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Umbrella Villanelle
I wish, somehow, you'd taken the umbrella
It's close again; the rain is warm and sweet
And if you had, the coffee would taste better

I know it wouldn't hold against the weather
in New Orleans - the hurricanes and heat
but I wish, somehow, you'd taken the umbrella

It couldn't shield you, like some space defender,
from attack ships, when the game decides to cheat
Still, if you had, the coffee would taste better

You're bound for more frontiers than Barbarella
And though you're cannier, more fun, more fleet
I really wish you'd taken the umbrella

Just taken it, with one swift, sanguine gesture
Like I take your legs sometimes, petite
Farmers' MarketFarmers'  Market

At daybreak, we make our aching bodies rise,
caffeinate, survey the still pink-patched sky,
pray for a dry day. Once loaded, we truck

bushels of produce, potted plants, sawhorse
and board tables, stabilize crates of pie
between bins and strawberry boxes, drive
down the mountain, into town and set up

the fruits of our labors, hoping neighbors
and weekenders alike will buy, eyeing
vendors wares, wishing there was cash to spare.
Down-street, a bow begins to sweep the strings

softly, bringing bed-headed children out
to watch the band set up. An old pup roves
over to the barbeque cart, gambols
off when the butcher
Accepting a drinkDoes this cloud-maned beauty see
how I ironed this shirt, pressing mercilessly
until the ionised water evaporated? Does he

understand how long it took to shape
my hair this way? To cover the gape
where my once-full coiff's now planning its escape?

Did he notice my choice of a twenty?
I had tens in my wallet. The drink cost two-fifty
but it looks like purples are all I carry

this way. Does this Pan, who probably fucks
his choice of uni intake bucks
see my killer-sweat? The flux

his lick of the lips casts? Of course
he does, but it works. No laws
against flirting, grandpa. Can't force

him to stop. He thanks me
for the double and
DreamcatcherMen. Men with guns. Why not? Two of them, two men, and in keeping with my usual themes they'll be brothers. The older of the two, that's Jack—and while we're on the subject, the younger one's Lawrence. God, just looking at them, you're reminded—they're the kind of people who can remind you—of what the difference is between the merely good-looking and the truly beautiful, between those of us who are fine to look at and those of us who are fine the same way a masterpiece is fine. These two men, our brothers, are really and truly handsome, so handsome it's almost painful sometimes to look at them.

You see them out of the corner of your eye in t
Past Our Dancing DaysA kitchen.   MAN and WOMAN stand centre stage, in front of a counter with drawers.  They are arguing as lights fade on.

WOMAN.  Look. It’s called a double suicide pact for a reason. I kill myself, and then you kill yourself.
MAN.  Why are we doing this again? Do I have to kill myself?
WOMAN.  Yes.
MAN.  I don’t like the smell of blood.
WOMAN. So what?
MAN. I don’t like iron either. Probably because iron smells like blood.
WOMAN.  Shut up.
MAN.  Don’t tell me to shut up.
WOMAN.  When you shut up, I’ll stop telling yo
The day the leopards diedAlarm clock - check!
The city humdrum - check!
The noisy guy upstairs - check!
The sound of running water - check!
The angry woman on the phone - check!
The furtive cat legions, stray, spoiled - check!
The wars on TV, clamorous, onerous, futile - check!
The shadowy stalkers returning to their hideouts - check!
The mother, worrying about offspring whereabouts - check!
The birds - a farrago of doves, gulls, sparrows, crows - check!
The dogs - spaniels, Great Danes, retrievers, pomeranians - check!
The plumber, wanting money for that job he never completed - check!

The bugs, the critters, the noises behind the walls, the eyes in your
path to dublin or somewhereThe path to Dublin is a devout nomad, wandering this way and that under the feet of a season sprinting off into a little town to smolder in the field or in the sky, to end a life turned over on its colder side. The path to Dublin is covered in dust. Sometimes it is disturbed by hooves crested with uncertain horseshoes or feet guided by a mind too shy to ask faith for directions.

