Cloud Catcher

Poem I wrote for a project.

We know the highest point our fingers reach,

To be the highest heaven in the sky.

So then, great one, might you perhaps now teach,

To me the strange and puzzling cause of why,

It seems in life, stock still we’re forced to stand,

While high above, the carefree cloud flies on;

While grasping groups of guy-ropes always manned,

Have not a single chance to hold it down.

Be it the slipping stream of boiling steam,

Or be the slithering smog of slimy smoke,

I never seem to reach my constant dream,

Of catching all those clouds in bottle’s choke

Therefore I sit, a lonely man perplex’d,

Still sitting silent, still, and always vexed.

Character Sketch #3

“Are you on World of Warcraft again?” The rather pudgy boy questioned. Clad in a white shirt and basketball shorts that fell just above his knees, he looked the part of a Warcraft nerd himself.

“Yeah, so what?” The reedy kid by the computer replied, dressed in similar garb, though he had on headphones that made it hard for him to hear his friend at the doorframe. Daren, the pudgy one, paused for a moment.

“I’m going on a nature walk with my parents. Want to come?”

“What?” the player questioned, unable to hear now in the midst of battle. Daren waited till the skirmish was over.

“I said, I’m going on a nature walk with my parents now, do you want to come along?” Daren’s friend turned on his swivel chair, hunched over from habit of bending down to look at the computer screen.

“Um… nah, I’m not really in the mood. Want to get on here and help me with this raid, instead?” He questioned, then, sighting action on screen, returned to the game at hand. Daren sighed.

“No thanks. You know I quit,” he pointed out. His friend snorted and chuckled at the same time.

“Yeah, right, man. You used to play every hour of every evening, and now you’re telling me you’ve gone stone-cold sober? You don’t have to pretend for me, man, why don’t you just join me and you can still tell everyone else that you’ve finally gotten over it.”

Daren sighed. How could he explain?

The tree outside the window coruscated in the brilliant sunlight, the wind rushing by in a gust. A robin warbled on one of its branches, Daren its audience, now that the thin boy had completely immersed himself in his game again.

“We can do this some other time. Come on, are you sure you don’t want to?”

The boy did not even respond, so completely engrossed as he was in the game, the orchestral music blaring to the epic battle that he was part of, his headphones blocking out all distraction.

Daren walked outside to find his own fantasy.

Muse #1

I might expand on this, I'm not really sure. Nonetheless, I'm working on another story that I definitely want to expand on at the same time, which is why I'm slow to post.

“Stop it!” I snapped. He did, but remained indignant.

“Why should I?” He demanded.

“You’ll learn someday.”

“But I want to know now!” He insisted. I sighed. How can you explain, the dragon asked. You cannot, he claimed, there is nothing you can teach he will listen to and not question. Accept his fate.

There is always love, Buddha said. Give him love.

Ah, those two. Thus the whirligig of time brings in its revenges.

“Sorry kiddo,” I apologized as I tousled his scruffy brown hair. He slapped my hand away.

“I hate it when you do that.” He grumbled. I smiled a bit, but it was tinged with the helplessness I felt.

“I’ll keep doing it so long as I’m the eldest.”

“Barely.”

“By two years. That counts.”

“So what? I’m getting to think you’re full of shit about this girl talk. I hate the fucking sluts.”

I winced. O, sing to me, Anna, muse of beauty and desire.

“Are you a virgin?”

I balked, my stomach dropping, growing more nervous by the second. Well, then, jump.

“Yes.”

She smiled, and draped her head on my shoulder.

“I like that you’re honest. I can actually trust you…” she said, trailing off as her fingers trailed lightly across my stomach.

I paused, a bit confused.

“You don’t think less of me?” I asked.

“Some guys just need the right girl.”

I looked over at her and grinned.

“Are you the right girl?” I questioned in a deep voice. She grinned back, and rubbed her face lower and lower on my chest, pulling up my shirt so her auburn hair could tickle my skin, and she took off her glasses as she nuzzled her face on my stomach.

A chorus of seraphim.

“Why do you hate them? Who cares if they’re ‘sluts’?”

“I care.”

“Why?” I demanded. He crossed his arms as we strolled across the parking lot.

“It’s disgusting.”

Sing again, O muse.

“Your face just started going pink!” She giggled. That was an understatement. It had gone jazz apple red, fire engine red, cherry red.

“You slapped my ass in front of all your friends! What did you expect?”

She doubled over laughing. I pouted a bit more. She hugged me around the waist, still bent double.

“You just look so cute when you’re embarrassed,” she wheezed, still giggling. My face flushed further. “Would you mind so much if I slapped your ass now, where no one could see?”

I thought about it for a second.

“I guess not…” I admitted, and before I’d finished my thought process she grabbed at my crotch.

“What!” I said, almost squealing. Anna cracked up again. I calmed down, but she was still clutching her stomach, laughing too hard to pay any more attention, and so I reached over and her a slap on her left butt cheek. She jumped up in surprise, then grinned at me.

“That’s what I love about you.”

I smiled back at her, and she walked over to me slowly, her hips rocking in her denim daisy dukes which were cut at a modest length. She pressed her chest, covered with a tight tank top, into my own, giving me a slow, teasing kiss on the lips. Just as I started getting excited, she walked away, still shaking her ass from side to side, and turned back towards me with a mischievous smile. I shook my head, grinning in turn. I could get used to this.

Chracter Sketch #2

Y'know, we men seemed to have dropped the tough guy persona. I'm not necessarily against that, I just find it kind of weird since most girls still go for those types. I don't see them falling all over the wimpy dudes who practically trip over themselves to give the girl presents or to open up emotionally. Just the other day, even, I was talkin' with Mohammed, and he was telling me how this one girl was all over him on vacation.

