The Trumpet Man

Behind your ears, in dead of night, cultivates your fears, unearths your fright.

Can you hear the trumpet song?

Few notes of tune, you follow the sorrow, pitied by moon, won’t last till ‘morrow.

The martyrdom won’t be for long.

A sunstroke prairie of wheatgrass and red-yellow-red tents attracts a crowd of the inquisitive and judgemental. The red noses and painted smiles soak up the rays, and as day comes to gloam behind the canola, a new presence draws the shadows from our minds and attracts all walks of life that thrive when their phantoms are most defined. Deformities within barred train carts can pull a sneer from behind any man’s teeth. Past the money-pocketing posters and maze of all things horror show, rears a tent most spectacular. Magnificent feats and daredevil stunts turn a greedy face stupefied. Grotesque disfigurement and absence of abidance turns a stupefied face vain. Backside the ruckus, a shy man plays a sad tune.

A trumpet, is what he puckers his lips around, and he tickles the three piston valves at such a rate, one would not expect the song to be heavy-hearted.

As a shy man, none have ever witnessed the sound of his voice. Some say he never had one.  He never partook in any merriment or festivities; he stood behind the train carts and exhibits and swayed to his sad songs. They called him the Trumpet Man.

Once every month or so, a curious mind would follow the sorrow carrying on the winds and lend an ear to the Trumpet Man, and this would satisfy his soul with such bliss and cheer that his eyes would gleam with gratitude and his fingers twiddled a new song, a laughing-bliss of flurried notes. Smiles dawned that brightened the eyes of the hungry and softened their hearts enough to care for an, altogether, new type of freak. He knew, the Trumpet Man, that their appetite would not last till morning, so he served meals of classical songs; composed songs that lingered in their guts to maybe appease them just enough for them to return for a second course. Never did it deliver their company any further. Diners never bestowed their company to a dish unless they could melt it down into a momento; a knife, perhaps. The Trumpet Man didn’t mind, for he longed for moments like these.

Days came to pass and less people would sniff out the sad tune, then less people would be engorged by the sounds he crafted and his prowess would remain untouched, unappreciated. The sad songs became sadder and the periods between these meals would be longer up to entire years where not a single guest had come to listen.

The Trumpet Man expired soon after. A rather cold day in early November froze his breath as he posed on the ground, huddled against the painted wood of a train cart, thawing the frosted wheatgrass beneath him. The circus and freak acts moved onto another town and the cart that supported his spine was taken, leaving his body slouched in the damp, littered, grassland.

That was then, and then is then, not now. Now, the Trumpet man waits on the secluded brick streets of city blocks. He plays the tunes just the same and those that smell the heavy heart of the Trumpet Man will come to find him, or what was once him, webbed with rot to the side of a building, his fingers moaning through his trumpet. These songs are different, however. If one seeps in through your skin and reaches your bones, you are helpless but to pursue the melody to the feeder, being the entity that howls these songs. He won’t let you forget him, no, not this time. It will forevermore be an itch in the back of your mind, an itch, then a cut, then a bullet hole as it grows ever louder and louder and your eyes become blurry with vibration and your mind a static void all except for this song and it will never end, never, not until, well, not until you kill yourself. That’s all he ever wanted, someone to listen.

In your eyes, and back of your mind, pleasure to your cries, in melody you wind.

I hear the trumpet song.

I’m From

Bloody Ladybird Rose By Anonymous

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=128176&picture=bloody-ladybird-rose

Emulated from Where I’m From By George Ella Lyon

I’m from a land of shadows and gloom

Blood splattered walls and shattered sanity

I’m from a place of unknown struggles and cries of pain

I’m from a darkened mind which begs to be understood;

Forever trying to reason with others but always failing to do so

Beaten memories and broken dreams line the walls of a carnival fueled by my ideas.

