Like the Sun by radtastic

a piece from radtastic today, which certainly isn't because she said nicenice things about my prose pieces, not at all. Actually used a line from this in my secret santa piece for her as well. not that you'll find it, tis very small. not that anyone reads this anyway. but i'm big on documentation and nostalgia and such and i think this will be a nice place to have in a year or so. hanyway. tis long but i'm going to get away with it. end of story. read, if you are already doing so.

Like the Sun

We’re sitting outside on the porch. The sky is darkening rapidly. I remember as a little girl I’d sit in the same spot I’m in now and try not to blink so I could watch the progression of the sunset. I wanted to study it, see how fast it took for the sky to go from bright blue to orange and pink to dark, dark purple. But it never worked. Every time I’d end up blinking, or my thoughts would wander for just a split-second, and when I looked back the sky would be dark, and I would be out of luck.

“The sky is sort of like humanity.” I say, and Matt looks over at me. He’s smoking a cigarette. The end glows orange, illuminating a small part of his face in the darkness. I hope it’s still light enough for him to see me glare. I hate it when he smokes.

He catches the cig between two fingers and brings it away from his mouth. A cloud of smoke follows the cigarette, then joins the air and floats away from us. “What kind of bullshit idea is that.” He says.

I pretend to look offended, but I’m really not. Sometimes I say whatever comes to my head, and most of the time it IS bullshit. I could just let it go, but I decide to defend myself. “It is not bullshit.”

“Convincing argument.” He laughs as he puts the cigarette back between his lips.

I stick out my tongue and ignore his comment about my immaturity when he notices the aforementioned action. “Will you quit smoking already? You know I hate it.”

“Don’t go all big sister on me.” I can just make out his facial features in the dim light, and I’m fairly sure I saw him roll his eyes. “I can smoke if I want. I’m a big boy now, and everything!”

Even though I want to stick out my tongue again, I don’t. “You know you shouldn’t. You’ve already had cancer once.”

“It wasn’t lung cancer, and it was a long time ago. I don’t even remember it. I was like, what? Two?” I watch the cigarette dangle in his lips as he talks, spewing its ash everywhere on the porch. Mom would kill him if she saw. I try to grab it out of his mouth, but he turns his head. Even though it’s quickly getting darker I can tell I’ve made him angry; he takes a long drag from the cancer stick and blows the smoke at me. I cough exaggeratedly and pretend to fall over. He doesn’t laugh.

I clear my throat. “Just because you can’t remember it, doesn’t mean the rest of us have forgotten.”

“I know. You were four, and you remember it just like it was yesterday. I was in the hospital all the time, the medicine, the big, life-changing surgery, blah blah blah.” He pulls the cig from his mouth and leans over the porch, dropping it into the flowerbed below. I resist the urge to say something sarcastic about how classy that is.

“Whatever, uniballer.”

That was a shot below the belt. Literally. He moves like he’s going to stand up, but I grab his ankle and pull him back down. He gives in but refuses to look at me. His eyes are out toward the sun. It’s just barely visible now, an orange sliver in a mostly dark sky.

“Look, Matt,” I start, “I shouldn’t have—it’s not funny to—”

Matt doesn’t move his eyes away. “Don’t, Kate. It’s fine.”

I nod, but I’m not sure why because he’s not looking at me. The silence between us grows for a long time, and when I am sure I’m going to burst if neither one of us talks soon, he pipes up.

“So,” he says, “how is the sky like humanity?”

His question makes me uncomfortable. I draw my legs up the steps of the porch and bring them to my chest, hugging them with my arms. “It isn’t. That was a stupid thing to say.”

“No, explain it to me.” He insists. I feel like I owe him now, after the joke I made about his unfortunate state of pants-affairs.

After another long pause, I state profoundly, “I don’t know.” He shoots me a look, and even though it’s dark I can still see it, if only in my mind. I continue, if only to entertain him. “It’s like when the sun sets, it tries so hard. It illuminates something until the very last second. It never gives up; it perseveres. Even when the darkness is inevitably going to win, and there’s no hope, and everything is unfair, it still tries to be a beacon…you’re right, this was a bullshit idea.”

“I get it.”