Sometimes it remembers that the weight of the world once plodded above its head, curved its spine. Sometimes it just forgets and winds itself to the edge of a cliff where a lighthouse stands waving its yellow-sleeved arm in the distance, claiming to know where a road
The Death of a Stone-SkipperNo blood.
The place is marked by a perfection of stones,
a little pile, all smooth as cartilage,
round as a socket, bleached like his last minute.

——

He measures the lay of the water,
the leaf-spread of the palms,
the palm-spread of his hand,

his hand holding a circled shale splinter,
kept from a delta down-road.
He measures—
                         and with measure,
cadence, and period, rhymes the rock
in a roll off his flesh.

It is the waterborne prayer
of the tiny temples
of his five fingertips.

       The sliver skims
above shallow-water skates and rays;
its comet tail of bent-bright skylight ripples
and spooks w
Scourgeleaves shuffled along
from breezes gone bitter
scatter
across a river

blackened
with maternal blood
from my thighs that
merge

with the onset
of autumn, and
the scourge
of our union-

clay soil darkened
with cooking oil
and carcasses,
and human waste

decomposing
in the dying light
of day and a life

the way summer
promises,
only to turn away
Peeling An Orange
  There is an art to peeling an orange.

 If you happen to get one of the ones with a very thin skin, it can become much more of a challenge.  You have to dig a nail into the orange armour, cutting it just enough to get through and get a grip, but not far enough to pierce the soft flesh underneath.  If you're unlucky and cut too strongly, you'll go through and get a thumbful of juice squirting into your eyes as a reward.

 Of course, if you're too timid you'll never get all the way in, and you'll peel of layer after paper-thin layer of pitted orange pith without ever truly getting to the heart of the matter.

 Yes, there is an art to peeli
Trickster's GambitThere are many of us in the forest. Grimmlings, we are, imp-wraiths of the woods. All the same, each to each, such that even where there is one, there is no I. And we slither unseen through the prickly brush, and you do not see us, for you do not even know we are there.

We are tricksy, foolish mortal, and it is best that you do not cross us, for we serve the Erl-King, and he is a vengeful lord, though fair and pleasing to the mortal eye. And this he knows, ah, this he knows too well, for he likes to lure the maidens to the forest there, and they do not often return to their village homes. Some stay with us and join our court, but others do n
if the woman    .

        If the woman is a stone
        bury her in blue water,
        If the woman is a knife
        rub her til she's sharp.

His voice is a rattle at the bottom of a tin cup.
His arms are spurs, and rusted
where metal pinches leather.

He shakes like a drum in firelight
with the last fist still fresh on his back:

        ama sa'ni, she grow curved low like a horseshoe,
      &
the ocean is pollutedthe ocean is polluted
and our children will be throat down baptized
in its weightless mausoleum choke.

staring at the rising tide
swallowing the shore,
swallowing the rivers,
man sees himself reflected across the cerulean surface,
remembers the tyrants past,
given power so surging
(the helpless destroyers),
sees the giant lumbering to transplant him
in an ecosystem generated for the mermen,
the chemically inflated
above the land where
there is only hunger and cold,
the leftover lineage
of an animal that slit its own tongue
and drank its belly full,
desperate for the memory of blood.
and we found...we love like we sin, terrified and breathless.

we are tea-at-midnight girls, naming constellations
that don't exist after lost tourists we meet on the
street, reminding our freckle covered shoulders
that even beautiful things can be made ordinary.

we are broken fingers and half-closed eyelids and a
penchant for mischief. we are ribbon skin and frantic
desires and incandescent hope. we are a voice spilling
secrets to falling leaves diving after their arachnid brothers,

mimicking the millions before us who were
judged unfairly, unjustly but all too correctly.

we whisper promises to dandelions because they do not
know how to hold gru
On LoveLove is not a poem drinking coffee at dusk
calculating distance of space to close between
us. It's a ratio of silence at the gallery opening;
the dark-cornered guest with an understanding
we fail to emulate.

It mingles like an impaled olive. Its grief
outshines the beautiful lichen munching satiated
on stone when taken for granted or ignored.
The reminder hurts so we impale its orange-red eye
with the sharp fingers of our mouth.

