Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in breakallmirrors' LiveJournal:

Monday, October 17th, 2005
8:39 pm	rauschenberg Robert Rauschenberg was a master in the art of assemblage. He was mentored by John Cage who was concerned with breaking down the barrier between art and the everyday world. Rauschenberg was an action painter (quick, gestural brushstrokes) who incorporated found objects into his mixed media pieces. The subject of his pieces were ambiguous, although he included popular images such as the statue of liberty along with more random objects with the hope that the viewer would make his/her own presumptions as to the meaning of the piece. I created my piece in the style of Rauschenberg, imitating his painting habits and including found objects of my own, such as buttons, mirror shards, dried roses, typed song lyrics, B&W photo-copies, a tape measure, etc. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 9th, 2005
8:00 pm	CAD anyalysis English 5/20/05 Analysis: EDUCATION FOR LEISURE Carol Ann Duffy has an interesting technique in which she uses the first line to catch the reader’s attention. In this poem she achieves this straight away by using the catchy line ‘Today I am going to kill something’. The first stanza uses this line to set a mood for the poem, and with the use of two caesuras and informal speech, she has already set an age (somewhere between eighteen-thirty) and a gender (male) for the narrator, which carries on throughout the poem without her actually specifying any details of the sort at any time. The first stanza also takes the place off a cliff-hanger, informing us that the person in the poem is going to kill not specifically someone, but something. This doesn’t help to relieve the author however, because of the tone, and the egomaniacal edge, and the threatening connotations of the sentence ‘I have had enough of being ignored and today I am going to play God’. It almost makes you recall something you heard in the news, or saw in the papers, and pull you in, engages you, with the morbid fascination we’d have watching such a story on the evening news. In the second stanza the first reference Carol Ann Duffy enjoys hiding in her poems arrives. The narrator kills his first thing, something small to build up from: a fly, then links it to a quote from one of Shakespeare’s four great tragedies, King Lear. He then uses this reference to create an edge of dark humour for the stanza, with the joke ‘It was in another language and now the fly is in another language’. Then we are drawn back to the egotistic personality as the fly’s existence, life, and short death by thumb, are erased from the window and he breathes out what he imagines as his obvious talent, his power over life and death; a Godlike complex. The first line brings us back to the egomania with a direct starting caesura again- ‘I am a genius.’ From the next few lines there seems to be an underlying teenage angst and frustration at his upbringing and surroundings, and the unemployment. The teen angst element is brought by his calmly saying of how they didn’t understand or appreciate him enough to give him the life options that could have stopped him from arriving to the emotional and financial place he has arrived now. ‘I could be anything at all, with half the chance’. He takes out his helplessness on his pets, moving on to bigger and “better” things like the cat. The animals are getting bigger. The cat, however, knows better and hides from the narrator. He puts this down to- ‘The cat knows I am a genius’. In the fourth, second-to-last stanza we’re leading up to the big finally. Another animal, the goldfish, is next to die via a toilet and English sewer. The caesura ‘I pull the chain’ unconsciously gives us the mental image of an out-of-date, old-fashioned maybe crumbling house, as chains aren’t used in modern newly built homes. ‘I see that it is good’ brings us back to the Godlike complex and his want of power over life and death with a reference to the book of Genesis in the Bible. The level of desperation is rising with a slight proclamation that he, the narrator, walks two miles into town every fortnight to get his government unemployment slip signed, but the phrase ‘They don’t appreciate my autograph’ makes me think that the slip is never enough to make up for the opportunities he lost, or that his dole slips are rejected? The poem is reaching a climax with that last, slightly defeatist line delivered in a calm, flat tone. In the fifth and last stanza, like all the others, starts with an attention-grabbing, straightforward short sentence. The first line for the last stanza achieves this as best as with the first- ‘There is nothing left to kill’. It’s threatening and terrifying, because it’s placement marking the beginning of the last stanza we know we’re near the end, and something bad is going to happen. The almost pitiable final cut-off from the average, ‘normal’ world comes with ‘I dial the radio and tell the man he’s talking to a superstar. He cuts me off’. Rejected one final time, he gives slip one slight possible detail into his character with the phrase ‘our bread-knife’ using the dialect habit of certain North England counties with the use ‘our’ not in reference so much to a specific amiable person. The last line is the climax without too much drama, and too much telling, which gives it a more horrifying aspect. ‘The pavements glitter suddenly’ like the evil glitter in someone’s eye. ‘I touch your arm’ pulls us, the reader, suddenly and surprisingly and alarmingly into the last ending part. The fact that it stops there, at the absolute climax, with no resolution is more effective than a long gory ending would have been. Willarae Culpepper, Group 4 DAK (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 14th, 2005
11:56 am	“Hey”. The blood on her hands was a dull red that reflected the traffic stop light above. It had already dried slightly into a rusty crust under her chewed-up fingernails, like old paint. She didn’t notice as people stepped aside, melting back into the shadows like the blood was an infectious disease, spread by touching. Her eyes, set on me, or the chain link fence next to me, didn’t even register them. She just sat down next to me and stuck her hands into her pockets. Then she gave me a nod and said “Hey”, like it was all the explanation I needed. So we sit there in silence for a few moments. I can hear sirens off somewhere, but in Astoria there’s always sirens somewhere. Over in the corner I can see two kids, about my brother’s age, twelve, arguing about what size plank of wood they’ll need from the abandoned construction site that will be big enough to cause a car to flip over when they throw it in front of the tires. Now they’re plans are getting more excitable, moving on to pile-ups. Yeah..rough place. Sitting next to me, Miguel quietly lifts a hand to wipe his eyes. I didn’t even know he had tear ducts. The sudden movement disrupts the sweaty, electric buzzing night. But there’s something else disturbing it. “It’s not mine, y’know”, he says, suddenly. “Huh?” “The blood its not mine. It’s Corey’s.” “Oh Mig, jaysus dude, I thought you stopped fighting.” Still it didn’t feel right or make sense. Corey was his best friend. The only time they’d ever fought as far as I knew was when Miguel lost a mixtape Corey had lent him. And even then, good old quiet Corey had just walked off with a dark sourness on his face. “It wasn’t a fight.” “…?” To be truthful, this is sadly probably the deepest conversation I’ve ever had with Miguel. At one point he dated my sister for a week or two, but like most of the other girls he dated, that only lasted around two weeks. But that’s pretty much the only thing we have. He moved to Astoria from the United States a few years ago. At first you just knew that he was Uranium. Very, very reactive. On his second day of school he hit a kid just for asking “Oi, mate, can I bum a fag off you?”