Artemis Drifting

Just because she tippietoes, doesn't mean she's a creepin'.

Matchstick

July 15th, 2009 Posted in Poetry
Jul, 15 2009
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You’re looking for still waters
oh your life’s just so busy
need a steady hand to carry on
you need a glass house
that no love could shatter

well baby i done screwed up
because my hands are shakin’
and my tongue is quaking
my mind is just endless troubled waters
rotten ships and tattered ghosts
nothin’ i can do for you here

i’m the kinda girl with matchstick hair
and oh you
you can time your wanderings
and your toes always count to ten
all i got for show
is a handful of shattered glass
darlin in every shard is a different me

i wish i could do it
stitch it up nice and sweet
be that lady you’d proud to
bring to one of your meet and greets
but i’ll have one fist in the punch
tell a joke to make you lose your lunch
jesus please, don’t bring me home to daddy

i’m the kinda girl with matchstick hair
and oh you
you can time your wanderings
and your toes always count to ten
all i got for show
is a handful of shattered glass
darlin in every shard is a different me

you don’t even know if i’m around for
protection or predation
but i got a curse
that goes a hundred stars back
oh i tried, pills by the sack
sporadic, erratic, lamictalic
can’t bring you even a moment of peace
and oh god i wish how

i’m the kinda girl with matchstick hair
and oh you
you can time your wanderings
and your toes always count to ten
all i got for show
is a handful of shattered glass
darlin in every shard is a different me

oh baby i’d just bring you down
but it’d take more then one wish
to make me right for you
honey, but if i could make those wishes
i’d be runnin’ home to you.

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Beholder

June 22nd, 2009 Posted in Short Stories, Snippets
Jun, 22 2009
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“I can’t get it.” Keith groaned, his body bending so far over his drafting table that weight pressed dangerously on Ikea Territory.

Dessie, the sulky room-mate, flicked a spent butt at a clay ashtray. Another miss. It only added to the dozens of other misses. For all practical purposes, her ashtray was the entire planet earth. She dug her tongue into the gap between her teeth, mumbling around the awkward twist of her tongue. “Of courf you can.”

“Really?”

Dessie spit free the food lucky enough not to get ground to digestible quality against those nicotine stained choppers. “Can’t. You can’t.”

Keith snapped back around and pretended to focus on the spread of notes on his desk. Lyrics, poems, stories and letters. The summary of a man’s desperation.

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Can’t blog with music

May 13th, 2009 Posted in Rants, Reviews
May, 13 2009
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Just finished The Filth by Grant Morrison.

Now if that isn’t a familiar story, I don’t know what is. Filth read like the chronicle of an acid trip. Reality switching out with the sub-reality created by an intense loss of ego. That’s the problem with LSD, for a few hours you too can feel like a space cop patrolling war between neutrons, however the struggle for asserting The Self ends up being a buzz kill. Who wants to be reminded they’re sitting on a couch when ten seconds ago they were cruising on the back of space dolphins?

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I liked it, even though the fantastical portion made the “real world” a little dull to read.

After all, it’s not often that reality is as sweet or intense as our dreams.

I caught up on Wolverine v3– the Old Man Logan run, picked up all the one shots I could and snagged a manga inspired version of the Origin story. And I did what I usually do. I read them all in a few hours and have now had to resort to re-reading the novels around my house for a 3rd or 4th time.

I cannot do these following things without reading:
Driving (Passenger, obviously)
Take a bath
Idle
Watch Television
Any event, except ones I’m expected to pay sharp attention too
Wait

– I guess in summary, only the internet and hanging out with friends seems to interrupt my addiction.

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Doubt

April 20th, 2009 Posted in Short Stories, Snippets
Apr, 20 2009
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“It’s that time of the sunset again.” she murmured, staring at the orange sky over the rim of her glasses.

Her companion sunk deeper into the half egg-shell chair, “Why can’t you just say how you feel?”

She smiled, an ivory flash showing between two fingers that framed her lips in a horizontal peace sign. “But that is how I feel.”

“You’re a human being, not a time of day. Though with how weird you are, I’m starting to doubt the former part of my observation.”

The hundred year old seat bottom creaked beneath her as she rose to her feet and then stretched onto the balls of her feet. “That’s how I got here you know.” Two fingers came up and tapped on the shallow dent of her right temple.

