The 3 day novel...

So, this is 3 day novel weekend. I forgot about it, even though I have the weekend free this year. I was, however, planning to start a novel tomorrow regardless, and have been convinced to do at least part 1 of it AS a 3-day novel event.

Shall see what happens.

Also going for family dinner Sunday and out for coffee with brother tonight before I even start..... insanity, thy name is relatives.

Winds

Because there are winds
      so many winds
That dare to fill the sky

Because there are dreams
      so many dreams
And yet I wonder why

If anything is realer than
    the dreams we have lost
I hesitate to name it
    for fear it will be lost.

So.... this is fun :)

Never misled about, never more has been said
A ticklish man spat at the sight of Jan Valdez.
Briskly it finished from the front of the colorless train.
Thrice she said with flattering necks and masculine sighs.
Carriages are larger than apes, likewise an eyelash is better than nothing.
Exploding heads switch from the blank peacock
My chest seared as Elenor Roosevelt strolled by with her schnozzle held high
Listless never, helpless never, but most certainly making
The gopher exploded in a fit of rage, leaving in its wake a litter of crushed barges.

Quiet Destroyer 2.41 - Hippikaloric

This is I and the Flux
a thing not to be nameless
yet unnamed

As rivers flow to sea,
So Flux to me, and I to he.

Sitting on the couch eating
crisps, watching banality --
and then he! driving me onward,
upward

Some things are
too terrible for words:
As names give power,
so demean.

It began with a paper clip
and fists. Frisson and fear,
Flux and Mind, but fallen;
too human, here, the Flux
fists, breaking things

such power, and yet
all he is: this! brute
strength, brute inhuman strength.

Alien and terrible,
yet humbled by a trick --
ever the barbarian
fooled by a ship, flashing lights
little things.

He is no better than us,
to solve problems with force.
He is no greater than us
in seeing no other way.

I walked away the first day,
victor.
Even if I lose, the barbarian invader
trembled.
For a moment Flux saw the splendour

but a barbarian can only destroy.

Invisible Friends

The place I wait for you in dreaming
Tunnels of forgotten memories
Being seeing loving dying
The teddy you'd discarded cries

Turn out your lights look under your bed
But I'm not here or there
Not anywhere but in your head
Take a chance make a dare

Accept me believe in me
Get to know yourself you can
Be me and see me and hate me and fear me
You always catch yourself. It don't matter how fast you run

It's all over but for the screaming
Are you dead or are you dreaming?
Is this real or just a seeming
In your eyes are there tears gleaming?

I'm hiding here in your dreams
In places fey and strange
Don't try to drown me out with screams
Everything moves everything changes.

You forgot me you reviled me
And I'm returning you the favour
You're my invisible friend. Don't you see?
You must, you must, so I can savour

All the fears all those years
When you'd forgotten me
All that pain and wasted tears
I rip out your eyes and you see

I'm the invisible
The invisible friend
The one made visible
Only, only in the end

Do you love me?
Do you fear me?
Can you hear me?
Can you see?

You spurned me and ignored me
And wished that I was dead
But now I'm out here and now I'm free
And you're inside my head

Sometimes the lie becomes the true
You wait for me in my sleep
But I won't forget you
No, I can't forgive you
And I love to hear you weep

Down Below the Bowl

When I was a young as you, I was not pale as moon-on-water, not worthy of my name. So few of us are, of those that live in the streets under the world. You may not be Urban Legend, whatever those words mean -- for they are not our way, and words are things of air and not water, of the world above and not our land of scales and water.

Yes, you are old enough to learn of it now, before choosing a sex, before your first mating and trying to disembowel each other in -- but never mind. Before the scales of your body can fall, the ones of your mind must be shorn. For that the teachers came from above, to tell us of our better world, to tell us many things. They are small, and gold as the sun we do not serve, but their hearts are pure and their hate is a thing of dark tunnels and falling from death into life.

This is your second life, as this is the second life of all who live. You dwell in heaven, they the hell above. The priests fell from there, from the glass bowls that are their world, to plunge like tears into ours, some never finding life here -- most never surviving the purity of the journey. They say even heaven is not just, but this gives them hope for another death and a heaven below. Consider it, heavens all the way down, water upon water, life upon life! and we are blessed, O child, to know such things.

