too much practice

I cry when I come

too much practice, too little

else, I come alone

mi mi cry

now featured over at The Camel Saloon

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leaves, shoots & eats

a new poem over at dark chaos ;)

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46 hours

38 hours, and counting.  A tiring morning, going Christmas shopping.  Wearing the wrong clothes again, my knickers are falling down inside my jeans, I have to periodically back into a corner in the shop, on the street and push my hand past my belt, past the swell of buttocks which you would think are large enough to hold anything up, push my hand down and hoick the offending knickers back up. I think about going into the department store toilets, wondering if it is worth taking them off and going commando?  Inside the store, without all the striding around, they seem to be holding.  I clutch various things to me, they don't seem to go much for shopping baskets in this store, but I make sure they are bought and bagged before I brave the escalator descent.

38 hours, and 2 hours into the shopping, my feet are aching.  Wearing the wrong shoes, or well, maybe the wrong socks. They ruck up under the balls of my feet and my weight falls onto the creases, rubbing, pressurizing the soles.  It hurts and I need to sit down.  I haven't finished the shopping, I know I have missed a couple of people so far, and I know I need to go to the other department store in town.  I decide to treat myself again (yes, the books seem to be all for me, and those other things that seem to have got mixed up with the gifts too) and have lunch out.

38 and a quarter hours and I sit at the table.  Dry mouth, tired.  A glass of wine would be good, and I could have a couple really as they will have worn off by the time I have done the next round of shopping, by the time I would get back into the car. But I am good, I hear my voice tell the waitress "Cola Lite, bitte" and then when the food comes, I pick it up out of the bowl, and my hand shakes.  It is very noticeable when you are eating noodles with chopsticks, they quiver, the sauce spatters off them sporadically.  I bend my head closer to the bowl, try to eat them faster, so I can get home as soon as possible.  The coke is good though, thirst lulling. The chef makes origami swans out of patterned paper, whether he knowingly does it to impress the waitress the result is the same.  They catch me looking at them and think I want to rush off, and come over with the bill.  I smile, I would have liked to stay watching them a little longer, get my notebook out and write about his surprisingly thick fingers and the tiny paper folds.

By the time I leave the restaurant it is 39 hours, but today the wine is already chilling in the fridge and I know I won't even try to resist its call this evening.  I have earned it, I have completed some normal tasks, interacted with the normal world.  I did not have any yesterday.  I have earned it.

Conkers

He thinks that I am something, because of the numbers.  He thinks that because I have a lot of numbers I am a connoisseur. He thinks that piling one on top of the other makes the difference, that the numbers mean something more than experience, something like popularity.  

He must be confusing arithmetics and athletics.  He thinks that the experience is more than hours filled, holes filled, he thinks that each number collected means something adds up in me and I become greater.  He thinks that I have known so much and still I stay with him and that must mean that he is something.  I try not to think of accumulators.

He wants to think that some of my numerical greatness transfers to him when we fuck, but it isn't a game of conkers, he doesn't gain all my numbers plus one if he breaks me, if we break apart and he adjudges himself the winner.

polished?

This week, I wrote in a mail to someone explaining my bulimic writing process.  I'm from the vomit school of writing, I sit down and spew the stuff up, then tidy it up a bit.  Things happen in life, I swallow it all down, and then sick it back up, somewhat selectively.  It's not that life makes me sick, I just react to it stomach first.  My natural inclination is not to polish writing endlessly, to pick the perfect perfect perfect word because near perfect will do for me.  





So I was quite surprised to find how much I enjoyed the polishing up of a haiku series yesterday, adding pictures and creating a new Issuu "publication" for it.  Perhaps there is no thing as too much practice ;)  Click the picture to see the finished result!

A circle of friends

It was a subdued night in the George & Dragon, the drinks were being nursed rather than gulped in deference to just dissolved hangovers, and the conversation was desultory except where it touched on the reality TV programmes.  It was mostly the same crowd that had been there the night before, except Carl and Donna were missing, some problem with one of the kids Donna had told Kate, and she'd told the rest that too.





Kate was quiet too, thinking about the night before, it had been romantically wild and crazy and would have been something to brag about at the pub with the female half of the gang if only she was ten, maybe fifteen years younger.  Back in the days before the gang's relationships coalesced from an amorphous mix of shifting allegiances and suddenly everyone was paired off.  Now that they were grown ups, it wasn't done to keep pulling at the old bonds.





Sometimes those bonds could be recalled with just a glance though.  Last night, Carl had seen the circle of bruises around Kate's wrist when her sleeve had slipped back, but he didn't say anything immediately, waiting for an opportunity that eventually came when they were both waiting to fetch drinks back from the bar.

"Did Daniel do that?" he asked her, touching her wrist under the sleeve.

"Sometimes he can be persuaded," she smiled, and watched his eyes for a reaction, for the old memories to resurface.





The window she'd climbed in through banged in the gusting night.  Carl had sent her a text saying the coast was clear, that Donna had gone back upstairs thinking him passed out in the living room, and when she arrived he had held out his hands to help her over the wet sill.  A dramatic heavy night, dark with expectancy, the thunder and rain appearing with perfect scenic timing as she arched her back on top of him, on the sofa.  The lightening heralding the next rumble froze the image of her hand across his mouth, pale with painted nails that looked almost black in the stark flash.  His arms darker than hers reached, gripped her waist, helped the rhythm build.  She'd lifted her hand off his face, allowed him to moan when the thunder cracked and rebounded around the room, squeezing it back when the sound faded.  She'd forgotten that he was so much bigger than Daniel, and that riding him like that pushed his cock into her so deep, almost too deep.





