Voodoo

[this is one of the best things I've written. It got me into a touch of trouble at school, but I wrote it with passion. It seems dark, but it hasn't really gone to hell... yet. Don't think I'm emotional, ]

The fields of love are sown with seed but once in a lifetime, the gods and fate the sowers. If one can manage to visit the field during the blooming of these rosy loveblossoms, one is intoxicated with their flowery scent and sent on a manic passionvoyage to the seas of the heart and the dark, labyrinthine rivers of elation. The fragrance of these cerise, velvetine kisses is euphoric, and one is powerless to resist their sweet miasma once one has found them. Like the lotus flowers of Ulysses, they are the slavedrivers of infatuation.
Like all the followers of Romance, Uther has tasted love, and found it as sweet as the waters of Avalon. He is tantalized by the flirt of the Gemini concept of love and addiction, fancies himself above the vermilion narcotic. He has been around, so to speak, loved and lost. Felt the keen shattering pain of sorrow rip along his body in bright, unbearable lightning veins, wailed to the sky as he has lost those he loved, idled moonlit under the lunar lantern on a househill, his emotions twirling as a zephyr in enebriation as witches swirling in dervishes chant and ritualize. He has attempted to voice his pain and grieve, finally, in the form of poetic speech. But no solace can be afforded him; the inked characters lying motionless on the parchment laid before him are meaningless, utterly void of sentiment. They can speak only of the smallest iota of the enigma of his soul. To him, no poetic gambit can soothe his ache, no anarchic prose can balm his sharp, bonded agony.
He has found, through chance and risk, that the only path to emotional redemption is the careless embrace of hazard and outlaw. The Brothels of Edinburg are his shrines, cathedrals of liberty tinted with rouge and parfum. The cries of purchased pleasure act as his lullabye as he basks in hurried afterglow, the violet bruises on the women with whom he lusts are his nightshade berries, poisonous and toxic, the sweet deathly harbingers of desire and doom. But his boundary of chains is halted no more. This path of escape is poison; followers of vice are rewarded with fool's gold, a day's satisfaction and a lifetime of scarring, shrill dirges, shadows dancing away into oblivion and truths tarnished black.
Sores and blisters and vice-blossoms pepper his ragged face, blessings to others; warnings. His urges fulfilled, he somberly mourns the years he has lost philandering and pillaging innocence.


Iniquity Can Give me no Peace
In the living of life, the heart always burns.
The charred husk is but a remnant of that blaze.
Our lives as fuel.
Our smiles scorched dry and black.
Our childminds erased, effaced.
Our hearts afire.
Age is incapable of evading truth.
Our burnt husks are open books for all to read,
And tremble.

The only call that can provide him safety is ecclestiastical. The abbey is his church of silence, his spiritual domain and resting-place. Its walled convexes and altars sight his furious escape from life in memory, the timely siren of prayer lace him with earnest comfort. But years of prayer and wine and servitude grow old, his bilious mind can no longer derive safety from the monastery, the ascetic lifestyle afforded him by God, and the relinquishment of vice is not enough to calm his hunger. He doffs the burgundy robe and dons his former attire of obscurity, enters life again.


Religiosity Can Give me no Peace

Salvation and damnation twist like roads in a wartorn city wracked by explosions and sleepspray. They dance, they play polarized, never touching; flirts. Blow kisses blessed by shadows, lips erupting from the night behind and lending a tangent longing for the boon of Faust. They snicker and wriggle, bloom in cerise terpsichore, stain aureate in our quest for their perfection. Always in motion, straining and burning and in a prism's metallurgy, turning our dreams into cherished ashes for their delight. Rend us apart, shir away our minds, grind our will into wisps. A false idol is the parentage of humanity's ideals, the malign puppetmaster that nurtures us into soldiers and pawns, delusions of grandjeur and grand illusions of purpose. Promise us eternity for worship.
Salvation and damnation are the twins and tools, the Gemini instruments of our extinction. No human endeavor has ever prospered under their control. Both efface life itself and consummate your time to fulfill their destinies. No breath should be expended in their pursuit.



