Ramblings of Amaryllis

[Amaryllis]

Decided I can't be bothered to post in my blog. Too many buttons. So I'll just chuck everything here. This first one isn't very... Story-ish or poem-ish, I suppose. But the rest most likely will be.

LIFE IS NOISE

I don't know why I bother to clip the pages between my fingers and flick through. Why I soak in each word, again and again. Why I press my feet against the polished trees and tie my shoelaces each day. How I manage to decipher the noise and slip it into my collection of deciphered noise. What's the meaning of laughter, I don't really know. It's a strange cackle of notes, like a song that faintly resembles what they call joy. A large mural of memories, hiding the tunnels that curl deep into the walls, playing the songs of sound.

Someone asked me what I wanted to do with my life. "Make money," I replied. "Lots of it."
"Don't you have a dream or something? Get married? Have kids? Pursue something you love? Travel the world?" asked the idealist.
"No."

Dreamers irritate me. You know, the ones that claim everyone's born innately pure and good. That out there lies someone who's your soulmate. That life will miraculously get better if you just wait it out. That the majority of the human population stays forever faithful towards their spouse.
It's irrational. And irrationality irks me. They're the occasional kinks in my never-ending files of precious, insignificant, scribbled paper.
Emotions are annoying and not to mention, dangerous. They're a source of recklessness. They make people do silly things - like drink poison, cut off their ears to send to their loved ones, murder entire races and weep over friends with polished nails and poisoned lips.
Norepinephrine, oxytocin, dopamine, vasopressin, endorphin, testosterone, serotonin and so on. They need to be trapped in a box, sealed shut and hidden within the neat array of reason - of which many lack.

"Because of God, you receive good grades," preached a man on stage. Uh, actually, because you studied your ass off you earned good grades.
"Because of God, this woman was saved from Cancer!" More like the woman had shitloads of resilience and a strong desire to live.
"Because of God, our parents were brought back together." Not really. It was either your parents, their sex drive, you or money.
God is like Santa Claus and prayer is like how I used to flush my wish-list down the toilet, because I believed sewage plants led to the North Pole. Maybe sheep do, too.

I used to run with a herd of them - sheep, that is, - we ran from the big bad wolf. Chasing this star in the sky called Faith. I stepped back one day and observed the wild herd, searched behind them for the mad wolf and found nothing. Looked up at the star and realised it was like a rainbow - untouchable, impossible, useless.

I'm living in a dream and my dreams are my reality. I wake to find nightmares and I sleep to find peace.

One day I know I'll disappear. That the girl in the picture, grinning, neck weighed down with medals, will be just that. A grinning girl, weighed down by medals.
I'll wake up to find I'm waking to a dream and that somewhere in the reality of my nightmares, I've been forgotten. I'll only be a certain set of connections in a person's mind. A swirl of neurotransmitters in someone's prefrontal cortex that invokes some sort of emotional response. Just noise in their minds.
Until they're forgotten, too.

One day I will breathe, and prepare to choke on another year's worth of water, to find I no longer need to breathe.

I will wake up and realise I'm asleep.






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So I feel all mindy today and the thing I just wrote reminded me of something else I wrote a long time ago. Might as well chuck in one of my old stories. I sure talk about suffocation and sleeping a whole lot.
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MY MIND IS REALITY

It sinks into me, crushing my lungs and forcing a corkscrew into my airways. I remind myself to breathe air every few seconds but it is never enough. The nights of accumulated fatigue circulate through me.
I curl into the mattress and cocoon myself in a thick blanket, scrunching my face and forcing my eyelids shut. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.
I am afraid - terrified - of the dark. Of everything. Of the ice that grazes my skin, bleeding into my arteries, fogging and merging reality and illusion.

I wrench my eyes open and sweep the darkness of my pupils over the darkness of the room, there's the girl with the rope snaked around her neck, staring down at me. Somewhere stands the little boy, his large, helpless, cruel, unforgiving eyes pressed into mine. There are others. They are watching. They are always there. I do not see them. But they are there. Watching me.
The fear forms cracks in my ice but my face remains stoic. I do not understand how my exterior remains so pristine when my interior is but a chaotic jumble of screaming, crying children and the rubble of war.