We reason its truth until shrunken to a memory
of a memory. It's not about our need, though.
Not the climb, the thrill, the release of salt and
oil across our lips. It's about the stomach peeling
from the burn o
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The Night Is Waitingby ~fallenidle

DescriptionDetailsShare
I've been working on this story for months. I hope it was worth it.


Preview picture is my work, Amplified Burial. It was the only art piece I've thus far made that scared the living hell out of me. I felt compelled to communicate it in writing, which is where this story was born.


All art piece concepts mention in this story are original creations of and copyrighted by me.


.....


EDIT: Thank you SO MUCH to *MeadowCress and ^LadyLincoln for the DD! I can hardly believe it! You guys are amazing and I will slowly but surely get to every comment!

(c) Megan Dipo
Category: Literature / Prose / Fiction / Spiritual & Occult

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Submitted on
February 12, 2009
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Daily Deviation

Given 2009-09-03
The Night Is Waiting by =fallenidle immediately draws you into a stylish and creepy tale that will definitely make you look behind you once or twice after reading! ( Suggested by ~MeadowCress and Featured by `LadyLincoln )
:iconkatarthis:
*katarthis May 29, 2011  Hobbyist Writer
I have to say this deserved the daily deviation. Your months of work show clearly, and even if the preview, your own work well done, did not match my mind's eye image, the story was still the most gripping piece of dark horror I've read in some time. There was nothing particularly violent, nothing awful enough to gain the attention and notoriety required to make the newest hollywood splash fest... but blood and gore do not a good phychotic thriller make on their own.

To put it bluntly, I had to make myself get up and go to the bathroom when I needed it. Your story kept me glued to the screen so much so that my wife gave up trying to talk to me until I finished it. Bravo Author. Bravo.

k
Reply
:iconfallenidle:
~fallenidle May 31, 2011  Professional Writer
You are too kind. Having a reader that enraptured is the highest compliment I think an author can get.

Thank you for reading and for your comment! :hug:
Reply
:iconsadisticicecream:
*SadisticIceCream Oct 21, 2010   Writer
Wait wait wait. Am I a total derp and missed this getting a DD?

... Yeah I am. :dummy:

Belated congratulations, because you rock! I've always loved this piece, and I think it's one of your stronger ones, so this is so very, very well-deserved. :D
Reply
:iconfallenidle:
~fallenidle Oct 21, 2010  Professional Writer
Bahahaha! I didn't know you didn't notice! But I am super glad I got to see my favorite emoticon again. (How do you use that guy anyway?)

Thanks so much dear! I've been looking at submitting it to a mag but it's too goddamn long for the ones I've found so far. I've been debating whether I should trim the story or just wait till I find a mag that'll accept its word count.
Reply
:iconsadisticicecream:
*SadisticIceCream Oct 21, 2010   Writer
:rofl: He's :dummy :, without the space. :dummy:

You could try to cut it down if you think that what you cut doesn't hurt the story's integrity, but I'm usually the kind of person who will dig for someone with a longer word count. If you want, you could try editing it and then sending it to me, and I'll tell you what I think of both versions.
Reply
:iconfallenidle:
~fallenidle Oct 21, 2010  Professional Writer
Hmmm, maybe I shall!
Reply
:iconsadisticicecream:
*SadisticIceCream Oct 22, 2010   Writer
I'm here for ya. ;)
Reply
:iconlunaticstar:
~LunaticStar Feb 17, 2010
I feel like a retard because I read this a long time ago and never commented or anything, and I have no idea why. But yeah! I remember it well. It flows from one scene to another in a great way, logical and stuff, but still it's about a mad doctor seeking to uncover the evil in the world, and that's just silly! But you framed it so well I was really on his side. This totally inspired me for my own works, but not in the way that I'd steal, just like "this person did it!" and you did! And well. AND HOW.
Reply
:iconfallenidle:
~fallenidle Feb 18, 2010  Professional Writer
Haha don't feel retarded! I do that all the time! :hug:

I really appreciate your kind words, I'm glad you enjoyed the story!
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:iconflippidyflop:
~FlippidyFlop Jan 19, 2010
If you don't mind me asking, I'm quite the literary idiot, what did the nooses mean?
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