Words Unspoken

Wish at night I held you tight
To keep away cruel darkness' chill
Wish each day to make you smile
smile all th' way through

Wish to share all that there's
To have: life's joys, its pains,
Its strifes, surprises, and refrains
refrain is what I do

My passion's river runs far deeper--
Bottomless to wonted streams of men--
With more than just lusts and interests.
I've reservoirs measured in lifeblood's treasure
That in_a lifetime you could'n_drink_it all in.

Words unspoken leave hearts unbroken
except for mine, except for mine
There's no hurtin worth forlorn's burden
it just takes time, it just takes time
And when all is said and done, we are both only one
Two silhouettes on distant shores
nothing more, nothing more

In this winter I will shiver
And wrap a blanket around myself
I'll wrap my arms around no one else
no one else but me

Before the fire I'll retire
And take in hot drinks in sips,
While thinking of the warmth your lips would give
your lips would give to me

There's no confessing my obsessing--
Nor will you give admission to yours--
We stare across a hazardous ocean,
Two silhouetted lovers longing for each other
From two very distant, different shores.

Words unspoken leave hearts unbroken
except for mine, except for mine
There's no hurtin worth forlorn's burden
it just takes time, it just takes time
And when all is said and done, we are both only one
Two silhouettes on distant shores
nothing more, nothing more

Were I to take your hand,
Were we to walk these lonesome avenues
laid out in veins and pulse,

Would my heart with you lie?
Could it be that I were true to you
whilst to my self were false?

Does doubt mark sooth, or
Are choice and action sufficiently true?
or am I
deceiving
us both?

Yes, words unspoken leave hearts unbroken
except for mine, except for mine

clemency

You are dear to me, sweet one.
Fold into me as I wrap around you, a blanket
To warm you cozily this winter night a while yet.
Come the warmth of day,
You and I will go a separate way.
But until such time,
Let our fingers clemently intertwine
To provide ourselves what comfort we may.

Catching Butterflies

In catching butterflies, avoid strength's dereliction:
Greedy needy grasping tight and scales will crush and wings will rend.
And self-recrimination to unworthiness forfend:
Your blood and tears and mooning earn just moths' affection.
Neither be the world-wise snake who wins a wide selection
Netted through a subtle mesh that grounds them out from skies they wend:
Abused, intoxicated, mounted, counted, labeled, pinned;
A thousand little deaths the sum of that collection.
No, appreciate their beauty, need it not, let'em know you've seen
Amidst the air resplendent color bright, which flutter-dips
To nectared flowers tended kept in case they choose to stay.
Let sunny warmth and garden-work on skin collect a sheen,
Then laugh at tickling kiss of puddle-mud on fingertips,
Your open palm extended kept in case they fly away.

Kinetic Communion

It was a cleansing, always; but not a physical one. They met at night, after the needling clangor of the sunlit preoccupations of man had receded into a low susurration over which their souls might be properly heard. During the day they toiled as hard as any other fellow pilgrim of the mortal coil—no, I dare say: harder—but here they released their ceaseless cyclings and obviated the demands on their attentions. As the music poured over them, they allowed it all to wash away in mirror to the ablutions that precede and follow such things. Rhythm and rhyme and sweat ran down their skin in so many streaming rivulets.

It was an intensely private affair, of course; but an open one. They welcomed any and all who might be willing to join them—even, I dare say, begged. Not hidden away in basements or burrows, they conducted themselves in grand halls and greatly windowed rooms set visibly atop the horizon, though not as a beacon in any traditional form, for the lighting was muted, drawn down and dimmed. Subsequently, newcomers shambled around in awkwardness until they adjusted, when dilation allowed for greater reception of the twinkling lights of celebration within, those of the cityscape without, and those of the universe above. And when the pupils of their souls widened, when they learned to draw deep from the light of one another, then newcomers were no longer so, and no longer stumbling.

It was an escape, perhaps; but not a shirking one. If love is merely a fuller appreciation of another—and I dare say that it is—then they came together in that darkened, lamp-lit room in an act of love for life: one expressed in body, mind, and soul; in both unity and individuality. Where others wound their escapes by imbibing spirits, they enlivened their own. Where others wound their escapes in dulled senses, they spun in graceful arcs and balanced motions that exhilarated their own. Where others wound their escapes in head-pounding oblivions unremembered in morning’s light, they in the sunset of their lives would recur their adventures: evoked, say, by a song on the air or the steady rock of a chair—the limit of their motions, which, in tune with such melodious memories, brought languid contentment.