There was little enough time afterwards for her to stay in the circle of his arms, she hadn't been sure if she really wanted to anyway, a small taste of comfort and nostalgia went a long way.  It had been enough to keep her from the chill of the short walk home, the streetlights glimmered coldly off of the windswept puddles.  Into the stone flagged back yard from the alley, pulling the wet things off of the washing line, an excuse for having been outside.





Daniel was waiting for her in the kitchen.

again...

you left me alone again today

I know you don't see it like that

it is just the weekend

and of course you have to be

with your family.

They are real

and I am not.

your comment is awaiting moderation...

I know, I know,

I am outspoken, yes

but the things I say

to you

they are private,

right?

My life is awaiting 

moderation but

you don't need

to censor me

really, do you?

I am immoderate

in everything,

I have enthusiasms

for people, for ideas,

and mostly it is

inconvenient for them

when my mind clocks on

and my being

is engaged and

the cogs whir.

They only wanted

a moments

distraction,

they did not want

my over-eager 

immodesty, at least

not more than once.

Moderation in all things,

definitely not

my motto.

You know that?

VAST - pretty when you cry

you're made of my rib or baby

you're made of my sin

and i can't tell where your lust ends

and where your love begins

i didn't want to hurt you baby

i didn't want to hurt you

i didn't want to hurt you

but you're pretty when you cry

and the moon gives me permission

and i enter through her eyes

she's losing her virginity

and all her will to compromise

i didn't want to hurt you baby

i didn't want to hurt you

i didn't want to hurt you

but you're pretty when you cry

i didn't want to fuck you baby

i didn't want to fuck you

i didn't want to fuck you

but you're pretty when you're mine

i didn't really love you baby

i didn't really love you

i didn't really love you

but i'm pretty when i lie

you hurt me baby

i hurt you baby

if you knew how much i love you

you would run away

but when i treat you bad

it always makes you want to stay

i didn't want to hurt you baby

i didn't want to hurt you baby

i didn't want to hurt you baby

i didn't want to hurt you baby





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdDts3rsdzE

colour by numbers

A says "Not now, I'm swamped today."

B metaphorically pats me on the head, tells me to keep up the good work with my writing.

C says nothing because I did not abase myself in front of him today.

D says "Hallo," in the restaurant and makes a mental note to contact me privately one day, maybe even one day soon, but the days drift by and home is familiar and it is winter and not the time to try new things away from the cosy hearth.

C still says nothing.  I say nothing back to him because he values my reticence more than he values me.

powerful aroma

A new man comes to work in our office.  He is the commanding type.  He sees me in my smart business suit but he doesn't believe I am all business.  He sees the heels I wear and does not think I am sharp and stylish, fearless.

He smells a victim.

He hunts me. 

He finds me when I am alone and stands a fraction too close.  In meetings with other people his gaze slides downward from my face.

Yesterday he closed the door of the meeting room when there was only us two in it.  He touched me, skin to skin.  His hand loosely circled my wrist and slid up to my elbow and he gripped me there.  He watched my face.  He touched me and my heart accelerated, G-force pushed my back to the wall and his body followed mine there.  His breath was calm but warm on my top lip, and I looked into his opaque eyes and I part my lips to be ready for him. 

He placed his mouth over mine and his teeth closed over my bottom lip.  It will leave a mark, an imprint of his incisors, reddest purple on the skin next to my mouth but my lip will swell over it, hiding it a little.  I know this.

He smells a victim.

He smells my longing.  It would be a lie to say that I love him, unless he tells me to.



inspired by a writing prompt at sleep.snort.fuck

dark chaos

features one of my poems today



click "you/i"  go check it & the site out... 

A breast filled with hope...

She grasps the wash-greyed nightdress by the hem and pulls it over her head in front of the bathroom mirror. 

Normally she does not pause and contemplate the reflected flesh, but today, again, her breasts catch her eye. 

Pink tipped like a tender sea-animal, high and firm, their youthfulness was not so pronounced when she was thirty; but now, nearing her fortieth birthday they seemed riper and perkier than the rest of her, Dorian Grey breasts.

They are a secret repository for her hope, they are filled with it, they store it all so that if asked about hope she would say she has none, but it is all trapped under her areolas.

They grow ever more buoyant, one day she will float to the ceiling and graze her skin on the woodchip.

Luckily, hopelessly, they don't grow much over the years.

afterwards

the bruises he left,

plum hued thumbprints on breast

fade to memories



-



today sour yellow

splashed on skin, dimmed fantasy

I hug to myself

half a mile high club

He left the plane ahead of her, after resting his hand on the small of her back and saying goodbye, he had a meeting to go to while she went to wait in the lounge for a connecting flight.  He didn't look back after that, but the married ones never did.  Not now the weird intimacy of sitting by a stranger for thirteen hours was over.

Hurtling through the skies in a darkened cabin, over land so far below and so uninhabited that there were no lights to be seen even though the clouds had scudded out of the way.  You couldn't feel the speed except when the turbulence sloshed the wine in their glasses.  He kept calling the stewardess over to top up the wine, and the first few times she smiled as he spoke in her native language.

It was nice, to talk to someone on these flights, she thought, so many times they passed virtually in silence after the opening Good Evenings.  He asked questions and listened to the answers, and she was in a sociable mood, open to the flow of conversation and ready to talk.  They talked with the ease of people relieved to find a pleasant way to pass the time.  They were the same age.  His job, her job.  His youngest child was just five months old.  They talked through the meal, and the chocolate tart went virtually untouched as she explained that blogging was her main hobby. 

The wine helped of course, and as the meal trays were cleared away, further top ups requested and their heads inclined together as their voices lowered.  He asked her what she blogged about, and she smiled as she told him, Sex.  He smiled back, more drawn in, they both were.  Engaged in flirting, he made a note of a couple of websites she told him about.  She said Fuck deliberately, spelling out the website's address.