That’s the only thing that’s said for awhile, as we both lean back and let the warm, humid night wash over us. I look over at him as he watches the stars come out, and suddenly, I want to cry. “Everything is unfair.” I repeat. He glances over and seems surprised to find me staring at him.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to be like the sun. Humanity may be strong and willing to fight, but that’s because it’s a whole group. Break them apart and all you have is humans, and what can one human do by itself? Nothing. I’m not courageous. I’m just one lone, single me.” A tear leaks out of the corner of my eyes, and I’m glad it’s dark because Matt hates it when he sees me cry. “You shouldn’t have to fight so hard. Things should just be fair. You should be able to smoke if you want to. You should have two effing balls.” A few more tears follow. “Everything is unfair, and I’m not a sun. I can’t fight it.”

Matt’s quiet for a really long time. I think he’s noticed my crying, but he doesn’t mention it. I’m grateful for that. After a few silent moments, he says, “I’m glad everything is unfair.”

I stare at him incredulously. “What?”

“I’m glad everything is unfair.” He repeats. “I mean…think about it. Life being fair wouldn’t change people; just because someone thinks they’re a good person doesn’t mean they are. So you’d have all these people, living life as they are now…only they wouldn’t be happy.”

“Why not?”

He sighs. I can tell he’s frustrated with me. “Because they’d have to live with the knowledge that everything bad that has ever happened to them…well, they would have had to have done something to deserve it.” He sits up and twiddles his handles nervously. “I like to think that I didn’t deserve cancer, and that I ought to have two balls, personally.”

Without thinking, I sit up and hug him as tight as I can. He doesn’t return the hug, but that’s probably because I’ve got his arms pinned to his side. “I love you, baby brother.” I say, suddenly.

Matt chuckles a bit and ignores my proclamation. “The trick to being like the sun—to keep fighting—is to know that everything being unfair is to your benefit, even if it doesn’t seem like it. You’ve just got to do your best, and you can’t let anything get you down. You have to keep…what word did you use again,” He asks, slightly embarrassed, “…illuminating?”

“Sounds right.” I tell him, even though I have no clue.

“You have to try to be the light in the darkness—to have hope, because the world is unfair, but it’s also beautiful.” He shrugs. I can tell he feels a bit silly. “I mean…look at the sunset, right?”

I still won’t let go of my grip on him. He continues to be hugged whether he likes it or not. “Yeah,” I agree, “it was a beautiful sunset.”

Scream by golden_orchids

the man, the legend, the love: goldie

Scream


The noise bursts from lips red, raw and cracked
spreading out in burning lines through the air,
small harmonic echoes bouncing between the burning streams of sound
bursting in the ears/

/like flavour crystals burst in the mouth
before the scalding salty draught of sea water/

/before the wall of pain, flaming wash of hate filled noise
cascades into the darkness of the ears
and burrows into the hindbrain
trapping and ensnaring thoughts
blinding the eyes/

/Which blink.
Slow heavy lids, mascara streaked and long lashed
descending
slower than a snail
yet faster than mice/

/hands cover the ears
moving with a speed unmatched by any chrysalis'
matamorphosis in the trees
the long painted nails
clawing round
sheilding/

YOU CANT SHEILD YOURSELF FROM THE WORLD.

Antiquis Temoribus by kluny

In honor of the 4 hr AP Latin test I just took (and did ok on) here's kluny's Antiquis Temporibus

that is all.

Antiquis Temboribus

Here’s an angry young man
He got a gun in his hand
His years weigh heavy on him

Here’s a foolish old man
He’ll refuse to understand
He knows less than when he came in

The anger will fade to words on a page
The old man will die, forgot, none will cry

But a child who loves
The world they wrought
Will rule and live forever

An Indyfluency Christmas: Written for Galantee by foxinsox9045

a beloved piece, i think, that i did, myself, enjoy. in the hopes that one day we might all meet up somewhere and have the bangingest party that ever hit this earth...

a girl can dream anyway.

here's An Indyfluency Christmas by my friend foxy

Of course I would meet Galantee on a bus. After nearly being knocked over by the exiting passengers, I boarded and took my seat in between a man with a goatee and young teenager listening to something on her iPod at that volume that is audible enough to be annoying, but not loud enough to make me complain. Crowds make me feel nervous, stressed, and inadequate, so I looked up at the ceiling and decided for the hundredth time that I hated trying to travel anywhere during the Christmas season (I never learn- you must not leave your house within a week of Christmas).

