Poet In The Jar Diaries

Clarity Disabled

2012-01-27T01:46:00.000+01:00

I've put myself in a hopeless situation

Willingly marched towards my own destruction

Knowingly fallen deep into addiction

Licking every last crumb off my fingers

Clutching my head, clutching my hands

Clutching my head

I can't stop perceiving these visions

Can't protect my mind from the intrusion

I'm only addicted, addicted to the infusion

Alarmed whenever my head clears

Whenever it's unclouded

Clarity is enabled

You didn't always fear clarity, did you

You weren't always consent with ignorance

Wasn't there a time you fought for innocence

When did you exchange it for vengeance

When did you exchange it for

Indulgence

I don't even think I'm equipped for defense

Even with the right tools I'll be unmotivated

There's no reason for me anymore to resist

Why not simply give in to permanent decadence

Whenever your head's unclouded

Clarity is enabled

You didn't always fear clarity, did you

You weren't always consent with ignorance

Wasn't there a time you fought for innocence

When did you exchange it for vengeance

When did you exchange it for

Indulgence

You told me I had betrayed my past self and inner child

That while my mind grew dull, my heart grew wild

Am I now supposed to adjust these regulations

Force myself back into ancient patterns

So I could fit with your intentions

Without any compensation

Is that part of your current implication

I'm divided within my own moral framework

Undecided between the young and the old

Undecided between what was only thought

And what was really told

All I can guarantee is that the two halves

Together, seem to make a whole

Complementing eachother

Compensating one another

Until I'm clutching my head

Clarity disabled

Lovely Bones

2012-01-09T01:58:00.000+01:00

I don't know how to describe my current state of mind if not dull, blunt, encapsuled in a bubble where I feel enclosed from the world, isolated, alone. It's like I've forgotten everything I used to care for, forgotten what used to be delicate, what used to be valuable, how the smallest things could triumph over the daily and trivial. I can probably blame this mood on stress, big deadline coming up this week and everything; but it does trouble me. Not bother me, I'm too closed off from everything to feel like it's bothering me... but the thought of it is slightly discouraging. It's hard to describe, but for someone whose belief is that emotion is key, feeling robbed of your emotions is like giving away one of your arms... I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this. It's strange though. I used to believe that what you did in the daytime didn't matter as long as the rest was deep, was meaningful, being with your friends, listening to that music, going to this and that place, travelling... and now it seems my whole life revolves around school, I don't even have time to do laundry or clean my apartment, everything is so frantic and I feel like I've been walking around like a useless zombie ever since I came back from England. Something happened to my level of ambition while away; I can't seem to get back into the right focus and I hate myself a little for that; I'm sure I could have been more efficient than I have been since I got back here... But I think it'll work out... and hopefully, eventually, I'll feel that I can feel again, so that I'm not this deadened poet walking the streets and randomly sleeping at off hours as I was some fucking cat. I even feel bad because my Mom called me earlier and I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about because I was still so tired, and she said she just called me to say she and Dad loves me and I felt horrible for not paying them the proper attention back. But I'm just so monotonous and my post-three-hours-on-sofa mood was pretty intense and like Glenda said, confusi-fying.

To just please change the topic, I'm currently reading Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" and it's so, so saddening. You'd think this clashes with my previously described lack of emotion but in my world it definitely and easily coincides. It's saddening in itself that a piece of fiction can be more touching and real to me than everything I see and feel around me. I guess I'm a little tired of reality, simply...

That's really all I have to say now... see you in some other, less exhausted stage.
POET IN THE JAR

Post-Happiness Infusion

2011-12-11T01:32:00.000+01:00

Are these my real thoughts
My actual ideas put in words
Or are they just a product of depression
A post-happiness infusion
A post-happiness display

Everything was so stable
Until I was murdered
By sentimental happiness

Have you ever felt it's impossible to learn
That you always fall back into your own past mistakes
As if you set a pattern for yourself that you must now follow
It's in your blood and carved in stone
Forged from your fear of the comfortable
And from your fear of being alone
In combination

Everything was so stable
I had pieced together everything I could find
Every little piece of paper, pieced together with glue
Forming the most delicate of statues
I had waterproofed it
So it would sail safely
In the rain
In the gutters

Had I ever expected the glue to dissolve
Or for the sun to kill its way through the darkness
Had I ever expected all these connections
All these encapsuled memories
Trapped in my mind
Escaping in laughter
And in tears

Why can't I embrace the unpredictable
Why am I dependent on scenarios in my mind
I relive them always, chasing the undeniable
And creating new ones from time to time
The plausible, the impossible, the improbable
They all struggle in my mind
And when reality strikes
I realize

It never matters what wars go on inside of me
When I only struggled for show and for comfort
Forcing my demons to believe my sugarcoated whispers
In promises about tomorrows I had no right to give away
Tomorrows that were never mine
They were only mine to borrow

Mumble Jumble

2011-12-06T02:15:00.000+01:00

I wish I could put my thoughts down in poetry, because I currently feel pretty poetic and deep, but there's just random lines floating about in my head that don't make sense, don't correlate... I'm a little confused and very tired and my head is filled with recent moments of laughter and timeless bubbles cut away from the rest of the world... I wonder if there's something remarkable about certain people. I feel like the people surrounding me daily just fill me with energy and it's like I had forgotten what that felt like, forgotten what people like that could do, what difference they could make. I guess the conclusion I can draw from that is that I really feel like I'm at home and it feels like I would never trade these days for anything. I think I'm going to miss these times a lot when it's all over... I'll try not to think about that, for now...

So at the same time why is everything so depressing? Everyone's feelings, my own feelings, how they clash, how they rebel, how they go into war. All the thoughts jumbled in my head mixing the hopes I have about the future while being absolutely convinced that future will never appear before me, I'll never live to see it...

It was a long time since I felt so split, but it may be a good thing. It can be turned into words. Into art. Into determination and ambition... if only I learn to catch up properly on my sleep...

POET IN THE GLASS JAR

Details

2011-12-02T00:36:00.001+01:00

When will I stop reading things into every detail
Things that only flickered by in the minds of others
But to me they are enlarged and deemed important
Deemed vital for unknown reasons I'm sure will show
Reasons I'm sure will save the world or the universe
Or at least save me

I wonder if the insight will eventually break me down
When I realize there was never anything grand
about all those small things that no one ever noticed
Those small things that I lived for
Those small things that I breathed for

When will I stop hoping for the naivest of dreams
And when will I stop nurturing that little knot in my chest
That only unties at certain occasions
At certain inclinations

Are you even aware that I'm breathing
Are you aware what I read into everything you say
What would you say to me if you were able to read me too
Like I was an open book, kind of like you

Let's pretend I don't recognize this feeling
Pretend I don't know what path I'm going down
The highway to my own destruction
Neatly laid out under my feet
By my treacherous heart

I thought I had told myself I could be rational
I could listen to my own logic, reason and rhyme
But it seems I keep being unpredictable, untameable
Time, after time

When will I stop reading things into every detail
Stop intercepting every imaginary message
Sent down the imaginary tubes
Signed by the invisible
Signed by you

POET IN THE JAR

A Word Or A Feeling

2011-11-28T08:00:00.002+01:00

Let's pretend I've grown out of disappointment
Let's pretend I'm too old to be naive
That I embrace the rational
Let's pretend that's me

Is disappointment a word or a feeling
Does it have meaning
Is it nothing but the bitter taste in your mouth
The taste of sour on your lips and on your tongue
Is it just the air going down your lungs
Every time you breathe
Just a little less air

Can you say your heart was painted by the feeling
From the inside and out, drowning in paint
Can you say you understand me
When I try to describe how I feel
Or are you just a portrait on the wall
Without thought or feeling at all

Did you smell those chrysant flowers
Did you smell the ocean waves
Did you ever expect more than the world
currently had on display for you
And did you see them,
when they tore it all away
Under your feet

Or did you read about disappointment in a dictionary
Was it explained to you in descriptive words
Did they show you pictures, and play you interviews
With everyone who had ever had the feeling
And do you remember what they said to you

Aren't they just whispers when they whisper from the dark
Aren't they just drifting sound that you interpret
Aren't they just screaming voices in your mind
When you try to silence them, every time
They resurface

I can't embrace what reason and rhyme tells me to believe
I only believe what I see and what I feel as real
When my heart burns and aches with pain,
born and raised in the disappointment game
My mind can tell it to quiet down and to control itself
My mind can even convince my heart that the mind is right
But I can't change what is felt in the heart
When logic and chaos crash together,
and fall apart

Let's pretend I've grown out of disappointment
It's a fun game, isn't it, built on lies
One of the games that every adult plays
A game that doesn't improve with time
Let's pretend I've embraced the rational
But I can't agree

That sense alone is enough
to silence me

The Death Of Dread

2011-11-18T19:24:00.001+01:00

I don't remember my heart ever being this full of dread
Filled to the brim with plausible and impossible scenarios
I don't remember when I last felt this heavy
Like every step I took weighed me down
Like every streetlight I passed by
Provoked a chain reaction
And made me feel
every possible emotion

I don't remember when I felt relieved
Except for the times I escaped into my heart
and rearranged it to suit my temporary wishes
Rearranged it so I could pretend it was different
That everything was different

I don't remember when I last felt so small
Like all the buildings towered up around me
Making me insignificant, making me insufficient
I'm so small, in comparison to the sky
To the world
To everyone

I try so hard to convince myself nothing comes easy
And to live the the life you've always dreamed
Requires sacrifice
I try so hard
I'm good at giving advice to myself
Advice I never follow
Things are too comfortable
Too easy and simple
To change

What if things really were different
What would it matter to the world
It's far too busy to stop, and see me
And in the long run, what would I prefer
Fulfilling guidelines of the universe
that I never understood
Or following my heart
Even though it breaks me

Even though it breaks me
It won't break the world
I'll still live
I'll still be
Even when no one else
Can see me

They Always Fall Down

2011-11-16T23:06:00.000+01:00

I can feel them burning, burning like fire in my eyes
I can't let them out, can't let them escape
I can't unleash the waterfall
and the waterfall always starts
with just one drop

If I succumb to them what happens to my anger
To my conviction that this was only to be expected
I'll only fall again, and become the sacrifice needed
To avoid confrontations and ill words
To feed my feeling of being safe
And cradled

but some things aren't worth what they cost to achieve

No, I can't let them fall, I can't
If only there was another way to channel them
If only I could send them back and pretend
they never burned in my eyes like fire
Pretend they never blurred my sight
But in the end they always fall
And there's only one way to fall
Down

They always fall down

Mindtricks

2011-11-14T20:41:00.000+01:00

Have you ever tried to embrace the cause of your sadness
Holding it to your heart in a treacherous caress
The last time you can read eachother
The last time you'll live in bliss
In one last embrace
In one last kiss
Have you ever experienced this

You spun lies out of spoken words
And almost fell for your own deceit
Learning to mask yourself so skillfully
That everyone was fooled
Including me

I'll keep my own mindtricks at an arm's length away
Hoping I'll protect myself that way
I told myself I was making the right decisions
Keeping my own impulses at bay
Now I can't tell if I did it out of convenience
Or out of self-preservation
And cutting the bonds with desperation
Requires motivation

You spun lies out of spoken words
And almost fell for your own deceit
Learning to mask yourself so skillfully
That everyone was fooled
Including me

Could you teach me, please
How to look beyond the shortest moments
While keeping remembrance of myself
Of who I always wanted to be
Can you teach me, please
You seem to know

You spun lies out of spoken words
And almost fell for your own deceit
Learning to mask yourself so skillfully
That everyone was fooled
Including me

Why couldn't you hold up a mirror shard to me
Forcing me to face what stared back at me
Why couldn't you confront me with my monsters
Maybe that would have scared me back on track
Or at least raised my defenses, spurred me to attack

I spun lies out of spoken words
And almost fell for my own deceit
Learning to mask myself so skillfully
That everyone was fooled
Including me

Sister Time, School, Writing And Watching Documentaries

2011-10-30T21:36:00.000+01:00

Nanowrimo is nearing with huge steps. It's in fact just one day away (not counting today), and I intend to spend that day in glorious vacation spirit together with my sister. She's visiting me over the day and I can't wait to see her. I love having visitors, I've missed her like crazy, and some sister-and-sister time always cheers me up. We're going to go swimming and get a nice sun treatment (we people in Scandinavia need these things when the sun decides to go into hibernation for half a year - and yes, that's totally what happens, I've always been such a scientist) that will hopefully cheer my tired body and mind up. I've prepared for making both tacos for dinner and blueberry pie for dessert. Sometimes even a student has to award themselves with a bit of luxury, and what better timing than when your sister visits? We calculated it a bit earlier today and we think that the last time she was here was during the spring, so it's really not something that happens very often. The more fun it'll be, hopefully!