Entrails coat the crumbling walls like blood dipped streamers

caused from a past birthday party of mine, in which no one showed

Tossing about the brittle bones of victims,

which are taken forcefully by my slender hands

Long winter nights filled with my silent screams fading into the endless void, never to be heard

I’m from blistering flames of envy and fear

I’m from the shambles of love and death, equally balanced on the scale of my life

Busted blood clots and soft, pink cotton candy dreams violently interject each other within my mind

causing mental hurricanes which leave my head in ruins and tears upon my cheeks, burning into the skin like acid

I’m from a normal family- unlike me

The odd one out

Always the freak that spends her time alone

Writing about the suffering of herself and others

and never telling anyone about her pain

They would never understand me; I was always aware of that fact

I am the weird one in every group

No one wants to talk to me unless they have to

She is a blank face that hides so much emotion

I’m from a realm of unrequited love

Always a crush

and never anything more

One day I will understand that I will always and forever be alone, as I should be…

If it is true that I am crazy

I will be my crazy self with pride

Nothing can change me

 

The Other Woman

He loved Work more than he loved me. Work to him was a cherry-oak desk beneath a city of one thousand story paperwork. These paper skyscrapers had deadlines, but he liked the view. Work to him was the bouquet of fancy, sliver-lined pens and complimentary breath mints he got every morning of every workday. Work wrote him letters, and though a portion he thought heartlessly cruel, he filed every single one safely away in his treasure chest. Work gave him luxuries, I guess things that I couldn’t give. And soon he was hooked on Work like a fish on a line. And he discovered other fish because Work gave him an entire ocean of opportunity.

But Work left him a trail of to-do lists everywhere it went, yet he somehow preferred this over me. And all he left for me was a trail of his cologne, lingering on the air. I wrapped myself in his smell while he wrapped himself in Work. But Work was messy, and it passed this onto him, and then onto our marriage. Work abducted his mind and hogged all his thoughts from ever straying to think of me. I spent many late nights wondering when he would finally come home, and when he finally would, I’d find that he’d brought Work home with him.

About Me

Asking me to write about myself is distasteful, but lucky for me I am rather good at it if I do say so myself. For instance, I read about an hour every day and despite having forgotten about writing this for some time now, I will have you know that it simply adds to the point I would like to make. Let’s face it, I am a forgetful person who often finds himself zoning out in class, and it does not help that few people notice. In that time I would like to tell you that I simply contemplate the philosophies of life, but that is hardly the case in most instances. In reality I actually am drifting off to some far off world within my imagination.

This may sound strange to some, but I find that my imagination often makes more sense that reality, or to put it more simply the whole world gives me the impression that it has developed excessive brain damage. People like to think that a petty thing like “their story” is essential for expressing themselves and maintaining a sense of identity, but I happen to think that is a load of rubbish. It is simply a lie people tell themselves full of the most admirable things they’ve done, deliberately leaving out all of their flaws. I find that in order to truly express yourself one needs to be honest in the image they put out to others. That is why although I may seem entirely sane, I cannot say I am; there is a very fine line between genius and madness. I admit wholeheartedly that I am more on the mad side.

When others put forth their expectations and opinions, it seems easiest to fit in by simply trying to meet those expectations, but that is not how I would seek to gain approval. The key to gaining acceptance from others is by holding nothing back from them, then and only then is it possible to find true friends. Anyone can pretend to be something they’re not, but it takes true strength to be utterly self-conscious and real to who you are. That is why if I am to remain honest, I must again admit that I am a complete madman.

            Throughout the years I have found it exceedingly frustrating to try and explain who I am to others, and I am not about to start now. It has been nice writing complete and utter BS for you. Whether it really is, is up to you though.

Kaden – They Said They Felt Pain (Favorite piece)

She said she felt pain,

she said her soul hurt,

she said her skin pressed too tightly to her bones.

 

He said he felt pain,

he said his body ached,

he said his blood carried tainted oxygen to his mind.

 

They felt no pain: they felt no real pain.

At seventeen they had drank more than there parents ever did. At nineteen they had been high more times than they had kissed. They saw what they thought was pain and hugged it close. The steep crest gave way to their tumbles, but they had looked upon the bottoms sharp spikes. They had been warned.

