Special's blog

Here are six words for your trouble:

I am the bitter of the lost days and this is why I'm sold

here. Please, believe the lies I'm

trying to believe

here. Together shall we be lost to a world of strangers?

These are the beginning words of poets- these are;

we built them with hands of iron and 

fingernails of painted gold. 

Try not to imagine me like all those gilded

ponies. I am not a child to be 

reckoned with, but rather a force to be

denied. 

Here's to poetry, darling,

here's to the old days of bloodlust and lye.

Here's to the sordid and the angry, Darling,

here's what's become

of the world.

I'm all confused about the dust
that catches in my lungs
every time I look at
the sun. My eyes are confined to
the yellows of standard spectrum.
My eardrums are too soft
to catch phrases whispered
from way out there.
Instead of apples in the moonlight,
I prefer the taste of oranges. They smell like the light that makes your face all sad
and tired.

I like to pretend you think of me when you smell oranges.
That when
you see their sungold skin,
cool and rough and aged Read more »

Trying to come home

is like fighting lightning with your

hands bare and bloodied,

cut to the quick by electricity

shaking with the energy,

shocked to the bone. Coming home

is tasting bitter blood and

crying sweet and slow.

  Read more »

Skies belong to pages

of wrinkled grace

and words aged like blushing

wine.

And when I fall asleep, convinced

of your form against my form,

I awaken to only skies. Wonderful

thoughts get caught up in our hearts

and make us Read more »

Touching you was not supposed to

erupt blue

nor spin heat into sky dew- light

the air with smokey residue.

Touching you was not supposed to

draw me

struggling to breathe, into your

every stolen moment and see Read more »

you were like a dragon with words
the way you
plucked them like heart strings 
and spun them like fine wool
into cloaks of deception 
Pitching 
forward strung like some foreign wave
and stolen like some malted sweet you
took baby steps accross the bow
as if anticipating the death of
balanced reason I wish I could capture
you in picture frames but they always
dull you and where you collect 
clouds they collect dust and where you 
try to reach out  Read more »

if my heart had a face
it would be cracked
and warped, so that 
as the hands slipped into 
1:36, they would become 
invisible and for a moment 
time and truth would stop
and my heart would
not.  
Every once in a while, the fractions
of its face would 
shift out of place, air would leak 
in and tears would begin
to scurry down the exposed 
jagged 
edges. You would 
not see the urgency there; that face  Read more »

It’s like a museum,
except nobody’s
allowed in and the
men in the windows
wear suits and shoes
with buckles. I count
the marshmallows
because you cannot burn
your tongue on sugar
and milk.

it’s like a museum
but they close the doors at
ten and open them only
on the thirty-third of
may. It’s on that special
day that the windows
are unboarded and
the cobwebs mopped away. Read more »

Before the concert on Saturday, a few of us YWPers were given the unique opportunity to interview two of the ECCO musicians. This is my reflection of our conversation with Nayoung, a cellist who performed at elley-long. Read more »

Written for the Piano Trio. 

Introducing an instrument
is unlike anything else,
the sounds must blend,
melt. Join. And 
from here I can see 
Soovin's fingers moving
to the vibrato and 
his arm pulling. pulsing 
notes from the wooden
violin tucked beneath
his chin.
 
Ignat's hands pass
over the ivory keys,
not like percussionist, but
like a father carressing
ailments from a
childgame bruised form. 
The notes he reads
are not words, but 
cues- art painted and
patterned, music inked. 
Music his fingers
are paused to spin. 

Carr's arms are
strong and they are Read more »

Written for the Gioachino Rossini String Sonata No.1 in G major.

colours of 
spring
like the teething sun;
the green of
grass clearing months
of ice & mud. 
colours of spring 
are painted 
on our ears 
one artist, but
four hands, each
with a different plan
to show us something
of beauty. 

opening flowers
with finger kisses;
freeing brooks,
handing us new hues 
for our hearts. 
if only we knew 
brushes
that could claim such art.     

