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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
 Posted - 01/29/2019 : 18:02:38
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| "Old building on the West Side," she says. "Incinerator for burning trash. A chute built into the wall like a great black breadbox. When you pulled the lid open you smelled smoke and heard the fire roar. Sometimes sparks flew up. I couldn't sleep. Went back to hotels. Skipped school. Out on the streets in the wee hours if the shoot ran late. Free. Nobody keeping track then. It's a black and white city. A presence place. Lots of ghosts there." He nods. The sun is hot on his knees. The day is shining. "...Sanity..." he says. "Like Chinese menus..." she says, "...One from column A and one from..." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
Posted - 01/29/2019 : 18:10:01
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| He talks about prophesy and revelation. The epiphany in dreams. Genetic memory. Parallel lives. Speculation and theory. "...all of it..." she says, her head spinning. Candle flicker. Gleam on the glasses. Too many flowers in the room. "Now and then..." he says. "Or the now and the then?" She puts her ear to his chest. The steady two-beat proof there. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2818 Posts |
Posted - 01/30/2019 : 16:22:48
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Carmelita has left me so many times
You would think I would be used to it by now.
All I have left of her this time
Is the stain of her cup on the table.
It's getting to the point that when
I see her standing in my door
I think that she is leaving me
Walking backwards...
If you were me it would make sense.
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
Posted - 02/09/2019 : 18:05:22
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| "...emotional memory..." he says, bells in his voice, "...when you were a child...all innocence and imagination." "Well..." she says, "Most of the hotel folk were Irish. New to America. Young men arguing Sweepstakes and Revolution. Pounding their fists on the tables. Scaring me with demon tales I loved. Battle stories. Myths and legends. Monsters under the bed. All manner of dread. The maids were lighthearted and musical. They laughed in the laundry and whispered behind their palms. Why do they have so many secrets, I asked Brigid. 'No more why's,' she scolded. 'Curious girls make God angry.' But she snooped in my closet and bureau drawers. Dr. Toomey let me lock my music box in his desk. He was older than the waiters. He sipped his whiskey and smoked a long pipe. He wore a gold watch on a chain on his vest. He read the scratch sheet with a magnifying glass." Late afternoon clouds scudding over the water. A swirl of gulls dipping down. His profile that never changes nodding with the motion of the rocker. "What did you keep in your jewelry box...?" he leans forward, unaware of his power. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
Posted - 02/09/2019 : 18:12:11
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| Bladed places. Spiny branches. Christ's bloody crown, "...out there in the desert," he says. But nights adrift in the dark on a Badlands dirt road are different. All the constellations in the Milky Way galaxy with their WELCOME mats out. And sailors know it's a short walk into low stars. Three or four car lengths at most. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2818 Posts |
Posted - 02/11/2019 : 20:20:53
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He never thought it could happen again
He thought that his old heart was dead
It just wasn’t worth it anymore
He was tired of banging his head
He climbed the stairs every night
When he could keep from falling down
The audience doesn’t pay for dancing bears
They pay to laugh at the clown.
She was everything he thought he wanted
The only thing left of his heart
She filled him with dreams and fairy dust
She kept him from coming apart
He had turned into a tired little man
Left with a tired little mind
Most times the ones who love too much
Can’t be seen by the one who’s blind
He climbed the stairs every night
When he could keep from falling down
The audience doesn’t pay for dancing bears
They pay to laugh at the clown.
Merci Anne-Aude
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2818 Posts |
Posted - 02/12/2019 : 05:08:53
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Margaret came upstairs and found him
sitting in the rocker just
looking out the window at a hawk
flying over the yard and
beyond that to the river.
He seemed sad.
She thought of a rhyme...
Eighty two and nothing left to do.
Did he have regrets?
Were they his own or for his son?
Were they because he had no grandchildren?
Were they because his friends kept dying?
Or was it just a peaceful moment after breakfast
and nothing much was wrong?
Margaret knew.
She shared the same life.
It was a beautiful Saturday morning in March
looking down at the Hudson River.
Nothing much was wrong...