Instead of walking a tightrope or going off to fight for a cause, they decided to get their thrills from the bottle and the joint, the smoke and the line. Every night they lost their minds to the infinite, every night was a symptom of the first. That first night where they chose to walk to the edge, that first night where they chose the fate that damned them.

They spoke of rebellion and pressure, but if they would have had the strength to tear themselves away, seek thrills in the real world and seen the sunrise with their own eyes, maybe they would still be here, maybe they would embrace their mothers and fathers and wipe the tears from their eyes. They were too weak, in too deep, with no line to pull themselves out, so they kept drinking, kept smoking, kept injecting. Their mothers and their fathers’ tears will not be wiped, a hand six feet under cannot comfort a crying parent.

 

Explanation: I can’t exactly remember when it was that I was inspired to write this, but there was some story in the news about drug overdoses in teens. I was appalled at the idea of anyone but their close families feeling anything close to sympathy for them. From the day I was old enough to think about, or know about drugs I had been taught to stay far far away. I can’t see any mother or father not telling their sons or daughters the same. I had heard all about the consequences of drug use and abuse before I even knew why anyone would take drugs. I guess the purpose of this piece is to explore my idea that if you know the risks of something and you still go ahead with said thing, you deserve the consequences that go along with your actions.

 

Arcipluvian

My body is the sanctuary of my lineage,

the safe that holds an inheritance too great

for me to apologise it away,

for me to denounce the differences in my complexion

simply because of their colour.

Identity is encoded into my body

like needlepoint spots of every hue

weaving paintings from the shades of my bruises.

The pigments of my skin

fit the whole range of the spectrum,

yet somehow, I am only ever seen

as a dusky shade darker than white.

It began when prejudice crawled into

the cardboard corners of my crayon-box

and tried to make me understand

that I was less of a human being

simply because I didn’t fit

onto the lightest, brightest section

of the colour wheel.

I’ve met the cold, grey eyes

who believe in uncoloured sterility,

but my eyes are kaleidoscopes

with stained glass irises, seeing

that somewhere in their achromatic psyche,

they confused prejudice for purification

and bleached away their humanity.

I want to spill every colour from my body,

make them realise that the canvas of my skin

isn’t dark because there is dirt embedded in it;

it is dark because it is a fusion of every colour,

because it is a prismatic collection

of everything undefinable by a single shade.

I will not decolourise the parts of me

that are too bold to be monochromatic,

too complex to be folded into a label;

my skin is painted from a thousand points of colour,

like a picture made of pixels.

Don’t ascribe a hue to me

when you haven’t seen me living in rainbows,

and don’t understand how

there is no one colour to tint

the human spirit.

My skin has been painted

with the bruises of every ancestor

who fought to claim their colour.

Now I claim my own pallet:

I draw variegations onto my bones

with the raw spectrum of my crayon box,

finger-paint marbled streaks

into the ridges of my face,

tattoo onto my heart the pride I hold

for being arcipluvian.

This poem is an expression of what it means to be ‘coloured’. From the beginning of my life, I was taught how to be a coloured child; I was spoon-fed labels to remind me that my classification as a person was dictated by the shade of my skin, and it never ceased to amaze me that people could define themselves and define others with a single hue. I believe that as human beings, we are multi-coloured. It is those who seek to separate people into sections on the colour wheel who have a lesser understanding of humanity. As people, we are complex beings who I do not believe should be constrained by labels, especially when it comes to race and other significant factors such as religion and sexual orientation.

Our bodies and our personalities are uniquely important and are an expression of our heritage. I do not believe that anyone should ever have to be ashamed of who they are, and this poem explores how individuals should not have to tie back their multi-faceted selves with the restraints of labels. Especially regarding race-related prejudice, the main message of this poem is that skin colour cannot ever account for the entire complexity of humanity and that individuals should not have to be suppressed by those who are short-sighted enough to value one skin colour over another.

Citations:

Dubeau, Gabrielle. “Katherine Harvey – Light and Water.” Pinterest. Pinterest, 29 Apr. 2013. Web. 30 Dec. 2016. <https://www.pinterest.com/pin/426223552214028123/>.