People reclined their chairs all around, put eyemasks on and slept fitfully.  The cabin lights were dimmed but his reading lamp was on, creating a warm pool of light between them.  He asked her if she'd ever had sex on a plane, and she said, truthfully, No.  Heads leaning ever closer, and when the stewardess grew resentful at bringing more wine, he went to fetch some, stepping over her legs, stepping close to her with his groin at eye level.

More talking, and now she cannot remember what was said when, but they both knew it was only talking to fill a gap until something more.  The wine bottles were drained so she got them whisky, and then at his turn, he said the purser refused to give them more as they had had enough to be drunk.  They giggled at this and then he reached a hand to her face to kiss her.

Faces sideways on the pillows under the privacy hoods, lips touching and even this was only a prelude for his hand reached into the neckline of her blouse and he grasped her breast in his long fingers.  His hand was not gentle, it kneaded her, fingers pushing into her flesh and squeezing towards the nipple.  His kiss was gentle but he gripped her tightly, she felt the strength in the bones of his hand under the rubbing skin.

He removed his hand and told her to unpack the airline blanket and lay it over herself so he could move his hand lower.  She loved being told what to do, loved that he took charge and let her lay there under his exploring touch.  He slid his hand into the elastic waistband of her trousers and under her knickers and now his hand was gentle again.  He told her to move her legs apart and she did.  Her knickers proved to be too much of a barrier for him to probe her folds so he told her to go to the toilet and remove her underwear. 

She took her knickers off in the garishly lit cubicle, mirrors reflecting her flushed face back at her, saying Look at you!  What are you doing?  She ignored this voice, and on her way back to the seat had to scoop the knickers up from where she accidentally dropped them before tucking them into her handbag.  Back in the seat they adjusted the blankets and he replaced his hand inside her trousers, bumps under the blanket as he rubbed his finger expertly along her slit, and she whimpered, quietly. 

Ssshh he told her and then made it hard for her to do so.  Made it hard for her to concentrate on anything other than the growing need for release, the trousers slid down and she tried to clutch the blanket so it would cover her bare legs.  Ssshh he said again, and smothered her rapid breathing in his kiss.  Ssshh and he brought her thumb to her mouth to bite on it and Ssshh as he plunged two of his fingers deep into her cunt.  She could feel the cool metal of his wedding ring against her.  She could feel so much.

Afterwards, she wanted to return the favour but he said there would be too much mess.  She pulled her trousers back up and they slept, and in the morning, bleary with lack of sleep and incipient hangovers they exchanged business cards and she found out his name.  His long fingers rested on his black jeans as they talked, coming into land, and lust coiled lazily in her stomach. 

big in japan

so here i am on a friday evening once again glued to my computer somewhat like my lenses are glued to my eyes right now.  i am listening to the sweet rumble of trains going past as the hotel is on top of the station which at least makes it easy to locate and find my way around to the next transit point.  i am less than halfway up this world, floor 12 of 25 but i guess even the rooms at the top can hear the trains too as this hotel is nowhere near as posh as the last two also on top of stations but with thicker window glass or perhaps better seals (cue sealion bark and flapping hands)  i ate in the hotel i wanted to be brave enough to venture out alone and fuck the worlds stares and confidently plonk myself down somewhere that looked interesting and see what happened but i didn't i ate in the hotel.  a couple of teams or maybe a couple of squads of schoolkids in tracksuits came and giggled and crowded out the buffet and i smiled it was ok for me to dwarf them as they were kids.  i drank a flask of wine and forced myself to go out of the hotel and walk around the city for a while in the entertainment district just outside my hotel door and i am brobdignagian there are maybe a handful of guys that are as tall as me but by fuck i've got everyone beat for girth.  i do stride although i clutch my bag to my shoulder i have sloping shoulders and it would fall off and so i bend my left arm back around at the elbow and clutch it to my left shoulder leaving the right arm to sway noncholantly confidently.  i have been here for four days now and i have not seen anyone else with red hair even though i saw some fantastically bad hair dye jobs walking around kabuki-cho no-one else in the entire country apart from me has red hair.  a couple of people even said hello to me brave souls a group of three "black" guys although they did not look african in origin, and then another further along the street i said hello back in a cut glass english accent and walked on.  noli me tangere.  i did not see any of the fabled (according to a friend) used-knicker vending machines although i bought some beer from a machine.  someone behind me wondered if i was a woman but of course i did not have the vocabulary to turn around and say that sometimes i wonder that too i do not worry about my eggs running out and my womb going unused i worry where my next beer is coming from (this is sorted there is a vending machine on every floor of the hotel)  but for all of this i like the country and it is only that i am screwed up and lacking in whatever i don't even know or i might do something about it but lacking in whatever it is that makes friends with strangers when alone in a strange country but purely in a friendly way enough to get through a shared evening pleasantly without repercussions and not sit here typing typing typing instead of living.

Sins roundup

Well, the 7 Deadly Sins pieces certainly brought out a whole bunch of reactions over at 6S, mostly complimentary and all commented upon. 

I admitted to envy, wrath, pride, gluttony, sloth and lust, and to having an understanding of avarice even though it's not a sin that is particularly dear to me.  I was going to do a summing up of the comments, and try to create some sort of league table as to what people (albeit from an admittedly limited sample size) thought the worst sin was in general.

However, I got an over-reaction to dear Belphegor, the demon representing my most excessive sin, which completely skewed the results.  Even 6 days I'm still not entirely sure what prompted it, although I suspect my worst sin in this case was a half flippant/half exasperated 3 word comment ("Count to 6") on a previous post by the 'author', prompting him to a vicious personal attack. 

This 'author', apparantly stinging from some "carefully crafted cutting comments" which must have been made by others, called the moral majority to round upon me for having such wicked thoughts in the first place.  I was called a troll, and accused of being the sort of person that only finds validity through hurting others to feed my own super-ego; and told I must learn from the knee-jerk comments of people who had no understanding what my point was in the first place.

