Hidden Dreams Written in the stars

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Waiting

Hours fall like the snow
Its just as cold.
Waiting for you
To be near
To be here
Promises so new
Yet all broken
Like the glass angels
Before you
And the porcelain girls
To follow
Precarious and precocious
Big words
For big dreams.
Unfulfilled not quite
Enough
Yet still a mouthful
For the bitter taste

Of disappointment.

Posted by XO-JK :: 7:20 PM :: 0 Comments:

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Creation/Psalm

I can’t create a masterpiece
With brushes and paint
Or copper and fire
But my mouth is over yours
And the words in my head
Spinning with your voice
Colliding with your image
Creating a beauty-
I have never known
I crave imperfect flesh
And the gaze of golden eyes

I crave my sweet creators touch

Posted by XO-JK :: 7:19 PM :: 0 Comments:

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Know

When heavy hearts begin to bleed
And wrists are stained with grief
When broken hearts lose their edge
And the razor ceases to sting
When sparkling eyes can’t seem to glimmer
And smiles no longer form
When lover’s paths have gone astray
And the stars no longer burn
You will know my pain and feel my grief

On this night you walked away

Posted by XO-JK :: 7:16 PM :: 0 Comments:

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Wind

She’s like the wind.
Touching my soul
But so out of reach
Her voice in my hair
Her hands in my heart
Crazy mixed up cute
Mixed up crazy emotions
A past flooding back
The future flooding forward
And all I want is her touch

All I want is her heart

Posted by XO-JK :: 7:11 PM :: 0 Comments:

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Monday, April 24, 2006

The Obstructions.

This story was written based on the photograph... I was then given obstructions by my professor for each rewrite... this is what happened...
The Masterpiece

She had always been an artist. But today she looked at her art in a whole new manner. She had spent the day in the sun, her shoulders were stained with the harsh marks of the UV rays as she created a 10 foot by 8 foot chalk mural. She sat back now the pavement burning her legs and palms.
She marveled at her creation. There in front of her Daniel laughed and played his pudgy legs carrying his body from one end of the mural to the other, his tiny feet kicking up chalk dust creating a rainbow cloud.
His tan skin and dark hair contrasted against the bold bright colors of the masterpiece. Looking at him she wondered which was more so the masterpiece, the mural or Daniel. Her son.
She had not expected him. In fact he had been the aftermath of the one night she would give anything to forget. For two months after the rape she tried so hard to get on with her life. To heal. And then she found out she was pregnant.
Her first instinct was to rid her body of this intruder left by the stranger that had violated her. However when the time came and she had been alone and with her feet held in place by padded stirrups she stared at the ceiling counting the tiles and she realized that it wasn’t just the stranger inside her but also part of herself.
Seven months later she met Daniel for the first time. At first she was devastated. He looked nothing like her, but then he coiled his fingers around her own and she knew she had found a way to heal.
Now. Today. It was 2 years.
As she watched her son play she thought of all the times she had been told to look for the silver lining in a storm cloud. Daniel was certainly the silver lining. She knew beyond a doubt that he was the masterpiece.

Obstruction #1
*don’t mention the rape
* write it entirely as “scene” with no summary; include dialogue
* use third person objective point of view

The Masterpiece

The late afternoon sun was reflecting in the young woman’s hair. She could not be more than 24. I watch as she puts the final touches on her masterpiece… Her chalk mural reminding me of anger and aggression with the bright reds and purples, yet I can see no trace of this in the present. Her eyes shine with pride as she watches the small child run back and forth over her creation, her laughter dancing with the warm breeze and she and her classmate talk.
“You amaze me.” Said the young man.
Her nose crinkled and she shrugged. “its not that impressive” she replied.
I wondered if he was referring to the same thing she was. He wasn’t.
“Really Amelia. I look at that mural and I remember the day Daniel was born. I knew you would make a great mom, regardless of what happened. But wow.” He pauses.
Her eyes go dark and she pulls her knees tight to her chest. She stares at the boy (Daniel?) like she is waiting for some sort of epiphany to come forth. It doesn’t. At least not from my vantage point.
He gushes forth, “And you never stopped once… you kept up with school, you rebuilt your life, your helping other victims… and Jesus. Daniel is such an incredible kid.”
She stares at the boy, barely acknowledging what her friend is saying… The small child comes barreling towards her throws himself into her arms.
Her laughter reverberates again.
“Yeah it is a masterpiece…”

Obstruction #2
* Tell it from the child's point-of-view presently or looking back years later. (either way, play with the idea of the unreliable narrator).
* Show the mural w/ highly specific detail
* Set the story in a specific place, providing the reader with a strong sense of the physical context of the story world.




