Folio Pieces

[Jaylenrup]

My English teacher made me write stuff. Dragon said I should post it up here. 'Nough said.



The Knot

It rests on the inside, a painful lump. Deep and not always noticed, but always and forever present. It is not always in the same place.
Sometimes it is so very apparent that it seems to burn, a hard pressure inside the chest. Crushing, tied to the ribcage and squeezing breath out, not moving.
Sometimes it sits in the throat, leaving a dry and impassable feeling. It cannot be swallowed and hampers speech.
Sometimes, it is heavy like a stone sitting in the deepest pit of your belly. It ties all of your insides together, leaving a sick trapped feeling. It’s reaching tendrils twist and turn. It will bring a sweat to your palms and sends a shiver down your back.
Sometimes it's thick as a fog hanging in the air. Damp, ominous and brooding. It is a monstrous thundercloud following you around, unlosable no matter how you run from it. It is this sense of a storm to come, knowing that it will strike lightening and hail stones.
And sometimes, it's pure and concentrated. You will kick, scream and wail. It will drain you of all your energy, hungrily eating you up. Your face will be streaked with tears, and it will rack your body like a coughing fit, leaving nothing behind in its furious, shaking wake.
The highly educated and wise will tell you that they can fix it. After all, everyone feels this, there are cures and remedies to be administrated, for a price.
That is a sweet lie, told to many so they can go on every day, waiting for it to disappear.
But it will not disappear.
It will not leave you.
It will not always be intense, and it will not always be noticed.
But it will be there. Waiting. It will be waiting until you are in the dark and alone. And then, it will strike like a deadly and poisonous snake. It will tie you up. It will leave you hollow and empty of everything but it’s sickening grasp.
Maybe, with a kind word, it might seem to move on. Maybe, with support, you'll feel like you're over it. And maybe it will seem like such a distant memory that you almost forget that such a thing ever existed.
But it is there, waiting. It will haunt you, and inevitably get to you. It is the knot that ties itself to you, and refuses to let go.
It will not get better.

[Jaylenrup]

The Night

A deep dark blue velvet,
almost black,
covered the heavens above.
Cool air whistled through the trees,
who seemed to murmur with the groaning creak
of gentle swaying movement.
A ghostly light dimly lights the trees
in their rustling dance,
emitted from the gentle glow of the waxing moon.
Accompanying the moon's loving caress
was the brilliant pinpricks of light,
Spicks and specks in the thick velvet,
like holes on a worn blanket.
They burn and shine brightly an eternity away,
some of these beautiful lights
may have faded, some exploded
into oblivion already.
And no one will know for millennia to come.

[Jaylenrup]

People Watching

The rain beat lightly on the buses windows. It wasn't stormy, nor was it a drenching rain. It was not even icy cold. It was simply a dreary and mopey weather. The “bus stopping” light lit up with a ding, and one of the passengers then proceeded to lurch themselves down the aisle of the still moving bus. Their bags snagging and bumping on the seats, they wobbled and muttered a polite apology to the only other passenger than myself. The old lady smiled, and nodded.
The bus came to an abrupt stop, the double bus doors jolted open, letting in a mildly cool wet air into the bus and the standing passenger voiced a quick thanks to the bus driver. They launched themselves into the dreariness outside, leaving me alone on the bus with the old lady and the bus driver.
Bored, I turned my attention from the passenger that the bus was quickly rattling away from to the old lady.
I began to study her intently. It might be odd in some people's point of view, but I've always been prone to people watching. Not in a weird way. Everybody has a story, and that fascinates me. I like to sit and study people's everyday actions, their random smile and little quirks.
With students, you can sometimes see the deep purple lines under their eyes from where they've spent the whole night studying. With an anxious parent, you can see how they react to their children's uncontrollable actions. Children themselves are fascinating in their exuberant energy, their endless questions and how they can make anything seem like a game. They'll walk on the patterns of tiles in shopping centres, refusing to touch a certain colour tile because it's made of lava.
The old lady who I studied now was at that untellable age, where she could be anything from 55 up to late 70s. She was wearing a purple shawl, and gripped her handbag to her tightly. Her withered knuckles were turning white. Her lips were drawn into a line, but it was obvious she had applied some sort of lipstick. Beneath her sagging and loose skin, you could see her jaw was clenched tightly.
What stress could an old lady be under? Was she going to visit her grandchildren, who were mothered by a step-daughter who simply put her teeth on edge? Did she have family? Perhaps her husband had died before they had children, and for the past 30 years or so she’s been catching this same bus to visit his gravestone.
Perhaps she never married. She could have never fallen in love, chosen not to.
Was she lonely, I wondered. Did she live all alone with just a cat or maybe a dog? Did she pamper this animal, it being the only deposit for all of her love? Talk to it, whilst she did chores around her otherwise empty house? It’s possible that this beloved pet was currently on a vet’s operating table, and she sits so tensely because her only friend might possibly die, leaving her once again all alone.
What that her story?
She could of married very young, or even had a teen pregnancy that led to a shotgun marriage and is now slowly resenting her husband more and more every day. Blames him for a life she never wanted, and now is on her way back home, only to have a raging fight with him over where the tea kettle belongs. They might have these little fights in a routine, and even though they no longer like, much less love, they need this routine of arguments to survive, because without these bitter little fights they would be lost and directionless.
Or perhaps she was happy. Whether that is because she’s happily alone, or happily married. Maybe she only looks so tense because she’s all alone on a bus with a hooded teen unabashedly staring at her. There was no way I’d ever know for sure, but I still like to watch people, and make up stories for them in my head.



Questions, comments and reviews are sensuously pampered to.

[J.O.N ((Dragonwing))]

The night one is fantastic, go figure we would like the night description.

And no I didn't have some accent in my head when I read it. Though I am now imagining your voice in cockney.

[theredbaron]

I read through the first one.

I'm no poet, so I don't know exactly what to critique on, but the part with the lying intellectuals is a little. . . meh. It ruined the poem a little for, like it seemed to go off track, and turned away for a second to bash streotypical, cold, unfeeling intellecutals. Whether to keep it or not though is your call. Espically if that's the point of this poem (although that's not the vibe a got from it.)

But it was a stirring thing that helps describe sadness/extreme stress/ misery quite well.

... Reffy may need this, at the time of this post.