I'm not 100% sure why I am still dwelling on this, the 'author' has made a fractional retraction, in removing the original offensive post, although reposting it without the words he'd copied from me.  I think it's because, even though (I felt!) my words were explanatory, logical and not particularly inflammable, they failed to persuade.  In the words of a writer I respect deeply the 'author' is "an arrogant little fuckwad (sic) afflicted with an utter lack of sense regarding not only his, uh, moral righteousness" but I still feel a sense of failure in my inability to get him to see my point of view. 

I should be better.   





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I said it again...

...what I always end up saying and what always gets them running for the fucking hills.  Men, I mean.  Married men even more so.



"Make your mind up"



They seem to want to believe that they have no fucking choice in things, that they drift through life and things just happen to them, without their volition.  Innocent victims of their own magnetism.  The merest suggestion that they are complicit in their own lives, and not awash in a sea of circumstances is ignored if at all possible, shrugged aside or compartmentalized somewhere else that doesn't interfere in the here and now so they can carry on saying the things they say to me, doing the things they do to me.



And really, they ask, what is wrong with me that I can't turn a blind eye forever?  That I can't just keep on compromising?  Why do I have to hold up a mirror to their actions and make out as if they have done something wrong?  It's not like they've been caught, so it's not a real problem, is it?  Why can't I just go back to before and be an adoring foil for their ego? 



I do it so well.

Asmodeus

And so it comes to the final sin, the pinnacle of the series, and the weight of expectation is falling heavily on me due in part to it being the finale, and in part to my previous "hot reputation" with publications to my name at sleep.snort.fuck and newwavevomit predominantly themed around lust.

People might expect a real bodice ripper, zip-buster filled with uncontrollable swellings and spurtings, yearnings and cravings, something to make them aware of their own excitement, their lust that the dictionary defines as both intense longing and strong sexual desire.

However, last week I realised one real thing about my sexual nature, and it is that it is not even mostly physical in nature, last week lets-call-him cyberguy, my latest and this time virtual partner in lust decided to come clean about his real life marital status as a prelude to calling things to a halt. 

I have never met cyberguy in real life, and the chances were always a million to one that I ever would, and yet, through a common interest we corresponded and chatted and when we talked about sex and then cybersex and then started cybersex there was nothing but words between us, minds interacting and bouncing off each others, spurring each of us to more invention and description and yes, lust. 

I knew some real life facts about him, had even seen pictures of him, and he would not be considered an object of lust to the wider world (me neither, I suspect) but sitting at a keyboard using my mind created a lustrous glow, a spark that reached over the miles, the time-zones, to a point where we felt we could smell, taste each others arousal. 

I lusted after him, or maybe I lusted after the "virtual us", but for sure I will miss him.



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                                 7 of 7 Deadly Sins                               

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The fallen

The sky is china cold and wedgewood blue and tells you that summer has been kicked over and here, here at last is the parade of colours whose vibrancy belies the slow winding down ending.  You want to watch the trees develop crispy deep-fried golden nugget leaves, only watch them as each hour they get a little more brown, a little more over cooked.  Your hair was shorn for the summer heat, and dyed brightest red, although it has faded to a merely vivid copper now, but when he grasps it in his hands the threads stay behind on his fingers like tiny tiny scratches.  Your nails are too loose to scratch him now as he once liked, you feel withered and dry towards the end, after the lessons he has taught you.  No more scratching, please?  Keratin slivers left in your wake as you move through the bruised season, your mouth of over-ripe plums a hard study all by itself.  The bouyant sky tells you you should be cheerful but it is him that is evergreen.  You gather your thoughts, pull together that little spark of life into a kernel and swallow it deep inside you as the thing of you and him falters and fails, your skin dries and tightens and your finger bones split away at the dry knuckle joints, drifting to the ground to join the leaves.  You wanted to plead for summer again but your arms end in sticks now and your voice is arid and he does not  understand semaphore.  Lie down in the woods and wait, the layered carpet of the forest floor will take you and make you comfortable, although it will tickle to start with, but the insects only want to feel you, the fungus wants to get to know you.  You will grow again, I promise.



also published in negative suck November 2010

Mammon

And at last I find a sin that I am not slavishly committed to, although I do have to think of it as avarice, an excessive or insatiable desire for wealth or gain, rather than the simpler greed, which for me is simply food related and therefore covered by gluttony.  Which I have already confessed to.

I remember as a young woman, just ahead of moving into my first 'proper' house with my very own mortgage surprisingly discovering a heretofore unseen passion for things - bookshelves and bed-linen, crockery and cookware.  Anyone who has met me in the flesh would realise that I don't find self-expression in designer clothing or accessories, so I think the sudden burst of interest in household goods was some part of finding out what I was like as a person who lived on my own.  

Perhaps I come closest to this sin when I am buying books, it generally isn't enough simply to read them as I do want to own them, and finding a new author with a substantial back catalogue is a real stomach clenching pleasure, I can go shopping and bring them all home to rest.  I want to see them on my shelves with the other hundreds of titles and run my eyes across them and have my head swirl with the dizzying amount of choice I have when I ask myself the question "What shall I read next?"





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Belphegor

I have confessed to this sin before (here) and the situation of course has not changed in the time since I wrote that piece a bare couple of months ago;  my physical sloth is as entrenched, torpid and intransigent as ever.  I would like to think my mind is mildly more energized than usual with the buzz that a weekend flurry of writing activity brings, the sense of achievement of actually having done something, but I think that as usual it is in Sunday evening mode.  Looking in a forward direction without actually looking forward to taking up the reins once more, fighting the same fucking battles with the same annoying people, and above all fighting my own apathy.  Perhaps this is why I am such an irritable cow, why little things annoy me out of all proportion and I let myself respond; the exasperation actually drives me to do things, say things when I would by nature wish to slump back down and let them wash over me like a warm bath. 

