Transference

I bet you can tell,
I bet you know already, without me telling you, that my
greatest pleasure is
to submit.
But I wonder if
those eyes can see
what I want
from you; I wonder
what you'd say--how you would
explain away
this fire
between my legs.

First paragraph

[It's not right yet.]

Long ago the forests of America were dark and unbroken, and beyond them were the sun-baked plains that ran on and on toward the mountains, and the sunset. Then the Europeans came and built European cities. And the peoples of the world came and met and mingled. And now there is me, and there is also him, this man whose eyes I am gazing into, this stranger who I am asking for help.

Badass Viking epic: paragraph one

Assignment: write the first paragraph of a short story that may or may not ever be completed.


If the ship came in now, Ingegärd would be the first one to see it. She stood on the cliff above the sea, waiting for the sun to rise. She’d come alone. Probably no one else would join her. This was the beginning of the two hundred and forty-ninth day since they’d left. Since Hrodgeir left. Most of the village had given up. Hrodgeir’s wife had given up. Ingegärd glanced back at the path to the village—no one. She turned back towards the sea. The sky was starting to glow blue, and she could tell just tell the ocean apart from the sky. She lifted her lantern, blew out the flame. The sky grew brighter. A bird passed overhead. Two hundred forty-nine. This was the last sunrise she’d suffer here, alone. The bird continued on, headed out to sea.

For P.W.

Five thousand versions of the same thing...

I could write a thousand lines on you, on the feeling of sitting here and wanting nothing more, and nothing less, than to send you silent invitations; even now I feel them burning, out of my eyes and towards your face; all I want is to touch your face, as nature intended, but now there will be nothing, because I have to sit here.

I could write a thousand lines on you, on the feeling of sitting here and wanting nothing more, and nothing less, than to send you silent invitations; even now I feel them burning, out of my eyes and towards your face; all I want is to touch your face-- as nature intended—but for now it’s all emptiness, because I have to sit here.

I could write a thousand lines on you, on the feeling of sitting here and wanting nothing more, and nothing less, than to give you silent invitations. And even now I feel them, rising out of my burning eyes, focused towards your face. All I want is to touch your face-- as nature intended—but for now it’s all emptiness, because I have to sit here.

I could write a thousand lines on you, on the feeling of sitting here and wanting nothing more, and nothing less, than to give you silent invitation. And even now I’m doing just that, my burning eyes focused on your face. All I want is to touch your face-- as nature intended—but for now it’s all emptiness, because I have to sit here.


Final (for now):

I could write a thousand lines on you, on the feeling of sitting here and wanting nothing more than to give you silent invitation; even now I’m doing just that, my burning eyes focused on your face. All I want is to touch your face—as nature intended—but for now it’s all emptiness, because I have to sit here.

Lighthouse

My heart rate is the only thing that’s irregular here. The sun shines steadily overhead, and the humidity continues to hang close over the water. The waves crash against the rocks, the rocks that hold the whole thing up. The lighthouse has been here for a hundred and thirty-three years, he told us.

He lives for lighthouses. He spends every weekend on this one, helping to renovate it. He’s wearing a shirt with the “Lighthouses of the East Coast” illustrated on the back. He rambled excitedly whole tour: And here’s one of our most recent improvements!! We were able to buy these beautiful shutters thanks to our generous donors--

I think I love him.

The seagulls continue to screech. There are sailboats in the distance. The lighthouse sits in the middle of the bay, only accessible by boat—today, a little crabbing boat. He’s standing just inside it, helping the tourists, holding their arms as they step over from the dock underneath the lighthouse.

I don’t trust myself to touch him, even for a few seconds. My grandmother took his hand, climbed in. I’m the last one in line. I hold my camera behind my back, slide open the battery door. He talked too much. Sometimes my wife and I stay out here overnight. I felt for the SD card, took it out. He held my sister’s arm as she carefully crossed the gap. Put it in my pocket. Why the hell would he tell us that? My turn. I step up to the edge. The bay is wide around me and at the center is his arm, his hand. His voice, “Wait til the waves bring it high enough!” The boat goes down. The boat comes up—

I let the camera slip out of my hand. It hits the water with a splash loud enough to perfect catch his attention. I grab a rope pull myself over land on the deck. I leap fully out of his reach.