The Masterpiece

I stood at the window watching relatives come in packs, bearing gifts of casseroles and cookies. Their black clad bodies moving together like a cluster of storm clouds. It wasn’t time yet for me to face the masses and accept their condolences. I sat on my mothers bed and looked around the room. It was filled with the clutter of an eclectic woman with a passion for art. Yet shining through all of it was one photograph that was as familiar as my own voice. I couldn’t have been more than 2, if even that.
It was taken on a warm summer day and I stood in the middle of a giant chalk mural that my mom had created as part of her drawing class at the annual art fair in uptown. The mural was a mass of swirls, deep reds and fuchsia, purple and yellow and chartreuse. It was a cloud of figures and shadows, all jumbled together beating in a passionate rage.
That picture had been in Mom’s room for as far back as I could remember, always in a wooden frame painted in colors similar to her mural, she had written the word “masterpiece” at the top. I never quite understood because all though it was a beautiful mural it definitely wasn’t her finest work.
A knock on the door. With out waiting for a response Tom, my mothers best friend, entered the room. His face fell when he saw me looking at the photograph.
“I remember that day.” He said softly, “Amelia was so determined to finally create some sort of artwork to really express how she felt as a rape victim.”
I looked at him. I had known for years that I was the result of a traumatic rape, although my mother made it clear every day that I was never mistake.
“Daniel, I wish you could have been there that day. She had so much pride in you. I think it was that moment right there watching you play on the mural, the mural that was supposed to express all the rage she felt as a victim, that she finally let go of it all… I will never forget the love in her eyes as she hugged you and marveled about the masterpiece.” He smiled and looked me in the eye. “At the time I thought she meant the mural… but really it was you that was her masterpiece.”

Posted by XO-JK :: 12:13 PM :: 0 Comments:

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Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Stolen

Chipped pink nails trace passion on the softest of skin

focus blurs in and out in a haze

As she takes me as hers

Deep inside....

yet still deeper in my heart.

Hidden there like stolen dreams...

As we Kiss to pass the borrowed hours.


Posted by XO-JK :: 12:37 PM :: 0 Comments:

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star crossed

Silence perpetuates the passion
Visions of your lover eyes
Making me precious
Precocious
Yet all the same simply you
Like West Side Story; or star crossed lovers,
We begin with beauty and unite in conflict
Yet we have no play write.
Only kisses forged at midnight,
And a destiny still unknown.

Posted by XO-JK :: 12:26 PM :: 0 Comments:

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Chimp is to artist as i am to writer.

(written for my online creative writing class but none the less deemed worthy to share here) question posed? "what keeps a chimpanzee with a paintbrush from being a writer?"
Chimp is to Artist ... As I am to Writer
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Black and Magenta scrape across the empty canvas, in violent and mindless patterns. The chimpanzee sits by chewing on the paint brush and smiling an oblivious magenta grin.

This is not art.Or is it.

A young girl babbles along the keys of her computer trying to make sense of the emotions that run rampant in her mind. She sits in the glow of the screen tears staining her cheeks with a mournful expression.

This is not writing.Or is it.

Author Robert Coles has long pondered the question, "or is it", by questioning the ideal of human actuality. Coles presents the notion that every moment and idea appears differently to different individuals based on experiences and feelings.Subsequently who is to say that what the chimpanzee creates is not art? Who are we to decide what is art in the first place.

In pondering this thought, I asked a friend "what keeps a chimp with a paintbrush from being an artist?" her answer was quick and concise and simple. "he does not know that he is creating art". This posed an entirely new question? How do we know he does not know he is creating art? How do we know what he is thinking or feeling? How do we define art, and is this definition the right one? How do we know what is RIGHT?

Perhaps were we to stop looking so deeply for answers we would see that sometimes its the questions that teach us more. That perhaps that silly chimp chewing on a paintbrush does know more than us. He knows to just accept the color for what it is. To create with out trying to define.

Posted by XO-JK :: 12:21 PM :: 0 Comments:

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Walter

This was written for creative writing again... But i'm just growing so much with it that i want to share with everyone... This is my "character sketch" based on a character someone else created.