As I spend so much time blog-browsing, I should perhaps rejoice when I read inane, repetitive, badly written and badly spelt, shallow cliche ridden pieces as this fires up my mental engines, fuels them up with hot sarcastic coals instead of laying down by the embers and wondering some time later how long they have been cold.  The only cure for sloth is creativity, and even carefully crafted cutting remarks can feel creative at times.





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5 of 7 Deadly Sins

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7 Deadly sins

envy

wrath

avarice

sloth

pride

lust

gluttony



4 down, 3 to go...

Open wide...

I've been writing on this blog for a while now, and I first started up so I could write things that I wouldn't like a whole bunch of people to see, mainly colleagues.  I have no problem with relatives since Mum was a reader from the start, and no-one else in the family is vaguely interested as far as I know.  Some of the adult content herein has been published at other adult sites, and some in 'normal' poetry sites, and some double blogs over at 6S where the wider audience has in general not fainted at my crudities... And over the months I think I did some OK writing here and now, modest as ever, I want to share with the unknown world.  I don't really know why... other than great immodesty, the world deserves to know my stuff (it was a bad world in a former life or something)



My other blog is streamed to facebook where anyone who was my "friend" or basically vague acquaintance could see the stuff I was writing if they could be arsed.  Despite it's accessibility it has unnaccountably failed to win me fame and fortune...  And, I think it unlikely that the little orange git in Amon is ever going to find this stuff, but why make it easy by posting it in front of a load of workmates that we have in common ;)  I hope the "nice" blog will continue not descend into irrelevancy as the more personal raw stuff is posted over here, though I know I already drifted down that route by posting about fluffy kittens this morning. 



There is a time and a place and at the moment this feels more like my personal place ;)

Beelzebub

Beelzebub is apparantly the demon associated with gluttony, habitual greed, or excess in eating or drinking; and I don't even understand how this can be a sin, which would mean an offence against a moral or religious law, or some sort of divine command.

I find it difficult to imagine a God anyway, without thinking of 'him' as some early-age politician, saying "you know, if you eat more than your fair share, someone else will go hungry," and we all know how much we trust politicians.

I don't even believe that these politics of scarcity are true anymore, we do not live in communities so small that eating to excess is taking the food (or drink!) out of another person's mouth.

For sure, gluttony can be ugly, as can doing anything to excess, especially to people who think there is some moral purity in restriction, holding back.

People who make a virtue out of self denial are the ones I find incomprehensible, what warped sense of self says "I find this attractive therefore it must be wrong," and thank Christ I am not tempted to sin, to eat nice things, to fill my stomach with gorgeous, slaver inducing food and mellowing, mind altering drinks?

It must be true that Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me... because for sure I am unrepentant and combatting my gluttony is not a fucking part time job.





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navel gazing

It's been a weird week... my cyber partner had a crisis of conscience and withdrew leaving me not exactly bereft but with a certain amount of thumb twiddling going on. I think humans (or maybe just female ones) are programmed to seek a narrative, a story, even when picking a fantasy partner, and this particular story has come to a natural and unresentful end.
I was sat down at lunch today and "Next Married Man" sat with me, and got a phone call, he explained to his wife how to move the car seat forward so that she and his daughter could fit the cupboard they bought from IKEA into his company car.
It is now 73 days since I heard from the ex. I try to look forward and not back. 73 days from now will be in a new year and I will still be stuck in the last but one wondering...
I hate that I get like this. Of course it is "natural" to want to find someone to share day to day shit with, although I don't really know what this is like in practice. I sometimes hate that I want excitement, variety so much. I hate that I ditched my solitary principles for the ex and felt I wanted nothing more than to come home to him each night and then after getting his wife pregnant on an overspill of our lust he decided I was irrelevant.
I hate that there is nothing else to do but be me.

Lucifer

There is a song I particularly dislike for the line in it that runs "What have you done today, to make you feel proud?" and it's self aggrandizing, self improvement message. As if all we need is a little self belief and we can stop being one of the ordinary people and become someone who stands head and shoulders above the other 6.7 billion of us out there. And it's not like I am saying this from the viewpoint of a particularly modest, hiding-my-light-under-a-bushel person. I am proud to be in the intellectual elite, which for me means I can score 140 on IQ tests, that I quickly understand many new concepts and complex ideas; and that I am highly articulate in being able to string a grammatically correct meaningful and persuasive well written sentence together, and oftimes verbally too (in my native language). However, all of this is just something that I am, I was lucky enough to be born with it and was fortunate that I grew up in a nurturing environment where my intelligence was valued. So I haven't done anything today to make me feel proud, and I don't fucking need to, OK?





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Amon

I don't generally consider myself to be an hot tempered, emotional person, although I guess this is more nurture than nature, having been brought up as English and therefore at the more repressed end of the spectrum as regards expressing one's feelings.

I am ill equipped, therefore, in ways of dealing with emotions other than burying them, and the helplessness I feel when I let the strongest ones get loose is all encompassing. 

No matter how much I try to hold onto logical reasoning, everything else goes out the window when I am forced to have a conversation with that man and my anger is not white hot, but the flaming molten colour of Olde English Cider, directed at the little orange man in front of me, an unavoidable work colleague. 

He is little (5'6") and he was orange when I first saw him, an unconvincing sun tan and he looked like a thousand year old corpse dug up from a peat bog, and he thinks he is always right and of course he is suffering from little man syndrome in spades and he thinks his point of view is more important than anyone elses and he DOES NOT listen to other people but still demands that they respect him without doing anything to ever gain that respect for his whole work ethos seems to be to find the one person he can delegate (I mean dump) the job onto.

