Locke-Peter's blog

Like everything else, much of the Almighty's work happens behind the scenes. Hundreds of Cherubim and Seraphim labor like ants, probably rhe same workers who'd worked tireless hours wiring and double checking before the final microphone check preceding "Let there be light." there is no area where heaven more closely mirrors earth than the amount of credit given to the stage crew

"Look, I thought we agreed we were just going to have a nice lunch. That's all!" sloth pounds the table with his empty coffee cup. The other five look slightly embarassed. Gluttony puts his arm around Sloth's shoulder.

"I mean, it's nothing personal, but you did start it."

"Start nothing! That guy fell asleep! That's all! He was tired, he fell asleep. Now we're the only people in this fucking diner, and why? Because every other person is outside fighting for no reason!"

Warning: violence. Don't read if you're going to get me in trouble for reading it.

Ordinarily he would not be seen in such a disgusting, seedy place. A motel bed, probably filled with bedbugs, diseases.... But definitely filled with Her.

They kissed again, and he begins to lose control entirely, becoming more frenzied, hungrier. She responds in kind, growling softly and nibbling at his ears and neck. He groans with pleasure, running his hands down her soft body.

They wind their way in, the wind blowing them like leaves from across the continent. They come in ones and twos, until there are Six.

For many, this is the first meeting in a long time. They take their appointed seats, and exchange pleasantries as they wait.

They are in a golden field of wheat, neck high, and they are completely obscured from view, not that there is anyone present to spy. They know hthat this place was chosen for that exact reason.

After speaking with each other, they sit silent. Not one pair of eyes dares to glance at the vacant seat.

Major Gerard Hubra returned home from the medal ceremony. Another success. He could still feel the swell from the star spangled banner, from the heroes he'd honored with bits of ribbon and metal, from their families... He basked in it.

Here is the whip man, the wiry muscled man who jitters and hisses, pacing while reading the paper in his shaking hand. He takes a huge gulp of the scalding hot coffee from the mug in his hand.

The bone white mug has painted letters on it. There is a line at the top, with a message reading "Half Full." near the middle, another line reads "Half empty", and a line at the bottom, in red, "Pour More Goddamn Coffee."

"Do you understand what this means? This... This... Thing?" the man's voice is getting progressively more frantic. He slaps the paper viciously, and growls.

Do you want something?

Do you desire, in the deepest depths of who you are, some cold, simple object, just to call it your own?

He's there, and he sells that desire to you.

He's mister big shot, advertising king, the fancy suit expensive watch cookie cutter man you see in all the movies, the mogul, the modern king, who leans over a desk from his leather throne, and calls his cell phone baby.

With a body like Collette's, you didn't need money.

Money just happened.

Collette was reading a magazine, holding it daintily between perfect sculpted hands, her dazzling manicure almost, but not quite covering the picture of her face on the cover.

They said later that the ship was cursed. That the devil himself had crawled across the foredeck, clicking his hooves and sowing terrible seeds.

It was just another boat leaving London, that lovely black pit, to go somewhere fresh and new and green....

The colonies, land of opportunity, America.

The passengers were a mixed lot. Some poor, some rich, and they slid in like snakes, coiling their way through the throng.

Author's note: I was struck by inspiration today, the kind you can't quantify or question. Characters are running rampant through my mind, and they want to be written. A story is unfolding itself, and I apologize for any offense this may cause, because I will record this tale to it's fullest extent. I would advise those of you offended by violence, or too young to read about it in good conscience to leave this post alone. That's all.

Ask a person to imagine a god.

This is a short story I started and completed at CCYWC, and it's been in high demand, apparently. It's been sitting in my notebook these past few weeks, and I guess now I've finally got the time to write the whole thing up. Here it is!

The power is dead.

I have one tall candle, wax pooling and dripping, casting a yellow light in an uneasy circle around me, and I cast a long shadow on the discolored wall.

