Author Archive: LobotomyPop
Just a young whippersnapper who's interested in writing. >..<"
I do a bit of poetry, and sometimes I write short stories when I have time.
#30: The Caretaker
Text reads:
“She put the world in a cage
to separate herself
from that which she was charged with;
to monitor it’s health.
She doesn’t have to feed it;
it self-perpetuates.
She only needs must keep it
locked behind cold iron grates.
She named herself caretaker
oh so many years ago
when she learned the world was lost
and didn’t know which way to go.
She doesn’t deign to tell us what to do or how to live.
She offers only interest, and that’s always there to give.”
Ok, so not only a character everyday, but a poem every day for 30 days. More or less. WHOOOO. Alllll done. 😀
#29: The Dreamer
Text reads:
“This is a girl with an inverted head
She thinks that what’s real’s what she dreams in her bed.
And when she awakes, she walks in a fantasy
Her school and her friends are not part of reality
She dreamed up the grass and the trees and the sky
And chooses to live where it’s mundane to fly.”
Nearly there, guys…
#28: The Boy in the Wood
This is the boy who lives in the wood.
When he was a child, he was very, very good.
But then came the day he fell under the spell.
He listened to trees and their victim he fell.
Deserted his body, he took greener form.
His friends found his corpse and they bore him home.
He moves ever slower, his aura engorging
on mulch down below, it’s power absorbing.
#25, 26, 27: The Dystopian Landscape
Three wayward sisters, adrift in a sea
begot in a deluge of chaos and screams.
#27: The Eldest Child
She cut her long hair so that she can fight.
She ran with her siblings through dead, quiet night.
She rescued her sisters, she says she’s done well.
She can hunt, she can fish, in Nature’s cold hell.
She did what she had to so they would survive.
And nightly she weeps for the things left behind.
But when the day breaks and she feels dawn’s breath,
She knows now’s the time for looking ahead.
#26: The Youngest Child
Not much concerns her, she’s still oh so young
She stays close to Sissy, doesn’t wander or run.
And sometimes at night, when Sissy’s abed
and she has been sleeping, alone in her head,
she’ll wake to a queer sound, a moonlighted vigil
of teardrops and snuffling and sobs being stifled.
She’ll creep out of her bedroll and go to the eldest
and hug her in silence til’ she’s sent back for more rest.
#25: The Middle Child
Sometimes she is anxious
(though not so much as some)
She is the middle child, she cares for old and young.
She ends up with the cooking,
but this she doesn’t mind.
It’s a welcoming diversion from the life they left behind.
#25: The Frog-man
But efforts to study have not yet availed.
The Doctors don’t know, the Government’s baffled
(The Biologists are understandably rattled.)
Nobody knows what to do with him now,
But he doesn’t care, he just wants to lie down,
and if he can dream, then he’d like to, somehow.
#23: The Dancing Bones
Text reads:
“Bones in motion, bent out of shape
Distorted, cavorted, too little too late
He mourns for the day when his dance was respected
‘Neath the dead trees were his footsteps expected
A bogeyman now, but in so many ways
Was he a god in those dark demon days”
#22: Her Majesty
She knows no light, only holes in the dark
She doesn’t know that it’s her world there in the spark
There’s nothing to know, no laws that she makes
all that she sees is the small form her might takes
And maybe she dreamed this all, but that begs a question:
if she’s been asleep, what happens if she awakens?
Where will we go when she awakens?
#21: The Mountain Fairy
Text reads:
“When you live on a mountain so steep you can’t climb,
The only way up to your home is to fly.
She lights on her doorstep, lacewings spread high
She leaps and she flits into open, bare sky”
#20: The Lady in Waiting
She’s trapped in a box
there’s no windows or doors
(I venture to say you have heard this before)
She ponders her savior
and when they’ll arrive
(she’s tried everything, she’s left with no drive)
Powerless, waiting
and sometimes quite mad
(she fears that a limit or doom is at hand)
She tears out her hair
and it grows back again
(time is a thing with no start and no end)
Always she’s wondering
when it will come
If she’ll be free
or if there’s no one.
#19: The Wanderer
There is nothing you could say
there is nothing you could do
He is lost inside a world
which is not for me and you.
He is thinking, he is feeling
but of what we haven’t learned.
And of which we’ll never know
until the day he has returned.
Perhaps he isn’t searching for the path that leads him home.
Perhaps we are more lost than he who knows not where he goes.
#18: The Tree
Text reads:
“One day he was standing and slept where he stood.
He slept and he slept ’till his heart became wood.