Death can be dealt with when Death comes knocking. No peacepreach is real if it is the word of a false prophet or any priest, purveyors of narcotic dreams and necromancers of ghost memories long entombed in their cerements.

The cottage apartment house rented to him by the aging couple becomes his refuge. Daily, naying animals call out. He offers to work for them, the aging couple accepts. His modest lifestyle is a charm to his appetite; he feels he can settle again, and perhaps this time for good.
When the dawn seperates and again converges the clouds as the rooster shrieks its notification of morn, Uther faces a small, guilded mirror and spots the roaming guises of his past, the scarred remnants of the avenues of escape. He mourns at this.
He sees the animals slaughtered, the aging couple aging further. He mourns at this. The world ages into foreign eras; the inner warring of man's attempts at controlling basal actions groove and sand away. Entire nations pit opposite wills for profit and the blood of both are called to service and death. No place in humanity's dimensions are sacred; the sacrilege of peace is restored time and time again. The stubborn cycle of ignorant battles scar every town to the dim, blurred horizon, and the rationing of happiness spreads to every dwelling in the countryside.
The yesterdays catch up to him, warning of imminent distress. He must escape from this stasis, as no peace or rest can be taken; time is throttled and distorted as memory surges. Uther must delve again into the inferno of the world and sate his hunger, endeavor to tempt the devil with greed and chaos.
Calm Cannot Sate my Hunger
This passing of time and the shunning of recreation is killing my eternal soul, I cannot sit and sit and work and be happy. I must follow my cravings. I will lavish my hunger with opulence and decor. I will spend life and take it as I wish, dwell in the arctic tundras and view the black vistas of satiation.
Blood is shed on the city walls, Bergerac and Aurillac stain red. The choirs of Hell preach a tenorous falsetto of murder, the minstrels of Paradisa dance a terpsichorean courante of worry and regret. Screams titilate in visceral rapture, he rejoices in howling thralldom and bloodlust. His savage escapades alert the cloaked constabulary and, amidst a violent battle, he is captured. The brace of men carry his beaten and bound body through the city as a gesture of public welfare. His impending execution is celebrated.
Murder can give me no Peace
Sweetmetal, the blood jets in a fine spray,
Offal, the rampant purging overtakes me,
Envelopes me, in murder and the luster of it,
Victim, I dote upon you,
And lend you my finest and most
Intimate of gifts.
Uther can hear the hateful shouts of the throngs and masses of people surrounding him. Faces pinched in bitter and pristine hatred. His consciousness threatens to fail as he envisions his escape. But he knows, as he approaches the wooden gallows and sees his twined fate knotted into noose, that his next escape, the ultimate release of need and hunger, will be his very last.
Swag and amour are forgotten, my life is given purpose by the swift decision of the noose. Peace, cold and true, is the only remaining luxury I possess. I have escaped this life through every possible route, except for one; resolution. The fortunes of life are present for every man, it is their's to squander. I regret the decisions I've made, yes; the quagmires falled under me, and the shrouds of crime and indulgence rested upon my flesh like pox-satin. My treasures have been spent in pursuit of something that cannot be bought: the escape from the pain of life. The complete belief in any of my choices will fruit in poison. The simple fact, I've learned through struggle and false triumph, is that life is inescapable. The only path to a good life is clear and resolute : passion diluted with repsect, belief in a higher power with the absence of personal illusion, ease of living with the short constance of the outside world, and, overall, the collection of sweet smiles from others. Life and the business of living it can either be a shadowy prison or a sunny respite. One must spend every measure of energy to be true to it, or life will have its vengeance.

Achilles

It's pretty up there. Lofty, I mean. Melodramatic. Your vocabulary is impressive, but you didn't need to show it all off. I mean, really, leave a few words for the rest of us.

Also, you're really heavy on the modifiers. The meaning, crispness of the writing gets lost in piles of adverb and adjective. I'm sure you don't want to hear it once more, but showing instead of telling is a skill that applies to every level of writing, beginner to professional.

I enjoyed all the mythological references, but they also could have been used in a little more moderation... moderation.

This works more as a prose-poem for me. A wordy prose-poem, but not a bad one.