Forcibly freed from all my distractions, I notice how slowly time passes.

Somewhere in the future, there is a calculus test, 8:00 sharp tomorrow seeming blunt, eroded by the gentle patteribg of the remnants of the storm that killed at least one tree hours ago.

You live in the world's most free country, and you cannot show your face.you cannot speak, for if you do the world will see you as something to be cured, and you will be destroyed.

The only way you can exist is by hiding behind a mask, speaking through a personality not your own, becoming a fascimile of another's life.

You are shown a place where you can be yourself, where no one will care who or what you represent, or so you think.

As my days on this Earth lengthen,
and my horizons exapand,
my curiosity
abounds,
continually proving boundless
(language still causes me to wonder sometimes.)

a day of protest,
a day for outrage and encouragement and solidarity,
where I must not speak.

People.

The root of my omnipresent confusion.

How I love them.

I would shout and scream my support,
for all their endeavours
(for indeed, I've never understood why one cannot simply love whom one wishes.)
I would laugh with my brother humanity,
as girls and girls,
as boys and boys,
loved,
if they so desired.

The green, unwashed creature watched in awe as the Bigjobs came out of the rip. They held big, wide stickers, with a hole right in the end. The creature almost snorted with dirision. That wouldn't even slow down a pig. Keeps em sharp, keep em pointy. That's how he- wait a minute.

A shadow passed over the creature, and it looked slowly upward in exactly the same fashion as nearly every gremlin in the course of history had when first encountering a bayou vulture.

Gremlins were consistant. They seldom learned from past experiences, because gremlins seldom get many past experiences.

Leviticus had been there the day of the breaching. He'd been stronger then, fitter, and one of the best magicians of the age.

He had been called to the Tower. He had listened to his fellow practicioners complain and groan about the waning of their abilities, how magic as a whole was getting more snd more difficult.

Impassive and uncountable by human or any other eye, the pasts drift by. Every possibility of every infinite instant of every infinite finite life, dividing and reforming and collapsing. A million million worlds, some brown with decay, others green with life, others barren or molten or ashen grey, only one thing stretched completely, encompassing all: every single world was Earth.

Pan closer.

One in particular, inasmuch as it's possible even to hope to pick one out, is green, and placid, and modern, and dull.

Pan back.

I sit here,
silent.

Impassionate, as I watch
parades of stuttering,
nervous notes,
shivering fingers clutching white sheets,

and I wonder at it all.

I wonder whether I or the stage holds such power,
whether I'm wearing a tightening mask,
inspiring this fright,

these...

Clanging chattering nerves,
thick I feel them almost second-hand,
like a tobbaco whisp, sour and
unhealthy.

Resting beside my love,
watching the hopes wash around me,
the quavering voices tickle my ears,
sitting, deciding.

Casting.

-Locke

I am corporeal in my dreams.

I walk among the living spectres,
my own lord and king,
prince of nox.

Silent still, reticent, but capable of speech,
my warm throat filled to the brim,
pulsing red in my veins, life with solidity.

Perhaps I'd walk on slender legs,
pale dark hair left long,
I'd walk and think solid thoughts,
feeling summer's first pale rays
poking through the permafreeze.

I always awake,
as dreams are wont to end,
slip conscious back into this dream where I live,
and I can't help but wonder,
could I be just that?

A dream of another,

Her heart beats like a semaphore,
sending countless
steady
dot dash
dot dash
dot dash
beats, sliding effortlessly through her,
through the wires in my palm,
see what love has wrought.

-Locke

Hey folks, Locke-Peter here looking at applying to that nice, wonderful writer's conference down at Champlain college. Big problem is I'm applying for prose, and I seem to... Have a lot to choose from. I'm not good at narrowing. So, my question, or favor rather, to ask of you would be to tell me what you think I should submit. Really, anything from my blog, a segment of a longer piece or a stand alone, whatever you think would be better. Thanks a lot folks!