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 02/14/2019 : 07:39:07
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I am breaking up
with you, winter. I have eyes
for a hummingbird.
DL |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2818 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2019 : 08:35:10
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All the days you walked beside me
Were all the days I did not fall,
Winter winds caress my soul
Another day learning to crawl.
All the nights you laid beside me
Were the nights I did not shake,
God,
The doors are left wide open now
There's nothing left to take.
Did you leave me with a song to sing
So my lips would remember how?
Did you leave me for the past again,
While I'm stuck in here and now.
All the years go a little slower
While the fingers hold on fast
All the nights take a little longer
Midnight joys have mostly passed.
All the nights you laid beside me
Were the nights I did not shake,
The doors are left wide open now
There's nothing left to take.
All the days you walked beside me
Were all the days I did not fall,
Winter winds caress my soul
Another day learning to crawl.
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2019 : 17:53:36
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| Black and white photograph. Dust storm in the middle of a thousand-acre construction boom. The guy in the pilot car quitting. Disappearing down a street with no name in a puzzle of streets with no names. The bystanders dismayed. ...and now the house arrives at the crossroads. OVERSIZE LOAD. A tall Victorian with windows boarded over teeter-tottering on a wide flatbed truck. A piece of antiquity to be planted before wine town becomes the new city. "...like I was lookin' down on a maze..." he says later, "...I saw the way clear an' I took it." He likes black and white. "More rooted in time..." he says, "...more enduring. Think of old newsreels, honey. They don't have the same weight in color." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2019 : 18:07:29
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| He gets up from his gravity-defying chair. "...an' after...? he says. In his pensive mood the room becomes a portal. "I got out of the city," she says. "One Summer. Sewed tobacco for Consolidated Cigar. Dirt-floor sheds in rural Connecticut. Different pictures. A new point of view. The boys picked the leaves and the girls sewed them. A ballet reaching up. Pushing the stems into twisting twine on the drying racks. Dusty. Real work. But you do it with your body not your mind. We started at 6 and broke for lunch at 10. Cheese sandwiches on Wonder. The boys were a nuisance. They hid snakes in the baskets. Or worse. Best part of the day was a bath. I was glad I did it but ready to get on the bus when the season was over. Back to Horn and Hardart's tart lemon meringue pie. Pond's Cold Cream. Star painting on my face with MaXFactor. Her jangly bangle bracelets and Parliament cigarettes. Kind of like a mother." "Were you lonely?" he asks. "I was busy..." she says, "I was thinking..." He's eating clam chowder out of a pan at the stove. He brings it to the table and hands her the spoon. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
Posted - 02/18/2019 : 18:10:43
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| The narrow alleyway splendid with stars. The balcony aglow and floating. The broken-hinge gate. Bougainvillea pulling the trellis down. The heavy blue-dark arched door. He's handy with tools and ready with good intentions. A man like that you tell the truth to. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2818 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2019 : 17:08:24
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Things to remember, things to forget
Maybe what's left of it now.
Days by the river, ice bound and blue
A basket, a bottle, moments with you.
Sounds so simple, but wasn't it cold?
Fresh-faced, looking ahead.
If we could've jumped forward
Looked back at today
Would we find us alone in our beds?
With your head on my shoulder
Your hand on my back
I could almost dare to dream.
Plans that we made
At the end of those days
Words that we truly did mean.
It's only too late,
When we bring down the gate,
Lock up, turn out the lights.
There's a path not yet walked
For one, maybe both
Where the past and future are right.
[So many miles between then and now
And more between us and romance
But, Hell, here we are
It's the wee, small hours
There's always time for a slow dance...]
It's nearly a year since I last saw your face
These days I'm just learning to walk
So much to offer, so little to give
But we're dancing, no time to talk.
With your head on my shoulder
Your hand on my back
I could almost dare to dream
Plans that we made
At the end of those days
Words that we truly did mean
It's snowing tonight, I can picture the lights
On the mountain from your back porch
Hard to tell, I was under your spell
I always carried the torch.