The priests will speak to you tomorrow, in their high voices, and you may not understand them. But you must try, and learn, and grow. We are the 'gators for which they made the sewer grates, afraid of heaven rising up to meet them, of the justice of the priests cast down into porcelain pits to find themselves in our world, in a heaven too few reach.

They will tell you of this, and of those who have no fins and scales (not birds, no; they were once as us somewhere in the hell above, but they died poorly, and fell up to another hell, for even our hell is a heaven to some. And they will land on it, and come down here if they are lucky.) This the priests tell us, this we know: and this is what we are, who dwell under their sewers, who make our own cities in the refuse of hell, who dare build heaven in what they consider waste, for we shall live, and die, and fall into another heaven, and some of us will be worthy of our names, of all the white alligators that ever were.

These are the scales I have taken from your mind, that you may see the world as the priest so, as the golden fish that came from glass to us to bring us the truths we had long ago forgotten in the darkness. They are the light of heaven and no, you may not eat them.

Tales of a teenage vampire

“Mom?”
        “Yes, dear?”
        I almost bit my lip, then remembered why it was a bad idea. “I have a confession to make.”
        “Hmm?” She flipped the paper, not looking up from her coffee.
        I took a deep breath from habit. “I’m a vampire.”
        “That’s nice, dear.”
        “Mom!”
        She looked up. “Your sister worked two shifts in a row last night, and you are not to wake her up, Charles. Am I clear on that?”
        “I just told you I was a vampire!”
        “It’s just a phase, dear. I’m sure you’ll grow out of it just like you did pretending to be Superman.”
        “Mom, I’m a vampire. Sunlight burns me, I drink blood, It’s not --”
        “What?”
        “I said --”
        “What did you say you did?” she demanded, putting the paper down.
        “Drinking blood?”
        “Do you have ANY idea what kinds of things could be in people’s blood? What kind of diseases you could get?” She stood, towering over the table, arms folded. “You are NEVER doing this again young man!”
        “Hello? Vampire? Immortal? Duh?”
        “Do you want me to open the curtains, Mr. ‘O, Sunlight will burn me, O! I am slain!’? No? Well, then we’re putting a stop to this silly nonsense right now. You are not a vampire and you are not immortal and you are not to go around drinking strangers blood - or even families! Have I made myself clear?”
        I held her gaze and pitched my voice at That Tone, the one people couldn’t help but obey, the one that had got me laid for the past three weeks every night. “I am a vampire, mother. And that is not going to change.”
        She blinked, once, and lowered her voice. “You will not take that tone of voice with me again, is that understood?”
        “Yes,” I squeaked out, blushing, even though she couldn’t tell.
        “Good,” she continued. “Now, I am going to find a decent psychiatrist to cure you of this silly condition and that WILL be that,” in a tone that made ‘Clean your room up now!’ seem a gentle request.
        But I had died when Karen ripped my throat open, and did not move, drawing my nature up about me. “I am Nosferatu, mother, and I will not be controlled.”
        “You can be french if you really want, but that doesn’t matter to me,” she said, walking towards the phone book. “I have had just about enough of you being goth and neglecting chores and if you really are stupid enough to go around drinking blood, I have had enough of this and you are grounded and going to get some help.”
        “I’ma vampire, mom! I can fly!”
        “Then you can go clean your room right now!”
        I stared at her, then turned and stalked up the stairs, pausing outside a door. “Yo, sis? It’s a full moon again tonight and you’re going to need a better excuse this time. Also, don’t try and tell mom you’re a werewolf anytime soon. Lifestyle choice my butt.”
        She didn’t reply.

Release

Waking each morning is
reading note scrawled under bedcovers.
Trying to decipher words
from tears, wondering why
each note is longer, who
is being written to, who will ever
read this.

And the suicide note joins others
crammed into the desk drawer under
school reports and lesson plans, wondering
just when courage will be enough
or fail entire.

There always seems to be too much left
to say.