-Locke and Peter

You are the wink drifting past in the wind,
a gray green specter,
the first to appear to my untrained eye,
full and human-seeming.

You are the white whisps of hair
clinging to the bald head,
framing a constant,
grinning joyous lover of life.

You are the fearless soldier,
marching to glorious war,
but degraded to loading bombs onto planes,
not killed by jungle hell but by cancer in the shells you lifted.

You are the image of God,
the one face I saw in my prayers as a child,
your gleaming squint eyed grin
staring back from the gates of imagined heaven.

Winter meant frost and chilly leaves, crunchier and browner than those Aubrey brought during autumn times, winter meant a palpable chill in the earth on Aubrey's shoes, a change from the cold mud of October. 

We are the centuries.
We are the bloody baskets and the guillotines,
and soon we will discuss the amputation of your head.

We are your singing servants, Sir or Madam, or perhaps you'd prefer not to choose, no matter.
Still we march behind you chanting our rhymes and repeats, which some find inscrutable and others hilarious.
Left,
left,
left,
right,
left.
Wir, as they say in the old country, marschieren weiter wenn alles in scherben fällt.
We are the centuries.

I have felt fractured,
divided since
forever.

It's never really
bothered me,
just a fact
of my
life.

And now that I have
your love to guide
my steps, I've found
I have a place where
my feet can always touch
the ground.

I feel a oneness,
a simple unity,
lying somewhere warm
loving every moment
I have spent one
with our soul.

Because souls can heal,
and souls can seek,
and souls can bond,
in pure white heat.

-Locke

We are a complex,
multileveled,
simple people.

We take pleasure in
complicated,
multifarious,
simple things.

The taste of you,
never quite
definable,
intangible,
yet undeniably
present

the delicate smell
that lingers in your
long
wonderful
hair I can never quite
place.

You say you feel
pressured
to conform to
nonconformity,
that you can never really feel
welcome
in the complex world.

We will always have
the simple
gentle
tenderness found in
our complex
beating
hearts.

With you I
drop
my guard, my interwoven
complicated
shield,

Today I steered at school. I guided myself along the halls, an hour into my off block, wandering the edges of things.

I watched students shuffle to class.

I watched teachers shuffle to different rooms.

I watched janitors clean the places no one walked.

In one corner, a forgotten essay, dropped maybe. A sputtering, stuttering, error ridden attempt to explain a complex young life.

All these people driven by the invisible hands of power.

I hate dolls.

The house I live in when I'm awake seems to be full of them, macabre imitations of life.

(So ok, this wasn't too great, and I still can't play any instruments, so it's just my voice... I had fun with it. Kind of long, i know.)

Silence, little country girl,
hear the cries and scars the way that you have
walked,
just to leave the wonderland you'd found
return to the still life you'd led before.
You could have lived your days out here,
there was never any need for you to fight,
but now you've chosen life in black and white.

But it was not your fault but mine,
and it was our love on the line,
I really thought it was my time,
and now my great and powerful mind,

Silence, little country girl,
hear the cries and scars the way that you have
walked,
just to leave the wonderland you'd found
return to the still life you'd led before.
You could have lived your days out here,
there was never any need for you to fight,
but now you've chosen life in black and white.

But it was not your fault but mine,
and it was our love on the line,
I really thought it was my time,
and now my great and powerful mind,
brings me here...

Hush, smiling scarecrow man,
let your boiling, roiling thoughts now come to
rest,

I think of myself, a faithless kind of man.

I hear, see, touch, those things I believe,
never to know the blind respite of faith's gift to the ignorant,
those who-in my narrow view-need to see the world through a
wider
lens.

Yet...
As I lay to sleep
I feel something
more.

When I hear you despair that perhaps
you're incapable of
sustaining
this,

I feel a knowledge I can't have gained from anywhere
(except perhaps the lingering spark, unquantifiable)
that you're wonderfully wrong,
that this was built to last.

I've learned a lot of things from you.