Meanwhile, the bus-driver was swearing under his breath (about the same volume as the girl’s iPod) as he tried to inch through a blob of blatantly jaywalking pedestrians. He must’ve hit the curb or something; a sudden jolt wrenched my head from its upward gaze and brought me face to face with the man sitting in front of me. We proceeded to do that thing, where two people stare at each other because they think they’ve met before even though they definitely haven’t so it’s really more of a double deja-vu, and we did this for maybe a minute before I realized why we were staring at each other. His arm. I saw on his upper arm, just below the shoulder, the tattoo: printed neatly in a circle (Times New Roman), “IF.” I said nothing, but nodded and raised my sleeve until he could see the same tattoo on my arm. This time he nodded. At the next stop we both exited and immediately walked together in silence.

After about ten minutes, we came to an abandoned warehouse, the designated meeting place. We entered and beheld in the middle of the enormous room a similarly enormous Christmas tree, adorned, not with ornaments tinsel and baubles, but with disks of metal. On each disc, a poem had been etched in small print- Carroll, Poe, Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, Kipling, Bashõ, Goethe…looking them over, I became certain that no one had been left out. Underneath the tree were presents, but of course we had to wait until everyone else had arrived.

I looked back up at the man from the bus. “Galantee, I presume?” I asked.
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Totally wild guess. I figured if I met someone on the bus, it would be you.”
He chuckled and extended his hand for me to shake, “And you are?”
“Fox” I said, gripping his hand, “So, um, when does everyone else get here?”
“They should be here soon, I guess we’re a tad early. Let’s go look at our stockings.”
Galantee led me to the far end of the warehouse, where pinned to the wall were several stockings. These were just little treats, so we could have them while we waited.
“Um, who filled these stockings,” I asked, taking a small bottle of gasoline out of mine.
“Dunno, Brother Scorn?” Galantee answered, also removing gasoline from his stocking, “Santa wouldn’t touch this place. I guess gasoline is the new coal.”
Everyone had gasoline.

Still, no one had arrived. I was getting nervous, because I’m incapable of not getting nervous, and busied myself looking at the swirling rainbow patterns in my gasoline. Galantee was standing back at the tree, calmly reading the poems that covered it. Suddenly, there was a loud bang as the door flew open. They were here. Finally, in came MiladyAlise, Purple Haze, Golden Orchids, Neono, ITC, Bowers, Ironypills, Poison333, Radtastic, Burning Sands, Subliminal, Cyanide, Kluny, and the Milkman. They had all come for Indyfluency Christmas. We laughed and greeted each other (really, it was more of a brief, get-to-know-each-other orgy, because it is Indyfluency after all), and then sat down by the great tree to unwrap presents.


And because they were from Brother Scorn, they all contained sulfur.

Happy MayDay

Here, have some DOOM!

The esteemed Cyanide with Before the Machines.

After the bombings, the burnings, and the chaos, there was silence. Silence, save for the crackling of a few fires that hadn’t extinguished themselves yet and threatened to spread and consume whatever remained.

The twisted, melted skeletons of skyscrapers and office buildings loomed over the desolate, destroyed streets of this forgotten city. Once an empire, it has been reduced to ruins by its very creators.

Somewhere, deep within the bowels of the basement of one of these destroyed buildings, an abandoned computer sits on a desk. It sits, waiting. Waiting for a command of some sort. The silicone green letters glow ominously upon the screen. “Initiate System?: Y/N”.

A piece of ceiling tile falls onto its keys as the fire reaches a nearby gas main, shaking the entire city. By chance or some unseen force, it strikes the “Y” key before the whole keyboard crashes to the ground with a clatter.

There is a low rumble. The burning skeletons of these abandoned buildings begin to take life. Slowly, but surely gaining a sense of self awareness. They twist. They turn and weld. They grow into something greater, more powerful than what had been left behind.

And then. . . . there were machines.

Actually, MayDay ended about an hour and a half ago. I celebrated by hauling heavy office equipment into a truck and getting paid in beer that I couldn't drink because I was driving. Nonetheless, it's my favorite holiday. Cheers, all.