Walter's day began as it always had. Left foot, right foot, stand up, walk to the bath room, urinate and then splash cold water on his face. Now 59 years old Walter had began most of his days in the last 38 years in much the same manner. Walter has always lived his life very routinely. Following a plan. Doing things the way they had been done the day before, the week before, the year before. And this was all right with him. Walter often told himself that he was thankful he didnt have a nagging wife or meddlesome kids or a gaggle of unruly grandkids like the other guys down at the union. But the truth was as Walter got older he was begining to question some of the choices he made.
Walter joined the military as a young man, telling himself that it was his duty. To his Dad who served. And to his Mom.
Walter was always ecspecially close to his mom. Perhaps this was a consequence of her dependance on him. She had been born in Germany. She had been born Rachel Kohen. And by the time she was 16 her entire family had been killed by the Nazi's. It was in her search for answers that she met Matthew Wellington, Walters father. She came to America with him 6 months later, but she never fully left the tragedy of the war behind her. As a young child Walter witnessed her flashbacks and breakdowns time and again. Over time she came to depend on the young boy to be her constant. To never dissapoint her. Walter enlisted in the army so that his mother would be proud. Be proud that he was like his dad.
It was 1966 when he kissed his mother good bye and headed off to join thousands of other young men in a fight he understood very little about. Vietnam. When he came back his parents were strangers. Not just to him but to each other.
Walter understood for the first time that his mother had never been there with them. Not like other mothers. What she experienced during world war II and the loss of her family destroyed an essential part of her. He also understood for the first time the type of sacrifice his father had made making her his bride. After his own experinces in Veitnam he understood that this was a sacrifice made in the face of guilt. For all he had done as a solider and all he failed to do. It was then that Walter began to build the wall, the foundation a promise to himself that he would never be like his parents...If he never let anyone in, he could never lose them.
It was only now that Walter began to tire of the lonely life his wall had sequestered him to.

Posted by XO-JK :: 12:20 PM :: 0 Comments:

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Casanova

When twilight merely remains.
and amber eyes glisten like secrets in the shadows.
I'll be your ommission.

a lover at midnight security come dawn
but simply me in the light.

Posted by XO-JK :: 12:19 PM :: 0 Comments:

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Sunday, April 09, 2006

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time. So many stories start that way as does mine. Once upon a time I was nothing more than a little white girl destined for the same school my mother went to, the same sorority, where I would meet a man (most likely from my fathers fraternity), he would propose to me at the vineyard and we would get married (with a reception at The Ritz) then move into a house identical to the one I grew up in, where he would pursue a career and I would join the women's league and raise two children, two children just like me and my brother.
But apparently this was not to be. By the time I was sixteen it was apparent I wasn't going to live up to the Crestwood family name, or perhaps the day my mother walked in on me kissing the head cheerleader it became suddenly obvious.
It was in this time that I discovered there was more to life than being a Crestwood. In this freedom from expectation I became a person my parents now refer to simply as a hippie tree hugging freak.
Yet how I became who I was is unimportant. See this isn't really my story, or even Goldy's story. Instead it's our story.
I would like to say that Goldy was a pivotal point. My first adventure with a bad girl, but there were ones before and plenty after. I would like to say she was my great love affair or the catalyst that led me to write the next great novel or love song. But no. She was simply a life lesson that was long overdue.
I met Goldy when I was 23. I was working at a rinky dink club as a glorified bar bitch (though they actually called me promoter). Essentially I handed out flyers, ran the door, took care of coat check. Whatever was needed of me. This wasn't a forever job. Rather it was something I did to make new friends, to step outside of the world I had been boxed into for so long. To meet girls.
And I did. I met her.
One of my duties at the bar was to spend the night circulating, acting as host, like it was my living room and this just an overdone cocktail party. It was on a Saturday that I saw her.
It had been a night of blue liquor. Blue liquor was always my weakness. It didn't matter if it was island blue pucker, or blue caracou or hypnotique as long as it matched my eyes I would spend the night soaking my liver in it until I was drunk beyond belief.
Then somewhere between the third blue mother fucker (an insanely toxic blue cocktail) and a miller lite I saw her… Looking all kinds of sexy, throwing back Malibu and pineapple acting all slick and cool, like she wasn't afraid of anything. I remember sitting on that bar stool, immediately distracted not seeing anything but her.
Perhaps it really was her, yet some people tell me it was the liquor, but all I remember is a slurred rendition of smooth.
"Hey you. Let's make out"
And then we were kissing. It was one of those kisses that you can't describe. The sort that all the verbs and adjectives in the world could never touch.
I can't say I really remember what conspired after that moment. But there I was a week later laying in her bed, in her arms gazing at her. It wasn't a moment I thought would lead to anything. Rather an exploration of hormones and youthful adventure. But there I was.
Looking at Goldy was almost like looking directly at the sun. She glowed. But not in the prima donna princess way, instead she was radiantly lit like the sweetest sunset. Her skin was a symphony of earth tones reminding me of honey and caramel, tempting me to taste her soft skin, tempting me to run my fingers through her short ebony hair and lose myself in the sin of her flesh . She had a way of staring at me, her eyes like sculpted rosewood flecked with pure amber, that would make me question everything I thought I knew about her, wondering whether I ever truly saw Goldy.

