touch the pen to your heart

let it write you a song

a melody

a rhythm

brought to you by the well inside your head

where memories fall in and drown

.

a spray of color adorns the bedclothes

your invisible muse hums idly

floating languidly about your work

as you try to grasp everything they are not to you

roses are red and violets forget me often

.

the nightmare of logic

existential crises

eating your heart out

you consider things not meant for you

these puzzle pieces don’t fit together 

but you’re tired of reshaping them

and leave them to confuse the player

with a note of apology

and 

.

the pen slips

“We have no reason to be mistrustful of our world, for it is not against us. If it holds terrors they are our terrors, if it has its abysses these abysses belong to us, if there are dangers then we must try to love them. And if we only organize our life according to the principle which teaches us always to hold to what is difficult, then what now still appears most foreign will become our most intimate and most reliable experience. How can we forget those ancient myths found at the beginnings of all peoples? The myths about the dragons who at the last moment turn into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses, only waiting for the day when they will see us handsome and brave? Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help”

- Letters to A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

The fourth dimension daydreamer

I am the grass
I’m the tree
pollen from
widow of a building

M Baumgart

To the first person who listened

to look and to live
too late to trespass
we ate paradise
I’m happy that you were there

M Baumgart

The Many Faces of You

All of these prompts should help you begin exploring yourself. The other chapters in this section will help, too, by focusing on specific facets of your background, your experiences and your personality. In working through these chapters, allow yourself to have fun and take risks. Enjoy the process. Be daring. Don’t worry about sounding literary or angry or weak or whatever tag you’re tempted to stick on yourself. In fact, avoid tags of any kind. The key is candor. You need only bring the courage to dig deep inside yourself.

And learn the lesson of Popeye: Don’t worry about consistency. He is what he is, but you have many facets and dimensions. Need proof? Read your journal. Not only will you find yourself in many moods, your handwriting will change from day to day. Remember Emerson’s line about consistency being “the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Source: Heffron, Jack. The Writers Idea Book: How to Develop Great Ideas for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry & Screenplays. Writers Digest, 2012.

The sky had two moons. Barely visible in the day, two plates dull and grey kept secret in the mellow blue. Lustrous in the inky night, commanding the stars with their godly gleam. One night, one vanished. Jack fell asleep beneath the bulbous twin moons that gracefully hung above, and woke up midnight to one missing, one mislaid by a holy hand. He gawked at the lonely moon. It was half-bright and half-full. Its brother taken, its joyous light thieved. For a long moment, Jack only stared. Then, he ran to his own brother’s bed. John would know what had happened. He stumbled into his room on his little, fattish legs, eyes wide and mystified. He took tottery step after step to where his brother should lie. The bed, however, was empty. John was gone.

His diaper felt sticky. A dribble of stink a brook down his leg. He did not care. The little boy named Jack searched for John. Peeking beneath his bed, where the tousled sheets were whipped in a mess. In his closet, where he was known to hide when their mother raged. In the living room, where they would often play and watch cartoons. He was not anywhere. He was nowhere.

“John?” he asked all the way.

“John!” he shrieked when his search turned nothing but dust and lost pennies. He felt his little heart race, pump pump pump in the brittle cage of his ribs. He felt his eyes well, water spilling like the stream of reek pooling at his bare feet, leaking past his sodden cloth. He was about to scream for his mother, when a hand clamped his mouth shut.

“Quiet, little one.” It was John. His touch, the scent of his dirt-ridden hand, the familiar feel of his brother calmed Jack quick.

“Turn around, Jack. Do not say a word about this to anyone.”

Jack turned. Before him, his brother. The same spindly frame, all bones and body starved. The same curly hair. The same wild light in his brave eyes. Something, however, was different. Jack could tell. His body was held tighter, higher, his chin tilted up. His curly hair curved unnatural. The light was a storm in his ashen eyes. His smile the lightning, electric and brilliant. On one hand, his fingers glowed. Jack could only stand dumb. His heart still pump pump pumping, his tiny head struck thoughtless.

