This is me. Naked, true.

The diary of an anti-aesthete.

[ndru-wins]

"An author should be soulful, and compassionate, and responsive, and fair. Maybe I’m a flea, a nonentity, but I have my credo. Let at least one word of my writings impregnate a reader’s heart."

-Ilya Borisovich Tal

[ndru-wins]

That Night

The pub below our room was hosting a party; their music shook the floor.

I asked them to lower it, they did - but it was still too loud for you.

You stopped speaking and searched for something sharp to drive your point home with.

I found my coat, and helped you into yours... then we left and crossed the road and crossed the bridge and followed the river until we came to a quiet patch of grass near the water.

We sat beside each-other, sheltered from the rain by a Willow tree, whose branches made a fuss of us.

I thought you might jump into the water                                                               and float away to wherever grey things go                                              when they're lost;

but you didn't, I held you; the Willow tried to escape too but someone had chained it to the ground.

-ndru

[ndru-wins]

“He filled a shelf with a small army of books and read and read; but none of it made sense. .. They were all subject to various cramping limitations: those of the past were outdated, and those of the present were obsessed with the past.”  - From Eugene Onegine, by Alexander Pushkin

[ndru-wins]

I will use you to cruise through any writer's block

[axsalvo-bbsunshine-deactivated2]

III

You look beyond the field at the hanging garden impressed by the strangeness of the animals drinking from their bejeweled cups of black wine surrounded by great, gray stone pillars I pull at you and say: this is nothing but theater this is no Babylon You look out at the silent...

[ndru-wins]

Hello darling I'm psychology student and I'm willing to save some money to pay for my university studies.. I would be very thankful if you would visit my blog and check the commercials (under the title).. And its very important to stay there a little time.. Hope you'll help me with that Im very sorry for bothering you and thank you very very much! It will costs you nothing but will mean to me a lot Thank you, thank you very much darling!!

Fuck off, darling.

[ndru-wins]

Soul Song

Did you hear of the man who had a woman tattooed on his back: her thighs on his, calf to calf, tapered down to ankles, heels; her slender arms etched on the pales of his own, her breasts beneath his shoulder blades, throat on nape, her face on the back of his shaven head?

He called her his soul-mate, then his soul.

This is not anecdote, but fable, I should tell you, drop the blinds, he lay with her ten thousand nights but she aged with him, blemished, tarnished, more vascular than luminous until his true soul, she took umbrage, upped and left without a note.

- Michael Symmons Roberts

[ndru-wins]

Through a Glass, Darkly.

Mist can be a form of mercy, all precision gone, all detail lost.

Cataracted hawks hunt woods for motion blur, then stoop

into the slipstream of their prey. I pray for days like these

when cars are lit cortéges. As for oceans, fog is respite

from the ache of holding surface as a clear line named horizon.

Forensic summer gone, now we live in close-up: flaked face of brick

frostbitten, verdigris and icicles on statues. A world drawn tight.

Look up: stars are gone. It's just us.

-Michael Symmons Roberts

[ndru-wins]

Hell Set Loose

Elephants with tusks of fire have been spotted in Utah; they're aggressive, reports say there have been deaths and the president is              addressing the issue.

In Hamelin, Germany, a travelling musician has been playing for days; almost the whole city has shown up to listen. They're forsaking food and water, as his music               snares the soul and to them nothing else matters.

Ben Nevis has cracked open, the infinite army of the dead is marching out from the mountain; swords made of bone, armour made of bone, bodies of fire which leave ash in their wake.

Monsters are rising from the depths of the sea, from the belly of the world and I do not think we can stop them.

-ndru

[ndru-wins]

Jamble Jumble Jimble

There are workmen outside constructing a cocoon out of scaffolding

It's morning, or afternoon breakfast today is seven deadly lemon drops

There are children walking home from school that settles it, it's after noon.

Hungry, but the local stores don't accept poetry in exchange for food

I don't know what's real or unreal, my mist-dragon specializes in sky-swimming.

And I know that there are plenty more fish in the sea, but the biggest and best fish are make-believe.

-ndru

[ndru-wins]

Biscuit Troubles.

The biscuits I dip in tea to survive cost exactly fifty-one pence per pack. I know this                 because I get them every other day it's always the same, 51p, a single pack, it's known -

yet today, my chocolate bourbons have risen from fifty-one to fifty-four pence; and this may not seem like much, or hardly worth poetry, but when the attendant asks for fifty-four pence and I have in my hands exactly fifty-one,                                                                 it hits me that I won't get to eat tonight, and it makes all the fucking difference.

-ndru

[ndru-wins]

Rainwatered Rum

I smoked with my legs dangling from the window; my under-knees growing numb                       from the cold                       or from the pot.

That's how it's been the past week and a half.

I hit that point where everything became heavy                               and the knowledge                               but not the feeling of the cold started to prey on my senses,  and I contemplated going to bed                                                  yet instead reached to a drink for warmth.

My fingers forgot how to finger things and Sailor Jerry slipped off out from the window                                down                                         the three floors and into the street below.

I followed it.

The cold indifference of night gripped at my feet.

The bottle was a shattered cargo ship its liquid luxury all escaped into the puddle beside it.

Nobody was around to see me on all fours, sipping rum from the cracks in the pavement.

Sober conscience spoke:                                       This isn't helping.

I cut my lips and tongue and chin on sharpness hidden in the rainwatered-rum.

There are better ways to self-harm than drugs and alcohol.

Rebellious legs and arms and feet and hands carried me inside to the bathroom despite my intention to stay. I don't recall the journey                                       but I'm glad for it,                                       I'm thankful to my body for taking charge when my mind can't.

-ndru

[ndru-wins]

The Early Hours

Thunder in the morning, a talk with a stranger in the doctor's waiting room. Walking through Sefton park, tip-toeing over stepping-stones and searching for inspiration in all the off-the-path places.

A shrine, a natural one: it's the trunk of a tree beneath a canopy of leaves; there are carved names, relics of dead moments left to rot with the undergrowth like the hieroglyphic graffiti of slaves.

A message in the bark: Does this inspire you?

Not really. Well, I guess, yes.

-ndru

[ndru-wins]

If I should stand against the wind up a mountain, in a storm, along the prom when winter comes; know that I won't shy away from the cold or misunderstand you for leaving us. The air is you, now the world's your ghost and that thought alone will keep me warm. -ndru

[ndru-wins]

Joe Dee

I know I love you because I never really mean to say it, like, there's no forethought at all, it's just natural, it just happens: when you bring in the tea, when you recommend writers or something cool on tv, when you wake up with a stretch-yawn-smile take one look at the world and roll over and under the covers only stirring with a drunken arm in the air searching, then finding and pulling me in too.

-ndru

[ndru-wins]

No, I get it -

he wears scarves and listens to the Hoosiers and takes a new selfie every other day. you see the friends of friends, the-just-a-friend-honests liking his pictures and him replying coolly and you want to change that, you want to be able to see thirty other girls liking his pictures and for him to say that he's yours, only yours, with less-than-three's and all.

I get it, you're stupid. You want to be famous no matter how infinitesimal that fame is. Of course you do, it's 2013 and every shop's filled with shitty gossip magazines.

-ndru

[ndru-wins]

The past six posts were all written/submitted withing fifteen minutes (that's total, not each!). speed writing is nuts.