Yup, after nearly seven months I've finally written a new poem. Crazy madness. For being so out of practice, it's not too bad :) Partially (vaguely) inspired by Watchmen. Read away.
________________________________
Specters Black
At midnight in the city,
All the dark and tattered men
Play poker in the corners
And hold close their jars of gin.
They plot dark things in slick black tongues,
They stare like dazed lost sheep,
Pass packages beneath the slab
And watch him take the leap.
A poor man down the street cries out,
He says, “The Specters haunt.”
He doesn’t understand his needs,
But thinks he knows his wants.
He wants to drink and throw his cards,
To play their vicious games;
He wants the world to be his own
And wants to live in shame--
Not this life, this worthless thing,
A new thing, all it’s own,
A living thing in shadowed night
That will not stand alone.
He lies awake each night and day
And watches Specters black,
Longing for a place with them
And the vices that he lacks.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Chapter II - Part 2
Yup, decided to post it. Thought it had some good bits of prose, if nothing else, and couldn't bear not putting it up :) It's not much, and doesn't add a whole lot as far as important goings-on, but hope you enjoy all the same. I was going to do an entire scene between the two, but really what would be the point? Maybe if a "final copy" (lol) ever manifests itself out of oblivion, I'll elaborate on it. until then, enjoy :)
Also--*does a happy dance*--I self-congratulate myself on finally getting to 10,ooo words :D Yay!
Anyways, happy reading (^,^)
WORD COUNT: 1,763
TOTAL: 10, 470
_________________________________________________________________
It was raining by the time Jacky was making her way out from beneath the shadows of the city that loomed behind like those of angry giants. Thick drops pelted against the rounded glass, forming rivulets and craters that disappeared and reformed with each strike as the droner sped away above the smoothly planned magnetic curves of a silent and invisible road. The trees below swayed and groaned like lost drunks along the narrowing road, rustling with the passing of each scarce vehidrone that cut through the twilit air, unheard and ignored.
Jacky watched the raindrops slide from their craters along the sleek glass and pass by in streaking comets on either side of her. Her arms crossed against her chest, and her dark mossy eyes seemed vague, narrowed in thought. A strange quick beat was playing over the pinpoint speakers, and electronic tones soon accompanied it. It reminded Jacky of a low-budget but interesting performance she’d attended years ago. “Neo-Asiatic,” she remembered. The performance had been surprisingly well-played, but she recalled the music and grimaced briefly. Not quite her taste, she guessed.
A sudden and annoyed sigh flew from her lips like hard wind coming through an open door as she ran a quick hand through her short black hair and fell back limp and tired in her seat, staring at the blackening fields beyond the window.
In fifteen years, she had probably lived more than millions of people (more worthy people) had in their entire lives combined, most of whom she probably met along the way. They were the little guys, the poor and starving chaps, the abused Third World countrywomen, the children with bubbles in their bellies and clear dreams in their heads amidst the nightmares of the day. Luck brought Jacky out of her own little hellish home and luck brought her too to the people that shared a history with her, the people that made her happiest. They shared families and siblings and cousins, shared money and the lack thereof, shared the hard times and the harsh world, shared hopes and dreams (both the full and the broken), and, soon enough, she shared all the words to express all the things. When she saw their smiles--their untreated, unbreakable, undisguised smiles--it was her smile too, and it was just another simple thing they shared. So many others that Jacky now saw every day found their dreams and deserted them, found love in the people or in art or poetry and left those all behind for a high-paying job and a high-flying life without the real highs; Jacky found it in all these things, though, and in all the places it could be found, and for that, if for nothing else, she was eternally thankful.
It had been years since the last of those smiling faces disappeared into the backdrop of mislaid villages and ramshackle huts. Now they were replaced with the harsh and humorless people Jacky had unwillingly and unhappily grown up with--old starch-collared little buggers sitting in offices in big red leather chairs with a pen in one hand and a mandate in the other. No love in their hearts, or at least there wasn’t anymore. It’d been given away somewhere along the line, wasted on some pitiful creature and lost for good in some dark corner, evaporated into bitterness. Over time, that bitterness and wasted love began to consume Jacky too, and put strange lines in places they shouldn‘t be, made her lips thinner and harsher and her sometimes smiles fleeting, while behind the fluid sea-green of her eyes the liquid memories danced in monochrome.