“How?”

She closed one eye, grinned, and arched her thumb to resemble the hammer of a gun.

“Doubt.”

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Crosswalk

April 15th, 2009 Posted in Snippets
Apr, 15 2009
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The crosswalk glowed as a lingering high five.

She stood there with a sullen expression, watching the duplicate machine across the street count down.

Where she was from, you never had to wait to go. The concept was alien because her people’s independence had plenty of room to stretch out and grow.

She was angry that the city was more honest. It wrote unspoken rules and drew invisible lines.

Tucking her thumbs, she waited.

The hand turned to numbers. Somewhere, on the other side, time had run out.

Her shoulder bent inward as she was jostled forward, and she begrudgingly stepped into the street. Just even listening to the electric humming over her head felt like a betrayal.

But she …

She had never felt so alone than the moments she stood there waiting.

The light that sluiced between the buildings blinded her, and cupping one hand over her forehead she proceeded forward.

Ah…God, it was so bright.

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Ashes

March 14th, 2009 Posted in Snippets
Mar, 14 2009
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“You fall off your fence, buddy?”

I laid there, breathing in the chalky dust. In some last stubborn act, my arm was still looped across the rough bottom rung.

The crackling of my dusty gloves were louder then I ever would’ve thought right now.

“Yeah, somethin’ like that.”

He leaned over his fence, muddy sweat filtering through the stiff grains of his beard like the process of shifting. “Gonna get up?”

I sunk my head back into the greasy, untangled mop beneath my skull and closed my burning eyes. “Maybe.”

He flicked a heavy glob of mud from the cleft of his chin, “You’re still on about the ashes thing, ain’t you?”

“Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.” I quote, voice dry and bitter. “You get to burn and twist off in papery molten capes towards the sky.”

The mud strikes a clump of her hair. “So, Dust – how you doin’ with that then?”

I hunched forward, lifting my chin to draw my eyes towards the dark skies above. The movement revealed the pale ribbons of pasty flesh between each ring of soot on my skinny neck. “Dust.” I whispered, again, pushing away from the fence and into the ragged terrain.

“It was never Dust to Ashes.”

I walk away from him now, the earth’s heartbeat lancing up through the dry soil to strike me as yet another artery for substance. It’s supposed to hurt a little more than this, but nothing…

After all, I am Dust.

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t-what.

February 25th, 2009 Posted in Journal
Feb, 25 2009
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I have twelve foot ceilings because a huge and scary dinosaur has chased me all my life.

Without me knowing, he contacted my real estate broker and secured enough space for him to be comfortable. Furthermore, I believe the dinosaur ordered the mirrors atop my ten foot doors. After all, there’s nothing more embarrassing than lumbering outside with a chunk of my hair and scalp wedged between incisor and canine.

I’d bet he’s probably unsettled with my move, after all, during our Tom and Jerry escapades he had plenty of room. Out in the alabama sky, he had all the head room in the world to hunt me from house to house.

I also have a large suspicion that this dinosaur suffers from dissociative identity disorder. As I have not been gobbled up yet, his greatest and most successful effort has been to make me hurry to every destination. I could be heading to the market or stumbling for a midnight pee, but I assure you – I’ll be moving at a steady clip. So in conclusion, he may have been trying to trim the fat rather than plump me up.

Does anyone know therapists that can possibly help dinosaurs that believe they’re enjoying steady enjoyment as my personal trainer?

I say dinosaurs, plurally, because I am positive at one point I had one wedge into an abandoned refrigerator box. And anyone reading this knows that once you’re within the boundaries of a refrigerator box, only your mother and a dinosaur can get past that cardboard fortress.

Additionally, it wasn’t my mother. The occupant had carrion breath, and I know without a doubt my mom is a religious brusher. While these dinosaurs may have been chasing me, I have not yet found a rinsing cup fitted for scaly beasts missing opposable thumbs.

All I am saying is this, what did I ever do to be pursued by these guys? Maybe I need to break my concerns down into bullet points. All great men solve problems by making lists.

- I have not willfully mocked dinosaurs or made gigantic omelets. I also have never left a glass of water out to tempt them to stomp around me to watch the ripples go. Never encourage the ego of a dinosaur. These are basic guidelines we all know.

-How could I have possibly not only attracted dinosaurs, but a pack of them bent on simply making me run from point A to point B?

