Misery

Hands cover your eyes from behind you, and Zac Efron is lost to the darkness. 'You hurt because you're alive, Charlie,' is the last thing you hear before the film is paused. She didn't knock - she has the keys to your apartment, after all. A knowing smile mocks you even as you try to manage one of your own.

"Hello there," you manage in greeting.

"I'm back again," is the answer you get. You can only sigh in agreement.

"I guess I could use the company," you confess.

She clears a space on your coffee table, dumping take-out containers, soda cans and cigarette butts into a black bag. "I brought beer, love," she says before kissing your forehead. Humming, she walks to the fridge, handling everything delicately, like a celebrant preparing for a rite. Satisfied, she returns to take a seat beside you. She lights a cigarette and takes a drag before handing you one of your own. She pours beer into a glass and passes it on to you. You just swirl the drink inside the glass to keep yourself occupied.

"Now, tell me everything," she says without preamble. You turn down a glass, savoring the cold, knowing the numbness will come later. You tap the ashes into the ashtray and take your first drag.

Shrugging, you begin your tale, "last autumn, I met a boy..."

The Memory of Friends

Dust gathers upon

the paper that lies

in wait.

      I fester within

the confines of your inkwell

                            dry

my hopes, frayed

                   quills lost

to dust:

swathe my mailbox

                 scour the rusted farce

                 flake away the painted mask

            rub. my present. raw.

            farewell

                        farewell my past

Nic

MTV blares on, the two of you spellbound, until a string of K-Pop songs breaks the spell. He endures Animax for a few minutes before asking why you watch the show in the first place. You toss the remote at him, asking if he knows Nat Geo's channel. He flips through shows, muttering about the impracticality of cable tv when you couldn't watch all the shows anyway until he finds Discovery channel. He watches with the attention a child might pay a bedtime story up until the show ends. He gets up, and tells you to flip the covers and the bedthemselves to look for things that might get left behind. He reminds you of your shirt upon the dresser before heading out. Unsurprisingly, you get up to leave as the door shuts behind him.

You never know what goes on in his head. One moment you're walking with him, and the next he wanders off. He eventually shows up and tosses your shirt at you, smirking.

"Well, I did tell you to look," his voice carries on without need for volume, "You were drunk beyond help last night, and we'd never let you sleep with that wet shirt on."

He walks around in his boxers with a quiet confidence and speakscandidly. He regards things cooly, and he doesn't seem the type to get surprised easily. You never know what goes on in his head. One moment you're floating on a water pipe, smoking in the tiny pool amidst your colleagues, the next he puckers his lips and asks for a draught. Unsurprisingly, you oblige, your fingers brushing the bow of his lips ever so lightly.

His brand of remoteness is a beacon drawing you in, moth-like, as helpless and as willing as you are. You glide over his contours in your dreams as you taste the salt of his being: you are his captive, utterly and completely bound to him.

You have his name, but not his heart.

Confessions

One considers taking wing to start anew and take root, deeply, in new horizons where the naked truth is laid down without prejudice.

Happiness Hit Him Like a Train on a Track

Gomez Addams meets Salvador Dali meets Halloween meets Spiral Prince who reasons he smiles because it is free.

That Day at SM

I knew for certain that here was a brother, and in ways his own, a father.
Kindred souls sundered at birth, severed by blood, bridged by chance.

Find nourishment in poetry and song. There is peace to be had behind infinite bokehs, some as brief as drying watercolors.

As Far As And Even Beyond What The Eye Can See

Sand. Sand. Silken salmon shimmering sand. I am drowning in the sand. There is only the sand.

Voiceless, I Long to Whisper

To bare. To be someone's Muse.

Maybe You'll Notice

Spiral Thinks

We mind the emptiness of space more than the space that fills the emptiness.

regrets              collect             like             old             friends

here     to    relive    your    darkest   moments

I        CAN       SEE       NO      WAY

I        CAN       SEE       NO      WAY

AND         ALL         OF         THE       GHOULS        COME       OUT         TO        PLAY

and  every  demon wants his  pound of flesh

but    I    like    to   keep   some   things  to  myself

I    LIKE   TO    KEEP    MY   ISSUES   DRAWN

IT'S          ALWAYS          DARKEST 

BEFORE            THE            DAWN

These Days

Dreams dwindle the afternoons: the city softly blurring into the periphery of vision; the stereo churning out songs punctuated by (our) laughter, rhythmic reminders of lyrics lost in the mirth; the shades shielding against the glare. We slow to a crawl, making memories, freezing moments, listening to shutters whir away.

We ripple away from lazy power lines, from bright commercial facades, from looming billboards(THIS AD SPACE IS AVAILABLE). Road signs tell us we move closer to our destination(  Mandaue City ↓  ,) wherever that is. Our conversations turn to photographs:  life metamorphoses to the surreal when viewed through a lens, when boxed in a photograph; our conversations turn to art: we create for the joy of creation; our conversations turn to poetry: abandon all hope, ye who enters. We go in circles, their circumferences degenerating, our conversations spiraling to love: you don't know it yet, but you're renting a one-bedroom flat in my mind.

One drifts off to sleep, briefly worn, the diffused light resting on the planes of his face, delving the recesses of laugh lines, peeping from the shade of his jawline, from behind his cheekbones; the other's hand ensconcing his, welcoming the soul beneath the callouses.

The sky, ablaze with shades of red beyond count, and the horizon, caked with diamond dust, greet waking eyes, their edges crinkled, roused from slumber by an insistent breath towards his ears, stray locks quivering in delight. We sit on the hood, living memories: listening to the waves hiss in surrender(or was it bliss we heard?) as their brief lives end, beyond all control, upon rocks, only to be raised again; capturing moments: the spray and the foam always frozen in flight.