However what I remember the best is her hands. They were small like a child's and rough from days of working construction. Yet they demanded attention in the way they touched me, or how she always laced them with my own to combat any intense moment.
Her delicate fingers would mingle with my own as we talked. Me trying to extract stories and secrets as is my inquisitive nature and her insisting that there was nothing to tell. But then in moments of golden rarity she would tell me stories.
She would tell me about dropping out of school at fourteen. Of losing parents. Of leaving Puerto Rico. And she would tell me of girls.
The girls that came and went. The hearts she broke. The cheating and fights. And of that one girl that broke her heart.
Well that isn't my story to tell, it's important that you understand that with out that one girl my story would never have been possible.
Goldy and I came from very different worlds. The brain and the thug, the butch and the femme, where as I grew up in the majority she would always be a minority. Yet we both had a vulnerability that came from having seen and lived through things the other could only imagine. We were young, and cynical and physically passionate. Somehow little what we had in common was enough to string our lives together even for a short time.
This is the point where I should confess that it started as a hook up. Something to quiet yearnings and to provide a brief yet explosive release, something that would deem her a stud and me a slut.
It was always supposed to be just about fucking. Yet there in the dark quiet of her room something happened. We became friends. Then we became lovers in the truest sense of the word. And finally I realized that our world is more prejudice than we can ever imagine. And it was in the light of day I realized the truest meaning of heartbreak and my own imperfection.
We had been seeing each other for more than a month. Nights stolen and sacrificed to sweaty embraces and heated kisses. Dawn lost to long talks and hushed giggling.
Laying in bed drinking Medalla with Tego Calderon or Pitbulls voices carrying on in the background serenading the moment with rich reggaeton melodies and beats we would explore the world while smoking cheap cigarettes and filling an empty coconut shell with ashes. I would ramble about literature and art and she would muse about the trials life had presented her with.
And then I started missing her. I would be at the gay bar with my friends sipping a vodka cranberry and realizing she wasn’t there, or at home doing laundry, while she was out with her friends. I realized that “we” didn’t exist outside the bedroom.
Everytime her name snuck out of my lips my friends tried to convince me I was being “played”, that she was just some ghetto girl from the hood that didn’t give a damn about me. They wanted to know about her made could possibly make me crush on her so hard and questioned the capacity of my common sense for dating someone like her..
And I almost started to believe they were right(or at least believe that I should believe they were right). It made sense though… Goldy didn’t belong on the dance floor at my bar bouncing to DJ Sammy any more than I did fumbling through salsa steps. Yet it was still a surprise when I sent her a text message one day, just to ask her what she was doing and her response came back “I’m on a date”.
Her date was a petite Mexican girl, a girl who spoke Spanish (apparently knowing how to say “donde est el lesbiana con el cerveza” didn’t count), a girl who knew how to dance to salsa and had Latin pride. In a matter of weeks her date became her girlfriend and her girlfriend became her wife.
So this is where you ask… Is that it? Is that her story? And yeah it is. It’s that simple. I lost Goldy cause of worlds that were so different; I never got to create a beautiful story, a love song or a sonnet. Because of those invisible lines that I was too scared to cross.
Over the years I have tried to pretend that this didn’t matter. That she was just a phase. Something that happened. That it just was what it was. But the truth is losing Goldy devastated me. I remember spending nights preaching to her about social injustice (I was a sociology major) and rhapsodizing about what was wrong with people… Yet there I was making my own assumptions, my own mistakes.
I often wonder what would have happened if I had spoken up and told her she was amazing and beautiful and special. What if I had told her she deserved the world? What if I hadn’t been so afraid to step out of my “class” and social stratification? What if I had only been given a few more nights? What if those nights had turned into a lifetimes?
But in the end she was a lesson… Through Goldy’s kisses I learned that I am more than what everyone thinks I should be. And when I lost Goldy I learned that the color of my skin, or the languages I speak should never stop me from loving someone with all my heart.
It wasn’t one of those melodramatic events where I cried and screamed and ate a gallon of ice cream every night. Rather losing Goldy was a dull ache in the deepest part of my heart. I was reminded of my foolishness every time I saw a couple holding hands, or a Puerto Rican flag. I still am.
Once upon a time I had a lover, she was amazing and beautiful and her arms were the heaven I always searched for. Once upon a time I was a fool.

Posted by XO-JK :: 8:21 PM :: 3 Comments:

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