In a world that no longer allowed room for pride in mediocrity, Jacky knew she had to find work high and fast, something that suited her proficient talents that also paid well. For several years the only job available that fit at least one of those descriptions was working as a tourist translator for hire nearly anywhere that would accept her. The pay was low but a cut above average, which was good enough for a while but didn’t amount to being worth the aches and pains and rare happiness it yielded. However, friends in low places do occasionally keep friends in high places, and in the case of her sixth and closest employer, those friends happened to be extremely high up. A government job loomed dead ahead, and although working as a government official sat dead last in Jacky’s list of prospective occupations, the infrequent logic in her mind forced her to take the job all the same, and at least attempt to keep it. For over a year she did more than simply attempt that, taking every translating job she was offered and letting the much-needed and welcomed cash flow into her paychecks. Soon, meager translating spots at long and inconclusive international meetings for dying languages used by dying countries turned to a post at the very head of it all, and that was just fine with Jacky. Traveling was what she was after in the end, and if sticking to tight schedules and dealing with moronic tight-lipped businessmen lead to the places she missed the most, well, that was just fine too.
It was the foreign affairs in her own country that drove her back to the streets she once inhabited to fight the good fight. No amount of duty or responsibility could keep her from speaking out against the very government she, in part, represented. After what seemed a hundred arguments, petitions, and even pleas and threats, Jacky saw no other way but to rally. Maybe they’d listen with a peace army a thousand strong at her back.
Evidently they had. And, evidently, they hadn’t liked it in the least.
Cynics passed along rumors of black bags and memory wiping and remote prisons, and Jacky was admittedly among them at times, but as with any rumor she never fully believed or found proof of such things. They were myth, as far as she could tell. The simple imaginings of cowards, mostly. But Jacky knew from experience that even the most profuse rumors and stories were founded within some unspeakable truth. The fact of the matter was that people created false fears to cover for the simple and ever crueler true ones. And government agents from other countries sending people thousands of miles away on a whim “just to talk” didn’t sound like much of a safe carefree trip to Jacky.
“Operata’.” Jacky leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. A quiet chime sounded from somewhere in the droner’s console as a thin blank holoscreen slowly climbed its way out. “Call Robbie,” she continued, rubbing two fingers at her temple lightly.
“Is this an urgent call?” the faceless monitor asked in its best comforting electronically concerned blonde secretary voice, reading the quick thumping of Jacky’s pulse as urgency.
“No…no, s’not urgent,” Jacky answered after a moment, and suddenly she delt so old and tired and worn as she spoke and kneaded her temples. “Just put me through, eh?”
“Please wait.” All concern gone. Bloody machines. The screen glowed faintly and a old-fashioned ring sounded over the connection. It rang four times before a picture finally came up.
At first, the screen showed nothing but a familiar earthy living room, brown leather couches and green glass lamps in the corners and a messy combination of children’s fairytales, political biographies, and coffee-stained yesterday’s newspapers warring for places on the maple coffee table. A shadow moved off screen and to the side. Someone was speaking, indiscernible, and someone was answering--“Well, alright, fine,”--and a pair of arms picked up a tiny blue-eyed child from the side. Finally, Robbie sat before the screen, wearing a genuine but weary smile as he sat the little blonde on his knee. He wasn’t often a tired or frustrated man, and never felt or looked as old as he was, which was a good sum of years older than Jacky and more than the she could ever boast, but he was indeed a serious profundity in a world of lackluster carbon-copy-Kafkas sitting in shady downtown café’s snapping their fingers to the rhythmic raps of new age music while boasting a steady supply of 1984 and Brave New World and all the rest. Robbie wasn't any of these things, preferring his own plain study and a library full of hard substance to the rather Gothic Bohemian life he could have (and perhaps once had) lived.
“Jacky,” he started, his voice a deep and precise baritone. The smile slipped from his face briefly as he adjusted the girl squirming in his lap, but it flittered up again without fail. “Jacky, it’s a bit late for calls, isn’t it?”
“Ah…sorry, Robbie,” she answered slowly and could tell by the way the auburn haired man peered at her through half-moon glasses that she must have looked must worse off than she’d hoped she would.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well…to be short with it, I do believe I’m in a spot of trouble, mate.”
“Do you need money?” Always the first question. To most, it would seem an insult, but between them it was the best possible trouble Jacky could be in.
Consequently, she shook her head, humorless.
Robbie watched her a long moment. “Lacy, go see your mum,” he whispered to the child, planting a swift dismissing kiss on her golden head before setting her down.
“Something bigger, then?” he asked tentatively.