It was an addiction, to be sure; but a hale one—and, I dare say, a symbolic one. Here they were alive, the wind in their lungs as fierce as a runner’s, the pounding in their chests as buoyant as a musician’s, the song in their soul as passionate as a lover’s. They operated in partnership and communicated on a level deeper than mere words. They held one another and breathed in concert. They drank deep and were sated for all times even as they thirsted for more. An addiction, yes, to an expression of life itself: it drove them with the same power as the will to live. Hours passed them and they noticed not. When came the time to cease, they ignored it. When the time to cease could no longer be ignored, they lingered in the glow of the touch of one another, only reluctantly parting at the need to rest their bodies or cease a more physical hunger, and some times not until the sun cast its signal for the commencement of the return to toil for another week. They reserved for it prior, reveled in it during, and relished in it long after.

It was a secret, I suppose; but not an intentional one. They exulted and explained, spoke and shared, talked and taught, posted and published, announced and advertised, and yet: it could not transmit thusly. It was only to be experienced, and saddeningly too few who heard of or witnessed it were also brave and persistent enough to truly plumb the depths of its joy. I knew the secret because I watched them. I saw their beckoning hands and allowed myself to be taken into the pleasure of their embrace. I knew because I became one with them, and—I dare say—I would never be otherwise again.

Open Minds (Partial)

In submission to the 12/10/10 Friday Challenge, "Telepathy," the opening scene of what will maybe one day be a longer story. It was certainly too large of a story for me to finish on time.

Ahabrim could still hear her incoherent dreams as he walked out his front door. Her unconscious babbling had served as a pleasant white noise while he had shaved and dressed. Where the anticipatory silence of morning would have weighed on his spirit, she instead filled it with a vapid pleasure that in turn filled him. Her mental presence brought with it a strange Freudian joy, so that it was not his razor but her hand that caressed his cheek. It was not his dress shirt but her arms that wrapped around him. It was not his toothbrush but her tongue inside his mouth.

So when Ahabrim left his apartment, both his looks and his spirits had a strong, sharp edge to them. Whatshername had served him better in this than she had last night—not to diminish last night. He closed the door, cutting off the last weak detections of her stream of unconsciousness with the vibrant rays pouring in from the window down the hall. Ahabrim squinted and smiled into the morning sun. He jogged down the stairs and took a deep, appreciative breath before joining the sounds of Humanity.

He walked briskly down the brilliantly lit sidewalk. His street was a Letter Street, so it ran east-west; the pleasant sun morning sun peered down from between the tall buildings. Aside from the sunshine, the street was also flooded with cars and pedestrians.

Many of those who walked or took the subway took advantage of portable music devices. But Ahabrim loved the roar of the crowd. It reminded him what he was fighting for. With this many streams the chatter was largely indecipherable and incoherent, but as with the girl’s dreams, Ahabrim received energy from it. It rolled along with him like an ocean wave as he walked the mile and a half to Central, cresting only when he reached out and opened the double glass doors that led him from the mighty river of Humanity into the lesser eddy of his work.

Here the streams became more intelligible. Mostly acknowledgments that “Marshal Marx is here,” though to a few secretaries and interns, it was “Breem.” Ahabrim did not acknowledge any of them beyond recognition, nor did they dare interrupt him when his mind was focused on the task ahead of him. He walked quickly down the halls and into the Department of Domestic Security.

Annie immediately walked up to him. She had been waiting for his arrival, file ready in hand. Her thoughts reached him before she did, already informing him that there had been no change in the situation since the prisoner’s arrival. Still, as she handed him the file, she properly acknowledged him with voice.

“Marshal Marx, sir, welcome,” she said. Looking good, old man.

“Annie,” he said. Thanks, I feel good. He knew she used the ‘old man’ label to distance herself while simultaneously creating a special intimacy. In her thirties, she was just over half his age, but she also knew that he regularly bedded younger than her. But the Department of Reproductive Health would never approve an application between the two of them, working so closely in the same department as they did, and so she could only admire and tease.

