Week Four

Week Four, April 24th.

You have until next Friday, May 1st, to write a piece of any kind about the photo. The rules are that simple-- literal, abstract, short story, poem, prose, etc. All styles are welcome, just use the photo as a starting point. After Friday, you may not post writing from previous weeks' photos.
Feel free to write multiple pieces if you feel that inspired, although you aren't required to write every week. You won't be removed as an author unless you go four consecutive weeks without writing or contacting me at all, or you ask to be removed.

ALSO
do you know any other writers that would be possibly interested in becoming a part of this project? don't hesitate to tell me-- i'm open to inviting anyone who wants to write. pass the link along in the circles of writers you know, and tell them that if they want to join, just email me: graffiti.grunge at gmail dot com.

Careful, I (want to) say. Don’t you understand? No, of course not. There are eggs behind my eyes, and that’s why I’m afraid to think, to obliterate them with the thousands of simultaneously-running trains in my head. No, I can’t sleep; if my eyelash fences are erected then there will be dark and cold and the eggs will die. Forgive me for crying, it’s just that they’re pecking their way out now, and eggshells and eggteeth and eggteeth and eggshells are all I can think—oh, here they are.

You can’t see yet, no, they aren’t ready. Stop talking, those breezes from your lips—stop, they’re turning into cold winds! You’ll knock them out of my head if you keep that up, and then they’ll die! I won’t be able to touch them again!

I can’t tell you this, but they aren’t for you. I’m disguising my dreams in feathers so they can get away before you can crush them; they have such small, hollow bones after all. You’ve seen the fragments of shell come out of my tear ducts, you know something’s changed. You’re always trying to gust it out of me, but you don’t really want it. It’s just that I’ve never kept something from you, you’ve always had all of my thoughts, all of me; it’s not that you’re anticipating something beautiful from my mind.

You don’t know what it used to be like; I didn’t always think in steel and coal. These engines and miles of track lacerating the scenery in every direction used to be the shuddering of butterflies and the paws of foxes and the dashing of stars. You did this to me.

And now I’ve finally incubated something pure and fluttering again. The birds behind my eyes just need to be fully developed before they make their way out, so they can immediately take to skies beyond your grasp.

I’m not sure which sight will be more majestic, the avian visions soaring from my lips or the empty shock parting yours.

echo; i'm just an echo.

"my heart is a bird,
but my ribs are a cage..."
//


i'm leaving again, he says.
that's as much warning as he gives before he steps off his perch and begins to claw his way up my throat. i choke on his exit, knowing that it will be even harder to breath when he's gone, even though my chest will be empty, spacious. the sound of my ribs clattering together will echo once he makes his daring escape, they'll resound like thousands of drums, clickety-clacking, the sound coming out my nose and ears. it will give my words a percussion accompaniment that's unrivaled by any orchestra in the city.
"forgive [clickety clickety click click snap] me [click clack clackety click clack], love. [rattle, clickclickclick.]"

you'll hear it, and know the truth.
i don't want you to know that i'm hollow like an old log, except the rings in me don't have the history. i don't want that echo to reach your ears. i don't want to see your eyes widen with the realization that this sweet fluttering thing has furiously fled.

i face you and it's like slow motion. my heart should be beating in my chest, my throat, my ears.

click, clack, my ribs say, as if responding to my anxiousness.



cliick, claack,

cliick, claack.

clickclack.

take a dip in the cesspool

Bump, bump, bump, bump, goes the drum in my chest. Beating in time with the fear resonating throughout my body, exploding through my trembling fingertips. While the darkness swallows me whole, I can hardly wrap my mind around the pit of acidity waiting for me at the bottom of this 10-inch pipe. My wings have broken and I can no longer fly, fly away from this place. A place only in my head that no one knows, this is where evil grows, and where the monsters under your bed reside when you don’t believe anymore. This is where innocence is lost and seeing is believing. Swallowed by the greedy mouth of reality, escape is no longer plausible. Fear is floating further and further away from the slowing drum, oxygen is no longer a necessity, and freedom is finally here.

Three

Week Three, April 17th.

You have until next Friday, April 24th, to write a piece of any kind about the photo. The rules are that simple-- literal, abstract, short story, poem, prose, etc. All styles are welcome, just use the photo as a starting point. After Friday, you may not post writing from previous weeks' photos.
Feel free to write multiple pieces if you feel that inspired, although you aren't required to write every week. You won't be removed as an author unless you go four consecutive weeks without writing or contacting me at all, or you ask to be removed.

reconstruction

oh! boy, you'll thank me for this one day.

i've meticulously taken
all that flesh and bone and turned you into
someone much more
useful,
pertinent,
stable,
predictable.

i've fixed you.

i peeled off skin like a
tangerine in the summer heat
wiping my hands as i worked;
putting you in that metal shell
was the best decision we ever made.

the only thing i couldn't save was your
pumping, feebly sensitive yet explosive heart.

but trust me darling, you are better off without.

because i cannot love you forever,
i remember once,
before you were all dials and
lights, i told you,
"having a heart is like an evolutionary step

in the wrong direction."

you cried when i did,
and i'm positive i could feel
that explosive heart
wringing itself around your ribs
to try and escape,
kill me for what i was calling it.
i could feel you
wanting to, too. but
that anti-darwinistic,

four chambered,
emotional,

sissy son-of-a-bitch

just wasn't having any of it.


instead you just cried, and loved me all the same.
but i keep reminding you,

you will be
grateful,
later.

lost among the pages of you.

your smile, it's beautiful.
and I dont even mean the physical
looks of it.
just the idea, the concept,
makes me blush.

you're happy; that's what I live for.
it's not even your features that
pull me in to your magneton.

you are beautiful like a well written book.
strong and mysterious on the outside.
drawing me in.
making me long,
desire,
to know what's inside.