Written for the Gioachino Rossini String Sonata No.1 in G major.

If you were to play
this beauty on my neck, I 
would surely sing Spring. 

Written for the Gioachino Rossini String Sonata No.1 in G major.

She would lift her bow
& pull music from the air

he would pluck it from the
strings & they 

would harmony. Breathe
melody, tears rolling

from their fingertips &
landing like 

ritard-
andos in scores on the floor.  

For the Antonín Dvorák Nocturne in B major; performed on August 25 by the ECCO. 

The violin sings, &
the cello hums, unable 
to resist. The bass chuckles 
and snaps his tongue 
in his mouth. 
When the violin begins 
to dance, the cello stretches
out a hand and swings
her in larghetto arches
as her sister catches the 
tune and trills. Harmonizing
with the viola who
has arrived with a pipe
& a beat in his throat. 
The bass is unimpressed,
leans against the cellos
chest, gives him a 
'take it away' sort of
glance. The violin picks
up her step, rises to Read more »

R09_0065.MP3

As a response to David Ludwig's composition, performed on Wednesday, Aug 25 & titled, 'Aigaios'. That night David explained the piece as a musical interpretation of a scene from 'The Perfect Storm' in which the waters swallow a ship & eventually silence into calm.

There are crows in 
this ceiling 
with wings of ocean
waters and beaks of 
shattered glass. 
They take movement
like waves take 
shadows and fold them.
 
These crows are
greenblue like
sunsets reflected 
on the calm of past
& lasted perfect storms. 
These crows catch long notes 
& draw them.   Read more »

While listening to the rehearsal of Brahms String Sextet No.2 in G major.

Can words swell & wane
as a melody may?
Although, I suppose
words carry more likeness
to the bows & fingers,
playing on instruments of
page & producing, instead 
of music, bruising thoughts 
& drowning emotions-

similies as rhyme &
crescendos the realization
of some sort of purpose. A
poem would be this 
sextet, in that the layers
of line, stanza, verse
return to each other & tangle
into chaos that emerges as
beauty- as bliss. 

What is a word without a verse?  Read more »

UU 1.MP3

Based on what I heard Tuesday evening on church street. The ECCO quintet playing Mozart's no.4 in g minor.

An argument of sounds 
is a dance of sorts-
a battle of chords,
taking swings with things
like a sharp and
g flats. the musicians,
I can imagine, would 
stand, a trance fueled 
by the music in their
hands
and give each other battle
scars, cock their 
violins like clubs & 
their bows like swords;
tangle in a
brawl of sorts- or a waltz. 

Music fills a room
with a humid 
atmosphere comparable
to that of a heated
fight- to that of
the maple dust
in my head. Read more »

Lady Grey lives on the edges of misunderstanding
strums strings so that the beautiful things 
will come. Lady Grey
has eyes for ink stains. Comes & goes
like melodies. Written in 
much too sharp a key. Can't see 
without love
& can't see the future. 

& the grass sometimes
calls
her name, whisper words 
with undertones of forest
green, topaz shadows, harmonies 
of gold.
Cookie-cutter secrets fit in 
painted china plates, chipped 
at the hour lines, picking
at the urgency caught like 
leaves in Lady Grey's 
hair. Dew on her elbows
from when she tried  Read more »

I dislike this ending. Thoughts?

Indigo stars are
invisible at midnight.
You can only see them when
the sun shines, and
only if it doesn't blind you
as you look up to try to catch the beauty
on your tongue. &
it was cold so we cried
snowflakes down our cheeks. Rivers
formed from melting ice.
Candid dreamers swam from
bays at the bases of our
eyelids, through the ravines and to
our chins.

I never
told you this, but
you glow in the dark.
Your skin
draws in light. It's rather beautiful
I know because
I've never seen anything so
lovely. Read more »

He is only lungs and toes
with finger tips and
dangling arms. He is only
breaths and lungs and
he will not be here for long.