John uncurled his fingers. John held a ball of bright white. John held the moon in his hand.

“How many times do I have to tell you, you can’t just kill everyone we have a problem with.”

“But he insulted your dress!”

Alone in his bedroom, Joey sat on the edge of his bed, dressed in a rented tuxedo. It certainly wasn’t the last time he would ever be in that room but it was the last time that this room would really be his room. From now on, he supposed this room would be referred to as his childhood bedroom.

Is that what I’m doing today? thought Joey. Am I leaving childhood behind?

Looking around, the room now looked to him like pieces of a story. The curtains on the window were made of red cotton printed with multi-coloured trains. Joey’s mom had made them before he was born and, even though they had now lost almost all their colour, he still remembered them as bright they had been back then. On the windowsill, stood a dozen plastic dinosaur toys. All the figurines were covered in a thick layer of dust and the utahraptor’s tail was mangled by teeth marks. Joey remembered the day he had caught Artemis chewing the toy under his bed. He remembered how sheepish she had looked when he had yelled at her.

Joey’s desk sat directly beneath the window. There were two computers on the desk. The first was the laptop that his dad had bought him when he started university. He still used that computer almost every day. Joey remembered setting up the laptop at the foot of his twin bed and watching movies with at least two different girls. It was weird to think about his old girlfriends seeing as today was his wedding day.

The second computer on the desk was an old desktop that was at least as dusty as the dinosaurs. It had been the very first computer that they had in the house. Joey’s dad had gotten it for work and Joey could remember sneaking down to the basement with his brother to play games on it early in the morning. When Joey had been in high school, his dad had gotten a new computer and this one had been moved to Joey’s room so that he could use it for homework. That hadn’t really worked, however, because the computer had even then been too old to connect to the household printer.

Other than the two computers, the desk was also covered in stacks of paper. These were papers leftover from university and possibly even high school. Joey could make out a syllabus from an English Literature course and two different chemistry assignments. He had been meaning to throw away those papers for some time now and felt a pang of guilt for having put it off for so long.

Under the desk, a large number of colourful boxes were stacked. This was where Joey kept what he considered to be his rather impressive collection of board games. These games had been his life throughout high school. Lunch hours, evenings and weekends had all been full of gatherings with his friends to play these games. The entire group had been passionate about tabletop gaming but for Joey, it had been and still was more of an obsession. He had even specially ordered games from Germany and Japan that had not even been translated into English. He had spent weeks translating the rules as best he could and teaching several of his friends to play the games.

N.G. // Simply Hurts

I wonder what it would be like not to have a linguistic distinction between “sun” and “star”. what would that language be like? what kind of people would speak it?

Yes

There are things deep within me

Things breaking the surface wanting to be seen

I submerge the best of me

Hiding from the prying eye

Hoping to remain anonymous

Lost in a crowd of wonder

Blunder

Yes

That is me

My light seen

A beacon drawing more than I need to me

Who is to say

Who will walk my way

Destined to linger amongst trees ancient

Loamy scents my friend

The green of it

Yes

I have walked long miles

Dancing through minds

I have sought inspiration that way

Buying what others had to say

It feeds me

My need great

Do you complete the same way

Making songs of experience

Longing for diverse existence

Yes

I was seen

Basking in the richness of it

It is the things that make me believe

Wonder grown on sweet dense silky trees

Their softness the comfort

Their fruit the dessert of a life deprived of true meat

I hunger for the protein of it

My diet lacking

Yes

I have always dwelled in madness

It is how you defined it

Who was I to see your lie

I will be

You have never defined me

All I need

My words forever incomplete

Giving ultimate meaning

Blooming flowers of true hope

Their hue living to rise and consume

Yes

It is all new

I began merely to stir you

And as all things brand new

Forget what you have seen

Allow the truth of it to swirl into your existence

Yes

I am real

Ever dwelling in mist

Truth clear

Dialogue Prompt #6

“Listening to other people lie about themselves helps me relax.”