The blanket becomes another object of suffocation but I pull it tighter over my head, it is the only thing protecting me from the ghosts who watch.

I think of soft green meadows and waves melting into warm sand in a place of eternal sunset. I think of the small wooden hut, a storage room on the beach, a sanctuary within my head. But today I am not so lucky, the dead girl in the closet sits in my storage room. Sleep. Please. Please. Let me sleep.

Hours pass and finally, reality sinks deeper into my mind.

In my dreams, I am a bird. My wings beat the air in swift, rapid movements. I am escaping from something horrific, a being or event so full of anguish I'd rather be dead. It catches up on me, I run harder, faster, stronger, my feet slapping against the pavement. The water levels rise and soon it is above my head. I cannot breathe and my pursuer swallows me whole.

My body convulses and for a moment I am aware of the waking world but I am still trapped in my dreamworld. The pain is searing and a shiver rakes through my body, a billion needles have embedded themselves into the pores of my skin.

I return to the reality my mind has created for me. My back is against a cold, crudely made wall. My wrists sting and an oil slick is hunched above me. The dreams continue. I am running, then others are running from me. I snap heads and limbs, they are my gingerbread men. Hands first, legs second, head third, then I eat around the body, saving the heart for last. I am a spider, trapped in my own web. My friend sits next to me, he smiles and his face turns ferocious, a hideous creature with maggots in his eye sockets. Then I am the monster, the very creature I am running from. I am my victim and I am the observer.

Light gleams through the curtains, I open my eyes and looking down at me is the girl with the rope around her neck, hanging from the ceiling. That's when I notice she looks exactly like me.

[Mortal Coil]

Z, why are you so good at writing?
That second one was a little macabre though. Yikes :crazy:

[embers]

These are both really well written Z, particularly the first. I know I told you that on Skype, as well as telling you that if you're really feeling down don't hesitate to talk to me. You waved it off then so I'm just repeating that now. Good writing though! :P

[Amaryllis]

Thanks for the comments, glove you guys.

A BEAUTIFUL PAIN

There is a beautiful kind of pain. The electrifying kind that jolts you awake, like a dose from a defibrillator or one too many shots of caffeine. The soothing kind that one clutches onto and holds to his chest like a teddy bear. The kind that mutters soothing words into your hair and holds you as a mother would. A painful pain that makes you feel like your mind is flushing itself through a blender, like your brain matter's been turned into chicken feed - the blissfully terrifying kind that bleeds the world from your soul.

I'm addicted to it. To shredding the world apart like scrap paper through a shredder. I want to live it, hold it, marry it, taste it, be it. Come home each night to find it waiting for me in the bathtub, soaking me in its acid, making love to me like a tyrannically abusive husband on Satan's drugs.

"Masochistic?" you ask. Doubtful. It isn't a matter of bliss or ecstasy but the need to be punished. For something so odious I myself do not know of, and for everything I do know of. For being too obnoxious, too sympathetic, too self-centered, too big, too small, too loud, too quiet, too cynical, too hopeful, too this, too that. For being too much and yet, not enough.

Life is a disappointment. Or at the very least, I am. I failed everyone and I failed everything. It's like a choice between saving your son, your other son, attempting to save them both or saving yourself. Whichever road I step on, left, right, ahead, backwards, up, down or diagonal, I fail one way or another.

I reached for the stars and missed, then missed the moon when I fell. Aimed for everything else and missed, except for a pulsing, spiralling black hole. I held brushes and sunk its hairs into paint, melted the acrylic into the canvas and created. I spent hours on a single section of the background, writing and re-writing, never knowing when to stop. To this day, I feel as if I've never completed a thing it my life.

Agony is sugar-coated, wrapped in silk and duty-free. It licks through your skin and bleeds its impurities. Bloodletting was used to purge evils and I am old-fashioned.

People are apple seeds and pain is the juicy crunch of the fruit's flesh. Life is noise and pain is music. Scars are tree rings, they are timelines, each one a story of yesterday's child.