. I never quite understood why. Then Corey came back from visiting his mother overseas. You know how rich, divorced parents can be. Cause I don’t. Neither do many kids in our grammar school, Liswood Central. But for all the money his weight was worth, Corey was a genuinely good, smart guy. And something about when he went over and sat on Miguel’s desk and said ‘Hey’, you could just tell those two would be best friends. So my sudden deep conversation with Miguel didn’t tell me anything. Except that SOEMTHING had happened. And here that could mean anything. “Miguel..” He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and offered it to me. It had red fingerprints along the filter. I declined. “What happened?” He threw the cigarette to one side, and watched it as it rolled away. One of the little kids picked it up and lit it. Then he looked at me without looking at me at all. “I skipped off Maths and Frenchtoday with Corey, and we just went into town, went to McDonalds, bought some barcardi and went to the park to take shots from the cap. It was such a buff day, we decided to bunk the rest of the day as well. English-Drama double, so no loss there. Then these guys…you know..some really huge kids from Foxwood, they just came out of nowhere. One had a tire-iron (Comment on this)
11:52 am	“Hey”. The blood on her hands was a dull red that reflected the traffic stop light above. It had already dried slightly into a rusty crust under her chewed-up fingernails, like old paint. She didn’t notice as people stepped aside, melting back into the shadows like the blood was an infectious disease, spread by touching. Her eyes, set on me, or the chain link fence next to me, didn’t even register them. She just sat down next to me and stuck her hands into her pockets. Then she gave me a nod and said “Hey”, like it was all the explanation I needed. (Comment on this)
Monday, April 25th, 2005
8:56 pm	new poems... PAPA A friend of mine the other day laughed and said 'All the emo songs are about hating their M.I.A daddies', and he laughed, cus his daddy's in prison (no joke) and he's emo as fuck (no joke) well, my papa, his father died some 10 eyars back. my boy, his daddy's been gone all 15 years of his life When my pape caught me with this other boy he said 'Listen to me, goddammit, I'm your father! you know how that boy can make you sad' well, sometimes papa, that may be true. But as for my papa, well I hardly ever see you you live 1/4 of your life on an airplane. I wanted to yell 'FUCK YOU', at my papa, 'WELL AT LEAST HE'S RELIABLE'. (no joke) Current Music: willy mason:// sold my soul (Comment on this)
8:54 pm	new poems... MAMA I hate it when you start of arrogant sentences like 'Hunni, I KNOW you, you'll-" As if these sentences were self-justifying in your crusade to save me me from the things I live with every day (well, they DO say ignoance is bliss) Oh, am I relaly so transparent? Oh, am I really so predictable/readable/knowable? Well mama, in thinking that you know me you really don't know me at all. (Comment on this)
8:53 pm	new poems... THUNDERSTORM KID Water on the brain, I guess you could say. When we met it was pouring as we walked outside, drowning in the water that clung to our eyelashes, our hair, in our nostrils and eyes we were two sinking survivors clinging together with conversation When you kissed me under that bus stop sign, I swear we made the neon lights flicker. Well, when your clenched fists started shaking, dark clouds forming behind your eyes and I tried to put my hand over yours to stop the shock, but my parents yelled ‘NO TOUCHING’ Like you were an electrocution victim, and if I touched you I’d spark and die too. well I don’t care what they think; I’ve felt the lightning of your tongue in my ear, the electricity mains running up my spine (flip the switch) the volts in your lips Have you ever seen the way I light up around you? “…Like a Christmas tree” (plug me in) That night when we shared static silence over phone libes & I confessed how much I really loved thunderstorms, and you said you did, too. Well, I don’tcare what they think. I don’t need their drugs anymore; I can sleep on my own now that you’re the defibrillator for my heart When you kissed me under that bus stop sign, I swear we made the neon lights flicker. Well, when you kiss me goodbye promise me we’ll suck the power right outta this city. Current Music: lazlo bane:// superman (1 Comment |Comment on this)
8:19 pm	new poems... *SHAKE* when you're REALLY upset you can't help it, you SHAKE when I can feel your breath on my neck, your tongue against my ear, I smile and can't help but SHAKE when a tramp out in the cold feels the wind whistling through layers so full of holes they dont quite exist, he cant help but SHAKE when you hear about THAT boy, yes, THAT one, and who he's touched/been touching now, you cant help but SHAKE a trauma victim can't tell the difference between nightmare and wake, they cant help but lay in bed at night and queitly SHAKE when you're sick, you SHAKE when you're scared, you SHAKE a musician/rockstar.jesus yells out to the moving crowd SHAKE!SHAKE!cmon..SHAKE! So much for crying wolf. Dont get me started on goosebumps. Current Music: bloc party:// the pioneers (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 8th, 2005
8:01 pm	history project quotes "Two children I know got employment in a factory when they were five years old………….the spinning men or women employ children if they can get a child to do their business……..the child is paid one shilling or one shilling and six pence, and they will take that (five year old) child before they take an older one who will cost more." George Gould, a Manchester merchant, written in 1816. "The smallest child in the factories were scavengers……they go under the machine, while it is going……….it is very dangerous when they first come, but they become used to it." Charles Aberdeen worked in a Manchester cotton factory, written in 1832. "The task first allotted to Robert Blincoe was to pick up the loose cotton, that fell upon the floor. Apparently nothing could be easier……..although he was much terrified by the whirling motion and noise of the machinery and the dust with which he was half suffocated………he soon felt sick and was constantly stooping; his back ached. Blincoe took the liberty to sit down. But this he soon found was strictly forbidden in cotton mills. His overlooker, Mr. Smith, told him he must keep on his legs. This he did for six and a half hours without a break." John Brown, a reporter for "The Lion". Written in 1828. "We went to the mill at five in the morning. We worked until dinner time and then to nine or ten at night; on Saturday it could be till eleven and often till twelve at night. We were sent to clean the machinery on the Sunday." Man interviewed in 1849 who had worked in a mill as a child. "In the evening I walked to Cromford and saw