Some of my edges, cleaned and smooth
Some rough as ever I fear.
It's late in the game, there's no one to blame
What doesn't bring a laugh, brings a tear.
[So many miles between then and now
And more between us and romance
But, Hell, here we are
It's the wee, small hours
There's always time for a slow dance...]
Well, here we are
It's the wee, small hours
and
There's always time for a slow dance...
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Edited by - buckman on 02/20/2019 17:12:26 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
Posted - 03/04/2019 : 17:24:20
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| A new patron greets pilots in Little Italy. Three-story mural on a building in the flight path to Lindbergh. A young woman in an aviator's cap gazing up at the clouds. Biplane with the title banner trailing her arm, "Before the Horizon. Beyond the sea." Fisherman's net floating in the sky. Sun Tarot card shielding her eyes. A San Diego welcome. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
Posted - 03/04/2019 : 17:40:27
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| He chose this corner of the house for its light. His canvases leaning against the walls. All that striped lemon through the windows. And doors down the hall mixing decades, "...your blue heart and endless candles..." he laughs, "...know what I'm sayin'..." He's standing at the easel with his "good brushes" from Spain. Caught in the world on the canvas. A woman barefoot in a man's cloud-white shirt. A circle of tiny bells at her ankle. Little music. Saltillo courtyard in the distance. Suffused saffron glow. His image, hand raised in the gazing globe when he cuts the sky with Chrome Yellow. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
Posted - 03/04/2019 : 17:47:47
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| "Pixels..." he says. She laughs and tucks her skirt under her knees and sits down on the top stair beside him. There are ragged kelp piles down the long beach. Jingle shells left by the storm. "...where the water door opens..." he says, "...no bluffin' in this game. Yeah..." The grin in the lantern room when he shows her where the land notches in. Easily missed with its ever-present fog bank. "The whole place so dangerous and brimful of longing..." she says. Garden of wonder on the other side waiting. |
Edited by - Ailinn on 03/16/2019 15:52:33 |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2818 Posts |
Posted - 03/05/2019 : 14:33:05
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I could have sworn I had told her
I had nothing left to give
The future made no promises
Velvet days and nights were lived.
[The spark tastes too delicious
It's so hard to be denied
Our hearts are fed by wishes
And starved by foolish pride.]
It's what dreams are made of
On starry starry nights
It's what leads to madness
And the wrong thing feeling right.
It's the agony and ecstacy
With almost nothing in between
It's what lets us bear the world
The leaves fall, the grass turns green
We do the dance and we lick our lips
And we never see the bruise
It's a lover that we think we want
It's a friend we always lose.
[The lips, the nights, the tangled hair
Then days without desire
It doesn't take a hurricane
To take the spark out of the fire.]
It's what dreams are made of
On starry starry nights
It's what leads to madness
And the wrong thing feeling right.
It's the agony and ecstacy
With almost nothing in between
It's what lets us bear the world
The leaves fall, the grass turns green
I could have sworn I had told her
I had nothing left to give
The future made no promises
Velvet days and nights were lived.
[The spark tastes too delicious
It's so hard to be denied
Our hearts are fed by wishes
And starved by foolish pride.]
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2019 : 19:08:02
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| He's drawn to history. The origins of language. "Book of Invasions," she says. "Medieval account of the search for Ireland and their spoken word. 'They sail on the sea both by day and by night...' Something like that. And how Caicher the druid melted wax in the sailors ears to protect them from the Sirens songs and stories. The great battles. Their long dragon shields and javelins and double-edge iron. By the time you finish it you're ready to pick up the sword or put out to sea." His covenant with time when he closes his eyes, "...Atavistic..." he laughs, "...can't be bred out..." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2154 Posts |
Posted - 03/10/2019 : 19:10:04
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| ...and now each day grows a minute longer. |
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buckman
Firefly
USA
2818 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2019 : 16:04:08
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Eating Swedish meatballs over Spanish rice purchased separately at the deli. Irish whiskey and Mexican beer on the side. Let’s hope they get together well and don’t battle inside me.
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The Nightly Vigil