Yet in the torture, we lose ourselves and our compassion. Sheffield once said "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you incredibly annoying," to which I wholeheartedly agree. I lost myself in the maze of my mind. Somewhere along the hills of scars, I left behind my spirit.

But it's a beautiful kind of pain. And I'm too afraid to let it go.

[embers]

That was really well written, Z, though granted it was pretty fucking depressing. If you ever need to talk and babble then yeah we're on Skype at the same time more often these days!

[ImCoolBeans]

Really well written pieces, Z! :3

[Amaryllis]

Thanks mikey and sachal. Your comments make me smile :) (and my head grow bigger. stop it. lol jks, no, please, keep complimenting)

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What do you want to be when you're older?
That question seems to pop up constantly,
But what about what you don't want to be?

I don't want to be the notes that echo for direction.
To be the eyes that flutter and the lids that wake.
I don't want my breath to curl against another, lacing itself with ecstasy.
To be a rusting blade
And the weight on a stained child.
To weave a puppet that never asked to be made
And to mar silken linens.
I don't want to be the print on a marked face or the ink inside their veins,
To be the truck that runs its wheels over the same man over and over and over again.
To mother diamonds with gold-plated teeth
And fill bathtubs with damp bills and soaked cigarettes.
I don't want to be the scale that weighs your worth
With the eyes of a frugal pawn shop.
To be overwhelming and non-existent.
To be the edges of a ravaged book.
To be the metallic flavour of a violin's strings.
To be a brush,
A leaf
A bird
A chair
A picture
A house
A season
A lamp
A star.
To be more,
Less
Fire
Fragile
Blue
Childish
Close
Far
Old
Alive
Awake,

Human.

[Alexithymia]

I like it, Z! <3 You're always awesome.

Edit: After reading the other three, I have to admit that I'm scared. xD Macabre, horror, depressing, whatever you want to call it.

[Amaryllis]

I like it, Z! <3 You're always awesome.

Edit: After reading the other three, I have to admit that I'm scared. xD Macabre, horror, depressing, whatever you want to call it.

I'll take that as a compliment! Thanks mark <3333


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LIBRARY HEAD

A library melted into a bushfire. The shelves snap and tumble like cookies between teeth. Books spark and disintegrate like matches, their spines evaporating, pages sprawling across the scenery.
Many words survive, though some letters and pieces are lost. The ashes taste like the books they once were, of someone I remember being but no longer am. But the ashes lace together and along with it, the stories. They are muffled, bound, confused. Some pictures sing brighter than others, while some have been caught by the wind and washed away.

My toes shuffle through the collapse, nudging the blackened edges of paper. Obsidian eyes pound with hatred, hatred for a child that was too much to handle and too little to love.
Panting men with cameras press in, they smudge their lips against hollow bones. Groaning, screaming, begging, the voices shove into my skull, sinking in like the heavy, indestructible weight of sweating iron ceilings. I no longer know which sounds belong to who.
Noise like white static. Pregnant ugly nerdy dork fat failure spoiled brat bastard child mistake creep spawn pathetic die cutter disgusting anorexic nobody stupid loves girl you. Words I no longer remember. Dust. I do not remember. Will not remember.
Numbers on a lit screen, my precious light. It guides me through chaos, one calorie and pound at a time. It is my bible and I obey it like its faithful servant. The light chokes me, tears me apart, finger, toe and limb at a time. Skins me, paints acid down my throat and marinates me on a heated grill, my skin sizzle-popping. Devours me until I am nothing. Nothing but food and life is food and food is life.
Maroon caresses the lines, swims from the wounds like a waterfall. It presses its soothing presence against me and like a lover, I beg for more. Its lines clasp my flesh like strings on a guitar, the music lulls the radio to sleep.
My soul melds itself into my best friend, hooks its talons into her and marks her as mine. She laughs and walks with another. I grind like a barely contained evil spirit. The blue that paralyses me morphs into a red flame and bleeds green.
Smoke encircles my lungs and walks into my mind, putting the horrors to sleep. God's liquid floods me and gentle powder grinds into my thoughts. My lids open but my eyes are closed. I live and die and live again.
Women, men, poised on a cushioned chair. Their faces and offices overlap and overwrite. They ask the same questions and they nod in the same practiced manner. The corners of my lips raise and a stream of hyperactive tales flood from them. Today will be the day when I will get better. Today is the day. Today. Today. Today was not the day. Tomorrow will be well. Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow was not. Tomorrow never will be. Tomorrow. Today. Yesterday.
The explosion of glass, cloth and metal against my ear, the lamp's light severs. Mother screams for me to stop, while she crushes the metal neck of furniture against my skull. A chair's leg steps onto my stomach and digs in with its stiletto heels, I twitch like a half-killed mosquito. Mother cries and rubs the chair into me again, she begs for me to stop. Stop what? Breathing? Living? Being?