the children coming from their work. These children had been at work from 6 o’clock in the morning and it was now 7 o’clock in the evening." Joseph Farington, 22nd August 1801 (diary entry) "I began work at the mill in Bradford when I was nine years old……we began at six in the morning and worked until nine at night. When business was brisk, we began at five and worked until ten in the evening." Hannah Brown, interviewed in 1832. "Very often the children are woken at four in the morning. The children are carried on the backs of the older children asleep to the mill, and they see no more of their parents till they go home at night and are sent to bed." Richard Oastler, interviewed in 1832. "Woodward and other overlookers used to beat me with pieces of thick leather straps made supple by oil, and having an iron buckle at the end, drew blood almost every time it was applied."John Brown quoted in the "Lion" newspaper in 1828. "Sarah Golding was poorly and so she stopped her machine. James Birch, the overlooker, knocked her to the floor. She got up as well as she could. He knocked her down again. Then she was carried to her house.......she was found dead in her bed. There was another girl called Mary......she knocked her food can to the floor. The master, Mr. Newton, kicked her and caused her to wear away till she died. There was another, Caroline Thompson, who was beaten till she went out of her mind. The overlookers used to cut off the hair of any girl caught talking to a lad. This head shaving was a dreadful punishment. We were more afraid of it than any other punishment for girls are proud of their hair." An interview in 1849 with an unknown woman who worked in a cotton factory as a child. "When I was seven years old I went to work at Mr Marshall’s factory at Shrewsbury. If a child became sleepy, the overlooker touches the child on the shoulder and says "come here". In the corner of the room there is an iron cistern filled with water. He takes the boy by the legs and dips him in the cistern, and then sends him back to work." Jonathan Downe interviewed in June 1832. "I have seen my master, Luke Taylor, with a horse whip standing outside the mill when the children have come too late.........he lashed them all the way to the mill." John Fairbrother, an overlooker, interviewed in 1819. "I work at the silk mill. I am an overlooker and I have to superintend the children at the mill. Their strength goes towards the evening and they get tired. I have been compelled to urge them to work when I knew they could not bear it. I have been disgusted with myself. I felt myself degraded and reduced to the level of a slave-driver. William Rastrick, interviewed in 1832. For laws banning children in factories - click here For Industrial Revolution Index - click here Revised May 2002 http://kansas.valueclick.com/redirect?host=hs0198380&size=468x60&b=indexpage&v=0 For one or two minutes think about your lifestyle now. Make a few notes at the back of your exercise book about what you do now, how you spend your time, what you eat etc. Think about the number of times you have moaned about coming to school !! You are probably unaware but there are many laws that are directly linked to children your age. Not so much about what you can do but what you are not allowed to do. For example, did you know that children are not allowed down coal mines ? Did you know that you are only allowed to work for a certain number of hours per week at a certain age ? Why were these laws brought in ? Read the following passages about children in the C19………and you will begin to see why. All the following passages are primary source evidence. This means that they came from people living at the time. This does not necessarily mean that they are accurate but they do give us a good idea of what life was like for children in the industrial cities of C19 Britain. "Two children I know got employment in a factory when they were five years old………….the spinning men or women employ children if they can get a child to do their business……..the child is paid one shilling or one shilling and six pence, and they will take that (five year old) child before they take an older one who will cost more." George Gould, a Manchester merchant, written in 1816. "The smallest child in the factories were scavengers……they go under the machine, while it is going……….it is very dangerous when they first come, but they become used to it." Charles Aberdeen worked in a Manchester cotton factory, written in 1832. "The task first allotted to Robert Blincoe was to pick up the loose cotton, that fell upon the floor. Apparently nothing could be easier……..although he was much terrified by the whirling motion and noise of the machinery and the dust with which he was half suffocated………he soon felt sick and was constantly stooping; his back ached. Blincoe took the liberty to sit down. But this he soon found was strictly forbidden in cotton mills. His overlooker, Mr. Smith, told him he must keep on his legs. This he did for six and a half hours without a break." John Brown, a reporter for "The Lion". Written in 1828. "We went to the mill at five in the morning. We worked until dinner time and then to nine or ten at night; on Saturday it could be till eleven and often till twelve at night. We were sent to clean the machinery on the Sunday." Man interviewed in 1849 who had worked in a mill as a child. "In the evening I walked to Cromford and saw the children coming from their work. These children had been at work from 6 o’clock in the morning and it was now 7 o’clock in the evening." Joseph Farington, 22nd August 1801 (diary entry) "I began work at the mill in Bradford when I was nine years old……we began at six in the morning and worked until nine at night. When business was brisk, we began at five and worked until ten in the evening." Hannah Brown, interviewed in 1832. "Very often the children are woken at four in the morning. The children are carried on the backs of the older children asleep to the mill, and they see no more of their parents till they go home at night and are sent to bed." Richard Oastler, interviewed in 1832. "Woodward and other overlookers used to beat me with pieces of thick leather straps made supple by oil, and having an iron buckle at the end, drew blood almost every time it was applied."John Brown quoted in the "Lion" newspaper in 1828. "Sarah Golding was poorly and so she stopped her machine. James Birch, the overlooker, knocked her to the floor. She got up as well as she could. He knocked her down again. Then she was carried to her house.......she was found dead in her bed. There was another girl called Mary......she knocked her food can to the floor. The master, Mr. Newton, kicked her and caused her to wear away till she died. There was another, Caroline Thompson, who was beaten till she went out of her mind. The overlookers used to cut off the hair of any girl caught talking to a lad. This head shaving was a dreadful punishment. We were more afraid of it than any other punishment for girls are proud of their hair." An interview in 1849 with an unknown woman who worked in a cotton factory as a child. "When I was seven years old I went to work at Mr Marshall’s factory at Shrewsbury. If a child became sleepy, the overlooker touches the child on the shoulder and says "come here". In the corner of the room there is an iron cistern filled with water. He takes the boy by the legs and dips him in the cistern, and then sends him back to work." Jonathan Downe interviewed in June 1832. "I have seen my master, Luke Taylor, with a horse whip standing outside the mill when the children have come too late.........he lashed them all the way to the mill." John Fairbrother, an overlooker, interviewed in 1819. "I work at the silk mill. I am an overlooker and I have to superintend the children at the mill. Their strength goes towards the evening and they get tired. I have been compelled to urge them to work when I knew they could not bear it. I have been disgusted with myself. I felt myself degraded and reduced to the level of a slave-driver. William Rastrick, interviewed in 1832 (Comment on this)
