The End

[ajttk-deactivated20180528]

no not the end jim - waiting for “ her favorite” and sipping coffee - his mind 

wandered

vignettes presented themselves - each one 

another direction explored 

his hunger all but forgotten 

i cant tell you the meal finally served 

it would spoil the fun 

i thot i could wrap it - up in a bow - tie the loose ends - wat a fucking ego yah - put another dollar in the jukebox baby - inflation - it wuz tumblr - there was - coffee - imma re reblog the entirety - a kitty pile of poetry 

tumblr at its finest 

driver where you taking us…

as a contributor where did it take you ? give the drummer some and make james brown happy - please please please - write a comment - better yet a hijack 

[inanotherdirection]

@ajttk with a sublime summation of our most recent game.

Please do consider the invitation to leave a comment about your part -- put a penny in the slot. And yeah, a hijack would be more in the spirit of the thing.

Thanks to all who played, all who followed along, all who gave it a thought at all.

See you next time...

[inanotherdirection]

Inanotherdirection 2017A closes

I hope everyone had a good time playing and following along. It seems like the momentum, enthusiasm, what have you, have tapered off, and I’m bringing the curtain down on this one.

Thank you to everyone who volunteered to contribute and for all the fine work you all added to the project. go on back through and check it out again, I think you all made it into something special.

Disappointed that it’s over? You know, it’s never really over. I’m already having to actively fight back the crazy ideas vying to be the next concept.

[maya-doolali]

carafe.

cups       are    filled                with

   knots.               from the mouth

pours        steam,     cloudy              and

feels good when it               sinks

       in,  driving a sky from             knots

-stirred      the wheel,                stirs

the cup.                 pours and

                pours,  she

spilling

- Maya Doolali @inanotherdirection

[inanotherdirection]

Found a missing piece by @maya-doolali. It fits perfectly.

[marauderfan]

@inanotherdirection this might go with ‘Crimson Feathers’.

[inanotherdirection]

[speechless]

[reinventing-wednesday]

what has happened an alternate version // of what you had in your head // you think // about the sun cutting through // the thickness of the forest // you think // about the six inches of snow lying undisturbed // soft and quiet outside of your mother’s front door // you think // of explosions and smoke // gas masks and bomb shelters // mortars and mortal wounds // as you lay dying // in a field far from home // you think // I will not allow this to happen // never again // I cannot bear it // but you let go // to feel the full body shake // your grief has become.

[inanotherdirection]

Initially, @reinventing-wednesday had to pass on her turn, but she’s back with this gem that fit right in here.

[checkers120]

Crimson feathers

Your feathers fall soundlessly across the floor as crimson blood trickles slowly from your creasing smile;

I catch your fall as gently as I could manage but my legs give, shaking as I see your amber skin turn ever so pale;

I can’t help but mourn how graceful your wings were, how torn they are now;

Death was a peace you never deserved, a hollow I could never let you endure;

I don’t hear the screams, the sirens, the police, the priest… all I can hear is your empty breath, a lasting torment in my ears, all I can feel is your loose grasp of my shoulder, a cruel reminder of how I’ll never feel it again, all I can think is how you never believed in priests anyway, how you’d want to be remembered…

How you don’t want to be remembered.

@inanotherdirection collab

[inanotherdirection]

Each turn in our game has been spectacular. This one is so taut.

[teacup13-deactivated20200319]

Monday doesn’t start until my coffee matches your eyes, your hand retracts the wings to your soul, and though your lips keep my heart steadfast in residual loneliness, I still wear the skin you scarred me in to draw blood.

Misused Metaphors (via teacup13)

So much to find in every one of these turns of the game.

[mjao7]

It’s Sunday night, and my bookshelf is a graveyard for trees.   Ineffective martyrs. I don’t read anything anymore unless a thousand tiny stars burn it into my brain.   On my desk, a typewriter, unfinished drafts—epitaphs— the only flowers laid at the feet of this tombstone: dust.   I’d send my regards too, but I’ve run out of pretty things, between forgetting to put the lid on my multicoloured pens, squandering my inheritance, my mother’s ribbons, and oversleeping away all my bad metaphors.   I set my alarm clock on my bedside table, another wooden corpse.   I wait for Monday morning, my duvet a welcome shroud.

sleep is for the dead » ecm

@inanotherdirection collaboration

(via mjao7)

Another terrific turn in our game.