We go on, lost in anecdotes: this one time, at ...; lost in food: raw garlic, pasta, onions, black angus steaks, cheese, wine; lost in our thoughts: each idly caressing the other's hand, animatedly whining about school(our teachers and all the cliques) *click*, offhandedly cracking one-liners *whir*, cracking smiles *click*, curling smirks *whir*, rolling eyes *click*.

The night is afire with stars, the Milky Way filling us with child-like wonder(what if The Supreme Being's farted us to existence? That we are precipitates of some trans existential noxious gas?), imposing the enormity of the Universe, shoving our infinitesimal lives down our throats, brandishing it at our faces as we lie upon our mat beneath the limitless expanse of the cosmos, the sea-breeze ruffling our hair, its rich tang filling us both, taking our senses to new heights. You curl aside to face me, to take my hand, our skins silver in the moonlight: living a memory, freezing a moment, listening to words unsaid.

Asleep

Emily Browning

Disney Princesses: At Seventeen

The applause that rose as the curtains fell was thunderous, but it wasn't for them. One by one, the Princesses curtsied as was their wont and left the stage, all regal and smiling.

Her face forlorn, she asked Esmeralda, "But aren't we Princesses, too?"

Wistful, Esmeralda replied, "Well, what can we do? They're racists? I guess we are, Pocahontas," she bit her lip and continued, "but maybe they don't remember..."

And those of us with ravaged faces 

Lacking in the social graces 

Desperately remained at home

At Seventeen

Janis Ian

---

3: Disney Princesses

citybuoy | ♔ıǝɹɯɐı♔ | ןıuǝ oɟ ɟןıƃɥʇ | Manila Bitch | Orange Wit | Spiral Prince

The World's Biggest Liar

The world's biggest liar
is lying on my bathroom floor,
fetal
fatal,
his arms, he curled around me,
trusting
thrusting,
his lips, he whispered
                        slivers
of dreams; of longing; belonging; as he
                        shivers
the walls, they resound
feral and wordless:
                        a snarl
                                   a rasp
shapeless and shameless,
                        I contort beneath his grasp

the salt of his kisses,
the spice of his breath, he
                        pours
the chain of bruised cairns,
                        they mask
                        the musk of,
his soul, he entered my
                        pores

his eyes are suns --
                       they blind me
he bared his fangs --
                       he bit me
painless,
                       I bled
and
primal,
                       he lead
                       he mustered
and I, he
                       he mastered
                       he forced
I found myself
                       on all fours

he knelt in ascent, and I,
I prostrated in worship

they collided: wordless, noiseless

oblivion
euphoria

we trembled

the world's biggest liar,
he laid down on my bathroom floor

he fumbled, he mumbled
he said:

I love you, but you don't pay me

Blue

Process video found here. So weak. Tssss.

Yesterday

I used to sit by the dirt road, waiting for ghosts who once swore they'd stay, that they'd come back. Now, I walk under vault of the sky, chasing the horizon, chasing its twilight. 

The mists curl around my feet. 

"Stay," they seemed to say, before fading away into the past, where they belong.

Obsession: How's This For a Fear?(or Salinger Attempt Number 1)

Sia - Breathe Me

I created your wraith starting with the ghost of your eyes. Thick, heavy strokes failed to convey their warmth and conflict. Brows too thick to be yours came next, while sloppy shades smeared the contours of your eyes.  The image lay flat: shamed under the stark flourescence overhead.

Your lips sneered at us both. Your nose was a glaring mess. It reminded me of your past you cannot sunder yourself from; your open secret you cannot conceal. It wasn't until I drew your tangled locks that I gave up.

Veins bulged and sinews tensed as I gripped the darkest B pencil I had tightly - tighter than a room-dwelling bum(or a male nympho if there ever was a male nympho) would his shrivelled  phallus. It bled heavily on the sheet beneath it the way a deflowered wart refused to clot.

It is not that I never drew you in the first place, rather, I ended up not drawing you. I allowed myself to admit this.

Those lop-sided eyes I drew earlier, I gave a withering look brimming with malediction. They simply stared back truthfully and without malice, cutting through my affectations, ripping my dreams - my delusions - into sorry shreds of self-pity.

It would have taken very little to break the pencil tracing harsh lines upon the unfortunate paper, but that would have been too cliche. That would have made miserable me doubly cliched, so I settled for breaking the lead during the course of my frantic, frenzied sketching. My wasted scratching. My meaningless tos and fros, and lefts and rights, and ups and downs.

My breaths became laboured as I continued, the frustration besting my capacity for control until I finally, woefully, and pitifully snapped.

The darkest B pencil I had(its lead now broken) clattered lifelessly before my feet.

Still inflamed and now utterly incensed, I started writing in my jagged and erratic script of how I created your wraith the second the closest notebook(its matte-finish covers gray) I grabbed fell open on my lap. My sentences run on each other, and my modifiers dangle, and my tenses disagree, displaying my incompetence - my incoherence - for anyone to see.

Having been recently told how I drew horribly(and this I know to be true), and then given recompense by being told I probably had some unrefined skill in writing, I found it deeply ironic, and somewhat faintly amusing(in the driest sense), that I just unquestionably, unmistakably, and most assuredly beyond any shadow of doubt, emulated the truth so boldly served.

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The Emo Blogger's Happy Blogging Challenge: Obsession

• ןıuǝ oɟ ɟןıƃɥʇ: Obsession, A Series
• The Orange Wit: Please Don’t Leave Me
• citybuoy: On April and Zac Efron

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