On another, university-related note, I've now submitted all of my assignments and all I can do now is cross my fingers and hope they'll be well received. I spent a few hours of today worrying that I won't pass until I told myself to get a grip and simply stay put for the results. It's kind of hard though, this is one of the courses I've been the very most enthusiastic about and the impact of the grade will therefore be the bigger... I really hope I won't have to redo anything. I'll just cross my fingers and now forget about it.

I can't wait to start Nano. I'm lucky in the way that after Thursday, we're lesson- and homework-free until November 7th, so if I'm just disciplined enough I can try and get a head start for the rest of the month. After all, there'll be no deadlines in November as far as I know; the final submissions will be at the end of the course, and that's not until January. But if Nano interferes with my school results, I'll have to drop it. I'm reluctant to, I have a great idea, and even the most clear and vivid idea of my characters in my head - I might even go ahead and draw them after I write this post. Oh, I should get on with writing the Lovecraft story as well. I was hoping DJ might show up and do some word wars with me so I could finish it, but I haven't seen him around yet, so maybe I'll just do a few on my own. I'd love to have that story sent in so I can really focus on Nano. I don't think I'll be able to do that until the story has been sent in! It's a pretty interesting story, about a man who stays awake because he's afraid of his nightmares. Little does he know that he has very good reasons to be (that is yet to be revealed, probably on page four). It's overall a story about the mare, that gave the word 'nightmare' it's name; the version of it that can be found in Nordic mythology. At least I find it interesting myself and I think it's a pretty Lovecraftian mood over it, but then I'm not one of the judges. It'll be great once I finish it and submit it - it will mean that so far this year I have kept my promise, and entered every writing contest I've found, with only one exception: the Umeå annual contest, which is aimed more towards established writers. I didn't participate in it because A) there was no theme or limitations in the instructions, which strangely generated absolutely no ideas in my head, B) they only approve submissions by regular post which gave me less writing time and C) I had too many other stories going on anyway. I still feel pretty proud of my achievement and I plan on collecting all my produced stories in a little anthology and give it as a Christmas present to my grandparents, and to my mother, the three people who have supported me the most in my writing. I can't wait. Another good thing about November is that two contests will announce the results and the winners, and even though I didn't feel like I produced anything unique for either, I'm still excited to see how it goes. Who knows? I have been wrong before in situations like these. I just really don't want to get my hopes up. There are plenty of good writers out there who are quite the competition so I'm not counting on anything.

Today I've been watching various documentaries most of the day, mostly due to the fact that I'm now 'free' (with the exception of our other course, but I've worked as hard as I could on that today as well, so). I've watched everything from Norse runes found in America, experimental surgeries in the Roman empire, the artwork and film-making of Salvador Dali, the life and deeds of Mother Teresa and very briefly looked at a documentary about president Nixon. I feel twice as informed about the world as I was before, ha, ha. It's a good sign that my brain didn't fry and that I could actually focus on something that wasn't cartoons for more than ten minutes - something I'm not quite able to do when I'm stressed and hyper.

Anyway, that's about all I had to say for now, I should really get to vacuum cleaning and finishing Lovecraft.
See you in the glorious Nano Land!
POET IN THE JAR

Monster Walk

2011-10-25T00:43:00.000+02:00

Seems like the only thing I can write right now are random blog posts, but who cares, since I'll have all the writing I'll ever need come November. Not to mention that Lovecraft contest entry that I'm meaning to write but haven't gotten the chance to. Honestly I don't know when I might get the chance to, since we have all our animation deadlines on Sunday, and all our storyboard deadlines on Monday, and I'm far from done with either. Typically for me I was going to fix up one of my previous animations today, in which the character is only supposed to try and open a heavy, locked door; but ended up playing around with giving him a monster walk. If I was at least a little bit responsible I would let the monster walk wait until I had at least made him try that door but there goes. My mind is a little messed up lately despite all my efforts with studying schedules and whatnot. And that just reminded me I should go look at my studying schedule. There, I have now looked at it. Oh, so that's what it says about tomorrow. Two hours of animation and the rest of the day for Storyboard - and if the Storyboard work doesn't take too long then two times two hours of animation. Wow, I have really covered all possibilites. I like looking at my planning of the week, more often than not I am surprised at how cleverly and neatly I have structured my time (now let's just hope I can keep up with that).

But enough about boring schedules and studying.
I'm so excited about Nanowrimo! It starts in just a week, luckily just when all the deadlines have been submitted. My main character Madeline attempts suicide and fails. Afterwards, she finds it impossible to remember the real reason why she wanted to die. It bothers her to the point that she goes to a hypnotherapist, Doctor Ava Lynn Gardner, in order to find out, and hopes the good doctor will be able to help her deal with it if she nears another breakdown. And so her journey through hypnosis begins. She'll be travelling through five different areas of her mind, all influenced by different traditional fairytales. The first fairytale is a dark and twisted Little Mermaid spinoff, where Doctor Ava Lynn to her great regret is forced into the shape of a human with a fish's head. Since she physically remains in the office where she sends Madeline into her own mind, the good doctor can only enter the fairytales with her voice, and her body takes on different shapes in each area. I'm currently trying to figure out what shape she will take in the Thumbelina area but that, in essence, is a whole different cattle of onions.

Well, that's that for now, I think. I need to get to bed early if I want to be anything remotely close to efficient while working on my assignments tomorrow. Good night for now and I'll see you in the various November posts about how Nanowrimo is going that the Poet is predicting. Oh, and she says hi, by the way.
POET IN THE POETRY JAR

Writing And Thinking And Going Haywire

2011-10-15T01:03:00.000+02:00

I'm pretty sure this song wasn't in the playlist I just chose, but that's just secondary, and not really what I was thinking at all. Listening to some Shinedown while thinking about stuff. There isn't even anything for me to do in the apartment because I already cleaned and did the dishes yesterday. Odd feeling, there's always something I should be doing but being in front of the screen; but now there isn't - and to top that off I have even spent my planned hours on studying too today, so I've been quite ambitious! Still, my mood swings up and down like the pendulum in a grandfather's clock. It has been pretty stable since I heard Elton John sing I'm Still Standing on the radio when I was taking a drive over to the supermarket, but before that it went haywire. I really felt like just taking the car and going home to Mom and Dad and my sister, even though I wouldn't have arrived until after midnight, which I doubt would have been very popular... still, it's quite tempting to do it tomorrow morning and just surprise everyone, and to, I don't know, just get away from everything around here. It would be cool taking a drive just over to the gas station, stop there, fill up the car, have a coffee and then drive back. I think I might just do that, who knows. I really don't feel like being here tomorrow, there's even a big party planned which will probably be fun, but I'm broke and yeah... a little tired of partying, at the same time as it's the only thing I want to do. No, correction. Drinking is something I want to do, partying - not as much. I kinda miss the times when I was just sitting at home in my little apartment, writing away or watching stuff like Red Dwarf or reading Stephen King, drinking wine and being creative. It's in some ways incredibly depressing to be around the same parties with the same people all the time. I really want to meet new people and maybe make some new friends just for a change, but I always end up with the same people and just, blah. I don't know, it's not that I don't like the people I hang out with because I really do, I appreciate them all a lot - I'm just looking for some people who might have more stuff in common with me. Even though we have our school in common, well... it remains for people to realize that a person is more than what school they attend and well, I have a lot of hobbies that would be interesting to discuss with someone. I think that I might try to go to some write-ins, or maybe even arrange some, when Nanowrimo is here. I'm not sure I'll be able to do the full 50K since I've got both school and I need to squeeze in two more working weekends between now and New Years (already have one scheduled) but I'll be damned if I'm not going to WRITE. I have a pretty good idea too, so I'm quite excited for it! I've posted in the Nanowrimo forums for people in my area who might want to meet up, so far no replies. If no one is active in my area I think I will ask if I can join the Gothenburg people. They're probably friendly and I don't think they'd mind another Nano on board. I could really use some change of scenery - seriously. I don't know exactly why that feels so important right now.

Yesterday I think I made a huge mistake by violating one of the great Stephen's many rules about writing - keep the door closed. I even think I've blogged about it myself, but I couldn't resist. I had just finished a story I call Grammofonen for the Bonnier Carlsen's horror story contest and I really wanted to get some feedback on it. The feedback I got was: "It's well written and I got curious - but then I got disappointed. I don't understand the story". I didn't want to explain too much because I'd like people to read it and start thinking about what it means and what really happens in it; but it didn't work all that well. And now I'm stuck in doubt about this story. Did I make it too cryptical? Does the reader really have to read the other three stories connected to it in order to make sense of it? Is it too poetic, is it too abstract? I don't know, and I'm having such doubts. I'm letting the story rest for now and we'll see how I feel about it when I look at it a bit later on. Bonnier Carlsen accepts multiple stories for their contest so it doesn't really matter, I can always send in another submission if I should feel like it; but still... I don't know. Every writer doubts, I know that. I just wish I hadn't been so eager to show it to someone, because now it feels like the story has a wounded leg and can't walk properly; and I was actually happy with it when I'd finished it. I think in the end I will send it in as it is, because of one simple reason - it was a story I'd been thinking about for a long time that links together some vital things from other stories. I just thought that it would work as a stand-alone story. Maybe asking someone else to read it might also work, if I can get another perspective on it perhaps. OR, that would be repeating the deadly mistake. This close to Nano - don't let anyone make you doubt your writing or you're doomed! Ahhh, it's so easy to give advice to yourself, you just never listen to it properly. Sigh.

On another note I'm quite unusually broke (yes... probably the fifth-hundredth post about lack of money!) and I put up some stuff on this auction site for sale and hoping someone will pick it up. One auction for a bundle of band T-shirts and tops that don't fit me anymore and one auction for three of my prettiest dresses, which I can't wear anymore either. They're just lying around in the closet anyway so what's the use in keeping them? Still it feels a little sad. I wish I had something better to get rid off that would actually give me some money. These are really just pennies and nickles. But it's better than nothing. It's actually come down to the point where I'm going to exchange my leftover Euros from Vienna tomorrow. They're worth far less when they are exchanged back into Swedish money than they were before they were exchanged into Euros but I need every penny I can get to last me until payday. The reason I'm so broke right now is that I borrowed money from my London fund to pay for Vienna, and I had to pay that money back on the following paycheck. In worst case scenario I could borrow again from the London fund but that just ruins the entire purpose of having it. It's not an emergency-fund, it's the London fund; and I'd still have to pay that back again next paycheck so it's really a Catch 22 as far as that's concerned.

Really, really hoping I will get that job for the university, working at the Gamex game display in Stockholm! We got the chance to sign up for it last Monday and I signed up right away. Two or three days standing in the display case marketing the Computer Games Development Programmes - there are harder jobs, and more boring ones as well. I'm waiting to hear back from the teachers. It would help me a lot because it would give me some of the London money I had expected to gain with the writing job that didn't happen (a subject I'm only touching on lightly because I don't want to think about it and be all disappointed all over again).