Good piece, GV. I look forward to reading more of your work.

cheers

Achilles

__________________
The Palace Flophouse

When Newton closed his eyes beneath a tree
and took the apple from the serpent, he
conceived the urge of humanity, plea, plea,
procreant desire and tendency.

Voodoo

Prose poem was EXACTLY what I was aiming for, mate. I actually submitted this for a school contest, as i may've said. the bitch didn't like...

Mike

You say that this got you in some trouble at school. I won't ask why. To me, it seems that you're rebelling through writing this - and labeling it great - to express yourself, to stick it to the Man, to show us how many adjectives you know (or at least you're showing us that you're pretty good at using the thesaurus). You see, this is just ordinary. Look at what you've written. Really look at it. There's no direction; there's no fundamental meaning. There's a fragile balloon of metaphors filled with the epic, the misdirected, and plain ol' hot air.
You can really make this a lot better by following one of the simplest rules of writing - showing & telling. Here, you're telling us everything. Yes, love is great, them fields and flowers are nice and purdy. And Uther lost it all and somehow degraded into abusing women. We don't know how. We don't know why. These veils fluttering around in our faces, these metaphors that are clinging to our mental boots--they are distractions.
You mean it as a prose poem, but it's not close to hitting the mark. Prose is more than using adjectives, at least to me it is. Prose poetry should communicate to us. We shouldn't be forced to wade through this swamp. You need to simplify. You need to work on the flow and organization. Despite my seemingly negative comments, I like where this is going. You can do a lot with it, but it desperately needs work. Let it fit into a moment - it needs a sense of place.
I'm really speaking from experience here. I know how it is to write like you have written. Let me share with you some of what I thought was my best writing (at the time the following was written)--about five years ago.
Not that your 'poem' or my junked story can compare in many ways, but can you see some comparisons here?

What I would finally suggest is more of an opaqueness - an existence - to your story. Let Uther tell his story.

__________________
- Mike

Shawn

weitschweifig, der freund.

I agree with Mike. You must let your character, not your language, come to the forefront or all you story will be is words.

My suggestions are to do some exercises in minimalism and work down your words to be precise and meaningful. Then revisit this piece.

Read this: Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin was probably one of the greatest writers of the past two centuries. She is concise and every word has its own meaning. You'll learn a lot from her.

__________________
The most frightening part of leaving a parent's home, to me, is not knowing where one's own home is.

Voodoo

I'll try. But note that this man's descent into madness isn't meant to have direction. And evidently, you've never tried to hybrid oscar wilde and catalog...

Mike

The man's descent, yes. But the telling of the story - this, I can't agree with you on. All stories have direction. They don't just wander around in circles.

That's more than an assumption. That's an insult. Maybe it's just me, but I would be kind to people who take time from their lives to critique a stranger's writings.

__________________
- Mike

Voodoo

Its not an insult, mate. don't take it as much. you're right ,i shouldn't say anything like that about you for judging something of mine, even if you don't much like it. thanks for your time, mike.

Voodoo

okay, i'm editing it now... I read the excerpt of chopin, shawn. i'll try... but if i can't, i'll start with something new.

Sarcazmo

And that's too bad she didn't like it, because it's pretty damn good. Oh, school policies and politics. You probably blew her mind.

I stopped after "pillaging innocence." You could end it there. I was out of breath and suddenly wanted to make love....Achilles, may be right about the words...you may not need them.

Thanks for this.
(I need water now).
Sarcazmo

Voodoo

You're right... I whored it with the words. But I did not use a thesaurus. Spent too much time reading the bloody thing when I could have been writing.

Knocking

You are very poetic and it makes for a very interesting read (although I have to focus much more on it, lol!).
To show, as opposed to telling, what you want to say can be done with dialogue, but I'm not sure if that would fit in this. Also action that implies things can help. Let us see through Uther's eyes. For example:
He sees the animals slaughtered, the aging couple aging further. He mourns at this.
Could he see them being led to the barn and the old man holding a rifle? (or something) How can he tell the couple is aging? Do they walk slower?
I hope that helps some. There's a whole page on wikipedia about this (under "show, don't tell")
Anyways, keep writing! Your style is very cool.

__________________
"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

--John Keating, Dead Poets Society

Voodoo

thanks, love.