And everyone realizes what happened and starts to exclaim at once: was that oh no what a shame! And then all the thank-you-for showing-us and I know I should say something but I still don’t trust myself so I manage a thank-you which is lost in the general din, and then the boat is moving off. He’s back on the lighthouse and he’s waving and everyone else waves, so I do too, and he turns and goes in and after a while the lighthouse gets smaller, and I can still see him outside walking around on the deck, and then inside opening windows, and then smaller, and smaller, and it’s all gone, behind the horizon.


~


That night, half awake, half asleep, I saw black sky, black water, and the lighthouse, ten times larger than life, and brilliant, he and his wife the warm glow at the center of its beams stretching out for miles, toward where I live, which is too far inland, and in darkness.

Kouros

I took an aimless walk down here, here in a
Green World, wandering pointless as
this day, suspended between May
and June. I can see, under your shirt,
your angular shoulders, about to bloom wide,
and I want so much to
lay my hands on them-- your manhood.
A year or two.
I know I should be looking for
sun-hardened fruit, so I smile
and see you wonder just before
I turn away

just a thought...

[while I'm doing one-liners. Not really worthy of being recorded, but it's spring; that's all you're gonna get from me at the moment...]

As the reality sets in, so does the panic, squarely on my chest.

Facebook status/ line from an unwritten song/ one-line poem

dearest stranger with the light of heaven in your eyes... i want to be transfigured...

Emily Dickinson: the original emo kid

[This was for class. I think teh proffumz liked it.]

I saw a Rabbit—in the Wood
Its Fur was soft—and new—
It Stretched and Hopped so tenderly—
And on a Sprout it chewed—

I saw a Child—by the school—
At Recess—running Free—
The Sun shone bright—upon his Head
Around him sang the Bee—

I saw two Lovers—in a Lane
Passing among the Flow’rs—
I saw—reflected—in their Eyes—
Their gentle Talk—of Hours—

But though the Sun is shining—now—
Though Summer’s Music plays—
I can see—Clouds coming up—
And casting darkest Shade—

You do not see these Shadows black—
So I will counsel Thee—
O Rabbit—Child—Lovers Two—
To remember—you must—Die—

Holy Sonnet-- attempt #3

[GAAAAAAH! Not even close.]

You smiled at me, a divine smile;
Your gentle face seemed lit from within.
All others, who I always understood as traps,
Binding me to them in fascination,
Have very simply
Dimmed.
Their pretty flesh is now like dirt to me.
You'll be the consummation of my dreams.

The Transfiguration-- attempt #2

[I CAN'T GET IT RIGHT!!!]

I don't know you, but I saw heavenly beauty in your face.
Your gentle smile at me was lit from within, and
All others, who I always understood as traps,
Infinite sources of fascination,
Have very simply
dimmed.
Let them come and let them go.
Their pretty flesh is now like dirt to me.
You'll be the consummation of my dreams.

Metaphysics-- attempt #1

[My first attempt to describe a particular event. I'm not overly happy with it. I have the feeling that no matter how long I try, I'll only end up producing more attempts... "He was more beautiful than words can express, and Aschenbach felt, as so often already, the painful awareness that language can only praise sensuous beauty, but not reproduce it." It's also really hard not to go off into a cliche-fest. I stole the 9th line from a medieval Chinese story.]

I have seen divine beauty:
A gentle smile on your good face.
Your face, lit from within.
In this white light, all others,
Who I always took as sources of infinite fascination,
have very simply
dimmed.
Let them come and let them go--
Their pretty flesh will be like dirt to me.
I know that you will drive me on, forever,
Sweeten my dreams, and be their consummation.
I have been transfigured.