Pulling history and imagination
to his wayward pointing
eyes, lost in symmetry- intimacy
beauty-lies and butterflies,
he is tasting dirt and
air and blood and
getting nowhere.

He is suspended and endless;
liquid shadows lighting
his straight carved edges.
It will be his great pleasure
to touch the ground again.
It is just a tempered dream.
He is bloodied palms

I don't really like this one. Back to the drawing board.\

Because I need
to remember
every word that she said
when she
stormed out to
watch the sun set.
Leaving
well enough alone
in the darkness
to rest & my heart beat-
thump-thumping away.

Why didn't she stay?
It would have been okay.

& I'm waiting
& waiting, hovering
just above
sane, simply
because she has
gone.
Where did she go
when she left
me here? Why did she
run as the sun
disappeared?
Oh goddess of lightning &

It's raining postage &
the ink is staining the
cement. Painters paint, but
I'm no saint. I won't stand here
in the down pour much longer
waiting for some sort of
verification.

Dear Somebody Else,
I need you here.
I can
barely save myself, & I will
not be able to keep
this moment dry as the
world begins to cry.

The sky is fading grey and
white, the edges are misting
out of sight. The wind is
blowing in a storm
of sorts & time is blowing by.
I can only try, but I'm
no master in the art of

There's a lower air pressure
up in heaven- from the altitude
and they're all
fucking high- fucking crazy. I'm
just falling up to the sky,
it's not so strange as it seems to
be. No.

Nobody understands
falling
anymore. Not the sun nor
touching blazing stars.

My fingers are full of icecaps
& from my toes erupts a
chill of memories
beaten;
carried out
by the wind.
I lift with breaths full
of smouldering breezes,
built
up
with pollen- strung
from the mountain tops.

Please stop hating her.

She draws deepthroat wishes
with every footstep closing
in. She pulls a million years
of baggage tied with lace
to her fingertips. I promised
they were double knotted- she
made me swear and I swore
hard.
She is approaching me with
beautysmiles and lips lustrous
and purple with mistakes she'll
never admit she made. I
catch each breath, hoping
maybe she'll take my gift with
open eyes, I'm so tired of
her accepting with her tongue
tight and her mouth

“Just gonna stand there
& watch me burn? Well that’s
alright because I like the way
it hurts.”

I can hold flames in my palms,
it’s a gift I learned from
years of swift stealing sanity from
the brewing pools of hell.
I can trace ash stains on canvases
of ivory white. I can singe skincells-
embed nails in your throat. Sillygirl, I
will only kill you slowly if you promise
not to leave me. And we will die together
grim and grotesque roses firmly
fossilized in the amber throws of your
childhood home. I remember the way
you pulled the strings and snowflakes fell Read more »

i.
Sometimes I wish that
when you see me
you'll see the bruising. Triangles 
of blooming purple arcing 
in bands on my chest &
back. I'm bleeding internally 
from a broken heart. 

Sometimes I wish that when 
you see me you understand. 
& perhaps you do. Perhaps you 
simply do not care. I was just
hoping
that you could be my coagulant,
the one that binds my 
shattered platelets together. 

But alas, I'll go on losing
blood- turning slowly violet. 
I'll keep pulsing spirits 
through my veins- veins 
budding & branching & braiding 
& tides just below my skin Read more »

Sometimes the waves come,
but I can fly
so I survive.
Tonight, though,
I just let them come
& burst through my heart 
& spill from the rims
my eyelids
rubbed raw red
& warm. Pity tears, rushed together
until they were nothing 
like diamonds on my cheeks but 
muddy streams
dampening the way I taste
the atmosphere. Tears. Tears. 

I could hear them
everything 
their voices- hate full voices 
biting my ears tight
wound & high strung. 
I could hear everything. 
Their voices stinging. 
My sisters music miles away. 
Somewhere She is breathing. 

Fuck fuck fuck.  Read more »