He reviewed the file again, refreshing his memory. He looked forward to cracking Elijah Samuel Long, who was rather high profile when it came to radical shardists. Annie, in the meanwhile, was filling up with dread at the thought of their meeting.

“Stop worrying,” Ahabrim said. Worrying insulted his abilities. Get me a cup of coffee.

Annie immediately felt ashamed, though she passed his request down the line. She looked at the floor. It was only that he was obviously troublesome, or they would have never sent him here. A third transfer for a verbal dissident, across several thousand miles. And then this earlier this morning several Directors showed up—

Ahabrim brightened. Directors? Here? His interview would be observed. This carried potential for further promotion, possibly even a Directorship for himself!

Annie’s fears vanished into awe.

They sent Long here because I am the best, Ahabrim thought to her. I may be an old man, but this morning I feel as strong as when I was in the War. Watch me crack this nut.

Ahabrim took the file and left Annie lusting after him in his wake. Someone gave him a cup of coffee at the Interviewing Room door. Ahabrim tested its heat with a sip while eyeing the two security personnel standing at either side of the door. He thought that they looked like green-thought pansies, who had never seen any conflict like he had in the War. The one on his left felt unfairly offended but powerless, so then he shrugged the insult off with his job being more important than the thoughts of a retired old man. The one on the right decided that it made sense that a veteran of the war would have a steel mind like his. Ahabrim thought that the coffee tasted like water from the gutter.

“See you boys at lunch time,” Ahabrim said. I might be promoted by then.

The kid on the right believed it possible. Ahabrim chuckled and entered Interviewing Room.

As he closed the door behind him and looked over at the prisoner, he was once again starkly reminded why they were called Silent Ones.

The moniker had never made sense to him back in the War. On the battlefield, the shardists were loud of mouth as well as weapon, yelling and screaming at themselves and their enemies long before receiving any wounds deserving of cries. How different they were from the steady organization of his squad, orders traveling at the speed of thought. They were like wild animals, growling and barking in the heat of the moment.

It was not until he came here, as an Official Interviewer for the DDS, that the label seemed appropriate. Here, alone in the IR with them, where his world collapsed down into only his own thoughts, even as Long looked at him from the other side of the table.

Ahabrim glanced over at the tinted glass, the window on the right, not the regular observation room on the left, but the special room reserved only for the Directors. He could not hear them, either, nor they him, even over the come system. But he knew they were there. He walked over to the interview table and set down the file and his cup of coffee. From the corner of his eye he could see the bright orange of Long’s clothes, cut by bands of brown where he was restrained, and topped with a splash of light brown where his shaggy hair fell about his ears and face.

Ahabrim inhaled deeply, then looked up into Long’s eyes.

Long sneered at him. So he would be one of those; defiant and contemptuous, mentally propped up as some sort of barbarian martyr, taking pride in how long it would take to crack. He knew that Ahabrim could not learn anything that he did not voice.

But Ahabrim also knew that it was a two-way street. Long could only know what Ahabrim voiced. The contest had begun.

“You are Elijah Samuel Long,” Ahabrim said. He slowly seated himself with patient authority. “Known amongst shardists as L’oncle.”

Long continued to smile defiantly at him. Ahabrim said nothing, but simply looked expressionlessly back. Several minutes passed.

“Yes,” Long said. Then he grinned. “But your accent is terrible.”

Happy New Year

happy new year? sure, if you're in it
the way that I am thinkin it can wait another minute
every day I've seen passes just the same
the morning gleams with the sunshine rays
...with the sun shine rays...
...all my days...

on its axis the world spins on
the moon comes up and the day is gone
and as it climbs up in the starry sky
time flies by 'til the night that you die

...but we're still here, happy new year!

the midnight bells chime you ready for this?
it's time to give your lover a brand new kiss
I turn to my right but nobody's there
hard to celebrate when ya got nothin but air
...nothing but air...
...no one's there...

and so for the while it is what it is
wear a big smile an' sniff the champagne's fizz
dance to the music and laugh with your friends
and run down the street banging pots and pans
...yeah bang those pans!
...while you still stand!
...in the sun shine rays!
...nothing but clear mornin air all of my days

...yeah, I'm still here, happy new year!