Right, what are you standing here for, back to swabbing your decks and so should I. I have a long day of doing nothing mixed with possibly some storyboard drawing and possibly some alcohol later on in the evening.
POET IN THE JAR

Constellations

2011-10-05T20:50:00.000+02:00

How great it feels to see your dreams break
To lose that little ounce of hope
that you had just managed to conjure
out of many long and sleepless nights
You drew dots of hope in constellations of stars
while blocking every other thought away
As if you could paint a better life for yourself

How great it feels, when that bubble bursts
The illusion that the circumstances might someday change
That someday you might be that person you wanted to be
That you would have done everything you wanted to do
That you had opened your eyes to everything you wanted to see

How great it feels to see all those grand plans
Abruptly and recklessly torn from your hands
instead of slipping slowly through your fingers
You're left with that feeling of surprise and confusion
And it clings to you and lingers

And it hurts, doesn't it
When everyone told you, you were too naive
Doesn't it hurt when they turn out to be right
Doesn't it hurt, doesn't it hurt
When everything breaks
And you break

Horror Show Halloween

2011-10-04T11:59:00.000+02:00

Even though there's a lot of things currently on my mind, most of them having to do with school assignments; most of today I've been unable to focus simply because of what I dreamed during the night. It was so unsettling that I can't shake the feeling, even though I've been awake for hours now. The details have blurred up a bit, but in the dream, me and my friends had acquired an old, creepy mansion to have our Halloween party in and spent hours decorating it until it looked like your average horror mansion. Then, we went shopping for alcohol in a huge grocery store which didn't make sense at all, all the items were sorted by some obscure logic that took forever to navigate around. When I'd finally found some bottle of red wine we headed on to the mansion and for some reason we were now going to sit down and feast with all of the mansion's staff which had magically appeared. When we got the mansion earlier, it had been abandoned for ages. But that wasn't the weird part - the weird part was that all the staff was me. Different clothes, but they were all still me. It was like in that scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End where Jack Sparrow orders around a bunch of versions of himself on the Black Pearl; except this was the mansion and I was ordering around me. I also switched perspectives constantly between the different versions of me, and soon the guests were all me, too; I was everyone who was at that party. The party was going to start with a dinner and the snobby guest-me told the butler-me to go get more beer, and I became butler-me, gave a huge sigh and thought that there wasn't any more alcohol to get because the store was closed, and that I'd have to give her one of my beers, and that I didn't want to do that. But I did it anyway and made sure to take the snobby guest-me's change while I was at it (it was over four hundred, not really change but her entire wallet). And then every meal I put out as the staff I didn't get the chance to finish it as the guests before we were all lifted up by some invisible power and placed on the balcony on the floor above, complete with guests, chairs, the tables, the dishes, everything. And we just kept climbing floors and I realized that no matter how much I drank from my glass as the guests the wine never came down my throat, it vanished in my mouth.

I can't stress enough how freaked out I am by this dream and it's one of my worst nightmares in a while - even though to you it probably sounds silly, even peaceful, no action. But the environment was enough. It was completely surreal. I wish for better dreams tonight.
POET IN THE JAR

Your Shallowness

2011-10-02T14:06:00.000+02:00

Were you always this shallow
Or have you perfected your image with time
A transparent compensation for past actions
A transparent bandaid for your past wounds
Your past scars

At what point did you lose your depth
And everything that made you interesting
Everything that gave you appeal
And satisfied your own hunger

At what point did you turn your back on the world
The world that was inside your head

Is everything that counts now notches on your bedpost
Your rank among people you never cared about
Is popularity the eighth virtue or the eighth sin
Have you given that some thought
Did you let it sink in

Have you gone over your priorities just yet
Have you looked back and remembered
Remembered the reason you came here
Remembered why you chose it
Why you fought for it

It's not going to match up with your current ideals
Isn't it sad and sentimental how your values always change
And how still the core of things seems to stay the same
And everything's rooted in the past,
no matter how many branches reach out
Everything can be tied to the day
your childhood and naivety died away

Wouldn't it be great if we could brush it off
like dust from our shoulders
Wouldn't it be great

Let's pretend it's possible to run
Possible to settle down
That the demons never follow you
That you could trick them
Let's pretend

I'll let you take care of the pretending
I'd rather take the harsh truth than live in a lie
And I've come to realize what's important to me
And I don't need to feel included in your secrets
I shouldn't feel like I was the one who was left out
Just because I value what goes beyond the most basic
There's a poet inside of me screaming to get out
What's your place to tell me to quiet down
Have you ever had screams
Tearing at the inside of your mind
You have no right to tell me
I'm anything less
than what you are

And I am nothing less
than what I'm capable to be
I don't expect Your Shallowness to see
I don't expect Your Shallowness to agree
But you can turn the tables a dozen times and still find
You're not venturing like me
You're not venturing like me

Jack's World Of Hypnosis

2011-10-01T11:41:00.000+02:00

I'm sitting here passing some time before grabbing my coffee thermos (Achievement Unlocked: Caffeinated) and heading off to school to start on my character rigging assignment, and I'm thinking about an idea for a story that I thought of the other day, for now called "Jack's World of Hypnosis". It's about Jack, a man who's been playing with irresponsibility all his life. When his whole life situation reaches a point where every way out is a dead end, Jack is sent to a therapist specializing in hypnosis. To the good doctor, Jack is an interesting subject because he, unlike every other patient, remains present while under hypnosis. In the story we follow Jack as he submerges in the world of hypnosis and is forced to face different metaphorical creations from his own past, confronting past actions and neglect. The story to me feels very alive and caught my interest, but so far the story isn't anywhere but in my head... it seems I can't find the right words to put it down on paper. But who knows? Maybe I need to think about it for a while, letting it slowly brew and finally becoming the ingredient I need to get started. Maybe some wars'll do the trick (whenever I'll find some time for that...).

Off to school now, though, and for a completely different kind of mental challenge.
POET IN THE BUSY BUSY JAR

Different Dark

2011-09-22T00:06:00.000+02:00

I think you raped me
I think I never gave you my consent
I think that it never occurred to me to say no
I think that it didn't matter to you
That you never thought of it,
from my point of view

So go on then, do it again
You're welcome to hurt me
To rape me, to scar me
And make every little flame of life
Slowly die, deep inside

I think you stabbed me
when I wasn't looking
when I thought I was in safe hands
And you were everything but safe
How could I convince myself
you weren't dangerous
How could I convince myself
everything was fine
when it wasn't

So go on then, do it again
You're welcome to hurt me
To rape me, to bruise me
And make every little flame of life
Slowly die, deep inside

I'd love for you to tempt me again
To grab onto me and lure me in
As I've always loved to be run over completely
I've always loved to be scarred that deeply

So go on then, do it again
You're welcome to hurt me
To rape me, to bruise me
And make every little flame of life
Slowly die, deep inside

I want you to know that I'll be secretly laughing at you
Are so you pathetic that you have to force your love on others
Were you always forced to those extremes
Treading on everyone else's will and dreams

I think you raped me
I think you betrayed me to the descent
And now I'm the one who's become decadent
I'm the one who can't even focus on daily things
You've forced yourself further, you're in my head
And because of you I can't even think

So go on then, do it again
You're welcome to hurt me
To rape me, to cut me
And make every little flame of life
Slowly die, deep inside

I'd like to think that it didn't have that big of an impact on me
But who am I trying to fool when it changed everything
It even changed the fundamental me
Even though you weren't the first
To stain my innocence
Taking it for your own
It changed how I feel about things
It changed how I see them

I'm done with turning my cheek the other way
And done with pretending you and I are friends
I guess this is the turning point
Where all the pretense ends
For the first time I can see you clearly
See the effects you had on me
You thought I had forgotten,
but I had just repressed it
And it was bound to resurface
I was bound to view you in a new light

Or should I say darkness
You really should be viewed in darkness
For darkness is what has engulfed you
And it's a different dark than mine
It's a different dark than mine

The Capital Report

2011-09-15T01:36:00.000+02:00

So I thought I'd give you the full report from my little trip to Stockholm on Monday. As I've told you before I went there to accept the prize for winning the Metro 2033 short story contest, but I had no real idea what was in store for me, except that I was going to a bookshop. I could barely sleep the night before, being nervous for all kinds of things; but as it turned out I had no need to be nervous at all, and I was very well-taken care of by the publisher people. I went up on the afternoon right after school, taking the X2000 train which doesn't stop at many places and makes good time. It took around two hours to get to Stockholm's central station, where after a while, I found the meeting spot, and where I in turn was picked up by the guy the publisher sent. All well thus far. I was asked whether I wanted to take the subway or walk and I chose walking; I didn't regret it. I'd apparently left the rain and wind back home because in Stockholm it was sunny and beautiful over the old parts of the city where we were headed. We stopped by a Chinese restaurant on the way to the bookshop so I could get some food in me, and then proceeded to Gamla Stan and to the final spot, the Science Fiction Bookshop - and its theme for the night, "Post-Apocalypse".

The evening was divided up in three parts; first a pretty non-serious debate on how to survive a post-apocalyptic disaster, and then two different author sessions. First out was P. C. Jersild who is a well-known Swedish author, mostly popular in the seventies and eighties. He was discussing the re-publication of a post-apocalyptic dystopy he wrote in 1982 - a book I got with me home, as part of the prize. After Jersild was the night's big guest Dmitrij Gluchovskij, who is the author of Metro 2033, the novel that inspired the short story contest, and its sequel Metro 2034. He spoke for around an hour and it was beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was to listen to him, that most people had come to the bookshop. It was insanely crowded all night, and there was no room to sit down; I stood up for like 4 hours crammed into a tiny bookshop with tons of other people making it very, very warm. People were using books as primitive fans to cool down. Interesting really, now that I think back on it, and I'm not focused on my aching feet. Anyhow - finally, after Gluchovskij had spoken about his novel and about writing (and despite standing up time just flew away), the publishing company Coltso went up to announce the winner of their short story competition (me). I'd greeted two out of three of the jury members earlier in the night and now they read out loud the motivation for the winning piece, my story Sagan om Viveka:

A well-written short story in post-apocalyptic spirit

that showcases independence, and with thrilling changes of perspective

depicts an important relationship

(freely translated)

And then they called me up and I went to the little writer's table and shook hands with Gluchovskij, who advised me to switch genres to crime stories because they sell better (DJ should recognize this phenomenon) and made some jokes about how I earned this little piece of paper. He hadn't read the story himself but said he was honored that my "career" should begin with a story inspired by his novel's universe. And a few smiles and photographs later it was time for him to sign people's books, and I looked around in the bookshop meanwhile. The Science Fiction bookshop in Stockholm is really something extra. I found all sorts of obscure literature, not only sci-fi but also tons of fantasy, and entire walls with Marvel comics; I even found the comic book adaptation of the Dark Tower lurking on those shelves, not to mention the whole glass cupboard of 'authentic Harry Potter wands' and other collectibles. After the river of people had died down a little, and I'd talked to some people in the audience (among them a guy who'd also been in the contest, and who I'm now going to switch stories with) I got my own copy of Metro 2033 which Gluchovskij also signed for me, so now I have his autograph on both the diploma, and the novel. His signature reads: "To Rebecca, the winner, with my deepest respect and warmest wishes", and when I flip the page, I find the addition "Hope to read your own books one day". It was really amazing and I had a ton of fun at the bookshop.