“Well, so, what happened?” I asked him, and he was like,

“Well, she was, like, with her brother, who was super protective and everything, and so she didn't want to see me get beat up and all, so she gave me her number and then hugged me goodbye. Dude, she was like, so hot, though, so it was still pretty sweet.”

Yeah, well that was a bunch of bullshit, and I told him so, I was like,

“Did you even know that was her brother? Did she respond to the number she gave you?” and he was all like,

“The girl isn't just going to straight up lie about something like that, of course he was her brother, and so what if she hasn't responded, she's probably just super busy and hasn't had time to really look at her phone” and he kept going on and on like blah blah blah. He's seriously bullshitting himself if he thinks that the chick was legit all over him. See, 'cause Mohammed is super funny, but he kind of looks like he's trying too hard, and so he gets a lot of attention but it never goes anywhere.

As for myself? Whatever. I get some here, I don't get some there. I don't really bother with all this shit, since I can't seem to understand girls anyway, so it doesn't make any sense to try and understand the dating game if I can't understand who I'm playing against, y'know? Though I don't like to say that I'm playing against girls, since that makes me sound like some misogynistic asshole, and I like girls, I just don't really bother with them, y'know?

Well, go figure. I don't really mind Mohammed bragging so much since he usually puts a funny spin on the story, even if it's probably bullshit he still makes it sound really cool. So, I'm pretty sure the dude doesn't know shit about girls, otherwise he'd probably get more action. That's kinda why I was thinking about the whole tough guy thing, since Mohammed is just a nice guy, and girls never really can take him seriously since he's white and has the name Mohammed. His parents are nuts. But, yeah, so he doesn't seem too serious and all.

Character Sketch #1

The kid was half his size, but was still winning. He was small and scrawny, but he was vicious. His mouth contorted into a grimace, he rained mindless blows on the other boy, his shoulders swinging with the effort of each thrust, his feet lurching forward slightly each time with the mometum.

The boy he was assaulting was barely visible beneath his raised arms, which he used to block the strikes against his hunched frame, receiving the strikes continuously. Yet, the boy was still unharmed, like a mountain unmarred by the buffeting of shrieking gusts. His only movement was the slight shuffling of his feet to keep the distance between him and the other boy. The thrashing limbs caused the boy's mop of brown hair to brush back and forth, obscuring his eyes so much that one wondered if he could even see the face of his attacker.

By now the whole class had noticed, and the kids ran from the basketball courts, the nearby kickball field, the cafeteria and the courtyard, like rats streaming to a meal from their hidden crannies, vicious in their taste and voracious in their appetite for blood. The kids cheered on Johnny, of course, he was their friend, Thor was so big and weird and quiet and had such a weird name, so of course no one wanted Thor to win.

But Thor was still taking the blows, seemingly unaffected in the least. Finally Johnny gave a last, extra-fast round of punches and gave up.

“Get out of here, you stupid butthole!” he yelled, and then strutted away, so proud to have taught that stupid Thor a lesson. The other kids started wandering back slowly to the hot blacktop basketball courts, to the dry, brown grasses of the kickball field, to the dim, smelly, cafeteria, and to the bright, red-bricked courtyard. The high red-brick walls of the school grew quiet, left without sound to reflect, as if the whole school felt the vast anticlimax.

Thor brushed the hair out of his eyes, rubbing his head with the displeasure of the sudden headache. He looked away, and once he ahd seen that all the other school boys were gone, he retreated to a silent corner of the playground, where the shade of the hig building concealed him where nonce could see and where none would venture.

#4

A late night. No one was on the lonely side street as the woman plodded out of the innocuous brick building, tucked away from all the other brick buildings on the street like a baby swaddled in a blanket. She looked both ways as she stepped on to the bleak, well-worn sidewalk, doubly cautious in her state of exhaustion. She walked quickly past the various boarded-up stores, but with a slight halting motion that betrayed the determination required to move at such a pace, hampered by her thigh-high boots.

The few who passed by her did not catch the motion, avoiding any sense of contact after taking in the tattoo on her neck and the curly brown hair framing a tired face. Used to this, the woman avoided contact in the same manner, though each time she subconsciously looked up slightly, her blue eyes pleading for a connection, her pale lips barely parted in their repressed desire to speak. Yet, each passerby ignored her, and she struggled to shake off the sense of solitude that pervaded her whole world.

She arrived back at a quiet brick apartment complex, walking through an old wrought-iron gate to open up the door of the entirely dark building. She reached into her purse for her keys, glancing furtively left and right and spying no one. She unlocked the door as quietly as she could, walked inside and then closed the door quietly behind her. Her footfalls grew heavier as she slowly walked up the bare, stone, stairs, finally reaching an apartment on the third floor as she took out another set of keys.

She walked inside slowly and then collapsed to the floor. Slowly she undid the long laces on her boots, each second bringing further relief to her aching feet, until she slipped out of the boots, revealing a set of cute, pink, socks.

She stumbled into the bedroom and collapsed on the bed, sleeping as Saturday night turned into the day of the lord.

"On the Grange"

A short poem. I don't usually write poetry, but I felt inspired to do so this time.


Sitting on top of a green rolling hill,

I wave a halloo to a far hilltop vale,

Where sits my friend on his windowsill,

Viewing the valley on life-size’d scale.

With no gross obstruction in the way of this view,

He sees me quite clearly and responds in the like,

For on this landscape, then one or chance two,

Will find the world open as an unlocke’d dyke.

With the fewer restrictions, the beauty doth quoth,

“Leave behind limitations, the two of you both.”