8:00 pm	history homework that wouldnt print @ home Modern History: The British Industrial Revolution & Victorian Child Labour In 1837, Queen Victoria came to the throne to lead a country into a series of changes, both good and bad, and to lead a great empire of international conquests and industrial blooming. This was the Victorian era, and Victoria came into power just as the nation was on the brink of what would later become known as the British Industrial Revolution. Each country at some point in it’s history or future undergoes both a political revolution and civil war and an industrial revolution, which could be described as the major application of machinery fuelled by sources of power such as coal and water- to goods manufacturing. After the Napoleonic wars, Britain was one of the first European countries to start evolving economically, with the first changes of industry beginning to take place between 1750 and the 1830s and finally blooming between 1830 and 1910. The rest of Europe was soon to follow. Suddenly, entire livelihoods of a nation based around agriculture and small, traditional crafts and trades businesses were pushed aside as more and more people moved into cities, taking up employment as labourers in manufacturing took up jobs in the new factories erected all over England. At the beginning of the 1750’s around 1/5 of the British population lived in London. By 1860 half of the British population were setting up homes in and around the edges of the metropolises. Housing was scarce. People used to living in open farms and country villages were living with an entire family in one room, sometimes even several families. The houses were started to being constructed in dismal brick rows (as seen on shows such as the title sequence of Coronation Street). There was one water pump in the back of the row, to be shared by all, and a block of a few public outdoor toilets. The sewer drainage ran in a river of stinking waste and garbage down the middle of the street between the two rows, air-born and water-born diseases such as Typhoid, Cholera and Consumption spreading quick and deadly among the overcrowded and impoverished slums. But these people who had moved from the country to come work at the factories could not afford doctors or better housing, and often the entire family had to work, including children from the age of four. Now there are many causes to be named for the sudden economical frenzy, and most of them lie in the new inventions that were sprouting up. The Victorian age was a time of rich, exotic exports and great inventiveness, and with it saw the invention of the electric telegraph, the railway, and most importantly was the discovery of locomotives and engines and the steam power that ran them perfected and developed by Thomas Newcomen, James Watt, Richard Trevithick and Oliver Evans. Up until then, most of Briain still wore itchy, mouldy woollen clothes, when an American by the name of Eli Whitnery invented cotton gin in 1793. With the gin and new steam energy process, the race for quicker, cheaper and more productive textile producing contraptions was set. The conclusion were groundbreaking aids such as- • The ‘flying shuttle’ and carding machines -John Kay • The Water-run mill frame -Richard Arkwright • The ‘spinning jenny’ -James Hargreaves And by 1830, over a 35-year period, there were now more than 100,000 power looms with 9,330,000 spindles in England and Scotland. Soon children were also hired to work in the textile factories (among other places such as mines and the infamous chimney sweep jobs), with desperately families needing money the factory owners took advantage, hiring small children for almost no money. Their small hands were quick and nimble enough to prepare and spin cotton, wool and silk, and the infants swift and limber to dart between machines to catch stray tufts and scraps and unwind knotted fabric strands, then run back out before their small bodies were crushed by the heavy machinery, which happened often. The children would work up to around 19 hours a day or more, with a one hour break. Orphans were also taken in by factory owners, for no pay, telling legislators and unions that the unpaid labour was justified by the (leaky) roof and (scarce) food the factory owner had given to such orphans. The said factory owners often treated the children very cruely, and ignored their safety completely around the dangerous machinery. The very small children were sent to assist the textile weavers, who often abused them and were violent. There were many strict and harsh rules around the factories and mills, such as not being allowed to sit down and rest between multi-houred shifts, and extreme timekeeping. Children were sometimes dragged naked from the beds very early in the morning, their clothes thrust at them, and told they could change at the mill/factory to ensure they were not even a moment late. Flouting rules also carried terrible painful punishments. One such known forfeit for being late or not working the full quota was ‘weighting’, where a heavy lead weight would be tied around the child’s neck, and the child forced to walk the aisles of the workplace as an example to others. Yet it was a long while before laws and rules were created for the wellbeing of labouring children, and by then many had been lost to death from disease, malnutrition, and often fatigue. The first move made in improving factory conditions was the Factory Act passed by Parliament in 1833. This act stated that children from ages nine to thirteen were permitted to be worked only eight hours a day, and those between fourteen and eighteen could only work twelve. Each child was to attend school (financed by the factory owner) for at least two hours a day. This was the start of compulsory education. Parliament elected officials to make sure these obligations were carried out. Soon enough, the employment of children in mines and mills across the country became decreasingly rarer since the death of Victoria, with no child in Britain today allowed to work under the age of sixteen, with the exception of trivial jobs such as paper routes. All of this may seem unknown to our daily lives and horrors of the unconventional past, but in truth these same examples of unhumane child extortion still continues in exact parallel in third-world countries, striving to create and manufacture every part of our modern life from designer shoe and clothing labels to furniture. We may have acted in the past for us, but we should still act for their future. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 24th, 2005