The night was topped off with a beer at a local medieval-style bar together with Gluchovskij, a couple of bookshop people, and a couple of publisher people. Some interesting and nice conversations commenced and I learned that Russians don't actually throw their glasses over their shoulder when they have finished the glass (that is just a myth in France), and that you shouldn't try enjoying vodka, because it's impossible; and therefore you shouldn't blend it out with anything, but just have it in shots and be done with it. At least that was Gluchovskij's opinion. I also met another guy here who had been in the contest and who had written about a teenage girl; although that is all I had time to find out. It was late already and I had to get going to the hotel. I was showed there by the most official of the publishing people and even though I couldn't sleep for more than just three hours or so before I had to get up again and board the train back home; it was terrific. My feet loved the fluffy bed and the fact that I was done with walking and standing up and my dizzily happy post-event head loved the long shower and the giant window sill where I could curl up and enjoy the view of the... alley (but still, it beats the view we had in Finland). It was extremely tiring to get up at 4.30 AM on the Tuesday and catch a train as early as six, but I had to since I had classes at 10. Either way the tiredness didn't really strike me until later. The train ride home was wonderful and free. My thoughts totally strayed and it was a special feeling to sit in the restaurant of the train with a hot cup of coffee at six in the morning and just watching the world pass by, thinking about the previous night. An adventure I won't soon forget! And if I should, I need only to look at that diploma now hanging framed on my wall.

Now off to sleep land or I'll never be able to get up in the morning;

POET IN THE DROWSY-HAPPY JAR

You Won't Silence Me!

2011-09-10T01:02:00.000+02:00

Did someone say the word recognition? Did someone say there was a sweet, sweet smell of recognition hanging around carelessly in the air? Yes, I believe someone did say that, and that someone was me - hello, hey ho, hello, it's the Poet (a word that is difficult to rhyme sensibly with). Your good old Poet said this after placing well in the contest where I submitted Trygghetszonen ("The Safe Place"). But your good old Poet has some more news, and more things to say, and she won't be silenced!

My endeavour for 2011, particularly the summer (inbetween class and work, I was exceedingly bored), was to participate in every writing contest I could find, and so far, I've managed to keep this promise I made to myself. In fact I not only kept it but managed to achieve some of my underlying goals - practicing to write towards a deadline, and just maybe getting my name out there, in any way possible. To realize this endeavour I temporarily abandoned writing in English in order to enter Swedish short story contests, and one essay contest. To your Poet's extreme happiness - one of these contests went well, and more than well.

Yesterday it became official that I won first prize in the Metro 2033 short story contest. The prize is that I get to travel to the capital (Stockholm) on Monday, meet with Russian author of the praised novel Metro 2033, and receive a diploma from him personally. I'll also be rewarded with five books of choice from the publisher who has published the author's books. It's not so much the prize that amazes me - although it does, it's in fact one of the coolest things I've ever won - as the fact that I won, that the jury would deem my little story about Selma/Viveka to be so good, that it would win the entire competition... it's just a magical thought, it's just compelling, and I don't think I've ever felt so special as a writer. Perhaps it's the confirmation part, which is really what has been my driving force all along - the thought that someone would pick up something I wrote and just get it, just understand it, and if not understand it, well then think about it. To be meaningful in that way, to someone who's judging it objectively, and who isn't telling you it's great because you're close to them and you're obliged to do so. Of course this was a contest and perhaps different, but we're still talking about prose - prose, my lover, my best friend, my passion and companion through the darkness... to me, this is more than big.
It means the world.

I understand if all of these contests mentioned everywhere might seem confusing and therefore I have compiled a little list of the writing contests I've been part of, and their current status.

Icakuriren's annual short story contest
Theme: "The key"
Contribution: Trygghetszonen (roughly, The Safe Place)
Status: Announced
Placed in the category 4th-10th. I won an inspiring book package and publication in Icakuriren's annual compilation of the winners, along with the other 9 stories in the category!
Vulkan's essay contest 2011
Theme: "Stereotypes"
Contribution: Människan behöver stereotyper (roughly, People need stereotypes)
Status: Announced
Placed among the jury's favorites, and got published in Vulkan's essay compilation. This is despite the fact that I seemed to misinterpret the 'essay' part and wrote something very scientific and objective, completely lacking personal opinions, whereas what it referred to seems to have been a What-did-you-do-this-summer type of essay from grade eight.
Coltso's and Dmitry Gluchovskij's short story contest Metro2033
Theme: Write your own short story, in the same universe as the novel Metro2033
Contribution: Sagan om Viveka (the English working title for this story is Viveka's Tale)
Status: Announced
Won first prize, train tickets to Stockholm to meet with Dmitry Gluchovskij at the Science Fiction Bookshop and accept a diploma from Gluchovskij in person; as well as five books of choice from Coltso's published books.
Stockholm City Library and Sveriges Radio's short story contest
Theme: Story must include one vampire
Contribution: Drömsnö (roughly, Dream Snow)
Status: To Be Announced
The city library will announce the results in November 2011.
SKRIVA's annual short story contest
Theme: Must be in genre/genres science fiction, fantasy or horror
Contribution: Vangelis (English title is the same)
Status: To Be Announced
This year generated around 150 stories, that's all I know for now.

I hope that cleared stuff up. There's one more contest to go but I haven't sent anything in yet, and frankly, after all this writing I am out of all ideas...
POET IN THE RECOGNITION JAR

Exit Signs

2011-09-06T18:08:00.006+02:00

I promise, I'll take care of it tomorrow

Can't you see how those tomorrows glisten

They're full of promises yet to be made,

full of promises still unbroken

And they whisper to you in the dark

Telling you there'll be better days

Do you believe them?

Do you believe them,

dwelling in the dark,

covered in sugar-coated dreams?

What choice do you really have?

When it stands between the final solution

and fixing your eyes on tomorrows

What choice do you really have?

When the present chains you down

When it chains you down so badly you'll surely drown

Even if you never chose it yourself it will chase you

You know you couldn't live this way

Clear-sighted, in the night

You know you'd just fade away

Eventually

When did the demons return?

When did the nightmares start?

When did it become clear to you

That it was breaking your heart
That it was breaking your heart

I promise, I'll take care of it tomorrow

Or really any other day that never comes

I hear those are the best days to deal with life

I hear that running is always the best option

And I'm always running away

Always running away

Can't you see how those tomorrows glisten

Really, can't you see it

Exit signs in the darkness

Exit signs that are only detours

But you ignore it

You see those promises,

yet unbroken

Those promises you made,

to yourself

Timekeeper

2011-08-31T01:03:00.000+02:00

You and I, we were born from similar conditions

And we carved our lives with similar decisions

In many ways we're eachother's reflections

but we've ceased to be eachother's voices,

over crackling phone lines

We don't make time,

we don't take time,

the way it used to be

Our conditions now vary

between you and me

I'm sorry I can't be of any more use to you

That I can't act like you expected me to

But what were your expectations, really

It's not my trade to cherish defeat

Congratulations for buying time

It's all still for rent,

it's all still on lease

As am I

I've tried to follow your every development

I've been your companion to your every dead end

I've overlooked everything and given my consent

It's not that I don't care anymore,

I just ran out of energy

and it's not enough for me

to just stand by and watch you leave

Our situations now differ

Our situations are unique

I'm sorry I can't be of any more use to you

That I can't act like you expected me to

But what were your expectations, really

It's not my trade to cherish defeat

Congratulations for buying time

It's all still for rent,

it's all still on lease

As am I,

my little firefly.

Ain't I Always

2011-08-31T00:23:00.000+02:00

I'm troubled by money issues, hell, ain't I always. I'm not sure how I managed to mis-plan the summer's budget so badly and well this month ain't really any exception. It's a lot of fees and other stuff like buying books for school now in the start of the semester, so I really should have seen it coming, but I guess I'm not so good at planning. Also, this particular week eats money and spits them out again chewed-up-beyond-recognition because we're doing so many random money-consuming things, scheduled and non-scheduled... but hell, you only live twice, right. It just sucks though, there's such grand plans for everything stashed away inside my head and I can't make them happen because I'm a fucking student and live off student loans. And still I'm stubborn enough to stride against this and use my only earned money to travel when I actually can't afford it, but I'm looking forward to it so badly I wouldn't dream of it being otherwise. I guess that while I contemplate matters such as personal finances (or rather the lack of them) I can do poor-people stuff such as writing. There's no fee for poetry.

Speaking of which there's been a couple of lines ringing in my head lately. I might just go and make a poem out of it.
POET IN THE JAR

Oh, That Sweet Smell Of Recognition

2011-08-26T23:06:00.000+02:00

Or that may be an exaggeration, but to hell with it, today I've reason to celebrate and I'll damn well celebrate, if only in the written word. And the written word is exactly what is celebrated. Today I received an email telling me my short story Trygghetszonen (The Safe Place) placed in the top 10 in Icakuriren's contest. This was the first contest I submitted to this year and now here are the results. I don't know my exact placement, only that it was somewhere between the fourth and tenth, but the good news is the prize. Half the prize is a bundle of 'inspiring books', the second half is publication, along with the other nine stories in the top 10, in Icakuriren's anthology of the winning entries. So! One baby step towards recognition! Really it doesn't matter what happens next - the confirmation is enough, for me. That maybe I'm not wasting all that time I'm "sitting on my chamber" typing away but that someone out there might find my words worth something. And publication really is the best prize I can think of. Congratulations to me! It's very rarely I get to be this bragging and selfish, but it's worth it. I feel like I'm invincible right now, and the news even made me go finish up that story that didn't seem to want to end itself, so that's yet another good thing that came out of this.
Now remains to see how the other contests go. I don't have high hopes for the fourth one, for which I've written absolutely squat, the prize money is ENORMOUS, and many established writers enter; but on the other two, who knows. One has been submitted and I'm waiting to hear about it, one is finished and will be submitted tomorrow, and the third has been half-finished - but since it's dependent on the events on the second one, I suspect finishing it will go pretty quickly. Let's all cross our fingers that this is not the last you'll hear from me as a writer.
ADIOS!
POET IN THE JAR

Mushrooms

2011-08-23T13:11:00.001+02:00

My dream last night was just completely wicked. It started when I scratched my ears and discovered there was a small colony of mushrooms growing behind my right one, and when I tried to remove them they started bleeding, so I had to let them stay where they were. Everything was in a dirty and low-tech kind of future where most of the city was made out of quilts and patches of fabric. I was for some reason fleeing through the city landscape. I had woken up and no one knew my name, I guess I was trying to find it. I had the brilliant idea that I could signal to my grandmother by pulling out old rugs from a cupboard and hanging them out a certain window displaying a certain color code. With me for some reason was the old woman who's the nanny of my child in The Sims 2. My grandmother replied from her window with another color code and we hurriedly took off to see her. When we arrived, my grandmother, grandfather, sister, cousin and me were all wearing protective gloves while sitting down at the dinner table and we were apparently going to help them out on the big cleaning day, something we did every week. I started browsing through a magazine where I read a very moving article of two old men who used to be soldiers as kids until they inherited a fortune from a distant relative. It was so moving that I started to cry, at which point my grandmother said, "Oh hi John, what are you doing here?" and Rockstar entered the kitchen wearing a giant orange parka. They then exchanged formalities while I tried not to look like I had been crying and made myself busy trying to find that article again to show my sister. Rockstar turned his back on the table and dozens of chocolate bars started falling out of the back of his head onto the floor, something that everyone found to be a hilarious joke. Then he left the room and we left the house on motorcycles because for some reason we were now being chased. During our motorcycle ride I spotted some steampunk-ish aircrafts in the sky, including three of them looking not-quite-but-almost like they were police ships, and I said: "It's my old crew!", kicked off from my bike and jumped all the way up to the police craft where I was sucked into it, but no one else was on the ship. I took a moment to think about whether I was the police or if my ship had been cleverly masked as a police ship and if I was really good or evil. That's when I realized I had been betrayed by someone because the government agents appeared and begun chasing me. They chased me into a building full of parking lots where millions of small red dots started appearing on the ground. My allies still left on the ground called out, "RUN!" because they had spotted the man-size bunny bombs (yes. I'm not making this shit up) that was about to blow my ship to pieces. I jumped out of the ship, which hit the bunny bombs and exploded and I had to run as fast as I could across all those red dots, which were tiny laser bombs and blew up only a moment after I stepped on them. Amazingly I saved myself out of that floor and just like that I was in a hotel, learning my nanny had been the one who ratted me out; she had apparently taken a shot to look like an old woman but was actually a male agent and everything started to make so much sense (...). I summoned my allies from around the hotel's different rooms ordering them to put their costumes on and it turns out we were all kind of superheroes. The perspective was totally reversed and I became one of my nameless allies with long red hair and armed with those comforters you give to kids, but that were actually grenades. This way I could distract a blue-haired maid who discovered me as I tried to sneak out and then take the elevator down. Then I was magically myself again and back on the motorcycle in a landscape that looked like Nevada's. I crashed the motorcycle when I saw a flying man in the sky and realized it was Rockstar flying away. I lay on the ground motionless and I think I shouted things at him, but of course he was too far away to hear me.
And then I woke up.
Anyone wants my dreams?
POET IN THE JAR

Sagittarius!