Fever, or, When the Heart Guides the Pen

[Apparently this is what happens when I stay up too late/ get dehydrated/ want to avoid philosophy papers. It's not supposed to sound as sexual as it does; I was just writing it in a really hot room. I also lost my iPod shortly after I wrote this... an even trade? Pretty sure this won't make sense to anyone but me.]

Where are you, my blond apparition, my "standoffish" angel? It's a quarter past midnight, and you never came. I'm here, stretched out in a hot primordial haze, barely able to move, wondering where I might hunt salvation. If only you were here, I'd have to look no further than your mild face, your limp. Would you ever guess-- the things I would give you if you were here. My forehead burns and burns but doesn't burn out. Somewhere you sit with your mild face turned dutifully toward a book; in my mind I call you to me. It's happened so fast-- already I want to know every detail, on into infinity, not just your tongue and your mouth but deeper; I want to see the inside of you, every black cavity and every unthinking cell. I want to know what thoughts an angel thinks, why angels are aloof; I want to know everything that's made you, all of it, back and back to your childhood.

Kafkaesque story

[This is the very first copy of a thing for class. It needs work...]

It’s a beautiful morning, late April, finally getting warm. I left my window open last night, and when I woke up warm air was drifting in, and I could smell tree blossoms. The sky is pale blue, and clear. A few stories below on the sidewalk, a middle-aged man in shorts is walking a black dog. It’s still very early.

When I leave my room today, I could stop at the coffee shop down the street. It’s not too warm out yet for coffee, and I just got my paycheck, I can afford a nice breakfast. When I get to work, I could smile at my colleagues, say Hey, how was your weekend! and listen to Sarah talk about the party she had for her boyfriend’s birthday, and tell her Sounds like you had fun! and I’m glad it worked out! I’m wide awake today; when the customers start lining up I should be able to help them without getting confused, it’s easy, just one step at a time. When CJ comes in at 2:00 I could ask how his weekend was, and he might tell me about it, and he might ask me to have dinner with him later. When I get home I could do all of that laundry that’s sitting around, and then go to bed early, to be ready for tomorrow.

When I leave my room today, I’ll walk past the coffee shop because, no matter how loud I force myself to talk, the cashier won’t understand what I’m saying. When I get to work and say “hi” to everyone, they‘ll stare at me, and I’ll stand apart from them as Sarah tells stories about her weekend, about how drunk she got. The customers will come in, and I‘ll get overwhelmed and have to make them wait while I untangle my thoughts. When CJ gets there at 2:00 he’ll greet me politely, after a glance at my nametag, and then ask where Sarah is. When I get home I’ll eat whatever’s left in the refrigerator, if there’s anything left. No one will call me. I’ll stay up late doing nothing.

It’s a beautiful morning, and I’m not leaving my room.

Fallen

[I'm working on a retelling of Thomas Mann's "Fallen". This is the (very rough) first paragraph.]

The four of us are together again. This Friday we’re at one of those fake Mexican chain restaurants out in the suburbs; none of us got paid today so we had to go somewhere cheap. We stand out here a little, I think, us among the overweight dyed-blond women, the men in polo shirts, the loud, itchy little kids. Especially Anna. She's had our waiter's attention all evening, his attention on her low-cut shirt, her flat-ironed hair, her teasing glances. I know she doesn’t really mean any of it. She’s a writer, and she “chooses her costumes carefully,” as she told me once. For “research.”

from an unsent letter to an online acquaintance

Internet. No human contact. I know you; I don't. I go back and forth. It's an unsolved problem maybe, something new in the digital age. Do I still have my old belief that we are all just souls clothed in flesh? I don't know. I have no beliefs. I believe in science and run from it; I believe in art and run towards it. Those are my beliefs.

Scene

At the library I sat down next to a man, took out my laptop charger and started to untangle it. Noting his furtive glance at me, I moved my hands more gently, drawing the plug slowly through loop after loop, wondering absently if I was torturing him. I thought of old paintings of women sewing, their focused hands gracefully pulling upwards, downwards. Does it really matter whether the thread between a woman's fingers is delicate fiber or a computer cord? The implications are always the same.