“Large Tropical Coloured Abstract Art Painting Original | Calypso.” Swarez Art. Swarez Modern Art Ltd., n.d. Web. 30 Dec. 2016. <https://www.swarez.co.uk/modern-art-paintings-for-sale/calypso/>.

Imran, Ali, and Fasiha Jafri. “The Circle of Life.” Iqra Online. WordPress, 21 May 2011. Web. 30 Dec. 2016. <http://www.iqraonline.net/the-circle-of-life/>.

Yuliastuti, Dian. “Black White Lasem, an Anti-Racism Campaign  .” Tempo.Co. TEMPO INTI MEDIA TBK, 15 Mar. 2015. Web. 30 Dec. 2016. <http://en.tempo.co/read/news/2015/03/15/114650100/Black-White-Lasem-an-Anti-Racism-Campaign>.

Brunett, Emily. “Racism.” Racism. WordPress, 29 May 2013. Web. 30 Dec. 2016. <https://emilybrunett.wordpress.com/>.

The Two of Us

Image Source

Author’s Note: I’ve been seeing all of these quotes and such talking about how heart over head or vice versa is the better path to take. However, I’m rather fed up with seeing all of these graphics, quotes, etc saying that, because I really think that the whole situation is subjective. If someone prefers making decisions according to their emotions, then it’s their choice, and if someone is more driven by logic, then it’s their choice, and there really is no need to bash a person for thinking that way.
Because of that, I more or less started writing out conversations between two very different people. One, a girl who is highly logical and driven by reason, and another, a boy who is highly passionate and emotionally charged. I wrote this because I wanted to point out how different people can be happy living a lifestyle that may be the idea of ‘bad’ to someone else. I’m kind of sick of people saying that everyone should value passion over logic or vice versa, because if everyone really did think the same way, our world would be a terrible place.
This piece isn’t meant to be romantic in any way, the two characters are just the opposite gender to help differentiate them from one another.

Continue reading “The Two of Us”

Little Sister

Dear little sister;

I hope this isn’t the end for your hope. I know right now you are not so happy, you’re holding onto this line of truth so hard your fingers might shatter, and your body give way to the merciless current bellow.

Little sister I know your dreams are broken. You were deceived by the line we call the horizon, tricked to believe the things we can’t calculate instead of the things we can. But in spite of the fragments of dreams I hope you still find something to embrace.

My dearest sister I wish for you the gift of knowing where your own knowing ends. That you will one day be able to marry your ideals with the truth. I wish for you the mercury sight to see your deepest desires through a fog the rest of us know as doubt. I wish you might one day blur the line between your wishes and reality, letting the two overlap and inspire each other to become one.

My little sister, I know people are scary. And I know some of them have big mouths and sharp teeth that could destroy you in minutes. But I also know how deeply you feel the need to be with them. I wish one day you will find the courage to walk up to them with flashing lighthouses and no more fear in your voice.

My sister I wish for you the things I can no longer wish for myself. A desire to stay undeceived. An ability to know where not to be and when. The gift of being able to gracefully accept not knowing the answer to a question. The blessing of having something to hold onto no matter how bad things get. The opportunity to see the oceans in the depth most can’t begin to comprehend. A thirst for knowing what is beyond our planets.

My little sister. I wish for you the final knowledge that no matter what you do or how far away you push me, I will always be here for you. I will always love you. And I know right now you might not believe me. Those people are scary. I know they haunt your dreams and hide in the shadows of your closet, but they won’t always be there. I won’t always have to wake you up when you’re screaming in the middle of the night, sitting with you till morning. Maybe we learn how to deal with our demons, or maybe they just get tired and leave, but I promise they will go away.

My amazing little sister. Please don’t lose the light in your eyes. Make new dreams. Find something to hold onto in order to keep safe from the rapids below.

Love,

Your sister

 

Picture: https://pixabay.com/en/silhouette-city-skyline-night-stars-1211407/