I just want to read the story of your life.
I need to get lost in the
fine written imagery
that makes you amazing.

when it comes down to it,
we are all the same.
our features may vary,
but we are as the water;
no matter where it is,
uniform and constant.

we live our lives like robots.
repeating this monotonous life
over and over in our minds.

to the naked eye, we are the same.
we look the same. we sound the same.
we laugh and mourn alike.

but when i look at you, i see so much more.
i just want to sit in a comfortable spot,
and read the story scribed in your personality.

I just mirror a smile back to you,
as I reread my favorite phrase,
I love you. I love you. I love you.

Two.

Week Two, April 10th.

You have until next Friday, April 17th, to write a piece of any kind about the photo. The rules are that simple-- literal, abstract, short story, poem, prose, etc. All styles are welcome, just use the photo as a starting point. After Friday, you may not post writing from previous weeks' photos.
Feel free to write multiple pieces if you feel that inspired, although you aren't required to write every week. You won't be removed as an author unless you go four consecutive weeks without writing or contacting me at all, or you ask to be removed.

ALSO
authors, please send me ten photos/pieces of your choosing, along with the artist who took/created them [if you know it] so that i can link back to them. having a large pool of images to choose from will make the experience more exciting for all of us. especially me, who's seen all twenty of the current images. you can send them to me at graffiti.grunge at gmail dot com with links to the images. if you can't find ten, that's fine, just send what you can find and you can send more later.

Oh, sweetiepie, something about octopi.

You were right,
I am different.

My heart doesn’t have strings,
it has tentacles.
They’ll wrap around you
and adorn you in suction cup kisses.

If you scare me,
I’ll build inky word walls
between us so I can get away-
I don’t want to listen to you
talk about how I have
no skeleton, unlike you
and how I can hold
onto more at once than you
and how I have
more heart(s) than you…
so I couldn’t possibly understand.

If my escape isn’t fleet enough,
please promise you won’t
sever my tentacles.
(Heartstrings can be retied,
tentacles are another matter;
not all of us are capable
of autotomy.)

I swear I wasn’t trying
to crack your wooden ribs…
It’s just that this is the only way
I know how to love you.

But I will let go,
if you ask it of me.
I will detach myself,
and I hope you will feel it,
every suction cup kiss
being ripped away
as I sink down
where tentacle-hearts
belong.

DISCLAIMER: EXPLICIT

Walking through a crowded mall on a saturday afternoon is never a good idea for me. Maybe it's the smell of all those fucking children running around begging their parents for just one tiny toy almost like a whore begging on her knees. Tilting their pretty blonde little head back. I cant grasp the idea that children are innocent. Thats what children remind me of. Going down to that nasty lake (with god knows what kind of foul things float in there) and going underwater for a brief minute, imagining you are a fish or a sea monster. I used to pretend I was being forgiven for my sins. washing them away like it was that fucking simple. why didnt i just get in the damn bathtub? then at least i could have been floating in MY OWN filth. now, all I can think of when I see a mother and child, is how many dicks she had to suck before she spit out that thing and actually felt bad for what she'd done. washing away her sins. Then I picture it. The soccer mom with cum dripping from her face. The susie homemaker with legs spread like a fucking cellar door. Drowning herself in water, trying to be forgiven.

silence.

It has been ages since the weather has changed,
ages since I have had my chance to escape.

The pointless abuse, deafening.
The enprisonment to a place called home, smuthering.

My body is shutting down.
What makes this feeling any different though?

Everytime I speak to you,
my body malfunctions.
My heart collapses.

In one ear and out the other, your words flow,
flooding the empty space around my brain.
Drowning it of all the hopes and dreams I ever had.

We used to fight over pointless things,
any bullshit reason we found to struggle about.

But now I just ignore it all.
I close my eyes.
And fight the pressure.

Running away from the problems
probably doesnt solve anything.

But sadly, Id rather hurt myself,
second after second,
and hold my breathe.

Because the silence puts me at peace.

woooosh

i can't hear you.

this is where i want to be
no,
it's where i need to be.
i want to be a part of this
like i wanted to be a part of you

i am concentrating on it
take me take me take me
i'm whispering it,
i'm screaming it,
everything inside me turns to bubbles

then, it fills me
it seeks out every space,
every crevice
it wants all of me
why didn't you?

i am happy here.

when human beings are involved

water never felt so welcome
in my lungs.

i was packing all my bags and you
stood silently, staring.
by all my bags, of course i mean just my
faded blue-and-grey diary [i sure hope it's
waterproof] and a toothbrush [i don't
want to offend anyone on the other side,
you know.] tucked into a grocery bag.

i told you about all my dreams,
about swirls of colour and floating endlessly among
them, eyes open and searching.
seas of fishes swirling about me, all of them being
fishes of seas.

you held my hand within yours, and i felt your insides
quake.
"don't go," you said. "don't go."

in my head, i repeated those words to you. don't go.

you'd kept me dry and lonely, helping me brick and mortar those walls i couldn't find the water to fill. it won't hold water anyway, i think to myself.
it was just what i wanted, until i'd met you.



i coughed less than i thought i would, and welcomed it's cool weight.


dear sweet smile and forgiving green eyes,

i wish to know how a body relates to a stone

as it sinks.

One.

Week one, April 3rd.
To see more by this photographer.

You have until next Friday, April 10th, to write a piece of any kind about the photo. The rules are that simple-- literal, abstract, short story, poem, prose, etc. All styles are welcome, just use the photo as a starting point. After Friday, you may not post writing from previous weeks' photos.
Feel free to write multiple pieces if you feel that inspired, although you aren't required to write every week. You won't be removed as an author unless you go four consecutive weeks without writing or contacting me at all, or you ask to be removed.