[the-somnambulant-campfire]

Life is But a Dream

      The boat rocked dead against the wind.       Bridge and ballast both breathed as easily as her bloated bagpipes, burping whips and hawws between tightly zipped, amethyst lips into the scalding winter sleet pouring over the crumbling earth. Ticks and spittle, fashioned from tin and brittle teak, coated her coat and sloughed off in the torrents of her oily tears.        Coiling ears reached from the woods, knotted eyes blinking sap from charred and slaking bark, as the world around her burned to the rhythm of the rain.       Where has the time gone? Where is the clock when you actually feel like paying attention to it? Pickles have got nothing on this brine, she thought. Pearls are nothing to this swine.       Her laugh was almost manic with the panic of tantrum, ear drums bleeding seedlings dusted to dander over dandelions screaming cinders into the wind.       Mortar and mud moved as meaningfully as muriatic acid through the mineral-heavy mimicry of martyrdom fleshed out atop her cries for help, and the boat still rocked dead against the wind

      Her own snoring and snorting shoved her into the real world, heaving and whirling, soaring portly into the storm of waking life. She turned over on the bunk and spied his face, skeletal and broken across the room in the twilight of the cheap alarm clock flashing–

“12:00–12:00–12:00–12:01”

–and her sigh eddied, frothed and uncanny, into the nooks and crannies of the bookshelf and its sandy little timeshares, twiddling teaspoons into tonnage, whittling eternity into footprints on an alien shore. It echoed softly off the keys of the typewriter he bought in Sedona, and never used, sitting next to his laptop, still open to a page about a diner.       Sometimes she wonders if she’s just another dream he wrote about. Sometimes she wonders if that matters. Cicadas trilled across the dock.       The looping corkscrew of her dreams had finally uncorked something–something dry and bittersweet, chalky and haptic on the tongue.       Sometimes she wonders if she’ll ever wake up. Sometimes she wonders if that matters.       She decided to simply dream on.

      The boat still rocked dead against the wind.

@inanotherdirection collab

–© Micah Pearce 2017

[inanotherdirection]

What time it is, and where, on our this side. Ready to turn the page yet?

[street-heart-posts]

“You can’t do this to me, Ben! Des bailed too but at least he tried to come in. He looked like shit. What’s your excuse?”

“Look, I’m sorry, Maddie. I just…fuck, I just can’t come in today, okay?”

“Ben, you sound weird. What’s going on?”

He hung up and closed his eyes against the pain. He closed his eyes and didn’t think about why he was sprawled out, flat on his back, amid the devastation of his living room. He was so damn tired and everything hurt. 

Oddly enough, he thought about her hair. How stray pieces kept blowing across her eyes that day on the boat. Her, laughing as she brushed it out of her face. It wasn’t blonde or even gold; it was pure sunlight. She was happy then, wasn’t she? Or was that a lie too?

@inanotherdirection collaboration

[inanotherdirection]

An explosive next turn in the game. It just keep getting more interesting.

[bcourchaine]

“Oy. Enough", he mumbled to himself finally sitting up straight. “A creative mind is a terrible curse.”

Then again, he really needed to spin himself out. To run down every rabbit hole that came in view. They don’t go away until he does. He knew this.

He stared down at his coffee gone cold.

“Back in the land of the living, darlin’?” the waitress asked smiling as she made her rounds with the last of the hour-old pot. Finally, a voice outside his head.

“Here. You look like you need this.” She poured the liquid inspiration as he tried to think of something in the real world for a change. “I’ll make some fresh and stop back”, she said. He couldn’t help but stare as she walked away.

That knot.

He watched it shift side to side ever so subtly, the ass-riding bow loops trying to steal the show.

A tense ball at the base of a smooth but steep incline. A wadded up lump that knew its place along the strings.

Not always the exact same spot, but within a range of possibilities that showed her body had found its sweet spot.

It could spring into being with its eyes closed.

And it was a reflection of what kind of day it was for her. Tensely tight-fisted screaming “Bring it on” or in-the-weeds loose; a firm grip on her waist or hanging on for dear life.

Today was in between. She was alone so she was chief cook and bottle-washer along with tending to her flock. But it was pouring outside again and she tried to comfort her herd huddled against the storm.

His eyes drifted back to his laptop. He opened the lid out of force of habit.

His words swam before him again as he felt himself falling back into the zone.

“Where was I?” he whispered.

[inanotherdirection]

Down another rabbit hole, another terrific turn. Stay tuned!

[mikeyj529]

your spirit lights spun a web of halos straight from the mouth of autumn in what might have been a past life you drank in entire whorls of time, while i painted the walls of your temple with my dreams, a lover’s last sunrise we swam in a rhythm of ephemeral tides flaring like a match-stroke to the world, echoing through labyrinthine caves, a slow incandescence breathed slowly were you there, too, or did i dream it? a tempestuous sea too calm for my love, no quarter reserved for this coral heart the miles have turned to blown dust at the wind’s whim, a heavy silence filled our tongues like holy sacraments i have seen you a thousand different ways save my own reflection; it cast no shadow you became the desert now and forever where light is dimmest above my horizon we are beyond reach there, in that sanctuary where celestial bodies aligned with us– for a breath’s length, we were the universe

[inanotherdirection]

Everything is in each thing, here with @mikeyj529 in another terrific turn here. What’s around the next bend?