“Yeah…yeah, I think so.” Jacky looked apologetic. Robbie only looked worried, as usual, graying eyebrows converging with the lines in his face and a thin frown replaced the weary smile. “Listen…I don’t know what’s going t’happen yet. Just feelings, mostly. Two agents told me at the gov’ I needed to leave for ‘Merica, quick as ya like. And…I just needed t’talk, I guess. Heavy stuff, mate.”
“Quite,” came the thoughtful reply. “Come as soon as you can make it.”
“Right ‘round the bend.”
A nod. “Be careful, sis.”
A smile. “Always am.”
The screen went blank then and began it‘s descent into the console once more, leaving Jacky staring into the black rain around her. A line of yellow lights flitted like bulging fireflies in the darkness beyond the trees. Her eyes dimmed and blurred behind guilt-laden lids.
“Always am.”
Also--*does a happy dance*--I self-congratulate myself on finally getting to 10,ooo words :D Yay!
Anyways, happy reading (^,^)
WORD COUNT: 1,763
TOTAL: 10, 470
_________________________________________________________________
It was raining by the time Jacky was making her way out from beneath the shadows of the city that loomed behind like those of angry giants. Thick drops pelted against the rounded glass, forming rivulets and craters that disappeared and reformed with each strike as the droner sped away above the smoothly planned magnetic curves of a silent and invisible road. The trees below swayed and groaned like lost drunks along the narrowing road, rustling with the passing of each scarce vehidrone that cut through the twilit air, unheard and ignored.
Jacky watched the raindrops slide from their craters along the sleek glass and pass by in streaking comets on either side of her. Her arms crossed against her chest, and her dark mossy eyes seemed vague, narrowed in thought. A strange quick beat was playing over the pinpoint speakers, and electronic tones soon accompanied it. It reminded Jacky of a low-budget but interesting performance she’d attended years ago. “Neo-Asiatic,” she remembered. The performance had been surprisingly well-played, but she recalled the music and grimaced briefly. Not quite her taste, she guessed.
A sudden and annoyed sigh flew from her lips like hard wind coming through an open door as she ran a quick hand through her short black hair and fell back limp and tired in her seat, staring at the blackening fields beyond the window.
In fifteen years, she had probably lived more than millions of people (more worthy people) had in their entire lives combined, most of whom she probably met along the way. They were the little guys, the poor and starving chaps, the abused Third World countrywomen, the children with bubbles in their bellies and clear dreams in their heads amidst the nightmares of the day. Luck brought Jacky out of her own little hellish home and luck brought her too to the people that shared a history with her, the people that made her happiest. They shared families and siblings and cousins, shared money and the lack thereof, shared the hard times and the harsh world, shared hopes and dreams (both the full and the broken), and, soon enough, she shared all the words to express all the things. When she saw their smiles--their untreated, unbreakable, undisguised smiles--it was her smile too, and it was just another simple thing they shared. So many others that Jacky now saw every day found their dreams and deserted them, found love in the people or in art or poetry and left those all behind for a high-paying job and a high-flying life without the real highs; Jacky found it in all these things, though, and in all the places it could be found, and for that, if for nothing else, she was eternally thankful.
It had been years since the last of those smiling faces disappeared into the backdrop of mislaid villages and ramshackle huts. Now they were replaced with the harsh and humorless people Jacky had unwillingly and unhappily grown up with--old starch-collared little buggers sitting in offices in big red leather chairs with a pen in one hand and a mandate in the other. No love in their hearts, or at least there wasn’t anymore. It’d been given away somewhere along the line, wasted on some pitiful creature and lost for good in some dark corner, evaporated into bitterness. Over time, that bitterness and wasted love began to consume Jacky too, and put strange lines in places they shouldn‘t be, made her lips thinner and harsher and her sometimes smiles fleeting, while behind the fluid sea-green of her eyes the liquid memories danced in monochrome.
In a world that no longer allowed room for pride in mediocrity, Jacky knew she had to find work high and fast, something that suited her proficient talents that also paid well. For several years the only job available that fit at least one of those descriptions was working as a tourist translator for hire nearly anywhere that would accept her. The pay was low but a cut above average, which was good enough for a while but didn’t amount to being worth the aches and pains and rare happiness it yielded. However, friends in low places do occasionally keep friends in high places, and in the case of her sixth and closest employer, those friends happened to be extremely high up. A government job loomed dead ahead, and although working as a government official sat dead last in Jacky’s list of prospective occupations, the infrequent logic in her mind forced her to take the job all the same, and at least attempt to keep it. For over a year she did more than simply attempt that, taking every translating job she was offered and letting the much-needed and welcomed cash flow into her paychecks. Soon, meager translating spots at long and inconclusive international meetings for dying languages used by dying countries turned to a post at the very head of it all, and that was just fine with Jacky. Traveling was what she was after in the end, and if sticking to tight schedules and dealing with moronic tight-lipped businessmen lead to the places she missed the most, well, that was just fine too.
