Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Snippet: Project: Walker

Here's a small snippet of what I've been working on. It's still very rough but the main plot idea is firm and the characters are beginning to come alive. Yes I know I don't need ANOTHER project right now but I'm a glutton for punishment. :P

“He’s watching you again.” I said sliding the white ceramic cup across the grain of the table.

“What’s he doing?” Her eyes darted up quickly before descending back into the black coffee in front of her.

I casually turned my gaze from her glowing-carmine lips, letting it wander over the crammed cafe instead. Irregular tables set with chairs of different heights were wedged at odd intervals and filled with loud people. The air was a sort of orange-sepia hue the oozed out of the table lamps. Thick trails of smoke melded into gathering vaulted haze around our heads. But even in all that, I could still see the glow at the end of his cigarette, burning like some orange demon star between the pillars of smoke.

“Nothing.” I turned back to those lips, “He’s just sitting there. Smoking.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper as her pale hand slid across the table and wrapped cold fingers around my own, “We should go.”

I hesitated, savoring the icy feel of her ivory touch, placing my other hand over hers reassuringly. “Why don’t we stay? He would have done something by now if he knew.”

White teeth bit the corner of those glowing cardinal lips and a single canine glisten in the torpid, brown light. “It doesn’t feel right. Come on.”

There seemed to be a slight hush in the conversations filling the air with round vowels and soft syllables, right as her grip started to unravel in the palm of my sweating hand. We pulled our hands apart, separating slowly like a Russian nesting doll. As her cold hands retreated to their nest in her lap, their absence only made my hands burn the more for wanting them.

“My family.” I looked back around casually as a roar of laughter exploded from a nearby table, “Did I ever tell you about them? My family I mean.”

“It’s nearly half passed.” She glanced at the clock on the wall entrenched on all sides by pictures, posters, and mounted musical instruments. “It would have been here by now.”

“Mom was never around. Always running from one job to the other. My dad. Well, he walked when I was just five.” The small bell above the door jangled and we both turned to look, catching sight of a fur coat and pair of heels in the arms of a dark suit before they disappeared into the foggy night. “Anyway, least I think I was five. Can’t seem to really recall much.”

She turned her eyes back to mine at last with a hazy glimmer in their edges, “Sometimes its better to forget.”

“Can you remember anything from when you were that young?” If she was finally responding to my statements I wasn’t going to let the conversation end so quickly.

From across the room a spoon clinked as it grazed the edges of the porcelin cup, sending soft echoes into the chaos above our heads. It mixed into the voices and the smoke and the sound of saucers touching teacups like some first, hesitant kiss. I knew she was listening, straining so hard to hear the song that groaned from the old radio.

“Do you like music?” I ventured, the slow rising nervousness in her cold hands somehow seeping like a shadow across the table. “We should ask them to turn it up.”

Her hands reappeared as they shot out to grab my sleeve, to stop me from standing. All I had done was move my chair back. She knew I wouldn’t really get up. She knew I only wanted her to talk. To bring her hands back.

“My mother had a disease.” She said softly, words spilling across those crimson fields and bleeding out her chest, “My father was my only friend. No one else could understand. I couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t. No one could. She just sat there and got thin.”

I could see these were old memories. Forgotten? No, put away. Locked in the asylem that had been her only comfort. I had read her file after all. I knew what to expect as she sat there across the table from me, waiting for the drop. These were her deamons. The things that she would never let surface. I enjoyed seeing them surface like dead fish on a pond. I felt guilty for not feeling guilty at all.

“Hey, listen. It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.” Her hand was still clenched into my jacket sleeve, fingers burrowing deep into the thin fabric. I placed my hand over hers again.

Her grip weakend. “If you want we can just go.”

The thin line of white teeth appeared over that bottom crimson lip again, as she hesitated, fingers loosening bit by bit....