4:54 pm	creative writing notes MODERN DAY FAIRYTALE So pull these blankets around you and settle in this bed we never got to share And I’ll tell you a Modern Day Fairytale. And the maiden, down below the tower, opens her shirt to reveal a corset of dynamite “I’ll blow a hole through this wall of thorns so you can escape free” Only to find the prince had stabbed himself yelling “NO ONE CAN SAVE ME” Oh there are no happy endings. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
4:33 pm	poem, 23/1/05 COUGH UP YOUR HEART FROM YOUR SLEEVE You used to hate it when I smoked “It’ll drive you to an early grave, and I wouldn’t want to see that” You said And you used to hate the way the nicotine smell hung to my teeth as we exchanged breath “I think all that tar is going to your heart!” you screamed, “because it’s as black as night!” Oh, but not as black as your hair, my dear Playing across my closed eyelids like a film noir And your skin was as deep caramel as the logo on Camel Lights Your eyes as wild as the cowboy on the Malboro box But at times you could be as cold as the foil walls And your words harsh like the worst of coughing fits But now that you’re gone my apartment is an empty and depressing reminder like card box once I’ve run out Your betrayal more rancid than any 3-pack smoke stench And the way I miss you is worse than any craving..the hole in my stomach, my throat, my chest- Worse than cancer You used to hate it when I smoked “It’ll drive you to an early grave, and I wouldn’t want to see that” But the day that you left, you gave me a quiet goodbye, pressed your lips to my unshaven cheek, and three fresh cigarettes to my hand. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 25th, 2004
5:53 pm	just a little bit of foolin :P meery xmas all. and yes i got a *new* radio for xmas. “DON’T STAND SO CLOSE TO THAT RADIO, IT MIGHT GIVE YOU RADIATION” oh how I love my radio sleek black insect shell little blinking red eyes and a voice you can adjust to tortured screams or smothered whispers its web of waves trapping so many souls oh how I love you demon! ******** oh radio radio give me some noise to clear out my head to deafen this background soundtrack (Comment on this)
Monday, November 29th, 2004
4:54 pm	“I LIKE MY GIRLS LIKE I LIKE MY COFFEE” Step past the teenage clichés of rotting slowly innocence in the hallways/ curl your salon-nail switchblades and push open the door to the tear stained bathrooms of your educational prison/ but the bars on the windows aren’t to stop you jumping but the teachers/ “They say these are the best years of our lives”/ Christ I hope not. Lick your lips and lust after the reflection you see in the mirror/ these graffiti poems written up on the piss-stained walls are the same teen songs you’ll slit your wrists to. Remember when you used to wear the key to treasure on a thread around your neck? You were so innocent then. (what happened?) Now that key is permanently in the trapdoor- escape hatch- between your thighs. And all they have to do is twist… (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 12th, 2004
1:56 pm	enlgish class story ‘HEY, DOLLFACE’ She hadn’t meant to kill her. The blood running down the stairs was sanguine against the neutral shade of beige carpeting that coated the steps where Marguerite had fallen. She lay slumped at the bottom, her beautiful body bent and molded across the three bottom steps in an unnatural angle. Her blonde hair caught the light, and for a moment Paula was blinded by the pure strands of sunshine streaming from her sister’s head. The delicate silver crucifix Marguerite had received for her communion had wrapped itself around her neck twice, cutting into it and branding the imprint of Jesus’ crucified carcass in her breast. This further promoted the image of her angelic form, but then the sun passed behind a cloud and the illusion was shattered as her pale skin turned grey in the shadow but the sticky red mass of blood and cartilage on her scalp was just as bright and blatant as before. Paula sat down on the stairs and leaned against her knees, resting her chin on her hands. She watched the lifeless body, floundering like a pathetic fish. Later she would tell herself that it had been an accident, they had been arguing, she had lashed out spontaneously. It had been just a light shove… She was disappointed. She had expected it to be like when they had gone to stay with their grandmother in rural Maine over thanksgiving as children, and watching in sick glee and fascination as the headless chicken ran around the garden before climaxing the event in a series of choking sounds and collapsing, twitching. With her sister there’d just been a gasp and hands grappling at air, then sliding down and slumping, blood bubbling down her mouth as her spinal cord punctured her lung, and her torn scalp. Until her eyes finally glazed over with her pupils rolling to the heavens. That was all. After a quantity of countless minutes, the body hadn’t moved. For her sister had no longer become ‘Marguerite’ in her mind, but ‘the body’. This transition or address took place quickly and fell into place with ease. She stole a last look at it, then stood up and walked over to her vanity mirror, checking to see if her face showed any evidence of what she had just done. She tried on a set of impassive looks. They suited her all equally well. Then, for a moment, as she was spreading cream on her face to cover up the un-ladylike flush there, she thought she saw Raymond’s face, just over her shoulder. Her face turned in Marguerites. Paula stood up quickly, knocking over her stool in the clichéd way that the thespians she had seen do, and gasped. Marguerites face also gasped. Paula struck the mirror, beating it again and again. She slipped, and lay there on the hardwood floor, crying and bleeding as the shards of glass downpoured over her like pointed stars. ‘Annie’ she said, ‘my dear Annabel. You promised me everything would be okay”. ***** The crazy old lady in the house on top of the hill couldn’t remember her last name. No one in the town could remember it either. At once it had almost been Burndart. ‘Almost?’ asked the young man. ‘Oh yes, very nasty business.’ Mrs. DeAngelo, who owned the deli with her husband in the town of Williamsburg, wiped off the table, picking up the young man’s copy of the Herald Tribune, to push the apple Danish crumbs onto the floor where people didn’t notice them so much. She put it back down, catching a glimpse of a cover spread of a sweating president with his fingers crossed behind his back. The young man had a very official looking suit, greased black hair, coke bottle spectacles and a brief case that read IRS. Suddenly she felt like moving away to another table. He didn’t look particularly interested in her stories of local village drama, but she continued nevertheless, mostly out of nervousness. ‘Oh yes’, she said again, ‘about sixty or so years back. Was all set to marry the governor’s son, a lawyer with good money to his name. They was all surprised, weren’t they Mario?’ She directed this comment and an old man playing Scrabble with a small dark-haired boy in the corner. His head bobbed, most probably at the game, but this greasy-skinned woman with lipstick an unflattering shade, the same color of the spectrum as, say, roadkill that’s been in the sun all day- took it as an answer. The young man, who had always dreamed of being a freelance writer but wasn’t quite exciting enough for quite that type of thing, noted this smugly. ‘What happened?’ he asked, already searching in his pockets for money to pay for his stone cold coffee. He hoped she would take this body language as a sign to shut her trap already. He was eager to get today’s business all over so he could take the two-hour commute back to the city and spend a night in his sleazy motel room with the lights off watching the illegal channels. The lady wiped her hands on her too-tight trousers and picked up his coffee cup. She noted sourly that half of it had gone undrank. ‘Her younger sister moved into the picture. More his kinda match, o’course. Everyone was all surprised when he picked the elder originally. Wasn’t much to look at, and was about ten years his senior. We all thought it was her controlling nature, mebe he was one of those men who liked dominating-type women, who knows? More my father’s generation, o’course.’ She jerked a thumb back at the old man with the board game. “Anyways, they were all set to get married, until her sister came into the picture. She was a governess, gone half the year before. Love at first sight they say. He blew off the marriage and they eloped. Very romantic”. She was surprised at her last comment, as she was religious Italian woman who believed in marriage as a life-long commitment. Her hand flew to the small crucifix around her neck shed found in a flea market at the church. “I thought her sister died young?” the man asked. He frowned and started searching through the papers in his briefcase. “Yes. Fell down the stairs late at night. Very tragic. Some short while later the young man died in Paris after being drafted for the second Great War.I believe he was in the-“ The man suddenly stood up, pushing his money into Mrs. DeAngelos hand and not so much swept- the superior exit he was aiming for- but slouched out. She held her hand up to her mouth. The money smelt like Vaseline. *** The man knocked at the door. He adjusted his glasses and stuck a hand in his pocket, hoping the old woman wasn’t home. He had better things to do then rob old ladies of their life savings in the name of the government to pay for phoney wars. He wanted to get home. Though it’s not like he had much of a social life anyway. He knocked twice, and as he turned to go, the door opened. He turned around. In the doorway stood an old woman, wearing a white jazz dress gone grey over time. It sagged just like the way her sad yellow skin dripped waxily from her bones. Her feet were bare and filthy, and her hair was white and loose. In her arms she cradled an old-fashioned doll who clearly was taken care of better than the woman. Her little white tea dress with the lacy apron was pressed and clean, and her thinning blond hair was brushed smooth. The edge was chipped off her nose. The old woman looked past him. “Yes?” She seemed to address to no one in particular. Her voice was like sandpaper, but harsher. He checked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. It is very well known that people don’t welcome tax collectors very much. “May I talk to you about..er..finances?” The old woman turned around and walked inside, leaving the door open. He took this as an invitation and closed the door behind him, pushing off his (government employee regulation) shined black shoes and setting them next to each other neatly on the placemat. He traced her to the kitchen in his (regulation) navy blue socks. The house smelt of stale mothballs and codeine. “Me and Annabel were just having tea” the old woman said. She motioned him to the table. “Will you have some?” “Erm..yes.” The young man was eager to get the diner’s bad coffee taste out of his mouth. The old woman set the doll on the side of the side of the table and got up to bring the teapot over. It had little blue flowers painted on the side. The man drank from a chipped ‘Do it for Uncle Sam!’ mug and stared at the doll, who stared back icily. “You live alone, I understand?” He asked, opening his serious black briefcase and shuffled some papers. The old woman nodded and smoothed down the doll’s skirt, laying a napkin over it. “And your name is..Paula…no last name..hmmm…” “I suppose so. The children in the village call me Paula Paperbag.” “Well..erm..Paula..I am afraid to remind you on the behalf of the Internal Revenue Service that you haven’t been paying taxes for quite some time now. There seems to pay a problem with your finances.” “Tell me,” she said, eyeing him with an equally icy stare to match the doll’s. “Just why should I pay taxes?” “Erm..” the young man struggled to remember the response to this question that they taught them in the training course. Most people actually didn’t ask this question when he came to tell them their property and belongings were being repossessed. There was usually just a lot of screaming and crying and the occasional waving about of guns. “To pay for roads, m’am. And schools and bridges. That sort of thing”. “I do not use the roads,” the old woman, now said coldly, ‘Nor the bridges. I do have any children to send to school. I do not use electricity, or gas. My house is lit by paraffin lamps and I use a woodstove. I have not left this house for fifty years, give or take”. “How do you eat?” The man imagained she would say that she drank her own urine, or something equally heinous. She did seem slightly unhinged. He spat his tea back into the cup. “That nice DiAngelo woman at that café brings me little care packages or groceries every month and does my washing. Very nice lady. Shame about her being a Catholic”. The man stared at her in sick fascination as she whispered to the doll for a moment, then snapped out of it. “Well, yes, the last will and testament of your..ex..fiancé Raymond Burndart left you some money…but not quite enough…” Her head snapped up and he saw something almost like emotion flicker in her eyes. “What?” “Oh yes..” he shuffled around in his briefcase unnecessarily again, trying to provoke a sense of fear. The he drew an old creased letter out of his pocket, the envelope defiled by age and manners of weather. The old lady opened it with steady hands and a steel impression that buckled as she read the contents. She closed the letter and held in tightly in her hands until her knuckles turned white. “ I see” she said. She would not look over at the doll. The young man suddenly felt very uncomfortable, sitting in this brown kitchen the same colour as the lady’s liver spots, drinking brown tea. He decided to leave this case to the big boys, and send a form the next morning for a repossession van. He stood up and shook her hand at the door. She noticed he smelt like Vaseline. He noticed she smelt like moulding newspapers, and felt like it too. “Ah..well, very sorry for your loss ma’m”. She nodded. Neither knew whether or not he was apologising for the losing of her belongings or her past. *** The old lady watched him go. He was the only person shed spoken to for fifty odd years, except for Mrs.DeAngelo and that nice hitchhiker who was lost that one time. She went back to the table and wiped off Annabel’s mouth gently and choked, almost crying in a small child-like voice ‘Ann-y. You said everything would be Ok’ The doll was motionless. ‘You said that if I killed Marguerite, I could be a little girl again. It would be like before her time, when it was just you and me. And everything would be O-Kay”. The doll smoothed out her skirts and made a sour face. It was though, wasn’t it? It was just like old times. Until