2011-08-22T19:35:00.001+02:00

Here I am again fellas, refusing to give up on my niche (completely random blog posts), the way that Karo refuses to give up on her niche (fan fiction) and DJ refuses to give up on HIS niche (various reviews). Perhaps it's like me and DJ discussed the other day, that we need these niches to kind of keep us afloat and give us a break from all that other, more serious writing; such as poetry and prose. My head has been crammed pretty full of prose lately and I think that if I spend another night dreaming about my own stories I will have start using happy sleeping pills or something.

Anyhow! School resumes on Monday next week, but for me, the Sagittarius; it starts on Thursday. Why is that? Didn't I say? Because I'm a Sagittarius and therefore I am overly fond of committing actively to hundreds of projects at once (I'm sure that Sylvi will recognize the syndrome) and I've got loads of stuff to attend and do before actual school starts, most of it having to do with welcoming the new first-years. On Thursday it begins with attending a planning meeting with teachers and a bunch of other involved students regarding next week's introduction; immediately followed by a planning meeting with the teacher responsible for my particular department (graphics); in turn immediately followed by the annual "fika" where students in the second and third year get the chance to meet with the new first-years before school actually begins. Then Friday, which is relatively free, and then we spin on to Saturday evening, where the, also annual, back to school festivity is held. Followed on Sunday by putting up the campus tents and meeting up with involved students for yet another "fika". Then, Monday, and not even then will I begin school; since I'm to be present at introductory meetings all day, including speaking to the new students in the graphics department and answering all possible questions they might have during the afternoon. Phew! You see why it's a little disturbing that I forgot my calendar at Mom and Dad's and can't write all these things down; but luckily I have a nice mother willing to send it to me by post.

I have a little mixed feelings about going back to school. I love studying what I do, yet I have a nagging feeling that I just don't have the motivation it takes to become good at it. I'm one of those people who had never tried any of this stuff before I got here and I'm still struggling with basic things. Passing courses will be possible, no doubt, I'm just wondering if I'll ever be good enough at it, to actually make a living of it. Only passing the courses isn't really enough within this branch. You have to really stand out and I have this impression that I'll never really reach to that level. What you'll think is, if it's just a matter of motivation, then make yourself motivated; but it's been proven before that it's not that easy, it can't be turned up from nowhere by a flick of a magic wand. Lately, all I have felt an urge to do is write. I can't even draw, whenever I sit down and try I don't have the patience it takes. At the same time, it'll be kind of a relief to get back to school and have a solid every-day life to revolve my routines around and not live as haphazardly as I have been doing all of this summer. Next summer I have to find myself a job, it hasn't exactly been ideal to survive the summer with part loans, part working under the table (and yes I'm not afraid to admit that has been the case). I keep thinking about that white house and about that typewriter and about having every day revolve around writing. I can't get it out of my head. It's impossible. It stresses me out beyond belief to know that I have three more writing contests to submit to still, and that at the same time I have to do all this university stuff; but hopefully I can pull it off. Hey, I pulled off Nanowrimo, and I think that's a bit (only a tiny tiny bit) bigger than writing a couple short stories, which are half-finished anyway and only need some additional work, the foundation has been laid down. I really, really wish I can take part of Nanowrimo this year, but I have absolutely no idea if it will be possible; I think it's at the time where we study our Animation Project and it's such an important course that I can't miss it for anything. I can't use the solution that I did back in Gothenburg where I could just skip some exams and redo them later. This university is quite different. Either how, I still wish there'll be time, and that I'll have energy for it; later in November. I'm convinced November will be pretty grey and boring in all other aspects... like every year. The whole reason everyone does Nanowrimo to begin with.

By the way it's totally cleansing for body and mind to sit down on my patio (that's what the dictionary says... but the word sounds much more fancy than the uteplats really is) with a big cozy blanket and a cup of coffee. I think that I'll have to make that a habit for as long as the weather allows it.

Off for what I hope will be the night where I finish translating Viveka's Tale and make some progress on my other writing,

Sincerely yours,

POET IN THE BAR

...pardon me, that's supposed to be 'jar'

Viveka

2011-08-17T23:50:00.007+02:00

I looked everywhere for you
Through every door, in every room
I thought I could conjure you to life
That you could be returned
That you never died

Everywhere I heard your voice
Everywhere I saw your eyes
Regardless of choice,
Regardless of mind
You presented yourself
To my memory
Ghost to be

I can't retrieve you from the other side
I can't glorify you after you died
I can't grasp my own dreams anymore
but I can fulfill yours
In your name
Even though it's not the same

I had to withstand facing your Reaper
I was forced to embrace
unpredictability
I confronted a mirage of you
That was really me

Everywhere I heard your voice
Everywhere I saw your eyes
Regardless of choice,
Regardless of mind
You presented yourself
To my memory
Ghost to be

They wouldn't let me be,
they chased after me
I ran for you, to save your remains
To save what I remember
from damage and stains

You couldn't face your Reaper alone
Isn't that why I was allowed to be
When all awhile I wouldn't see
that was your only ambition for me

And my dearest,
Everywhere I heard your voice
Everywhere I saw your eyes
Regardless of choice,
Regardless of mind
You presented yourself
To my memory
Ghost to be

My dearest
I don't know what I can achieve
I don't know why I do believe
I can change things or make them better
All I know is that I can't stay here
This heartless existence
is more than I can stand
but wasn't that your true intention
Wasn't that part of your plan
This heartless existence
Was created by you
By your hand

And my dearest
Everywhere I hear your voice
Everywhere I see your eyes
Regardless of choice,
Regardless of mind
You present yourself
To my memory
Ghost to be

Selma - God's Helmet

2011-08-17T15:42:00.001+02:00

Hello again, it's me, your Poet. I've taken a temporary break in the writing of my short story in order to tell you a little something about it and above all in order to motivate myself to go on. Progress, as always, is slow; especially when you spend so much time procrastinating even though the chore in question is indeed not only necessary but also entertaining. If you're sensitive to spoilers, it might be best if you don't go on reading.

The story tells of teenage girl Selma, a descendant to survivors of the nuclear war in 2011, who now, in 2033, lives underground with other survivors. Selma is the only resident in the underground system of bunkers and tunnels who is immune to the effects of radiation. After her sister, Viveka, dies from radiation sickness, Selma decides to make a journey to the Surface to honor her memory. On her way to the Surface, Selma travels through five rooms, and it is her progress through these rooms that are depicted in the short story. In the first room she is forced to meet with her old guardian Samara, who is now suffering from the same disease that took the life from Viveka. In the second room Selma meets with underground inhabitants Checkered Hat Man and Tobacco Man, faces Checkered Hat Man in a game of dice and finally wins, enabling her to go on to the third room. In the third room Selma confronts the memory of her sister and has an unpleasant insight about her own mortality. The fourth room is where we find her now, and I'm slightly reluctant to keep telling the tale; mainly because the only notes I left for myself about the fourth room was "mission revealed, you are condemned" and that does have quite the alarming feel to it. The fifth room is the last before, or possibly the same as, the Surface, and is the final part of the story. Here Selma will unveil who her sister really is; the big twist of the story.

That's the main parts of it but not, at all, what the story is actually about. In fact it is framed by another story, one told by Viveka. When you get the chance to read it, this will become clear to you. As usual, if I don't have any success in the contest this story is written for, I will translate it into English and make it available to English-speaking readers.

That was actually enough to inspire me to go on writing. See you mid-war,
POET IN THE JAR

Wondrous Solution

2011-08-16T01:58:00.000+02:00

What is there left for me now
As your life progresses, and mine
Always seems to fall behind
In a slower pace
What do you suggest I do
How do I close the rift
you tore open
With claws and
Silent screams

What is there left for me to dream of
I'll never run into your ghost anymore
I'll never lie awake at night
Seeing your demons, fly me by
You've gone to hunt for other demons
Or maybe, for the first time in your life
You're not looking for monsters,
out there for you to find
Maybe for the first time
You look around you
and it all makes sense
Crystal clear sense

Should I be mourning you still
Mourning old games of hide and seek
Those eyes, that you reserved for me
How out of place am I to criticize you
To ask of you to stay
I never said the words
Not to your face
Only inside my own mind
when I daydreamed

What is left to daydream of now
What is left but emptiness and grief
Gradually I've realized
I was never as meaningful to you
As you were meaningful to me

I'd like some of that miracle potion, please
That wondrous solution you drank with ease
That bottle of medicine, that vial
That has ensured your survival
That saved you from denial

What is there left for me now
But only flashes of remembrance
To feed on my subconscious

Hand me that bottle when you're done with it
Maybe we can share it temporarily for a sip
like we used to do
And maybe you could drug me, too
And have your eyes disappear on me
Passionately absent
Violently absent

Don't get me wrong, I'm not keeping you
Evidently, I lost you a long time ago
I'm only wondering, now that you're free
What is there exactly,
Left for me

POET IN THE JAR

Photographs

2011-08-15T00:14:00.000+02:00

I took a picture of my newly dyed hair, looked at it and thought: one day these pictures is all that will be left of me. One day I will have been reduced to flat, two-dimensional replicas and gather dust in some drawer until no one can remember how I laughed or what I wrote or how I used to sing or who my friends were or how tall I was or what I used to wear or how I looked like while sleeping. Some day I will have left this existence and my name will disappear and the only thing left of me will be these photographs. And maybe that is why I strive so much to write, to immortalize my thoughts in words so that at least something can live on after I'm gone; and maybe that is also why I'm so destructive, all at once; maybe that is why sometimes I just feel like saying fuck it, life, and not care if I live or die. And the more I think about it now, the more it actually seems as the wish to never die is equal to the wish to be destructive, the more it seems like they are connected, like they are dependent on each other... as if it indeed is true, that destructiveness is how you learn to accept your own inevitable death, as a friend of mine put it... I've been thinking so much about death lately and I just can't seem to get it out of my head, which is probably the reason the short story I started to write for a contest has become an abstraction over my thoughts about mortality and overall something much bigger than I ever intended, and I'm not even sure anyone who reads it will even understand; there seems to be so few who can read between lines.

I kind of miss my old sarcastic self who knew all these things and would treat them with dark humor. It seems all I can do nowadays is look at them and feel the tears in my eyes. Everything has become impossible, everything's a hopeless case, I've given up all hope about people, about man kind, about this world that isn't going to last, about how it is even possible to LIVE without constantly fearing to die, how is it possible? Is it because everyone is blunt and prefer to ignore it, prefer to worry about bills and getting to work on time... because no one wants to realize how fragile they are, no one wants to realize they will turn into photographs one day and then be fucking forgotten?

How come all these insights tend to disappear and go dormant only to return, greater in force and twice as hard because you realize you've had them before and you realize you drove them away out of the same reasons that everyone else does?

