Shahrazed's Weblog

Coast.

Lilith — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:18:38 +0000

He walked out into the darkness of the bay. The water was warmer than the summer air, lapping against his skin. Ship lights flicker on the horizon. The lighthouse pulsed rhythmically beyond the end of the break wall. He dug his toes into the sand, disturbing the snails on the bottom. The breeze ruffled his hair, licking the sweat that was beginning to bead delicately on his brow. He was trapped, caught up in the dirty whirlwind of it all, the vulnerability and the power struggles. The ups and downs that he still struggled to ride after all these years. He wanted to give in to her completely, but never did. Couldn’t in spite of himself. Thinking about it made his chest feel tight, jammed his brain. He submerged himself in the water. The sea was made of her, it was trying to drown him even as the salt water buoyed his body up. Grabbing handfuls of sand and the smooth pebbles that littered the bottom he tried to focus on not breathing, on staying beneath the waves until his lungs burned. He let the pebbles run through his fingers and clink back down before grabbing another handful. Then another, and a fourth before he couldn’t fight his body anymore. Gasping, he broke through the surface into the night air, filling his body with it’s thick perfume of brine and seaweed, the hot-blooded stink of the sea. The salt stung his chapped lips. His head and heat pounded together, oxygen deprived. She was still there, filling his mind, his body, torturing him. Where was she tonight? Where was she the night before? He never asked her, but it needled at him, secretly. Would she show up, ringing with her laughter and madness? Or would he spend another night wondering? Was there someone else? Several someone elses? He preferred not to know, pretending that these sort of questions weren’t eating him from the core outwards, reducing him to something craven and sad, a junkie, an addict. Floating on his back, he let himself think these things that he couldn’t think onshore, cradled by the ocean that wanted to suffocate him and carry him all at once. The ocean had no soul, only hunger he thought. Many insatiable hungers, which some people mistook for soul. A thread of seaweed brushed against him, slimy and clinging to his skin. He flung it away, suddenly angry.

Wading to shore increased his anger. Each step was a struggle between him and the waves dragging against him. Kicking at the surf he half-ran, half-stumbled on to the shore. He stood on the beach, in the dark, dripping. Feeling it boil through his blood. It came in waves, like the ocean itself, white hot rage washing down over him. His hands convulsed, fingers spreading wide then curling into fists. Staring blankly into the darkness, he luxuriated in forbidden emotion, let it roll through him. There was no one there to start a fight with, or hear him howl. He tried it anyway. Unsatisfying, impotent howl. He dropped to his knees in the sand. There was no one to see him.

Oh, Yes.

Lilith — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:53:54 +0000

She pushed me up against the wall, hard. Her eyes had the manic glaze I’d come to recognize in one of my ex’s that still sent shivers down my spine. Nothing good can come of this was the last coherent thought I remember having before everything went warm and fuzzy and then turned into a slow molasses sort of slide into oblivion. I don’t remember exactly how we got to the floor, but her arms wrapped themselves around me in a blissful tangle. Breathing was both effortless and deliciously hard to do. It’s the little things. Her lips brushed my neck as she pressed closer. An epic unfolded, fractal-like, as I tried to figure out how to get us up. It’s hard to get off the ground when there’s a universe being born. Everything I touched was a cascade of light, she was unbearable, radiant, bliss in the shape of a woman. I lifted her off the linoleum, so light, so fluid. The wallpaper supported us, clung to us in a sea of light, sustained us. I pressed my shoulders against it’s faded whirling roses, green and pink. Breath, breathe. We are alive, right now. She clung to me, like the wallpaper, arms around my neck, cheek pressed against my breastbone. I hold her as tightly as I can with one arm. Have to keep one hand on the wallpaper roses; I can feel them trying to bloom, pinkly. She tells me about everything she feels, the cotton weave of my shirt, the roughness of my jeans, the feathers in my hair, the heat of my skin. She tells me what would be amazing as each moment passes; lying in the grass, dancing, the swing-set down the road. We walk, arm in arm down the hallway. It’s difficult to leave the roses, but I know it’s better this way. She sighs against me, and because our hands are palm to palm, her bliss is my bliss. We are floating down the hallway, and suddenly it seems too bright. She agrees. We have to get to the screen porch, the old couch and the patchwork quilts. The quilts are important. They are a collection of information, each square a separate bit that has been sutured to other bits. We undertake this journey, a mutual purpose. The screen door must be touched. It sings when fingers graze the mesh, but we keep going. Sink into the couch together. We made it. We can sit here forever; the cicadas sing for us.

Yes.

Lilith — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 02:55:00 +0000

Yes.

I love you.

So what?

Staccato

Lilith — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 02:36:01 +0000

The rhythm is played on the drum of my heart

By the rough fingers of calloused hands,

Sailor’s hands, that play also on those frozen barrels

Full of thick black oil, slick circular rainbows

Churning in the icy slush, wake-riders.

Rip Tide.

Lilith — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 04:01:05 +0000

Have they called to me?

“Neptune’s daughter, child of the sea?”

Do they know me by my words? Syllables which are not soft

snowflakes which settle one atop another, in peace and perfection -

They are heart-piercing, they are the cries of the gull in the night sky,

harsh and raw invocations full of sea-spray and salt.

Have they discovered me by my bones? Bones which are not

delicately hollow like the sparrow’s, or the fragile

mineral reeds that might support some ephemeral body,

made of nothing but wind and the reflections of stars -

This frame is forged of stronger stuff, a seashell skeleton,

tattered fishnet sinews,

tidal flesh.

I am the unquiet wave that crashes against

the pebbled shore, grinding new sand.

Bright one, you are the lighthouse

telling the dangers of dark reefs and the

safety of an invisible port.

Forgive me; I am already promised to the rocks.

Senseless.

Lilith — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 01:37:03 +0000

When I broke it open

The cracking sound satisfied

Some visceral hunger

Long suppressed.

It’s un-wholeness, those pieces

irrevocably seperate,

Thrilled.

Silver

Lilith — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:38:33 +0000

She is dressed in only silver bangles,

And the tangle of my sheets.

Soft beside me, sleeping curled

Against me, a whirlwind, a dervish

Woman caught momentarily with defenses down, still, asleep.

Ashes.

Lilith — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:25:55 +0000

Consume me completely.

Show me immolation.

Turn my guilt to dust.

Let me be the fuel

For a fire that burns too hot,

Too bright in the deep sacred darkness

Of what was once a soul,

Lighting the horizon for miles,

With a sinister flickering

With black smoke curling

Thickly,

And the ominous beating of your drums of war.

Free me with the power and

The purity of your destruction.

Take it all;

Leave me blameless.

There is nothing else left to burn.

What else could we have done?

Change.

Lilith — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:57:26 +0000

Bring me the whispers of a late summer night,

Leaves that rustle without the urgency of fall,

A moon not full but bright and golden,

A warm black lake, calm but not quite still,

Heat lightning and gentle breezes.

Give me a night between the headstones

With another beating heart beside me,

Two warm bodies against the eternal stillness

Listening to cicadas and night noises,

Quietly resisting the seasons’ close,

Claiming one last summer evening,

Denying the inevitable change.

Frozen.

Lilith — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:58:25 +0000

Your pale eyes have burned me, unholy coals

made of ice and cold granite

instead of the warm carbon memories

of ancient forests.

I cannot look away.