The progression of a description-- part 1

My first three attempts to "work out" a "pointed little effect" regarding something that's been floating around in my mind for the last few months. (This will suck. Brace yourself.)

...blond, wool-coated men that haunt the halls of academia...

...weak-looking, blond, wool-coated young men gliding through the halls of academia...

...blond, weak-looking young men, with their glasses and wool coats, striding soundlessly through the halls of academia...

I'm so Kafka, writing out my attempts. And I'm so fucking profound. Haha. I'm trying to be Mann, aka something I'm not. I need to give my pompous 19th-century tone a swift kick to the huevos. Looking back at my early attempts at fiction (ie. last June, ie. not even a year ago, DAMN IT!), I'm so ashamed at how fucking pretentious I was; I was trying to write like Mann/ a dead 1800's Euro white guy. A bad idea. But everyone goes through their shitty stage. Pretty sure I'm still in mine. But at least I'm progressing!

Which sounds less pretentious: "academia" or "the academy"? Or do they both suck? Meh. Fin.

2 AM [final]

Night hangs over
the city and below
the sky the side-
walk stretches on

and on and
at its end and
in orange lamp-
light he
stands silent,
smoking

2 AM-- version 5,831,382.4... beta

[I can't get it right!]

Night hangs black above
the city and below
the sky the side-
walk stretches on

and on and
at its end and
haloed in
orange lamp-
light he stands silent,
smoking

2 AM

[A poor imitation of William Carlos Williams-- for class]

Night hangs silent over
the city and below
the sky the sidewalk
stretches on

and on and
at its end and
in orange lamplight
he stands silent,
smoking

2 AM Apollo

The night is cold, the night is dark
and he is there.
Distant
He is there
Smoking
He is there
Silent
He is there
I want no more
He is there

Adonis [rather old; fragment]

She was enraptured. She launched herself up the stairs two, three at a time. Barely touching the floor. Oblivious to her backpack, its weight, twelve pounds, thirteen, ten? She was aware of shapes moving around her. Adonis. Sweet Adonis. Wavy black hair, chilly marble skin, dark eyes—she’d seen him.

Contain it! Can’t! She needed someone to tell; too much to keep inside—growing, impossibly soft feeling-- freshmen moving so slowly up the stairs! She slammed herself violently against the wall. Don’t care who sees. Nothing outside of-- she only knew him by sight, from the hallways, yet she felt she intuitively understood his innocent heart, his refined mind, his guileless intentions, his sweet demeanor. Such beauty—such beauty—

He was originally from Eastern Europe; his parents had immigrated for science careers. Other people didn’t see what she did, something she knew too well. Xenophobia? Blindness? Or clear sight? She didn’t particularly care about other people, though… to her, he was a fairy-tale knight, tall and rather thin, but his sinewy arms and beautiful broad shoulders suggesting a latent physical power, a suggestion that kept her awake sometimes… such a fine-boned face, deep brown eyes, delicate, pale pink mouth, white skin, black curls. Yes, to the others he was quiet, unobtrusive, someone to simply overlook, but to her he was aesthetic ideals incarnate, and she preferred to use the elegant word “lover” in her thoughts, even if it was technically untrue…

Friday

If there’s a god in heaven

or anywhere else

please bring me my poet

please send him to me

International Fragment (3 of 3)

The daughter was really quite young, very short, in rather dowdy clothes that contrasted with her apparent jewelry-consciousness. She had very dark hair. .. Why were they speaking English? Why would he want such a conversation publicly comprehensible? She made it to the door and should have gone out, but, thinking this might confuse her mother and sister, she instead stood by the window, waiting, watching the people outside, very conscious of the distribution of air and matter within…

She always felt very powerful around men with ornery children. The women just depressed her; she saw her future in them, but the men… she felt they became self-conscious, almost apologetic, when they saw her, that they were embarrassed by how ridiculous they looked. She felt she reminded them, with painful gentleness, of how their lives could have turned out differently… Oh, she had to stop flattering herself with these delusions! He wasn’t interested in her; it was just a passing look between strangers, a reflex, the body’s way of observing threats without bringing in the cerebral cortex too soon… I wish I could turn off my cerebral cortex sometimes. Although overthinking got her in far less trouble than animalistic instinct would… but at least animals don’t think themselves crazy! She always felt so vulnerable in those brief glances, like the other person could read her thoughts, when really she just hadn’t had time to hide them from herself.