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Huntress of the Night

There she stands
Or rather crouches
The huntress of the night

She walks on feet
So softly padded
The huntress of the night

She crawls and creeps
Before she leaps
The huntress of the night

She rakes the ground
With hidden claws
The huntress of the night

She flicks her tail
Her shoulders rise
The huntress of the night

She sniffs the air
Her fangs know bared
The huntress of the night

She pounces swift
She comes drown strong
The huntress of the night

She grasps her prey
She tears away
The huntress of the night

She sits now still
And cleans herself
The huntress of the night

She does not see
Upon her claws
The huntress of the night

She has on them
The remnants left
The huntress of the night

She can't remove
The bits of yarn
The huntress for tonight

Sunday, March 11, 2012

My Own Night Terrors

I sit in a dark room
On a couch that feels so strange
I watch the television
It's blank
Not on
Reflections painted on its glass
The image of a different room
Where I see people smile and laugh
I think of you
And suddenly
My jacket is too tight
It strangles me
The thought of you with me
Now gone
Alone on this strange couch
I pray
And sit and wait and now receive
My bitter fate
We can never find the love
I wish we could
So I will write this poem
And slowly fade
Drink myself to death
If only I could

Friday, March 9, 2012

The Hunter and the Raven

You were the raven
When I was just a lad
I saw you rise
Over tall tree tops
You soared with black feathers
That gleamed like the night
And you sang that song
That my heart longed to hear
You stayed in the tree
Above the home of my youth
I would sit in it's shade
And bask in your song
But then your wings grew
And too soon you did fly
So far from that tree
And my house at it's base
And the farther you flew
With each beat of your wings
The notes of the song
Were dimmed in my mind
And I longed for the song
Though I knew not it's chords
And the seasons did pass
And I grew into a man
Mighty hunter of the land
And the trees no longer
As tall as before
I was out among them
When I heard it again
Your song on the wind
You winged back to me
And it was so sudden
That I could recall all
Each note and each phrase
Your song was my all
And I would sing it
And you would come
Always to the sound
The sound of my song
But again as you flew
The song began to fade
So I made a dark plan
To never lose the song again
I chose thickest vines
And using ancients designs
I made my net fast
Locked with the elder's rhymes
Nothing could escape
The perfect trap I did lay
I waited for you return
Then finally came the day
When you floated by
On the forest's wind
Between trees and light
Your form glided in
And as the song started
Again my heart leapt
But the trap was set
And the net descended
Now you were mine
Caught in my trap
Bound by my knots
Never to leave again
But as I rose to claim you
Your song now to be mine
You sang something different
And shone with light
And you were transformed
There before my eyes
Your feathers unwrapped
To reveal pale skin behind
No ordinary bird were you
No this was now plain
You are the Maiden of the Raven
And I had captured you
But when you transformed
Into your maidenly form
The net was too tight
And in struggling I saw
It tighten further
Around your pale neck
And I knew the for certain
My net would be your end
For if I let you fly
Your song would leave too
And I would hear never again
Your voice on the wind
And I knew if I kept you
You'd struggle in vain
And the net would still tighten
And you'd die for my gain
But ere my mind could be made
Your eyes glistened and then
From their ever fonts sprang
The tears my heart rent
For your tears raven maiden
Like no tears before
Were black as the night
As they dripped down your jaw
For ink were your tears
And two ink pools you cried
As the net slowly tightened
And as I knew I would die
When I unleashed my knife
Of coldest made stone
And advanced on you maiden
And knelt beside you alone
With a flash of the knife
The deed was quickly done
The ropes were severed
And my heart was undone
And as quick as a flash
Your feathers returned
And you sprang upon wings
And the wind was heard
You sang your song
One last time as you flew
But then I knew at once
What I ought to do
I knelt by the pools
Of tears that you shed
And using that ink
I wrote down as led
For the song you sang
Would fade in my mind
But I had it for now
Even if just for a time
And I wrote down your song
Oh raven maiden I wrote
And made sure to recall
Each and every single note
And then when the song
Had departed from my mind
I could sing it again
And remember your smile
And you came back to me
In answer to the song
And I knew then just how
I had been foolish and wrong
For one cannot capture
A creature so fair
That flies on enchantment
As the maiden did there
With knots and ropes
These tools will not do
No only with words
Could I capture you

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Coalesce

You say you won't play
But you're playing right now
Reading my mind
As it dances across the page
You step in time and keep it

I say I can't dance
But I'm dancing right now
Catching your heart
As it waivers on the wind
I'll catch it and give it my wings

You say you won't play
But you're already in the game
I say I won't stay
But I'm already right here again
So where does that leave us

But if you will stop time
Just for a few seconds make it stop
Then I'll spread my wings
And we'll leave this world behind
To dance upon the north wind's frozen skies
To lie among the constellations
And never see dawn again