now. Paula took the creased letter out her pocket and smoothed it out gently, the creases of the letter disappearing into the creases of her yellowed crumpled skin. She read the note, not addressed to her, but to her sister. But in a way, it was addressed to her. It was paper-clipped to his last testament. In it he left ‘PAULA PRINCE- A SUM OF THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS AND ALL MY POSESSIONS IN THE EVENT OF MY FORTHCOMING DEATH’. She recognised his eventual way of speaking, not purposefully pessimistic, but more jaded. A quality and calm state of mind she had never managed to gain in the ten odd years she was his senior, nor after his departure from not the world, but from her. She could have guessed that the last letter he wrote would be addressed to Maguerite, but she could not have foretold what it said. Half the words were eaten away by withering years, a portion others blacked out in typical army censorship where it seemed trivial. “To Maguerite Prince-Burndhart, I am at ___ ___, in ditches that swim with the most lurid things you would never even want to think of dreaming about in nightmares. This will kill me. You always tell me to never talk this way, you hate my depressing, logical stream of thought, you’d clap your soft hands over those pale ears and shake your head, whistling Dixie or Amazing Grace, or some other typical school-girl chant to disturb your concience away from those awful things that would drive you crazy if they were to penetrate… Oh how I used to love your care-free ways. It was the nemesis to my own black thoughts. You were never foolish, but appeared that way to me. My last moments with you, your last letters- they ate away at my maturity. You are a beautiful girl, but I have never quite recovered from Pauline and her business-like, efficient sense of the world, her steady and controlling approach to weakness and the earth that caused it so. If I were to ever leave this god damned foxhole/ditch/barracks that I’m stationed in, I would return to her, and stigmatise myself to a lifelong apology even though she would never reveal if she was hurt. But I love her in that way, and many others you wouldn’t understand as your sugar-sweet field-of-gold sense of the word, the notion. You are not foolish, my dear, my sweet piece of flesh and golden hair. For that is all you are to me now. I was foolish to ever leave your sister. Pass on to her my love. And for gods sakes make peace with her. Petty fights are so taxing to all parties at hand. from Sgt. Raymond Burnhart, division____, platoon _____ ___ ______ _____” ‘I didn’t know. Oh sweet lord, the mistakes I made..’ The mistakes filled the silent gap that hovered. ‘He liked me for being grown-up’ Paula said, her eyes glassy. But you aren’t grown up anymore. ‘No…you said everything would be better if I was a little girl again….if I killed Maguerite, it could be just you and me, like before..’ But now it is just you and me. ‘You said he liked Maguerite for being young and..’ Paula bit her lip in a very childish manner, ‘foolish.’ ‘You said..you promised..it would all be fine. I could be young again..be those things..’ You were never those things. He left us. She left us too. Your parents left us. But I have never left you. Yet. ‘No…’ Search yourself, you are returning to the way you were. You’re not young. You’ll grow old and you wont believe. Then I will go away..you’ll be alo- ‘NO’ ‘I’m not OLD’ Paula looked up into the mirror as these words left her shrivelled thin lips. That steely look she’d never noticed for decades past now had returned to her eyes. Her hair, which in her mind had retained it’s tawdy dirt-brown color of her youth was turning whote..grey..She screeched and started to rip it out in clumps. It fell it brittle wisps around Annabell’s small china feet, blening into her little white starched tea skirt, that somehow had never turned soft over the years. Annabel waited for her to calm down. Then she would give her the answer. She had it. Annabel always had all the answers. You’ll be alone. All alone. Do you really want that? ‘No.’ You know what you have to do… Paula nodded. She lifted the doll, cradling her in her arms. She dragged her feet in a shuffle down the rotting wooden steps to the bathroom. Would it still be usuable…? How long had it been? She never knew what day it was anymore since the Day The Clocks Stopped. Everyone except Annabell was gone then. That was her only marker of late history- the day the clocks stopped. For there had been no one to wind them back up again. She opened the bathroom cabinet. The portable glass mirrors was still shattered from that day when she broke it in her anxiety. The day she killed Mageurite. She read the across the bottles with quite steady fingertips -regarding what was about to happen- most of them surely would be invaluable to her now. There, to the very left, near the cobwebs that died long ago and were spit out again by ancient spiders, then died and resurrected.. They grew like a third layer over the skin of dust that coated the spare bottle of kerosene. It had been a long time since she had used those lamps. There was still some of the orange liquid floating about the bottom, crashing browny waves excited at the thought of fire they’d never thought theyd see again. But they never saw any fire except the fire down in her gut, as it creeped like diluted molasses, heavy, down her throat. She liked fire, but she wouldn’t have been able to find matches anyway. Did matches expire? Oh yes, she had put that bottle to her lips. The old glass cut at her lips as she poured the whole remnants in. Down the hatch. It rolled over her taste buds (that dulled along with her other senses over time), and began to creep over her tonsils as it ate away hungrily at the inflamed flesh of her throat then began to feast at her inside organs, crawling over them, into their crevices and folds in excitement, and burned her with the fire she craved. She would have screamed if there had been a voicebox left to scream with. She would have tried to stay upright, dignified, if the nerves in her legs hadn’t been swallowed, making them buckle as they feel in the doorway, at the top of the staircase. The staircase which Marguerite ‘fell’ down. Maybe the kerosene leaked out her pores. Maybe her eyes clouded over. I really don’t know. And maybe around that time the nerves in her hands and fingers went as well, or it was just the force of the fall. But Annabel dropped from Paula’s useless fingers and rolled down the stairs, and shattered into little pieces where Marguerite’s skull had done the same. Her little china doll body broke into jagged edges that cut right into the wood. Her little glass eyes rolled up in its little china broken head. He little pink lips were still smiling that macabre smile. It would be some while before her body was found. If it had ever been found at all. About a week later the IRS men (late..as usual) beefy and eager to get it over with arrived in their vans and U-Hauls. One went inside and called out ‘Hell-OOO, anybody home?’ He went down into the basement to see if there was any silver, or anything of interest for the guys to pocket before claiming old dollhouses tea cosies and other such kitsch. Nothing. He took a drag of his hand-rolled cigarette and flicked ash behind him. Over the space of a week the remains of the kerosene dripped through the rotting wood and into rags into the basement. The entire house blew up in a searing inferno that rattled the mugs of crappy coffee down in the DeAngelo’s cafe. Paula got revenge on everyone in the end. Even herself and that adult she was afraid of becoming again. Perhaps the last thing she saw before her eyes gave in was the doll, lying on those steps, broken, just like Marguerite had been so many years before. And in her mind, she saw Marguerite there, Paula’s own blood that dripped down the stairs from the landing from the impact of the fall, replaced as Marguerite’s. Her sister lay there, as she had that fateful day, the same day All The Clocks Stopped. Her sister, her golden hair spread out, falling around her shoulders and face, glinting as the sun caught it in it’s trap, wanting to own it, also sending silver beams off the little crucifix. She really did look just like an angel should. Paula learnt that all angels are attached to wires in the end. Current Mood: hungry Current Music: bright eyes: the calendar hung itself (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, October 8th, 2004