We had a "clear the air" discussion last week where he told me that he did not have to justify himself to me and oh how I wish he did, how I would weigh him in my scales of injustice and sentence him to something suitably Sisyphean; but the best punishment of all would be for him to see himself through the wrathful eyes of others, and yes, I do volunteer my vision for that.





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Leviathan

The truth is that I live alone, solitary, and some of you might envy my freedom to please no-one but myself.  Freedom to bury my head uninterrupted in a book, or to leave the bathroom door open when I pee and walk around the house in whatever state of undress I feel like, to leave clothes lying where I drop them.  Freedom to please myself whenever I want to, and yes I am talking about masturbation, you might envy that. 

I do feel wistful for the long familiarity of years spent together and imagine the comforting but alien feeling of having a prolonged interest in your partner and vice versa, like a warm blanket on the sofa where I would have only cushions. 

People expect me to want the blanket, to feel incomplete without it and jealous of people with it, and I do sometimes, like when my borrowed blanket goes back to it's family home, leaving me vasoconstricted with the hairs raised up from my skin.

I want it sometimes, I am attracted to it like a shiny new plaything, a glinting CD released from it's packet or a pretty new ring, I guess there are moments when I do feel envy but then I go bury my head in a book, my fingers in... well, I do find solace, solitude.

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Q Block beer festival

Have you ever been naked in a room with several men?  In porn films, the men are all interchangeable dicks but in real life it is a bit more complicated than that.

They weren't all standing in the background holding themselves, tugging themselves, at least, I don't remember that, or remember that well; though I know I was the centre of attention splayed on the kitchen table.  They might have been content with only splashing beer and some flatmates honey over me, rubbing it into my skin though I don't really remember where they touched.  They made me so sticky but there was no malice, they were only playing with me.  I kind of sobered up in the shower with Geordie, whatever his real name was, at least enough to somehow stumble back to my room in his t-shirt.

omg

I am a sad facebook games addict... and I do accept friend requests from equally sad people...

but today I found I had a friend called Robert Cockream...

[snort]

although teenage humour is only a small reason I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore.  With that name you would expect porn film credits at least, but he seems to be a H&S officer of some sort, in Grundy...

I am NOT making this up.

oh my dedication

yesterday he asked me to write something nice for him, to him; which really means something he would call nasty and something i would call raw, i guess, as natural sounds too insipid for the things he wants me to write to him.  something about sex anyway.  something for him to download and sneakily read, hunched over the computer like he sneakily reads the e-mails we exchange when it gets late at night and he won't be caught.  and i don't know what to write now, i could embellish the 'performance & cocktails' mini series a little more, he liked that, especially when i said penis in it and when i mentioned semen, but i think i am finished with those pair of characters now.  i could use one of the sleep.snort.fuck prompts to write something like i have been meaning to for ages but when it comes down to it i use up my inventiveness when i am e-mailing him and the words i write for myself afterwards are about flatness, about non-relationships.  sex on your mind, in your mind and oh it should not feel more intense and interesting touching someone only through words on a screen, it should not make the real world seem plain and dull and i don't know which came first, no not out of the pair of us responding to the words, i mean it's chicken and egg whether you turn somewhere unreal for excitement when real life is grey or whether the excitement you find makes real life grey.

so the dedication?  the writing of something nice because he asked me?  i guess i will dedicate the "post coming" to him since it is anyway about him but i think he did not read it so it will be new for him and i can save up, hoard my imagination until he will e-mail me again...

Performance & Cocktails

...part 1

Everything was set up perfectly for tonight to be our first night, he'd even been on my wavelength earlier, when a flower seller had come hawking roses by the table, seen my glance at them and correctly interpreted it, laughing that we would have another carafe of the juicy wine instead.

He had put his arm around my shoulder as we walked back through the cobbled pedestrian zone, and I didn't shrug it off although I didn't like the possessive tone it imparted.

Walking back he'd paused us under a streetlight, by the pond and the stone walls of the old city boundary and he'd bent his head across to kiss me and I acquiesced.

I'd thought of the cover of that Stereophonics CD and the bored eyes of the woman being kissed there, and I'd wondered if my eyes were just as bored, and I'd noticed that his eyes were closed, and wondered if he too had needed that to believe that this would go somewhere, or perhaps he knew his eyes would be just as ennui filled.

We'd gone to my flat, not so much caught up in the moment, but moving along inevitably with the slow seep of honey running down a knife blade.

We'd tried not to allow the sense of loss to enter our conscious thoughts but, the chase was over, it would never be the same again



...part 2

My hair still smelt of the burnt meat from the restaurant he'd taken me to; stank not from the innocuous looking grey salted stones, heated to flesh searing temperatures, but from the scents emanating after we had dumped our raw steaks, prawns, chicken breasts upon them. 

Carafe after carafe of house red, pinkly echoing the blooded centres when I'd cut through the meat again.

I guessed that to others in the place, to observers, we looked warm and cozy in the snug by the bar, happily hazed by the smoky fat in the atmosphere as much as the wine.

A pretty, convivial picture and I wished I could feel that we were a pretty convivial couple but if the truth be told, I didn't really like him all that much when I started to contemplate what would happen after the meal.

I was waiting, not because I wanted to be sure it was right, I was pretty sure it wasn't right, or I'd have jumped him at the end of the first date, but he kept paying me attention despite my ambiguous goodbyes.

He kept on casting his attention my way, shovelling it into the aching hole that he didn't even know was there, and I know I am coming to depend on his attendance, his willingness to be with me.



...part 3

In my flat, I guess I did just go along with him coming back here, his willpower for that must have been stronger than my sulky resistance. 