You're no different, I'm no different, we're all just small ones afraid of the dark waiting around to die and turn into flat images
POET IN THE JAR

In Hiding

2011-08-14T14:11:00.001+02:00

When I'm reminded
I wonder how I survived
Why I survived
When old lines, old words
Decide to reveal themselves
After all their time in hiding
They're like stabbing knives
Reminding, reminding

How could it be possible to overcome
How did I endure, what was my motivation
When I had lost everything that meant something
When I had lost everything that was me

How could I not have seen it coming
How could I not have known
Was I really that naive
Was I really that blind
To think that I would be an exception
To think that you would be
To never imagine you leaving me

Without explanation, without reason, without sense
You left me with an aching hole,
Left me with decadence
Left me to die
Left it all to die

When I'm reminded

I wonder how I survived

Why I survived

When old lines, old words

Decide to reveal themselves

After all their time in hiding

They're like stabbing knives

Reminding, reminding

Self-preservation told me otherwise
Told me I had healed, and that aching hole had sealed
Stubborn self-preservation, telling me lies
And the link hasn't worked for years
But it can still fuel screams
It can still fuel tears

When did I make the decision to live
When did I decide that one day it would be worth it
One day I'd look back and be grateful I was still around
When will it be worth it
When will the pain truly subside
When will I stop panicking
Because I'm alive

When I'm reminded

I wonder how I survived

Why I survived

When old lines, old words

Decide to reveal themselves

After all their time in hiding

They're like stabbing knives

Reminding, reminding

It tears the hole up every time

With every word, with every line

And again it aches, and again I break

Every time I wonder how I survived

I thought the first cut was the deepest

That I'd only be left with scars inside

It was self-deceit, it was all a lie

Carefully told

I was never meant to suspect

It would worsen with time

I was never meant to realize

When I'm reminded

I wonder how I survived

Why I survived

When old lines, old words

Decide to reveal themselves

After all their time in hiding

They're like stabbing knives

Reminding, reminding

Do I really want to fall asleep

What if I dream your voice to life

What if I revive your words, your lines

I can't do it all over, I can't do it one more time

I've managed to block out all their meaning

I've managed to blind myself to their power

I can't lose them one more time,

I can't lose them again

I can't lose you again

Even if it's only in my dreams

Even if you're only conjured by me

Symbols & Signs

2011-08-14T04:05:00.000+02:00

Aren't we too different to speak of this
Shouldn't I have known it wouldn't be meaningful
That only in my own mind does it make sense
Do the words and thoughts have any power
Only in my mind do they seem real and true
I shouldn't have come to you

Is this how it was meant to be
Will the poet always be lonely
Lacking understanding
Dead heads only nodding
Dead eyes that can't read
Between lines
Eyes that can't see symbols
Symbols and signs

You never shared my love for abstractions
In your world everything's for granted
Realizations about life and death
Aren't allowed to stray near you
Only in my mind do they seem real and true
I shouldn't have come to you

Is this how it was meant to be

Will the poet always be lonely

Lacking understanding

Dead heads only nodding

Dead eyes that can't read

Between lines

Eyes that can't see symbols

Symbols and signs

I don't make divine observations

Life isn't a starry sky to be analyzed

But I live for everything between those lights

Everything that can't be seen by our eyes

Everything that can be imagined

And at the same time is more real

And says more about you,

And about the world

Than anything

Is this how it was meant to be

Will the poet always be lonely

Lacking understanding

Dead heads only nodding

Dead eyes that can't read

Between lines

Eyes that can't see symbols

Symbols and signs

Life lines

Family Values

2011-08-11T23:54:00.000+02:00

I think that everyone basically have a love-hate relationship to their close family. On one hand you love them to death, you grew up with them, you've shared the same jokes and lived under the same roof and have many mutual experiences and you know their behaviors and choices of words like the back of your hand. On the other hand it's not very common that everyone in the family shares the same interests, quite the opposite; and it's been said many times that your friends are the family you got to choose. And even though I love my family very much - it's still going to be somewhat of a relief to be around friends, to travel, to have a couple beers, to write and have coffees until the dead of the night and just not really give a shit about anything. Who's in favor? I am! That does kind of make me crave a coffee, I might just have some, hell, it's only 10 PM and hell, I don't start working tomorrow until 4.

Like my dear poet friend Roccari, I'm currently struggling with some writer's doubt and I'm not entirely sure how to deal with it. I've got the idea, the background and basic plot all thought out for the short story contribution I am making for the Metro 2033 short story contest; and still when I write on it, all I want to do is scrap it and start over (which violates the very writing tips I myself posted here not so long ago, oh, the irony), and still it never really feels as if I can get it the way I want it. I'm hoping that writing for all these contests will teach me a thing or two about letting a piece go and not overwork it anymore, that it might still be good enough to submit to a contest. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I either have to write it as a masterpiece right away, or I'm unworthy for any competition; which, of course, isn't a very nuanced image of actual reality. There are plenty of people who, for one, write mediocre pieces and win contests of the like with them; and secondly, there're plenty of people who don't feel the pressure to write a masterpiece or overwork it down to the last detail; but who sees the contest announcement, gets inspired, writes their piece and submits it. I'd like to be one of the latter people... or at least I'd like to have a similar attitude towards these kinds of contests. I think that a writer still always has to have the will and desire to improve, or they won't go anywhere. But there's a limit you reach when perfectionism only slows progress, perhaps even brings it to a halt.

POET IN THE SUPPOSEDLY EGOCENTRIC BUT ESSENTIALLY ONLY APPRECIATIVE JAR

Rainy, Sentimental Days

2011-08-10T08:30:00.000+02:00

What do you say of a memory that you just can't be rid of? What do you do with it, when you've treated it in all sorts of ways and still it stays? Isn't it tiring that we can never entirely forget what's really better left forgotten? There is a belief some people have, that without your own particular path in life, without your own particular memories, you wouldn't be where you are today; and you would perhaps not appreciate the good if you never knew of the bad. But I'm not asking for redemption or complete bliss. I'm only asking that I could leave a part of my life that didn't go that well behind me, and let it be. I don't want sudden flashes, images, voices, sounds, that particular, special joke; those particular, special eyes; to attack me when I least expect. I simply wonder - would it be too much to ask to lock these memories up, store them somewhere safe; and only bring them out on rainy, sentimental days, when you conjure them by conscious effort. In my experience the answer's yes, that would be too much to ask. Seems that we humans are meant to be tormented by our past lives, regardless how well we live in the present. Or, which seems more likely perhaps, this is only the case for those like me, who tend to get too emotional over small things and who can't simply slap evil in the face and get on with their lives. And still I wouldn't change myself. Mostly because I spent too much trying to change, way back, in order to deal with these things; and it didn't work that time, and I doubt it would work now. I've come to the conclusion that over-emotional, over-thinking, over-sentimental people such as myself are deemed to be artists and that is that, story is over.

Any writer with self-respect has self-doubt. There's lots of that going around at the moment.
POET IN THE JAR

Towards Madness

2011-08-04T22:38:00.000+02:00

I wonder why I, of everyone out there with the same dreams, would have my voice heard? I wonder why my lines should be heard, why my words should matter? I'm only one person, one who constantly thinks about things, thinks about life, thinks about death. I'm no chosen one. I don't have any special abilities. None of my thoughts are really unique. They've all been thought before, they've all been heard before, everything's been done before.

I'm the last one to deny I have a dream, and that the dream is to be recognized for my writing. To for once be able to look at something proudly and say, 'I wrote that' and 'I made that', and be renowned. Too many times lately I've thought I am writing for nobody's eyes. I'm writing for nothing but my own eyes, and who cares? Really? No one cares about anyone's eyes but their own. We are so quick to say we are misunderstood but none of us ever tried to understand others.

I will always be driven to write. Maybe one day I'll be rewarded for it. But more often than not, I ask myself why this should happen. Why I keep clinging on to the hope that someday, someone will pick up a book of mine, read it and have their world changed, have their world revealed. There are no little golden elfs to hand out riches and fame to the struggling artists. A struggle is all that it is, and still we can't keep ourselves from doing it, we can't keep ourselves from putting pen to paper. Is it naive or brave? Is it stupid or ambitious?

I've always said I write in order to deal with hardships in life, and it is true. I write to distance myself from thoughts about mortality and monsters under the bed. I write to get it out of my head and onto paper where it's safe. But what do you do when the writing isn't enough? What do you do, when all you do is write, all you do is pour and pour from yourself, and still you never dry up?

I feel so lost, and confused. The more I write, the more my angst shows through. The more it seems like a game and a folly. What madness is this?

Why do I drive myself toward madness?

POET IN THE JAR

Writing Rant

2011-07-31T20:25:00.000+02:00

Despite my previously mentioned ambition to post writing-related progress on my Twitter account, I can't help but drop by here and proudly say I just submitted my three-paged essay to the essay contest arranged by Vulkan. First prize is 10,000 SEK and an Iphone 4, but more importantly, the top contributors get to be published in an anthology with their essays. Sometime in August I will know how it went, meanwhile I'll be crossing all my fingers, arms and toes for luck. To be perfectly blunt and honest, I would rather go far in a contest of short stories than in one of essays, but they're all writing contests after all, and I've decided you've got to start somewhere. Remaining for the time being are three more short story contests and one contest for a play, which might be a challenge since it's entirely new to me to write plays. No matter how it goes in the contests, I'll be developing in the process, and writing challenging things will develop me twicely so!

I also had an idea to myself that if I shouldn't go far in any of these contests I will publish my own anthology with the stories and make them available that way. But now, I believe I'm going to continue re-reading Ophelia's Photograph and dwell in the sad yet beautifully worn world that is Cade's and Ophelia's.
POET IN THE JAR

Treasure Hill

2011-07-27T01:43:00.000+02:00

What interest have you in my thoughts, my wishes
Of how I daydream or how I dream at night
What does it matter to you what I read,
What I write, what I make, what I create
If it isn't aligned with yours it's insignificant
If it isn't already in your thoughts,
in your wishes,
it's invisible

You're too attached to daily appointments
To promises that you made to yourself
That the world follows with gaping eyes
Like they'd never think to follow mine
My wishes was always too abstract
For anyone to even consider as real

I miss even the darkest times of living
Then at least I felt I fought for something
Then there was something more than illusions
at the edge of the treasure hill
And there was something more than just dread
To kill

Couldn't you just once open this wine with me
Finish it while speaking of unspeakable things
And what you think of when you dare to think
Couldn't you just once stop, and listen,
and find my words meaningful

What interest do you have in what I value
What interest do you have in any of my visions
Since visions never fed anyone or paid their days
They're rendered useless, aren't they
Useless in your eyes

You could stretch to agreeing they were beautiful
but soon enough you'd be lost again in fleeting errands
Soon enough you'd have forgotten it all
What we might have shared over bottles of wine
What you might have found meaningful
beneath the starry sky
would be useless, wouldn't it
Useless in your eyes

Warden

2011-07-26T23:36:00.002+02:00

You can't break glass with silence, trust me, I've tried

And you can't put out fires with tear drops

You can only gather them in vials

For when they should stop

You can fling them open again

When you've run dry

Automated eyes

Automated life

What am I to do with these faint images

They are bleaker every second

What did you leave them for

Maybe you believed they were dead

I could keep an eye on them

but they are only dying slowly

You didn't make me a gravedigger,

You made me a reluctant warden

And I'll never be awarded

You can't chase shadows in the night, trust me, I've tried

And you can't drown sorrow on desert plains

You can only carry it inside

Carry the pain

You can release it again

When it can fly

Automated wings

The conditions you left me with are unfair and desperate

You never spared a thought for what would come

Once you had secured your own escape

You weren't even brave enough to face me

You didn't have what it would take to stay

Forgive me if I won't guard your institution

Your well preserved memories

I scattered my copies

Left it to them to survive

You stopped yours in flight

Then imprisoned them

And turned your back on them in denial

I can't bear to be your warden

I can't bear to see the memories die

You weren't the only one who created them

The other creator's hand was mine

I'll spread them with the others in the memorial grove

Spread them with the others across the sea

They were meant to fly over it, one day, with me

But they never got to see the day

So I'll set them in flight before they die

Maybe that can keep damnation at bay

You can't break glass with silence, trust me, I've tried

And silence is all that is left after us, after we died

Maybe it was for the better, after all,

no more glass will break

And there'll be no more lies

Without Sound

2011-07-26T15:35:00.000+02:00

After years and years I never thought I'd see this day
When I'm wide awake and can't even remember your voice
So seemingly brief and unimportant, so seemingly silly
To reminisce about these things that are better left forgotten
And still having forgot is what bothers me
Pierces straight through my heart
I thought these old wounds were quiet
Woven into scars the way they were
Woven into old images without sound
I was mistaken, deceived by myself
To ever think there was a stop to hell

