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Here’s another poem. I wrote it a little while ago. Just after my twenty-third birthday in fact. In general, I do not enjoy my birthdays… I haven’t enjoyed a birthday since I was ten. It was something about double-figures so you can imagine how I feel about slowly creeping up the twenties! As part of my birthday "celebrations" we visited a place called The Fairy Knowe on Doon Hill near Aberfoyle. Legend has it that the pine tree at the summit of the hill contains the restless spirit of the Reverend Robert Kirk. He studied local fairy lore, publishing his findings in The Secret Commonwealth (1691). As punishment for making public these supernatural secrets, he was snatched away by the fairies to languish in fairyland forever more. Anyway, if you make a wish and walk around the tree seven times it should come true. But beware if you walk the wrong way. I love things like that and I guess it made my birthday slightly less painful!
Apologies for the lack of posts recently. I am frantically trying to complete my Masters dissertation. Only eleven days to go and then I’ll be well and truly back to the creative writing because, quite frankly, if I have to write many more academic footnotes I may well go insane.
Another year had wandered passed
With lead toed boots, muddied all
The life I live. Squandered fast
With nought to show but this scrawl.
And there I stood, smiles beneath
The streamers on the chandelier.
My multi-coloured mourning wreath
Heralds the death of another year.
The table gleams, treasures atop,
Musing on the memories gone.
Innocence wilts in a teardrop
A child from a time, once upon.
A small, green steed and a knight
In jeans flew with me into the sun
Enchanted rode we through fading light
The night sang lullabies of fun re-begun.
Sweet melodies of blissful sleep
Linger as the dawn glows red
We lovers arise, and up we leap
Into Hope’s rosy joy, we fled.
Up blue hills and passed a stream,
Through the cool-veiled waterfall
We looped a knot around a dream
And listened for the fairies’ call.
And here we are, back again.
Gone the whispering bluebells.
Wishes swirl through life and rain,
Love and pain, kissed by fairy spells.
Brace yourself… possibly my darkest story yet. It’s the story of a modern, female Don Quixote. The main character lives in a world of dreams and Arthurian Romance but is cruelly snatched from her reveries. I suppose if I have to be literary about it, the work is a metaphor for the loss of innocence and the realities of life but in all honesty, I was just depressed. Enjoy, but be warned.
She had grown up in a house filled with books. The walls of almost every room were decorated with a hodgepodge of shelves, grinning with rows of multi-coloured teeth, some lying on their sides, being read from sometime long ago. In the living room and the study, there was a shelf, with a single line of books, encircling the top of the room, just below the ceiling; crowning these rooms with the laurel of literature or perhaps, that of the eccentric collector. But from every shelf the world shone, illumining the beholder, encompassing them with a light denied to so many and sought by too few. Drawing in the open mind, with the enigmas of their pages, hoping to open this mind some more. She would stand bathing in the cool glow of enlightenment, loving the way the book shelves looked, this myriad gleaming cracked spines and beautiful leather and gold bindings and yet she would turn and walk away. To her own bedroom, with its own shelf of books, most of them pristine, still yearning for that first caress, the first bent page or crack in the spine. She would fling herself into the dusty pink bean bag in the corner of the rotting bay window, near to the radiator; she liked the choking heat from the central heating and the creeping draft from the rattling window. This was her favourite place. In the other corner of the bay window, there was a pile of books, perhaps two feet high. These were the books for which she shunned all others; reading and re-reading and then reading some more. These were the books she loved. These were the books she would live. There she sat, hour after hour, winding her way through the labyrinthine quests of the stories. Sometimes she was locked in a castle, ravished by the wicked son of a good king, sometimes, she was won in tourney. Other days she would be of great help to the Knights of the Round Table and on many days, she would fall in love with a single glance. And as she read of these fantastical worlds of days bygone, days long gone, she grew into the fairest maiden anybody had ever had the glorious good fortune to lay their eyes upon. A river of blonde, gushed down her back and past her waist, shimmering opalescent in the sunlight that snuck through the old window panes. Her complexion was of lily white, with rose bud lips and gentle blushes of pink across her exquisite cheeks. She was beautiful and she was eighteen and soon she would embark on an adventure of her own, away from the questing knights and malicious ogres of the kingdoms of somewhere else. Lunette was to go to university.
This month, my story, The Renaissance was included in a free online magazine, Original*. It includes the best stories recently posted to the usenet group, alt.fiction.original.
I’d like to thank Alaric for his hard work producing the magazine and suggest that anybody interested take a look at it… and not just because I’m in it - it’s an impressive showcase of fiction writers.
* To download the PDF, click my link, scroll down the page and click the button marked "free". On the next page, scroll down and enter the "captcha" code and click the button marked "download… " It’s a little complicated but worthwhile!
Hope fled long before,
On wings I could not share.
That which I adore
Left nothing but despair.
I cower in the dark,
And now that Hope is gone
Life sears bright and stark
With smiles plastered on.
Through this mask of joy
Eternal wishes fly
For Hope’s return, coy
I pray it’s not goodbye.
Content soon, I hear
"Anon, I come" Hope sings
Quelling creeping fear
Wrapped softly in Hope’s wings.
Another short story. This one is about childhood; not necessarily mine but some people may recognise themselves! It follows first day at playgroup, nursery and school and ends with the first time you realise childhood is not perfect, not a fairytale. It’s not about loss but about the awkward transition from innocence to experience.
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, in a distant land, not so far from here there lived a girl. A girl who was not a princess but who never gave up hope that one day she may be. It was not the riches, the dubious celebrity, the contempt of Mrs. Jones, Mr. Smith, their kids, step kids, pet hamsters that she desired. It was not even the inevitably insipid looking Prince Charming that drove this dream. The thing she most wanted was to be like the beautiful, happy princesses from the animated films that had punctuated her childhood with their spinning dresses and sweeping hair and sweet songs and happily ever afters. Dancing in a field, friend of the birds, (strangely coloured, fat and charismatic birds, sometimes even clothed), singing like a nightingale (not clothed and possessing the normal levels of charisma for a bird) and utterly enchanting to look at, even though the happily ever after dress and hair hadn’t happened yet. Read the rest of this entry »