N.G. // Simply Hurts

N.G. // Simply Hurts

There is wonder in found hunger

The yearning the teacher

The need the lesson given

Momentum

We walk through grasses meant to cushion disasters

Hoping for survival

Never trying to overcome

Do you seek dreams

Do you destroy the things of meaning

Waking to worlds lost within a cosmo of lie

It is the beginning of it

The end unthinkable

Can we move in unison

Creating things that make dreams

Bringing wonder to the

I hunger for it

Waking in need

Having to

Can I begin

Longing to dive in

The want intense

The need dwelling deep within

I am the cloud upon a sky of blue green

How else can I be

Meaning residing within me

Inspire me

Release

You were always in my dreams

Hungering with me

Finding

Green fields

Blue skies

All between dominion

My words clean

Hear me

Be with me

Close your eyes

Finally see

The dream the reality

There is a love in you,
as of yet unanswered;
unfound in another.
You used to exude it from
every pore.

It opened up a world of hurt,
till you supposed you
yearned
for a thing non-existent.

And so
you stifled the whispers
whirling in longing
by compressing your rib cage
and all that sought expansion
imploded within.

Supernovas turned black holes,
and light faded to this darkness.

Wasn’t it supposed to be
easier when you started?

But the void aches more
in its ever gnawing
presence.

Scoff at the irony of this
self-imposed emptiness:

How can nothing hurt more
than anything?

The whispers
now cut like razors,
escaping the harsh vacuum
caused by clenched fingers;
wrapped around a heart, still beating.

Resonance escapes
no matter how hard you try
to prevent it;

seeking that which will amplify it.

And you feel incurably diseased,
when you look over to your lover,
once more wanting
to leave.

—
26-5-2020, M.A. Tempels © “… complacency kills.”

↳a new wip

↳Genre: Fantasy

↳Themes: Betrayal, Fighting, War, Romance, Royalty, Magic, Elements, Kingdoms, Blood, Princesses, Servant Boys, Spies, Guards, Swords

↳Warnings: Theres fighting and mentions of blood, might throw in an execution

↳Pov: Third Person

↳Age Range: 13+

↳Summary:

There was never a moment where Pangoniá and Lavira weren’t at each others throats. It was a never ending battle, only, there had been no fighting. Until now at least.

Lavira and Pangoniá are tired of arguing. The two Kingdoms are finally ready to end this. Lavira makes the first move and declares war.

With the King of Pangoniá on the brink of death, his daughter, Princess Elowen is the only one who can take over. But he refuses for her to do anything unless she gets married. But the King doesn’t have a say if he’s dead.

Elowen takes matters into her own hands. And with the help of the new servant boy. Magnus, they gather allies. But it comes at a price. Leaving Pangoniá behind and risking getting caught in the woods.

As stakes rise and friendships are made, there is only one thing—person—who can break it all. In the end it all leads to a battle. Sides must be chosen. The two kingdoms can not escape this fate anymore.

It’s time for war.

↳Main Cast:

•Elowen Fairbane

•Magnus Blanche

•Genevive Rose

•Azrael Dianno

•Alina Vilet

•Wendy Mills

•Silas Saulot

•Maya Gilton

↳Quote:

“A true spy never sticks in the shadows. He blends in with the people, unsuspecting.” —Magnus

TAGLIST

Lmk if you want to be added!

Wrap around!

           curtains tumble at ears

                       pins poke

thread woven peacock beaks fleur-de-lis

           scrunches at

neck, swaddles

           safe – but

                       worn in mirrors

finger

           twirl cotton dyed green

The cloth

           is only cloth!

Chatter on TV

           bald grey

                       men red faces

spit fire

           word-sparks false flames

                                               does not burn

Incinerates only

           ivy abstractions

                                   for printed havens

Shadows

           naked without patterns

                                               sketched empty –

blank forbidden to paint. I

           hold it,

                       cotton fingers,

dream of determined eyes

                                   secure in headscarf.

-Tribute to the Scarf, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

Through.