He now doesn’t think, and moves not a foot.
Not since his feet have turned into two roots.”
#17: The House Cat
Text reads:
“Francine the feline is friendly and flaunting
but meeting her feasting demands can be daunting!
Two wild boar and fifteen young lambs,
the finest pate and ten honey-smoked hams.
She’s quite like a dragon, a robber if that.
No one man could feed a five thousand pound cat!”
#16: The Man, The Beard
Text reads:
“Norman’s a man who came from the north.
He lived in a land from which snow issued forth.
Among driving ice and cold winds he was reared,
and even when young, he’d a marvelous beard!
This gnarled mane of hair would protect from the cold
As a baby, a child, a young man, and when old.
He once had a wife but she left him. Instead,
she found a new man with more hair on his head!”
#15: The Girl With Birdsong in Her Brain
Text reads:
“The minstrels and the poets
the philosophers of birds
chatter in a language which
goes mercifully unheard.
Unless your name’s Belinda
(And you work at Dairy Queen)
you might go your whole life
and never know what sparrows scream.”
WHOOO half way there.
#14: The Young Hermit
Text reads:
“Ferris is a student
and a worker, and alone.
He lives in an apartment
but he doesn’t call it home.
He also has a roommate
but that’s just to pay for rent.
His free time goes to idleness
until the day is spent.”
#13: The Cellist
The ones who play the cello
are puppeteers at best
because the instrument is human
just the voice, the very best.
A cello couldn’t move;
it’s up to her to bow.
A cello cannot cry
but the sound will let us know.
A cellist is the one
who puts life into the shell.
With breath and blood and tears
and the will to play it well.
SECRET: This one’s probably my favorite so far.
If you can’t tell, I played cello once upon a time. I just really love this instrument.
#12: The Stupid Best Friend
You hate her (not really)
You’re hearing her cry.
You can’t help but be feeling
you wish that she’d die.
Except you don’t mean it,
well not in that way.
You want her to see that
she’s blocking her way.
She runs from her issues
and sobs end to end
You’re holding the tissues,
her stupid best friend.
You guess that you love her and want what is best.
You’ll just have to point and hope she’ll do the rest.
#11: The Silent Disciple
This is a girl who works in the day.
Subject to her father, she does what he says.
She mops the inn’s floors, she wipes clean the counter.
But he doesn’t know what’s special about her.
Learning to write from the old family bible,
reading Voltaire as the silent disciple.
During the day she’s quiet, demure.
But come the dark night and her pencil’s a blur!
She writes to the great minds of this day and age,
Descartes and Moore on her mind’s well-worn page.
Ok so call it blatant self-insertion or whatever, but I always liked to think that if I’d lived in nineteenth or eighteenth century england or europe or whatever I would have been teaching myself to write and then the floodgates would open. I’m so outrageously overanalyzing, I’d drive myself crazy if I didn’t have some way to get my thoughts out.
#10: The Runner With Invisible Legs
Text reads:
“Running’s a sport which is tricky to do
for the man with invisible legs.
And yet it’s the thing that he wants to pursue
(although stares are the thing that he dreads).
In winter he wears long tights and socks tall;
his transparent limbs are no problem.
Summer presents a whole new obstacle,
(but he thinks he knows how to solve ’em!)
He’ll battle the heat the one way that he can:
by baring his legs and wearing a spray tan!”
#9: The Emotional Rollercoaster
Text reads:
“Live in the moment, like Lily LaRoue:
With her heart in her sleeve and her feet in her shoes.
Sometimes she’s sorrowful, full of deep pain,
But always redounds to elation again.”
#7: The Happiest Brother
Text reads:
“The eighth in the line is Maurice D McGee.
He lives in a house with his small sisters three.
Dropped out of school at the age of sixteen,
Works every day, five a.m. until three,
Yet no man on earth is as happy as he
who lives every day for his small sisters three.”
#7: The Icicle Maiden
Text reads:
“The icicle maiden hangs frozen, suspended.
She waits for the day when her winter is ended.
Through warm air she will fall,
break into shards small,
and melt into rivers so splendid!”
#6: The Prince
Well mannered and quiet, he walks in the night.
His raiment is neat, his buttons done tight.
Wandering, always he looks to his ring.
He twists it and watches for light’s dancing sheen.
Smoky, gas streetlamps or windows from taverns,
Tailing watchmen and sailors with lanterns.
But sometimes he sits in the truest of dark,
no moon, nor the stars, or any small spark.
The ring he holds tight to his lips and he smiles
A solitude stronger than distance in miles.
