Why do I want to speak when I have nothing to say?
The words are absent but for whatever reason I stay
I jumble the letters trying to write
As if I could put you in a different light
But you’re not bright,
Nor subtle
You’re the darkness in the scuttle
The dusty rocks that fill the socks
Of those whom St. Nicolas mocks
The same material we burn to heat our souls
Simultaneously damaging our homes like voles
But again I’m only speaking for the sake of speaking.
Sure
I think I wrote this my freshman year of college, but I’m not sure (really not trying to be corny). Give it a listen. I just finished messing with the EQ… its still a rough mix though.
Collisions
This is a song that I recorded over winter break… It’s pretty obvious what its about once you listen to it. But I wrote the lyrics and music for it… really simple stuff, but it sounds good. Enjoy.
Note: Depending on what you are listening to the song from (i.e., stereo, headphones, etc) the channels may have been split… and when that happens the guitar and vocals seem to play from the left side. So just in case it happens to you… you know why.
Here’s a poem that I wrote the other day. I had to read some poetry in Irish Lit. and it inspired this… Not too much else to say about it. I’d tell you what I intended it to mean, but then you’re interpretation would likely be more limited.
When in all of the black sky is lit,
Past the hours of Helios,
All of the love, placed sparkling,
Hanging and hovering above,
Is hidden behind a thickening mask;
With eyes that cannot see past
All lovers are lost from one another.
Over our eyes, all we wear
Is the light we shed,
And into the welkin
We can no longer stare.
Thanks. I just started. That was the first story I finished. I’ve got three others I’m working. But facebook is my source of exploitation for this blog so you’ll see them when I finish them.
This is my first short story that I wrote in November of 2010. It’s not quite through editing, but exams have me at a standstill with all of my writing so come Christmas break there will be more writing posted and hopefully time to edit. Again, this is my first short-story. It takes place in less than five minutes. Dean receives a phone call from his friend Cara and battles his conscience in deciding whether or not to answer her call.
12 November 2010.
A sudden vibration brought out an overwhelmed sigh from me. I knew who was calling; and she never had anything significant to say. Cara would find me whenever she needed me for something. If I didn’t answer my phone she’d call until I answered or once she grew impatient. And when her patience would outgrow her small frame, she’d go out of her way to find me in all the places I hang out, study, and work. She’s a terrible inconvenience that I continue to enable.
Three oscillations per ring, her picture on a lit screen; left and right my mind travels between being a friend and letting her hang in the silence after the tone. But would I be acting as a good friend if I answered? I enable her and she uses me every time something negative occurs in her life. I can deal with all the major crises; but anytime her trashy, lifeless, undirected boyfriends break her sentimental heart she comes to me; when she cries about her dipping grades or seemingly-perfect-performances (which she picks to pieces to a point she could write a novel on her flaws); or just the mere, false loneliness she feels. My shoulder has bared its share of tears.
The third shiver; am I making excuses to not answer the phone? What if she has something significant to say? What if she has finally realized the reality of the situation? She won’t. As much as I don’t want to admit it, she won’t ever recognize how I feel or how I act. The constant admiration of her eccentric blouses and mismatched knee socks and tights; the mixture of plaid and stripes, black and brown; her style never makes sense. Yet, she’s always beautiful, even when she says she feels like the Grim Reaper has struck her on the dent of the back of her neck and then withdrawn her soul; an exaggeration?; On her part, very much. There is no way her combination of her dark brunette hair and ice blue eyes could ever turn me away. Maybe I’m enabling myself.
The fourth set of vibrations. I reach for the phone, hoping that maybe she has no crises, no problem, but one. She has a void to fill and knows only one who can do so. Thumbs stumbling, my phone falls from my hands between the desk and the corners of the walls – where in these seconds passed I’ve set aside my work to debate my own crisis. I work at pulling my desk out of a snugly fit cubby, but the desk corners jab into the walls and lock itself in place.
I hear the vibrations shudder through the air a fifth time. I’ve only one left before my voicemail; and though I’m certain she’ll call a nineteenth time I want to answer this call. I rush and work harder to straighten the desk and pull it straight to keep it from jabbing the walls again. The heavy burden of the solid cherry mini-structure slides enough for me to lie over my papers and reach for my phone.
As my right hand reaches the phone, the sixth and final attempts shudder through the plastic casing. Gripped in my palm and on its way back to me I press “send” to answer the call. When the ear piece reaches my corresponding counter-part I hear nothing but silence in response to “Hello. Cara. Cara, are you there?” I pull my phone down and look at its screen. The main display is present in its dull light. She must have hung up when I tried to answer it.
A half second passes before I enter Cara’s number from a “missed calls” list; one that she filled herself.
It rings. I hope for her to answer and spring on me her affection that she has secretly and fearfully felt. That she knows not to be scared of it and that she’s ready for stability.
The second ring, a split second of thought, and then an answer.
“Dean?” This isn’t Cara … It’s not even a female voice. This isn’t what I wanted at all. Was it not her that called me eighteen times, one after another? For no reason would Grant be answering my calls or even thinking about calling me, especially after the several occasions our conversations were quadruple the volume we normally speak.
Again, with desperation, “Dean… are you there, man? It’s Cara, dude. It’s bad.” Instantly my blood boiled and anger toppled over any previous strongholds of self-control I had established.
“What’d you do to her this time? You better not have hurt her, Grant. I swear to God I will fucking murder you and bury you with your little brothers!” My breath held; waiting for his bullshit, his nonsense excuses. I wanted a reason to take his insignificant life. Her pain was swept on to me no matter what the subject matter was. And, Grant, the piece of shit he is, was a main antagonist in all her stories of her immature pain and strife.
“We were in a fight…”
“Did you hit her?”
“No, man. No.”
“Be real you fucking coward? Did you hurt Cara?”
Crying softly trying not to explode into tears over the phone Grant said the most devastating words I have ever heard: “Dean, just listen to me. I didn’t do anything; we got in a fight about some stupid shit… little things. I walked out of her place and told her I needed to cool down and that I was going to bring us back some food.” His soft cry turned into a weep, “… I – I got back and she… she was on her fire escape… I tried talking to her while I set down the food… she di- she didn’t respond. So I walked over to sit on the window sill to talk to her…” He paused, trying to control himself; then stumbling through the last of the story, breathless and hurt, “Oh Jesus, Dean. Man. I hate being the one to tell you this, but Cara… Cara fucking… she hung herself. When I moved the curtain I could see her tied to the tier above her’s.” He broke into a terrible, obnoxious, wailing cry. “She’s so broken and lifeless, Dean. I don’t know what to do…”
I dropped my phone.
My knees and legs as lifeless as Cara, I hit the ground like a corpse in a hurry to be buried. As my head was en route to meet with the floor I could hear Grant several feet away on the line repeating my name and how lost in the moment he was. But all I felt was an emptiness. A void that was never filled by anything but my hopeful romanticisms of false secrets Cara might have kept from me.
Now she’s gone forever and as my head meets the glass tile floor in my office, I hope that I never wake up. I hope that in this instance I die too. Because I know that life after death is as false as Cara’s love for me.
So if there’s a God, let him take me now; because if I wake, I’ll only take myself by my own hands.
© 2010. All contents of this document are fiction written by Anthony Ivo Zuech.