And hell it is when you torture yourself with what was
You had the realization about mortality and shortage of time
It doesn't help, you can't make the minutes obey you
And sometimes during insomnia they rebel
They showcase what's really there under the surface
What you always run from, the monsters under the bed
The monsters in the darkness

You claim that the effects wore off eventually
And that you've done what you can to be finally be free
But your hollow lies don't impress or fool me
I know you for what you are and for what you've been
In the end, aren't you just human with all your flaws
Feeding on your own fear to build your life around
Old images that have lost their sound

And I can't even remember your voice

Buzzy Bee

2011-07-18T23:32:00.000+02:00

Leaving tomorrow for a mini-trip until sometime this weekend. I plan to take lots of pictures, go for walks on the beach and generally enjoy my free time. Until then, my head is buzzing with different dates for the many different writing contests I've pledged to participate in throughout the year. I've had one short story down and sent in, currently working on the second one which is also soon completed and about to be submitted. That will leave me with another two short stories, one essay about stereotypes, and a screenplay to write, all before September 30th on varying deadlines. Come to think of it, it might be a good idea if I brought a notepad with me during the next few days, just in case I should spark up any ideas. I'm pretty empty at the moment.

So, basically, I've had no real time to breathe here, I arrived back just yesterday and unpacked only to pack again. What happens after this week is pretty much up for grabs (I'm hoping as little as possible). I might work some more if I need the money but overall, I'm going to avoid it. If anyone could use some time off, it is definitely me.

Also, I think I'll go buy myself an egg timer in order to make word wars much simpler.
See you in a bit, whenever I return again from the road,
POET IN THE JAR

Cocoon Rant

2011-07-16T00:16:00.000+02:00

I feel reluctant to leave here and return home again. This place is so timeless and peaceful, like a cocoon of time where all your worries simply fly away. It's heaven for a writer, a real muse for inspiration, and there's so much left to create, so much more that I could DO here, if I only had the allotted time. I don't miss home that much, most people have left for the summer anyway. Surely if I wasn't working I could really do wonders by staying here, even in the company of the Ants, who'll be arriving home in around an hour... It's sad that I can't, at least not for the time being. I'll be leaving on Sunday and I'll miss it. But on the other hand, I have like five or six weeks to spare after next week that I can spend however I like, and I might just use that time to come here again. There are no limitations, only the ones I make for myself. Yeah, I might do that, I'll see how I feel later and maybe I'll resort here back again soon enough.

Short post for this time around.
POET IN THE JAR

Straws Of Grass

2011-07-15T23:47:00.000+02:00

It amazes me how dependent you are on worldly things
How truly you can't breathe without your daily dose of trivial
How can you stand yourself, being so blunt and blind
Losing pace, you actually froze in time

You couldn't tell a straw of grass from your bills
You can't remember your latest thrill
You'll always cower behind crosswords
And hide from anything that might hurt

Your meaningful discussions, I reduce them to nothing
Since nothing is exactly what they are
How can you not see that
How can you not see what you are

You've always been good at keeping yourself busy
Your way of protection against late night thinking
You fall asleep and leave the real issues awake
That way you bought yourself another day
You avoid the notion that being saved
will eventually take its toll
It will eventually have a price

Listen to your laughter, it's so hollow
I can see through it, it's so transparent
Like your dreams of tomorrow
Those are just your automatic reply
To my inquiries about ambitions

It doesn't matter if you claim to be happy now
It doesn't matter how you feel about your life
You still created it out of your own contempt
And gave it your holy bliss and consent
Isn't that hypocritical, how can you deny
You've become a reflection of everyone else
And still you make time to mock them all
As if you were better than them

But you're not, you're just like them
You're just someone who gave up on their beliefs
For the benefit of the most conventional kind of life
And without any interest in me
Without any effort for me

You wouldn't even be alive without me

Castle Of Paper & House Of Cards

2011-07-03T23:39:00.000+02:00

You made yourself a castle of paper
Folded out of hopes and thoughts
Every tower impossibly delicate
Every door closing at your command
A swirling castle
Made of paper
By your hand

I made myself a house of cards
That sways unsteadily in the wind
And sometimes falls
I rebuild it every time
I built it out of wishes and stars
For every wish I fail to fulfill
The cards fall down
And I restart

There's hills and valleys between us
They are made of papercuts and stamps
I can see them when I balance carefully
On the highest cards of my deck
And sometimes the knight lends me binoculars
Sometimes when the mist clears
I can see the writing on your pages
Sometimes

The ink hadn't dried when you built your fortress
You built it on sore print that became indistinguishable
You built it fast so that no one would be able to read the letters
And you built it high so that no one would be able to climb
You were careless and blind
Your paper doesn't obey you
It secretly rebels
To overthrow you

I never said I was more loyal to my cards
Than you were with your typewriter pages
I never said they speak to me
Anymore than yours speak to you
But I hear the whispers of your house
I hear it carried on the wind
Like a paper plane

I will not take part of or fuel what's there
You already laid out the perfect foundation yourself
It saddens me to see, from my red and black tree
It saddens me to watch your descent
Into denial and addiction
Into fire
Into fire

I wonder if it looks the same to you
If you glance my way on a clear day
If you ever wear those old binoculars
Do you see the same deceit in store for me
Do you see my house of cards
Overthrowing me

I believe you are the one who will fall
After all I have fallen many times before
And I have taught myself how to land
And pick myself up from the ground
You on the other hand never really fell
You spent all your life living on the ground
Until you left, to aim for the stars

I hope you find what you're looking for
That they'll reel down a ladder from the sky
And reward you for all your thoughts and hopes
While I'll fade away in my house of cards
Waving off unfulfilled wishes
As they disappear
Into the mist

Little Twitter Bird

2011-07-03T22:45:00.002+02:00

I wanted to have a place to post my writing progress and some overall thoughts about writing - in more specific posts than you'd find here, and I was a bit too lazy to start a whole new blog just for this purpose; so I decided to start tweeting instead. It might also be handy for those of you who are more frequently on Twitter than you are on Blogger (if there are any of those among you).

See you there!

rebeccaferm@twitter

Backwards Storm Chaser

2011-07-03T01:07:00.000+02:00

When did everything grow insignificant

Everything that used to touch and stir me

When did I lose my edge against the world

And become this thinker without soul

With only shadows of my former pain

Stinging inside

I'm left only with the thoughts, the ideas, the abstractions

Thinking them all over, pondering them, in my head

It seems I've lost track of all my emotions

Everything I was, everything I believed

Of what mattered in life

How come everything is so pure and beautiful

Until you realize you're going to die some day

You realize, and it stains your every thought,

your every amazement, with a coat of sadness

With a coat of darkness

And the realization is old

You've had it before

You just forced it quiet

I remember when my mirage was to feel, at least once,

every feeling there was to be felt in life and in death

When my presence in the present was the only thing vital

And now I've become a backwards storm chaser,

avoiding everything that might connect me to that time

avoiding everything that might make me tick

and send me back

But who am I fooling, have I ever fooled anyone except myself

Numerous times, thousands of times

Who would buy that trickery of loss of soul

Loss of emotion of all kinds and in all ways

That has never been me

See I was always fucking made of emotions

I was always fucking dependent on them

I've tried to hide them, lose them, sell them, kill them

Tried to shield them, seal them, lock them up, throw them away

Nothing ever works; these fragments always stay

Deep down in the mists of your mind

Where nothing's ever consciously stored

How can I pretend to myself, pretend to anyone

That everything's changed, that I'm different now

That I've become some fucking soldier of steel

That isn't me, that isn't real

But I almost actually bought it this time

I almost actually believed it

I thought I could always live off old diplomas

Dust-gathering in their frames

That it made a difference, that it meant progress

That if I became successful it would be like pointing a finger

at everything and everyone I left behind

but that isn't the case, is it

I'm meant to have these old demons - so are you

It's got nothing to do with fate

It's just the way it works for us

The world was made that way

And so, a moment that seemed completely insignificant at the time

Can be imprinted eternally inside your mind, inside your eyes

Imprinted so well and true that you can still feel your tears burning

Feel your fingers throw your work across the room

Feel the embarrassment rise high on your cheeks

Feel your inability to help it

Then feel your feet against the cold concrete floor

Feel the smell of smoke and oil and gas

Hear the words of attempted but inefficient comfort

Feel the pat on your shoulder

Feel the cold water on your face

Trying to wash it off, to look proper again

To be presentable for the big audience

To be passed down as normal

As if everything's normal

When your life has just been shattered to pieces

There were many moments that were worse, sharper, than this

And still this is what's going to haunt you

We don't get to pick what does

or when it will appear

I admit, shard, you caught me out of the blue

When I thought I had almost forgotten you

I admit that you got the drop on me

And that you managed to rip up my old cuts

But I am going to do the same to you

Until you realize what you put me through

Can't we let be what fucking was

Why so eager to stir up the past

I thought it all had been put to rest

My bad, my bad

My sorrow

The pain is not insignificant

I'm still capable of lies

Although the physical pain has subsided

And only resurfaces at few, given times

It's still there

And the mental pain hasn't faded

It has been blended with confusion

And countless conversations

That never really took place

But in my head

Suddenly it's understandable

Why I traded in my tired, sleepless mind

For a mercifully simple pain

That drove every angst silently away

How come everything isn't pure and beautiful

Until you realize you're going to die some day

9 Tips For Novel Writing

2011-06-18T01:34:00.000+02:00

Stephen King wrote that even if you're not writing on your novel, it's alive as long as it's inside your head, as long as you're thinking about it; and I think that's the case with Ella. Although I'm in no mood to write it's always in the back of my mind, and I'm considering how to continue scenes, how to add material, how to make things add up, and so on. Even while doing so conscious thought mostly isn't the answer to how to make a plot that works... at least, it never was for me. Hell, I've gotten the best ideas while dreaming or in my first conscious thought of the day - as if the novel itself feels more comfortable that way, building itself up from scratch in my subconscious. I'm not objecting. I always thought stories did better when they were in charge, even when it didn't turn out at all like I'd expected. On Ella I did write around 600 words the other day, so it's not standing completely still progress-wise, but somehow it feels like the text isn't quite keeping up with the pace the story is evolving with inside my mind. Hopefully, that will kind of work out by its own accord.

I don't by any means intend to come off as arrogant, or professional either, but since I've been thinking a lot about writing lately I thought I'd just randomly share my best writing tips. For your sake or mine? I'm actually not sure, but hell - does it matter?

1. Write in intervals
Set a timer on a certain number of minutes - personally I find that seven or thirteen minutes are good intervals - and do nothing but write in that amount of time, even if sometimes that means staring at a blank document. When the timer rings, stop writing and look at your word count. It's an easy way to make fast progress and it's more fun than long sessions. It's also easy to fit in a few intervals a day. In Nanowrimo context this method is called word wars and can be done by yourself or together with other writers just the same.

2. Don't. Press. Delete.
When you're writing the first draft, the story itself, think of it as a block of marble that you're going to sculpt. There's no need for every detail to be right in the first round. First write the main body of the text and save the editing for later. Make notes directly in the document if you have doubts, but never, ever press that tempting Backspace key, it is known to kill pace and make you doubt yourself. This method encourages writing on the spur of the moment and can boost inspiration and your enthusiasm for the art form. Sure, sometimes you will know you're writing crap, but other times you'll find that on the read-through, there are actually some gems hidden in the text that would otherwise have gone lost. And besides, if the crap stays crap, you can always delete it later.