-Is it possible for dinosaurs to inherit or make infectious this habit of chasing me down? Could either one of these theories explain how it went from just one tyrannosaurus rex to several, all with the same fixation?

I’m concerned.

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Otis.

February 24th, 2009 Posted in Journal, Snippets
Feb, 24 2009
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Absurdity once again strikes, needling me in the back of the head when I’m positive it’s cold enough outside to reassure me that reality is some serious business.

Not that I’m saying having my nose frozen is a good indicator that we’re not our own illusion, but the helplessness we suffer over the involuntary nose dripping does give pause to one’s confidence in our own control over bodily functions.

I think of the way I titter at permanent markings – the wobbly inked tattoos, grossly stretched piercings and keloid scars of enraged youths.  Doubtlessly, these people confront their decorations every day – whether by mirror, rolling up a sleeve or the second-look-head-snap of a gawker.  

What do I got?  Hypocritical hoops.  Twin bands of metal that wrap around my all too large left ear, capture beads securing them from any spontaneous itch to remove.  One, to love – the other to contain love.  The steel has become fingers in my lifebloods stream, doing what they can to slow the furious rush down just a knot or two.

But the most important reminder is the triangle of twisted white flesh at the base of my thumb, the raised blemish that has been with me for over thirteen years.  The day Otis died, when my flustered parents did all they could to shield me from his mangled body, all my concentration – truly – was on the last thing he ever gave me.  It was a gouge from his dew claw, where he jumped up onto my hips and danced with his thick mottled paw pads between my naked bony feet.  I went to push him down and then away in disgust once his eagerness left my skin split and blood running.

He was gone when the wound was still raw and angry.  He was rotting, his fat fuzzy belly distending and straining as my cut knitted and scabbed.  So I began to scratch, like I could sink my own hands into Alabama red clay and rescue him from the worms.  I pulled at the scab, I traded neosporin for lemon juice and salt.  As the maggots found their way around the deflating orbs of his eyes, skating across the foggy lenses – my cut filled with the sap of scar tissue.

Otis, the absurdity is this.  I did so much, and so little, to remember you – but in the end, the very process that consumed you and I fought to never forget will take me too.  I will become a viscous puddle of cells, and maybe, one day, the wound no one will want to disappear.

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Barn.

February 23rd, 2009 Posted in Rants, Short Stories, Snippets
Feb, 23 2009
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Beautiful boys have a way of making even the ugly things they do bearable by the adorable symmetry of their smile.

My science teacher had a fondness for injured wildlife — all but bunnies that is, and if you have any familiarity with trying to save baby wild rabbits, you’d know why.  A student had brought in an injured barn owl that my teacher had taken great pains to bring to full health.  I remember peeking over the tattered rim of the cardboard box, smelling the pungent scraps of trashed blankets that how now become its bedding.  It was a beautiful animal, but I was at the age where I still refused to be star struck by even the simplest of pleasures in life.

When it came time to release the owl, our class trooped out across the soccer field and around the newly steam-rolled tennis courts.  The outskirts of my campus led deep into the woods, and there honestly wasn’t a better spot to release the animal that the students could appreciate it without having to buss’em out to the wild yonder.  Frankly, we were already there.

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BLOCK.

February 22nd, 2009 Posted in Rants, Short Stories, Snippets
Feb, 22 2009
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When most children are palm wet with excitement at penning their own name and learning to corral their jerky little movements into BIG BLOCK LETTERS – I really hated it.

Hello, have a piece of me.

It seemed to say.

I hate personalizing things.  I break into a cold sweat at personal gifts.  I’m not an ancient egyptian reborn, I assure you, but for awhile I did not think I could handle the fingers and toes of my well intentioned friends.

I left most of my journals unsigned, more than a fair lot of my poems untitled, and arguably all of them hidden for the duration of the rash that came after creation.  I made and then itched and was absolutely not well enough to deal with the repercussions to my big ol’ mouth.  

I can tell you one thing, writing the poem about the bloodied all-seeing Jesus on the cross who is severely disappointed in you and YOU and YOU was something my sixth grade teacher caught the rash on.  Maybe it was about the gore.  Or even the tender care given to the way gore-flesh flutters in a healthy downward stream of blood like watercress.  Either way, it was bad news.

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