His night is spent waiting for first break of day
He turns into a pendant, and ’till night he will stay.
#5 The Princess
She doesn’t say much as she moves through her day.
She doesn’t sleep, she’s a princess they say.
Others say goddess in hushed, hurried whispers.
Still she moves on through the town, never lingers.
Sometimes she stops in a deep contemplation.
She stares into space for enigmatic revelations.
Her fingers ascend and they light on her pendant,
She smiles, or frowns, even laughs for a moment.
She always appears at the sun’s first small light
A quiet transformation from her role in the night.
For when twilight enters and evening bells sing,
as soon as sun’s gone she turns back to a ring.
#4: The Unsuspecting Anorexic
Text reads:
“Jolene’s anorexic.
(She doesn’t know why)
She loves food and drink.
(She’s the last to deny)
But she went to the doctor; he’s startled to find
that she’s frail, and pale, and ready to cry.
Jolene’s anorexic, but she doesn’t know why.
It started with days
when she just didn’t eat.
Not hungry, too busy,
too fast on her feet.
She’d get up at six and get out on the street.
Go to work, skip her lunch, then come home and she’s beat.
And these were the first days she just didn’t eat.
Look, you’re losing weight;
it’s good to be thin.
You don’t eat red meat?
Just coffee? You win!
Jolene loved her curves and the shape she was in,
but her friends let her go, let her wasting begin.
They said “You’re losing weight! It’s great being thin!”
We’ll loose all this weight; it’s grand to be thin.”
It started raining today. Rain always bums me out a little.
To be honest, this one creeps me out; the idea of being so busy and caught up doing the things other people tell you to do because it will lead to you being healthy and happy and safe, instead of just being happy and healthy and safe in the first place, that’s what scared me about the future. And I have this conception that people who have a problem don’t know they have a problem for so long, for one reason or another, that it’s scary to look at yourself and see how that problem’s changed you. Jolene is my nightmare.
EDIT: Also, hehe, I should mention that I think I’m gettin’ a little experimental up in here. Mmmm, look at the shape the words make… undulation. deconstructive interference.
#3: The Man Who Talks to Invisible People
Text reads:
“In the city there’s a man, and he watches people walk.
He sits atop the streetlamps and the bus stops where they talk.
He listens to the faceless, to the lonely and ignored,
the ones who sleep in shabby, hidden corners of the world.
Life is like a waking dream, and more so for the fact
that sometimes if he talks to them, they’ll even answer back.”
I do a lot of walking around the city and I see a handful of homeless people everyday, and I always ignore them. And then I start thinking about how terrible it must be to be in such a huge city with so many people and not be acknowledged by so many of them. But I still ignore them, and if there’s one thing I’m not proud of about myself it’s that I’m too scared to do that “be the change you wish to see in the world” thing. So I guess #3 is maybe some sort of expression of that confusion.
#2: Phil The Bird-Man
Text reads:
“This is the birdman and his name is Phil.
He’ll fly in the rain and he’ll fly in the chill.
He’ll fly through the night to ensure his work’s done;
his job, after all, is a pertinent one.”
So, I wrote the poem and started drawing before I actually knew what Phil’s very important job would be. Then I think I started remembering the opening scene in Dumbo, where I think there’s a storm and a stork brings her her baby, so I thought “Okay, he’s a weird variation on the stork thing.” Then I started drawing the couple and they just came out as being a same-sex couple. Does he only bring babies to homosexual couples? Just lesbians? I don’t know, maybe. Maybe the stork just didn’t want to deal with bad weather after Dumbo’s deal, so Phil takes the storm deliveries now. Maybe he’s a kind of apprentice. Hands would be better equipped than a beak for hanging on to that very important bundle.
#1: The Girl Whose Fingers Fall Off Sometimes
Text reads:
“There once was a girl who had fingers so frail
that if she were blind, she could never read braille
that if she were bad and they took her to jail
the fingerprint guy might end up with her nail.
She had to wear gloves all through the long day
While typing, while skyping, and when she crocheted
and even when sleeping beneath the duvet
her fingers she bound lest they roll far away.
Now some people laugh, and others may scoff
but the truth of the matter is somber enough;
the pianist’s hat’s what she wanted to doff
but if she played hard, her fingers would fall off!”
I saw Tim Burton’s exhibit in LACMA a few weeks ago; I obviously took some inspiration from that, but really I just was thinking about how cold my fingers were this morning and the piano sonatas I have to listen to for my music history class.
My fingers are still cold.
#30Characters Chatter…