General Writings - Not Poetry

[Ishan]

This thread is for those of us who, whilst needing to express ourselves, have little to say in organized poetry. I've written my share, here and there; but more I find it easier to express myself in protracted diatribes that lead from my present frame of mind to a desired outcome. Or if not a desired outcome, at least away from my present frame of mind.

I'll start with this one:

RAIN

So many random memories resurface without warning the sanity of the moment is forsaken to glimpse the past. There is the carnival in Santa Maria, the road to Santa Barbara where, at a hospital, needles found their mark upon my face. The hemangioma was ruthless, but so were those needles.

The memory of Idaho and the warm, brief summers spent sneaking out of the house at night with Jeremy and Ryan. And there is the recall of the fondness for Jonathan and Dominique. For the latter, there was a crush, for Dominique was a beautiful boy. I would get excited every time I saw him.

There is the memory of nothing; just equally all memories are seen. Nothing can be accomplished when the memories race through my mind in this fashion. It is as though the brain is dying, and in those dying moments all one’s life is seen; but instead of the darkness claiming consciousness, I succumb to tears. Rage is the product of so many forgotten hurts, and these racing memories suddenly bring elusive and powerful pains to the surface in a fashion unavoidable.

It makes me laugh, and I cry, and I wish I could escape the hurt that refuses to die. Death seems a comfortable option, but I despise suicide as God would. Yet, when the flesh is in such pain no comfort of God or any deity is sufficient.

Then the flood of tears and all that horrible and delightful pain is felt, and there is a washing of the soul for a moment. Then, in reclamation of composure, the hurting is chased away. The soul begins to throb once more.

There are wounds that have festered to become resentment. There is resentment that permits the entertaining notion of revenge. There are plots that are grandiose and so terrible I shan’t pen them here.

And I remember the days when fires burned in the deserts of Las Vegas. Those were days when, for a few months, I could allow myself to scorch the Earth as my own heart was burned by the very pains that even now boil the blood.

There is the need to belong to some group, as all creatures of intelligence and even some without are so gregarious. There is a need for solitude and isolation. There is the requirement I be noticed, whether for good or bad. Notoriety seems to differ little from quality fame; and at once I desire anonymity.

Hope is a lovely notion, but despair is more tangible. Remorse breeds despair, and the child of despair seeks only hope found in a past that never existed. Fragments of the life that have come and gone are reassembled in a collage of beauty; the falsehood of it is ignored. Perhaps the greatest insanity lay there, and the pain is the only way to restore the sanity.

I know nothing of the resolution of these things, or of how all these days that came to pass shall influence the nights yet to come. The weeks and months and years hence are frightening, but I would not suffer the musings of eternity without having first explored the opportunities that lay ahead.

So I shall trudge further, letting the blood boil through the beating heart that carries the oxygen to the brain that remembers all of these things, and hopes for better.

[Ishan]

I shall continue:

Part II - THE LONG BLACK QUIET

The night would not be fair, and dreams would not come to pass. The sky was obscured by clouds, and the clouds of fine debris that lingered above the waste of the land below would obscure even the clouds. All that could be seen, then, were the wisps of black haze.

It was quiet, and the quiet was so disturbing because there was only to be heard the quiet. Not a cry and not a yell and no weeping and no pain and not a single roar were sounded. The sky was misty black and the air was still and the sounds of the earth had been made silent.

And across the darkling waters of a river now dead lay the remnants of a gathering place where once the shoppers would delight in their purchase. The buildings barely found their own purchase on the soil, and the structure was scorched and silhouetted against the wispy black of the night. Only a scarce red glow betrayed its presence.

The timber of homes and other buildings once proud and gallant across the shore of the dead river now littered the land that had been blown and swept and buried beneath the city that died here. Turning head from here to there and seeing the scattered debris, only the blackness could be more expansive. There was a far, far gaze to gaze to see beyond any of this, and there was no way to see beyond what was here.

So began the dream that was a nightmare, but it was a necessary dream. It was a portent, a warning, a shadow in the blackness of the evening, where even shadows were not supposed to be seen. But this was a shadow yet to come, and those are the darkest of all, for they are given to the evils that are yet to be.

The last stairwell of the proud mall found on the opposite shore of the river was an ascent to nowhere, and the soiled faces of the masses, bemused and stricken with terror, and some faces hollow for the shock of it all, were lined up to step upon the steps to nowhere. Nowhere was still better than here, where no thing, animate or not, would wish to remain. Even the dead were attempting escape from the quiet.
It was an awful silence. Its preternatural echo a vacuum of needs forsaken to the waste of what once existed. All of it still existed, but none of it remained as it had been.

One man stood upon the shadows of the earth in the shadow of the haze that hid the moon, which would not cast light to create shadow through the thicket of death. His stare was a vacant glance into the depth of his hope, into the despair of his reason and the tragedy that fell at his feet, as much as it spread across the battlefield that knew no battles. But the field was now a battle of good and night, of day and evil, of life and worms, of sanity and death.

Nothing that crawled gave a damn, and all things that feared the crawling things would run for the stairs. There was nothing at the top of the stairs, but all reason was abandoned. There was no reason for it, just as there was no understanding the reason for this scene. It simply was a scene that could not be ignored.

As much as the sight and the echoes of silence were known, they were displaced by the sight of a warm and bright day that was as blinding as the instance of creation! Non sequitirs were more sensible than the change of scene. It all made perfect sense.

There was the thought of an old friend, and a return to the sea, a drive across a bridge that spanned the intra-coastal waters and separated the island from the mainland. There was a brief memory and the vision of a new office that was known previously and was yet to be known. All these perceptions were perfectly normal and good, and there was no curiosity in their manifestation, and not a moment of incredulity was felt.

And it was silent.

Just as quickly there was the sight of the ceiling, and the man emerged from his dreams to see the world about him. The world was still as he had remembered it the previous night, but it was now the morning. And he arose from his bed sheets to face the water that was the river, a serpentine river meeting the gaping junction of the intra-coastal waters that would carry the brackish liquid to the salty sea. Across the river were the stately homes that pronounced the wealth of their inhabitants.

Finally there was sound.