It wasn't that I didn't want to be possessed, but with him it is not the all consuming need to be possessed that I feel; more the sullen recognition that he is the only chance, the only option I have right now. 

I wonder if he too somehow senses the mismatch, and if he does is he just going along with me because it half fits what he wants too?

From the pressure of his hand behind my head when we break mouths apart from some robust to rough kissing, what he wants seems to be my face in his lap, and I don't really want to suck him, to feel a new penis against my lips, have a jet of his semen into my mouth, like white silly string, wormily writhing on my tongue. 

I think I will spit if he makes me do it, but although I don't conciously go through the options, somehow I guess that a gracious enough attempt at sucking him off now will keep me from having to go to final base tonight, I can keep something back in reserve so he will spend time with me again. 

I will gag, and then spit, he will like that, it will make him feel the big man and I will rinse my mouth and my mind out with the next slug of wine.

negative fuck

the guy who said he would come and see me didn't

the guy who bombarded me with fucking talk stopped talking

the girl whose hand i held whose tears i dried does not call me now that i could use a hand

i would not tell anyone i want a hand but...

well... shhh...

the cat hears an outside yowl and slips out to his nocturnal fun

his tail waving a fluffed question mark

i thought i had cast the guy who bruised my heart out of it

though as absence and abstinence make the heart grow fonder i guess i am fucked

although i am not





erm... apologies to a magazine with a similar name...  especially as it's editor has been kind enough to feature me... what can i say - it was a pun waiting to happen...

post coming

post coming

I am always drowsy

dreamy and pliant

and...

I don't mind then

that you called me

another girls name,

it was only Sasha

and I see her movies,

see her enjoyment

and i know why

you want her.

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Picking at scabs

Is it a crack in my heretofore steely carapace? Maybe he wonders that. Tell the truth, I remembered that I had "accidentally" mailed him today only when I was orgasming by myself a few moments ago. How bad does that sound? It is 44 days since I last contacted him.

I forwarded on a "funny" e-mail to the old distribution list today. It wasn't automatic, I added [first name]-ex-boss and [first name]-customer-guy and as his first name is the same my pernicious e-mail records flashed his name to me too. And I thought, What the hell, and added his name to the list (they were all in blind copy so no-one will know but me)

And I forgot about it.

I had a busy day at work and then [writer-guy] mailed me to talk about his cock and my cunt and how nice it would be if they were flowing in each others general direction, and I had a busy and almost productive day at work and felt useful and valuable. And my friend needed my help tonight.

A minor physical task, bringing her something she had left behind in the office, but I did it and I felt useful and valuable all over again, right up until I got home and my internet is still not working. A red winking dot signifying my cut-offness from the internet world. From my friends and family in other countries, which is most of them. My inability to speak the local language means I have no chance of putting this right without asking someone for help; and then I ponder why do I find it so fucking hard to do that? My friend who I helped earlier would be quite happy to help me out the same way if I were to only ask.

I would have to tidy up before she came around though; keep her from seeing my soul-dustbin flat. And I wonder, is this the reason I want a partner, someone to do the chores, or at least someone that I could share chores with; someone to make me feel gracious about doing them and I could kid myself on that I was useful and valuable for doing them? And hey, I have gone off topic again, take that, ex-[first name].

Is it me or is coming and crying at the same time a known buzz? Perhaps I am just using it to heighten emotions. I wonder if he has checked his secret e-mail account and is sat there pondering whether, no, what to reply. I have worked my answer out though. "Ooops, sorry, used old distribution list!" to whatever he replies. That statement alone.

Of course, I may think differently if, like last time, he says I was watching for your mail every day, so glad to hear from you. But I shouldn't say anything different. Flaunt the mask of indifference at him. Good the internet is down now, otherwise I would have to check... Except I forgot earlier, when I mailed [writer-guy] instead. In some strange value table, attention from [writer-guy], someone I shall probably never meet in real life, is more important than attention from ex-[first name]. I suppose I should take this as a good sign, of recovery, of equilibrium, but I fear to get caught in a new obsession.

38 days

... I should not still be counting... but I am.

It's the smallest things that let you down...

They were out shopping, browsing through the underwear in a department store with pretensions, the red-head's fingers flickering expertly through the racks to find the perfect size for her.  She riffled through bras and knickers in vibrant colours, embroidered and appliqued lace trims in contrasting colours, even ruffles, for goodness sake, the brunette shook her head at the sheer extravagence.

"I like wearing nice underwear," she explained, pouting slightly, "And not just for him, for me too."

"But what are the logistics of underwear?" her friend asked, "How do you decide how many knickers to buy to match, for example?"

"Oh, I tend to buy two pairs of matching knickers for every bra, if they have them.  And in this case, well, one of the matching pair can always be accidentally tucked away at his house, just to test how strong his marriage really is..."

Mugged

I am too weak and

you are too tempting, please

leave like a stormcloud.



Storm tossed reeds bounce back,

"you are strong, independent,

she needs me," he pleads.



My needs ploughed under

dark soil so yours can grow, forced

to my fallow time.



No coffin for this

love killed by your thoughtlessness;

naked mouldering.



Repeated goodbyes

touched to fiery sparks, puddled

blisters left to heal.



My essence pools,

slows to mirrored ice, blue sheened

to reflect you back.



also featured at The Camel Saloon

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I don't deserve this title...

I'm doing so well, I tell myself.  Just passed the previous "best time" of 23 days without contacting him.  I'm now on 25 days.  Why am I even telling you this?  Or telling myself this? 



A plaudit for being apathetic and doing nothing, well go girl, you deserve an award for that.  Clap hands that you managed to set up a situation where doing nothing is it's own reward, how strong you've been!



How strong that you are sitting here counting the days.  Can't get up and do something, you might lose count.  How strong you are to remain rooted, battling off incipient claustrophobia, to let worn-out thoughts flit and fit in your head like fruit flies inside an empty wine bottle.



