood I bleed?
The second day was bright, with lilting air cooling us as we walked arm-in-arm past trees and quiet streets into the centre of York. We moved along to Betty’s and were given a table for two, sandwiched between two elderly American families who marvelled at the Britishness of it all. I felt so young between the dignified families and over-groomed waitresses; wondered how young I looked, decked out in my best dress and beat-up shoes, glasses newly taped up (my glasses never stay in one piece for long). Kerry looked beautiful and mature that day.
I sat with a deliciously sickly strawberry milkshake (Kerry with a homemade lemonade), watching ghosts slide out of existence in the mirrors and stained glass in front of me. The kitchen had run out of meringue, so we went without our Eton mess and settled for a monster fruit sundae, I with a whole pot of tea to myself, laid out in china and silver – Ceylon Blue Sapphire, tasting of honey and laced with delicate blue cornflowers.
I joked about Pimms No. 1 and, earlier, about needing vodka with our fruit juice. I could feel Kerry despairing – Jon had teased earlier that I was becoming an alcoholic, and that joke had made me afraid. Reminded me of alighting and finding Kerry, and her trilling that I was not the Kathryn she knew and loved. She was mostly talking about changes to my appearance, I think, but I suppose I was squeamish and defensive in case this deeper insight was true.
As we left, I bought some sticky sweet peanuts from a continental market and gazed at the sand-coloured buildings basted in that bright, soft light. The exotic light flooded the streets, purple pigeons bathing in it as it fought with the dark clouds above.
On the morning of the third day I found myself hanging over the balcony in her kitchen, supplied with good coffee and a sweet young artist to play disarming music, looking over the bright green of the grass, now littered with goose feathers that fell like snow.
Current Music: Rock Your Socks, Tenacious D
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June 14th, 2009
02:43 pm - I Get Eaten By The Wolves And Weird Fishes
And I have a question:
Are you also
Frightened?
I lie there in quilted, indifferent rumination. I remember the day I fell in love with him despite the warning signs. Still spread out here, over a year later. I feel like bleeding out onto the sheets. Touching him.
Earlier in the evening I make a fool of myself and tumble from the arm of a chair onto a clotheshorse. I come out bruised and scratched and shaking and he holds me as I laugh and cry at the same time. Later he goes to kiss my neck, but doesn’t.
Now I lie on my front because he says it will help with the swelling, eyes closed with music in my head different to the music reaching my ears. I know the band he puts on and he seems both surprised and impressed; always does, seems to think I exist in a world of mainstream pseudo-rock. I should show him the music I have accumulated, see if his opinion changes or grows.
Sometimes I open my eyes and he is looking at me, smiling. Sometimes his eyes are shut. Eventually we give up any pretence and turn out the lights. My heartbeat is a dull, heavy gold as I fall asleep.
“Sometimes I feel like I should be pulling you close, and other times I feel like I should be pushing you away.”
I spend the rest of my waking night sticking my little rough feet into the warm patches his body leaves behind, and wondering what the light might bring.
Current Music: Green Gloves, The National
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dreamlight_2004's journal