11:22 pm	can't even remember when this was written...old 5 minute speedwrite :D Have you ever looked at the sky? Seen the gray and swear a sigh eyes fluttering like hyper butterflies something so obvious should be a crime murder in the first degree [Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<they [...] heal..>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] <SOLAR SYSTEM> Have you ever looked at the sky? Seen the gray and swear a sigh eyes fluttering like hyper butterflies something so obvious should be a crime murder in the first degree <they saltine heal..> water boils on heated skin only you know how your eyes burn me Have you ever looked in the dark? Caught a shooting star but it slipped through your fingers and melted away to leave back into the dark again Have you ever looked at the sky? Seen a shooting star? and watched it pass you by you made the sun jealous, so now I burn instead ********* as you can see the last line was almost a basis for a line in FOR YOU.. Current Mood: happy Current Music: ...silence..typing..etc.... (Comment on this)
10:57 pm	written in March this year... PINK RIBBON Tired and breathing hard, running back to the safety of the start. fire the pistol that releases me and watch me stumble, staggering incertainly and let me search these words for meaning you keep on taking apart this jigsaw puzzle heart and putting back the pieces wrong (looking across a crowded room, this is as close as you’ll ever let me get to you) but I don’t have the heart to correct you so keep on doing those things you do chorus- [Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<cut [...] that’s>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] PINK RIBBON Tired and breathing hard, running back to the safety of the start. fire the pistol that releases me and watch me stumble, staggering incertainly and let me search these words for meaning you keep on taking apart this jigsaw puzzle heart and putting back the pieces wrong (looking across a crowded room, this is as close as you’ll ever let me get to you) but I don’t have the heart to correct you so keep on doing those things you do chorus- <cut the pink ribbon that’s keeping me here I’m always watching everyone leave me behind and I’m so close to the finish line whispering in your face so you don’t heR you know these words mean everything> Current Music: adelphi://attention (Comment on this)
9:02 pm	written in November last year... well, hello, who’s this? someone new hanging on your arm you two are so cute I just want to puke up all the memories of you for them to see it took a while to keep them swallowed down but it’s all right now I hope you guys have fun on your night out and it really sucks to go to the movies on your own to spend Saturday nights all alone single’s depression list sign up here enough reassurance for another year I’ll just be on my way home kicking the chip on my shoulder across the road it’s not that I can’t read the writing on the wall it’s just that the script is way too small and I wish I could be swallowed up by the cracks in the sidewalk and I know you can clearly hear me when I say I’m by myself and you know if you want to call I’ll be up late… Current Mood: calm Current Music: nirvana://smells like teen spirit (Comment on this)
5:00 pm	my first ever (unfinished) stab at emo..written about a year ago...for J... <'SUMMER LOVING'> I must have been crazy to think that you would ever change months go by and lonely hateful nights (I hate the emptiness) and you are still the same this song is about friendship and how they turn into your enemies then into friends again (then they take their dagger...) and stick it in your back so painfully (this nightmare seems to be recurring)\ chorus- you always beat me to the ground I try to get back up but you just kick me back down the taste of dust mingles with fresh cuts this bleeds the truth in the words you don't want to hear yeah, you know yourself (but I still know something that you dont) v2. you make it look so easy as you look disconcerted when you rip out the heart (my heart, your heart, their heart, quickly breathing death) and crush it with your fingertips and youve done it so many times your fingerprints have been singed off from repeatedly bleaching away the crimson red (BUT DONT WORRY WE STILL ALL KNOW WHO YOU ARE) and it seems to be happening again.. somebody wake me up I must be dreaming (DON"T WORRY I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU ARE) (this nightmare seems recurring) if this is real life, then why am I still SCREAMING? chorus- you always beat me to the ground I try to get back up but you just kick me back down the taste of dust mingles with fresh cuts this bleeds the truth in the words you don't want to hear yeah, you know yourself (but I still know something that you dont) x2 yeah, you know yourself (but still I know something...) you know you (I know something that you dont..) you know you in a way only arrogance do (d-d-does..) I know something you don't know I know something you dont know I know something... I KNOW SOMETHING THAT YOU DON'T (you know you) and soon everyone will know but you dont need me to tell you chorus- you always beat me to the ground I try to get back up but you just kick me back down the taste of dust mingles with fresh cuts this bleeds the truth in the words you don't want to hear yeah, you know yourself (but I still know something that you dont) you always beat me... to the ground you always beat me.. better at everything.. I try to get back up but you just kick me back down the taste of dust mingles with fresh cuts this bleeds the truth in the words you don't want to hear yeah, you know yourself (but I still know something that you dont) X2 and when you stab me in the back (yet again..) and my spinal cord releases the tension I'll look around (but I won't let you win..) and the last thing I'll say will be 'DAMN THAT"LL NEED A TETANUS SHOT' Current Music: senses fail:// irony of dying on your birthday (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 7th, 2004
2:02 pm	this is my words on the tip of my tongue and my eye down the scope of the barrel of a gun FRIEND's ONLY to see the rest of my creative shit ask nicely and I'll make you a pal. Current Mood: morose Current Music: sleater kinney://Oh! (4 Comments |Comment on this)