It was the foreign affairs in her own country that drove her back to the streets she once inhabited to fight the good fight. No amount of duty or responsibility could keep her from speaking out against the very government she, in part, represented. After what seemed a hundred arguments, petitions, and even pleas and threats, Jacky saw no other way but to rally. Maybe they’d listen with a peace army a thousand strong at her back.
Evidently they had. And, evidently, they hadn’t liked it in the least.
Cynics passed along rumors of black bags and memory wiping and remote prisons, and Jacky was admittedly among them at times, but as with any rumor she never fully believed or found proof of such things. They were myth, as far as she could tell. The simple imaginings of cowards, mostly. But Jacky knew from experience that even the most profuse rumors and stories were founded within some unspeakable truth. The fact of the matter was that people created false fears to cover for the simple and ever crueler true ones. And government agents from other countries sending people thousands of miles away on a whim “just to talk” didn’t sound like much of a safe carefree trip to Jacky.
“Operata’.” Jacky leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. A quiet chime sounded from somewhere in the droner’s console as a thin blank holoscreen slowly climbed its way out. “Call Robbie,” she continued, rubbing two fingers at her temple lightly.
“Is this an urgent call?” the faceless monitor asked in its best comforting electronically concerned blonde secretary voice, reading the quick thumping of Jacky’s pulse as urgency.
“No…no, s’not urgent,” Jacky answered after a moment, and suddenly she delt so old and tired and worn as she spoke and kneaded her temples. “Just put me through, eh?”
“Please wait.” All concern gone. Bloody machines. The screen glowed faintly and a old-fashioned ring sounded over the connection. It rang four times before a picture finally came up.
At first, the screen showed nothing but a familiar earthy living room, brown leather couches and green glass lamps in the corners and a messy combination of children’s fairytales, political biographies, and coffee-stained yesterday’s newspapers warring for places on the maple coffee table. A shadow moved off screen and to the side. Someone was speaking, indiscernible, and someone was answering--“Well, alright, fine,”--and a pair of arms picked up a tiny blue-eyed child from the side. Finally, Robbie sat before the screen, wearing a genuine but weary smile as he sat the little blonde on his knee. He wasn’t often a tired or frustrated man, and never felt or looked as old as he was, which was a good sum of years older than Jacky and more than the she could ever boast, but he was indeed a serious profundity in a world of lackluster carbon-copy-Kafkas sitting in shady downtown café’s snapping their fingers to the rhythmic raps of new age music while boasting a steady supply of 1984 and Brave New World and all the rest. Robbie wasn't any of these things, preferring his own plain study and a library full of hard substance to the rather Gothic Bohemian life he could have (and perhaps once had) lived.
“Jacky,” he started, his voice a deep and precise baritone. The smile slipped from his face briefly as he adjusted the girl squirming in his lap, but it flittered up again without fail. “Jacky, it’s a bit late for calls, isn’t it?”
“Ah…sorry, Robbie,” she answered slowly and could tell by the way the auburn haired man peered at her through half-moon glasses that she must have looked must worse off than she’d hoped she would.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well…to be short with it, I do believe I’m in a spot of trouble, mate.”
“Do you need money?” Always the first question. To most, it would seem an insult, but between them it was the best possible trouble Jacky could be in.
Consequently, she shook her head, humorless.
Robbie watched her a long moment. “Lacy, go see your mum,” he whispered to the child, planting a swift dismissing kiss on her golden head before setting her down.
“Something bigger, then?” he asked tentatively.
“Yeah…yeah, I think so.” Jacky looked apologetic. Robbie only looked worried, as usual, graying eyebrows converging with the lines in his face and a thin frown replaced the weary smile. “Listen…I don’t know what’s going t’happen yet. Just feelings, mostly. Two agents told me at the gov’ I needed to leave for ‘Merica, quick as ya like. And…I just needed t’talk, I guess. Heavy stuff, mate.”
“Quite,” came the thoughtful reply. “Come as soon as you can make it.”
“Right ‘round the bend.”
A nod. “Be careful, sis.”
A smile. “Always am.”
The screen went blank then and began it‘s descent into the console once more, leaving Jacky staring into the black rain around her. A line of yellow lights flitted like bulging fireflies in the darkness beyond the trees. Her eyes dimmed and blurred behind guilt-laden lids.
“Always am.”
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