Stop already with the metaphors...

unresponsiveness...

i cry in the bath

no matter how hard i try

there is no climax

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Hypocrisy

I wonder if he imagines me still... 

17 days since I said goodbye (again).

Once I managed 4 weeks without contacting him, but I'm not sure there is anything to go back to this time.  Or, well, at least anything I would want to go back to.

But I want him to still want me, I wish he would be burned up thinking about me.  Pumping one out in the shower where she will never know.  Thinking of the things I did and things I said.  He will be checking online every day to see if today will be the day I would break down and send an oh-so-innocent message enquiring how he is.  He did that last time, well he said he did.

But he doesn't actually want to be with me.  I am not sanctioned.  I am only what he chose in a weak moment and not what he thinks society would choose.  How come that they really do tinge the "fun" girls like me with suspicion, tar-splotched good time girls?

And, for fucks sake, how do the girls who are not seen as "fun" ever manage to catch a man to marry them?  Do they go out and think, "Well fuck me, she's dull, I wanna spend the rest of my life feeding sperm down the shower plug hole, and occasionally, every couple of months, she might let me feed shit into her?" 

And I?  More hypocritcal, knowing all that shit, even questioning it like he doesn't, I still want the attention, I want to have the beam of interest focussed on me even as I decry the good time girl tag, the one I live up to so well.  I want, oh I want.  I want to be put first.  But I don't want to put someone else first unless they do first.

I do hope his life is fucking dull right now.  I hope he wants to tear his hair out with boredom; that will hurt as he shaves his hair so short, pulling it out would require individual hairs to be wrenched out with tweezers.  I would volunteer to do it, except I don't trust me to do only that.  He is only tempted with me if we are in the same geographical space.  He can say no when I am hundreds of miles away.  Well, he says "Yeah, but no" when we are hundreds of miles away.  He says if I was there he couldn't resist.  Great, yeah, I can resist anything but temptation too.  Especially convenient, playing away from home temptation... 

I fell for him because I thought we thought the same way, and I thought that he cared.  It has taken me 16 months to realise I was little more than a fantasy that had the added advantage of coming true every once in a while.  And really it was the fantasy and not the reality that sustained anything, for him.  And I guess I have to think that might be true for me too...



yeah, but, he imagines me still.  jacking off he imagines me.  kneeling in the shower in front of him, water drops pearling on my skin and anticipating the pearls he wants to release over me.

I'm afraid that I will die spending time with someone I don't like

Yes, I am talking to you.  Look at you, you sprawl there on the sofa.  Sprawl doesn't begin to cover it, you slump, you spill, you slouch.  You are a sibilant sloven.  Your feet up on the furniture, resting on the rubbish, remains of letters, magazines, chocolate wrappers. 

You sag.  You age.

It's not langour, it's way beyond that, it's a life draining laziness beyond comprehension.  Why would anyone choose to live like that?  Why do you choose to live like that?  Oh, you don't choose it?  You just can't be bothered to change it.

Billowing flesh, pale and pasty pink.  Hide it under the throw, pretend it isn't there as you reach for the next packet of crisps, the next gulp of alcohol.

The German word for lazy is "faul" and you know you are.

Sluggish?  That doesn't sound too bad, a slow pulse but basically everything under control.  Slug-like is more like it.  Fat, seeping, sliding through life at the pace of a snail without even the excuse of your house on your shoulders.

No wonder no-one comes around.  No wonder there is no-one who wants to probe your fleshy crevices, touch your pallid swollen skin.  And you know being so fat makes those folds fleshier and deeper, the journey into your cunt a longer route to pleasure, but no-one else wants to know that now.  Hell, most of the time even you don't fucking bother.

Get up off the sofa and go look in the mirror.  Not via the fridge again!  Go see yourself.  Really see yourself, not glance and see the memory of the girl you once were.  She was 20 years ago and is lost to you now.  Look at yourself, see what you really look like.  Nice eyes, yeah, but how many chins?  Your tiny mouth looks even smaller against the expanse of your cheeks, unhealthily flushed. 

Will you do something about it this time?  Will you?  Or will you just wonder absently where the gym card is, or whether your swimming costume would still fit?  And make a half hearted resolution to go into town and buy some newer bigger clothes?

My face in the mirror, I wonder vaguely what it would be like to finish it, to put an end to it, to kill this person that I don't like, even if it means I die with her.  But I know I won't do it, too much effort...





Thanks to SSF for the great writing prompt, click here to see story at SSF

coping...

You have knocked the life out of me,

I shovel dead things into my mouth

but I only taste the fermented stuff.

Honesty looks good on me, but on you?

I didn't need to know how easily

you put me out of your mind.

You made me feel alive and I hate

to think how long ago that was now,

I want to quicken myself but it does not come,

I can not come, it is an exercise in friction and

though the flesh is willing the mind is freaked.

Reject, side dish, bit of fun, reject,

slut, tease, reject; words bicycle in my head.

Dead mould, mushrooms for tea.

Yes, on the side, by the pallid fish flesh.  I will

shrivel up in the non-weight of your disregard.

This time, can I make the silence stick?

Can I pour in enough alcohol to make

me tongue tied and not voluble? 

Bitter exudations, oozing failure, and

in the morning, sweet rancid sweat. 

Success and failure both are counted

by apathy, not talking to you. 

Your life goes on, maybe to her you will

seem a little distracted, maybe? 

Maybe not even that, after all, she didn't

even notice when you went to her,

rubbed raw from our exertions. 

I try another tentative rub, but no,

rejected by my own flesh.  To drink

to sleep; to sleep perchance to weep.

You have knocked the life out of me,

and now half digested dead things

come back out of my mouth.





Also published at The Camel Saloon

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