International Fragment (2 of 3)

Well, he’d seen her already, so she could take her time… still, she needed to get to the front of the store. She didn’t want to end up trapped in this back corner, tripping over the delicate displays… and trip she would, like that time she’d nearly fallen down the stairs during a college tour as a Russian family, including father, came up behind her. For the love of God. Why couldn’t it be the mom? What was a dad doing here? Mom… I wonder if there’s a mother in all that… Shut up! Of course there was a fucking mother! It wasn’t that she felt any attraction on a personal level, it was just that accent… accents inevitably triggered these chaotic thoughts and burning feelings she couldn’t make sense of…

Safely out of the back corner, she took a curious look back. He was much taller and somewhat older than she had expected, and had that arched, erudite, uniquely Slavic expression on his face. Yes, somewhat older… when Eastern European men weren’t peasants, when they were scientists or businesspeople like this man probably was, at his age, with graying hair but still physically intact, ah, they were so wonderfully—I deserve to be shot. Nothing less.

Miracle (version 2)

I wonder if I'm sick, or seeing things.
They talk constantly, laugh loudly; all of them are unaware--
A quiet miracle’s unfolding here.
Wild-eyed, I watch the beaming apparition:

Your blond head bent over the desk
Your shoulders tensed in concentration,
And your beautiful hands,
writing.

Miracle

I wonder if I'm sick, or seeing things.
They chatter loudly, all of them unaware
Of the quiet miracle unfolding here.
Wild-eyed, I watch this beaming apparition:

Your blond head bent over the desk
Your shoulders tensed in concentration,
And your beautiful hands,
writing.

Loss [emo and shitty]

I wanted to be alone forever.
But before I could think, and almost against my will something happened and now--
Half of me is gone.

The sick muse's eyes glare weakly, piercing, accusing, begging, leaking darkness;
A sadistic higher power contorts my angel's brain.
I do not suffer the way he does,
Suffer though I might.

I am further and further from the people around me.
The happy voices are distant and blurry, the laughter jarring, irreverent.
Worldly things are gone for me, or fading fast.
All I think, all I see, taste, smell, breathe is the cloudy dark blue of his pain
And my own.

International Fragment (1 of 3)

She stood in the back of the store, aware of her sister and mother’s voices, staring blankly at long, plastic necklaces painted shiny to look like gold, feeling suspicious under the cashier’s observation, waiting. Suddenly she heard a man’s voice, then a young girl’s, both coming closer. The girl was whining, asking for something; the man was responding, annoyed, asking what it was for… heat searing upward from the center of her stomach, she realized the man had an accent. Helplessly, she let her burning face droop towards the floor; without turning around, without even thinking, she had placed it and was now trying to find an unobtrusive path to the door. They were still approaching; the bratty little girl was practically crying now over some piece of plastic, dear God… she looked up involuntarily and glimpsed the man’s face just as he glimpsed her. Shit! Russian, just as she’d thought. Run!

Amour [title changed to preserve anonymity]

No, not again. As I read his poem, I feel it—shaky but getting stronger with each line—gravity, pulling me, pulling me. Familiar, final. I close my eyes and picture his long honey-colored hair, his broad shoulders. There is no fighting. I assume the familiar position, teetering, and gravity pulls me, pulls me, down.

Fantasy on a music lesson

I just signed up for a class,
but of course there’s always more in my head.
As he sounds the purest notes,
I can’t help but let my eyes drift to his face
and muse about private lessons.

Leaves from a Portfolio

I am a writing (literature-- NOT journalism) student. I'm using this blog to collect and share some of my favorite "leaves," both poetry and prose, from my modest portfolio. Don't plagiarize, kids.