[truth--and--beauty-deactivated2]

I am the place in which something has occurred.

Something welcomed, Something feared, Something which awakens, Something which pains.

This is healing, And it radiates from within,

Turning broken Into beauty

My weakness Strengthened by Golden bands of Suffering

And when he sees Oh, When he sees

He will tremble.

[inanotherdirection]

Racing and quickening with @redearth-blueskies as the game rolls on.

[nosorryforyou]

Atone for this

Objectification honing

Women in servitude

Soliloquy

Besmirching of my caliber

I fill cups and plates and comprise no unrealized dreams of yours nor mine

Not chemically nor physically to neutralize your caffeinated trances.

And I am not the Djal to your piety

You are the raging world majority glorifying your defeats simply by way of reminiscent scents and disproportionate precipitation.

Angles.

Angles.

Haven’t we been blessed?

I am martyring my own martyrdom

Defending any soul tethered to apron strings

Oh, if only you knew how nakedly I waft this aisle

Perhaps as you hollow your route

Should I serve you yet

I am honoring a sense of tact

While relentless humanity stares at my ass.

And a word of advice: if my ass-

sumptions burn

you haven’t an inkling

Of purpose

Ascend a steeple, O, Compulsive Driver.

[inanotherdirection]

A new turn, a new perspective.

[ellenya]

As suddenly as it started, the rain stops. The crowds disperse like droplets, fleeting yet unhurried Chainlike, they flow into streets like rivers Carried off, bubbling with chatter and laughter. All the effort flows with them, All the anxiety and emotion. The pressure eased, And I am left serene. There’s peace in this isolation. I see it reflected in my still steaming black tea, Floating on the scent of warm bread From that bakery we went to once. The birds come and go, The sun roams the sky Like a kite on a breeze Until it’s gone, with it the day And I weave my way home Carried by gentle draughts On stream-like streets in moonlight.

Collaboration with @inanotherdirection

[inanotherdirection]

Another great play in our game. Thanks for taking us there, @ellenya

[inanotherdirection]

where the cracks get in

I spent my time writing I put it in drafts I lifted the scraps paper and self to the wind

I put it in drafts I let the breeze take it

I, like the crafted words, wafted and fell soft

I put it in drafts they carried it landing unexpected…

My hands as out of control as the rest of the world reflected inside my personal world. I gestured wild, my words punching the air with my body. My voice crackling with emotion, with love, with fear in anger. 

The canopied restaurant aisle crowded, the rain just outside the range of the roof’s capture pounded and splattered up. Nudging the crowd toward center where, their nudging of each other turned dangerously close to pushing. Not immune, I was exemplary. The men on both sides of me pressuring with deep leans, I angled a hip and a knee in opposite directions. I squirmed and wedged myself past them. They noticed and complained but I ignored them. My companion’s patient ears lost behind me. 

Bracing myself with a palm on the edge of a table whose occupants I could not see from my bobbing place in the sea of people crowding me, I felt the cool tip of her felt-tip marker. I was not able to look until minutes later when I finally found a bench at an empty spot along the packed center table. 

There was only a number, seven unknown digits. Presumptuous, surely and most likely unwelcome, I thought, looking around. But there she was, waggling the fingers of one hand and casually rocking a lime green felt tip pen back and forth in the other. 

“You are badass.” She mouthed the words slow and with great wide exaggeration. “CALL ME.” Then she stuck out her tongue, jumped up and squirmed and dodged her way through the crowd, out from under the tent, into the rain running.

Another piece so full of immediacy and emotion by @trixclibrarian. Every turn being played so well. Eagerly anticipating each one.

[ajttk-deactivated20180528]

stones shatter on the sound - tryin to get in tune - pouring rain outside - window crow perched - why the fuck i do this i wonder - not for the 1st time -mind scatter compulsion - did  caruso shatter glass - sometimes on stage - the best u can do is make it thru the set - life same - fuck i forgot the words - its ok itz an instrumental - now - hah -

NEWSFLASH - frequent readerz know of my interest in infinity -quantum theory - and existential humor - not 2 mention my compulsive nature - mid poem - i actually am spending time writing and put it in drafts and let the coffee kick in - i was scrolling yahoo - and searching for the facts about caruso - and came across two math whizzes  who measured the sizes of infinities = all infinities are equal and thats no jest…

where wuz i - playing guitar - onstage - life no rewind - bad notes and all 

collaboration w @inanotherdirection

[inanotherdirection]

A jump across the potentiality well as the perspectives spread.

Here’s a bit of behind-the-scenes from the author