I stand amidst the wreckage and attempt to find a cure. A clue as to how the flower first bloomed and why the flower grew dead, the withered bud opening to uncover withered petals. Existing in its half-dead, half-alive state.
Black spots of floating dust litter the grey air. I lie atop the cocoon of crisp paper and soft dust. Dress in embers, dark hair morphing into ashes, lips tainted blue where red once lived. I shut my lids, shut the world, shut the landscape of my mind,

And sleep.

[Amaryllis]

I fall through the layers of unconsciousness, the blanket like frozen ocean. My eyelids trip over their lashes like flimsy curtains from a budget store, revealing two circular pieces of parchment. The day is an unskilful work of art, made to look even worse in order to pass as abstract, my throat is the texture of dehydrated fruit.

An actress and a therapist. Flies attach their legs to my sticky surface and I absorb the shadows like a recorder. Report Card is God, She measures my worth, divides it by the designated points and multiplies them by a hundred. The achievements glide over my skin but they are not flies and they do not attach.

Every day is disgust and every night is shame. I wind through the pictures, transition between each one - an outdated form of entertainment. The necklaces lack its full set of gems, the bread is mold and the ears are naked.

Disgusting when skinny. Disgusting when fat. Everything in between: Disgusting. The skeleton peeks through and the layers shield the structure. An incomplete mansion, an abandoned mansion, the pillars snap like poorly manufactured needles and the paint creeps down the old bricks to melt into the sand.

I squeeze my arm and the squishy mold flops, I circle my shoulder and my fingers trace air, I touch my face and I touch a corpse. Fat. Thin. Normal. Ugly, ugly and ugly again.

Cosmetic surgery will do nothing, as a deceased made of maggots cannot be made decent. I press the worms into my mouth, I devour air. I scrutinise the photographs of me as an infant and take note of the holes in my skin, I look ahead and see a pile of garbage compost.

I search inside, put my hand inside my head like a spoon into jelly. I search for normality but instead I find void.

Cotton would be nice, I'll stuff it in my mouth. Fill the emptiness with cotton, nails, needles, feathers, salt water, carbon and yeast. I'll suck the flies through my surface to create a new heart, replace my eyes with marbles, replace my hair with rope.

Replace it all, replace me.

[Amaryllis]

WE ARE

We are apples. Our skins scraped white with peelers to be crunched and torn at by teeth. We’ve disintegrated to the core to be snapped apart.

But we are peculiar apples. We regrow. Recreate and re-die. Re-suffer and re-hurt.

Nothing is created and nothing is destroyed. Seeds reach their tentacles to explode into wheat, where it is grinded into a breath of solidity, to be trapped within webs. They are spilled onto tabletops, spun into dough, burned into bread. Devoured, excreted, dissolved, absorbed, resurrected.

We are snakes eating our own tails. Unmoving horses built into moving carousels, moving in circles but not moving at all.

We are leopards with distorted sunglasses competing in a beauty pageant with children whom we have destined to follow our footsteps. We tear each other apart – not one strand of fur at a time – but one eye at a time. Till none of us can see. We teach our young to do the same – to tear and break and shatter. We inwardly tear ourselves apart to squirm in our own vomit and disease.

We breathe suffocation.