3. Write for word count
This is basically what Nanowrimo is all about. I was sceptical at first to weigh your writing in a number of words, but it's actually a pretty good way to measure progress. It will feel more eligible to look at your text and say, 'Hey, I wrote 643 words today', than to look at it and say, 'Two hours work and Helena and Jack are still having the same boring conversation that isn't taking the story anywhere'. This method doesn't suit everyone, but then again, none of these methods really do.

4. Eliminate distractions
It won't work to write while you are cooking, talking on the phone, watching TV and checking your Facebook status all at once. Close all browser and chat programs. Only keep your word program and possibly a music player open. Music by the way is a great way to get into writing, and isolate yourself from possible disturbing surroundings, all at once. Choose whatever works for you to listen to, or experiment - sad music for sad scenes, and so on. You get the drift.

5. Ponder!
Even if you don't have time to write that day nothing is keeping you from developing your characters while standing in line for the ATM or sitting on the bus. Keep your story in mind when you can. You don't need to think of new, inventive ways to use verbs or come up with the new epic ending scene for your story; small things, like considering which hair color your character has or how that character would act in the ATM line is enough to keep your imagination alive.

6. Reward yourself
Set up goals, for example in connection to word count - maybe for every ten thousand words you write you get to go buy yourself a video game or a really nice bottle of wine or whatever tickles your fancy. It works better than you might think. For the final goal, set up the biggest reward so that you have something to strive for other than word count and personal development within writing. The average novel is approximately 75-100K worth of words, so you can adapt your goal after that. For some stories, shorter ones perhaps, or stories that don't need any particular length, this isn't really needed. For those stories instead set up a goal for when your first draft can be said to be finished.

7. Don't overexpose
Write on your own until you have grown sure of your story. Giving samples or short stanzas to fellow writers is fine, as is talking about plot problems or characters - but don't let anyone read the text in its entity until you have a rough first draft that has an ending and that feels good to you. Otherwise you'll be easily affected by feedback and might entirely lose focus from the original story.

8. Have fun!
Writing doesn't have to be dead serious, quite the opposite. Don't expect to write a novel worthy of Tolkien or Hemingway on your first try. Have fun writing, and don't be afraid to throw in deus ex machinas and random spoofs. Even if you tried your hardest to write a really bad novel, you'd be surprised at how good it would turn out, and you could probably use big portions of it to turn into a pretty good story. Enjoy your writing, and don't take it all too seriously. That could set you off into a writer's block.

9. Believe in your work
Sometimes I've felt like what I've been working on isn't original enough, or that it is just a copy of all the other millions of stories out there, that perhaps it even has been told before, but don't get caught in that trap. Don't listen to what people may have to say about your ideas or what they might compare it to. Even if the story has been told before, YOU haven't told it before, and that can be enough to make it entirely unique. The important thing is that YOU believe in your story, or writing it will feel meaningless. Don't be intimidated - encourage yourself.

That's all I've got for now and come to think of it, I think I wrote it for my own sake. I feel strangely encouraged to go write now. Funny how that works, sometimes.
POET IN THE JAR

Longest Shortcut To Misery

2011-06-15T17:50:00.000+02:00

You haven't changed, have you

Although you traded small town angst and hate

for countryside indifference and ignorance

You're no different, have no other goals

No other wishes or dreams

On the outside you look just the same

You haven't changed, have you

Don't look down on me, don't you see

That I'm the one laughing at you

You have no ambitions or aspirations

To become anything or anyone

To improve your current conditions

A few key matters still are the most important to you

How to be adored by your friends and local establishment

Your so-called friends have back-stabbed you so many times

That you've forgotten that you used to think it hurt

Now it's your everyday situation

You don't know how to feel, anymore

You tell yourself it's what you wanted

For self-preservation

Did you circle any of the ads in the paper

Did you ever get an interview

You didn't, did you

Barely finishing school is still the highpoint

of your life as you remember it

You haven't changed, have you

You're still the same

You still take the same walks

Still walk the same road to the same bus stop

Still live in the same house with the same ignorance

The same fights and same mess and same piles of junk

What can I do but laugh at you, pity you

You haven't even attempted to leave

Every same day of neglect has become a shield around you

Without any love from those around you, you had no other choice

You seek it out elsewhere, wherever you can get it

But you confuse love with admiration

And admiration is temporary

You have a role model, a hero of sorts, to inspire you

Letting you know you could always move three miles away

and hook up with the first loser you see

So you can still stay in range of what you know

The same fights and same mess and same piles of junk

Just in a different house with different faces

You haven't changed, have you

Should I stop laughing now, or stop pitying you

and actually lift my hat off for you,

and congratulate you

You found the longest shortcut to misery

That's always something, isn't it

Congratulations

If you ever rediscover how to hate

How to discard the empty and apathic

Let me know, hell, I'll buy you a coffee, or a beer

You'll deserve one after your time in the desert

I'll still be the one laughing at you

Hopefully I won't choke on my laughter

Coffee Cups And Stars

2011-06-15T17:23:00.000+02:00

I dream of a big white house with wooden panels and old bricks on the exterior, a big white house with a big garden and only a grassy slope from the mossy lake. It will have an entire room just for writing, a big room with bookshelves lining the walls and a giant stereo that can play my favorite songs really loud without disturbing anyone and a giant desk with a typewriter and plenty of room for spare pages and coffee cups, and behind the chair there'll be a big window facing towards the lake so that when inspiration ceases to come I can spin the chair around and look out into the sun or rain. There will be a washing machine in the kitchen and a tub in the bathroom that is built inside the floor and the walls where I can take long bubble baths after long walks, and there'll be gravel roads and narrow paths throughout the forest where I can go for long walks with my German Shepherd called Max that I've always wanted to have. There'll be other houses around the lake at a convenient distance and I will know everyone who lives there and we'll go to each other's houses for dinner parties and barbecues or for cups or tea and talk about life and about books and about the great that was, and about the great that is still to come. I dream of a big white house with a big kitchen where the refrigerator is always filled with fresh food and with a cold pantry where I can store cans of jam and lemonade and carbonated water. Down by the lake I'll have my own little bridge out into the water and on the rainy summer days I'll wrap myself in rainwear and watch the drops hit the surface of the water and cause thousands of ripples before my eyes. And there'll be a big living room with many different kinds of sofas and stuffed chairs and a fireplace for when I invite people over and there'll be at least two guest rooms where they can stay the night when they are visiting. I dream of having a four wheel drive jeep that I take into the city to buy groceries or go to the café or stock up on paper for that typewriter and the city isn't more than twenty minutes away. And when night falls the lamp posts in the garden will light up and keep shadows at bay, and we'll sit in the garden and talk about everything until the sun has finally set and then a little longer still until the stars light up the sky as light bulbs against black silk, far, far away from where we are. A big white house that will be everything and nothing, and that nothing that is everything, to me.
POET IN THE JAR

Harvest Safety

2011-06-13T22:29:00.000+02:00

I don't want to know how you harvest safety

Spare me your instructions, please

They serve no other purpose to me

than to make death and aging tangible

You remind me that our days are short

With all your talk and bureaucracy

Please, leave me to find my own peace

when it's not dependent on plans for my future

that you have created for my own good

Seriously, do all your words make you any happier

or any less vulnerable to pain

I'll let you take care of the numbers and recommendations

while I savor the moment, while I stay sane

_____________________________________

Yeah, I promised myself to start putting away money for my retirement by the time I hit twenty-five. Maybe... hopefully... if I have any income by then... honestly... well, we'll just have to wait and see.

POET IN THE JAR

Ultimate Selfishness

2011-06-05T23:11:00.000+02:00

Was this the dream you wanted
You claim to be different, to be special
but what are your words worth,
your empty promises, whispers of gold
when every aspect of your life was carved from the ordinary

What does it mean to question everyone around you
for having become spectators of their lives
when you too watch yourself from a distance
If your name hadn't been written on it
you would have ridiculed your own life
What does that say about you

You took those vows for your own sake
and said you would never be living in the shadows
you said you'd never hide away your true core
and you'd never conform to fit in the big picture
It was for your integrity and for your soul
not for your protection, really
Protection was exactly what went wrong in the first place
it became a bubble of denial of who you were
You said you couldn't live that way
You said you'd die fighting, taking your last stand
rather than rot away in indifference

Take a look in the mirror now
Ask yourself how a stranger would view you
Would they really see all the complexity under the surface
Would you?

To everyone else, and even to yourself
you aren't different or special or complicated
They only see those basic things, those highlights
describing your life in five short words
Without having read all the poems you wrote
And they dismiss you just as easily as you dismissed them
on first sight, based on those short words,
based on their listings in this world
Isn't that the ultimate selfishness

Couldn't you please stop trying to be above the rest
Trying to fight the conventions residing in your very bones
Couldn't you ever settling for being, for existing
Doesn't sometimes ordinary do the necessary trick
but I know the answer before you even reply
you're a visionary and a poet, just as I
and to us the regular just doesn't comply
Don't I know, because I have been where you are
I am there now, without knowing if it'll ever change
I've managed to find some comfort in the smaller things
A breath, a whisper, the sun on my skin
but every now and then the realization breaks me down
I am no special, no different, from anyone else
Maybe it would be easier to bare if I didn't care
but I set out for extraordinary
I set out for the world

There's still some part of me that believes
if you aim for the stars, you could land in a tree
And from there it's closer for shot two and three
should you want to, you're free to try it with me
Maybe I'll even tell you you're special

Temporary Antidote

2011-05-29T23:43:00.000+02:00

You can't kill tears with laughter
It's just a temporary antidote
And shallowly, it cures you
But it leaves a hollow inside
Filled with emptiness
A home for your sorrow
A safe place
Where time cannot repel it

Doesn't it feel safer to keep it
You know that it's there
Even though you pretend it's gone
Who was the exorcist of your grief
Someone who agreed to take the blame
Agreed to maintain your shield
But it weighs heavily on your heart
To carry

Is it too late to dream
When all the voices that whispered to you
Were banned from your mind years ago
All those whispers that were passionate
That told you about wonders of the world
Beckoning you to follow
Is it too late to awaken them

The walls you've sealed yourself in with are too high
Habit and denial keep you from tearing them down
There'll be no catapults to attack you here
All they need to do is wait
While you corrode
While you rust away

The damage is done and you're the maker of your own disaster
You were too blind and young to make the right decisions
It could have been undone if you had opened your eyes
But you drove yourself towards destruction
And now you have to pay the price
Pay the price for pride and self-deceit

You can't kill tears with laughter
And you can't afford to be selfish again
Selfishness was what got you here
It's too late to listen to those voices
And it is too late to aim for dreams
They'll always remain improbable, and silly
But in secret you cling to your dreams
And visualize a better existence
When you cry, at the end of the day
And no one sees you
You can lay off the antidote, if only for a while
And let the poisonous childish wishes rule
Aware that they will never come true

And you tell yourself, tears are better
Than emptiness

Ode To Manic-Depression

2011-05-19T19:38:00.000+02:00

Don't I longingly speak of you
Glorifying you after you died
I make you swirl with butterflies
And place you in the sunlight
Where you never actually were

Don't I somehow miss having you
Although you chained me down
You opened my veins and let me out
You became my channel for despair
The only way to create the great art

Is there something hollow in my words now
Now that you're no longer my driving force
Don't I admit that it's different now
Doesn't that make any difference

I tried in every way to kill you
While simultaneously clinging on to your presence
Every ounce of you, of your darkness
While I fought you, I would have died
I would have been burned by all the false lights
The lights they turned on me in mutual understanding
Didn't I live, even with my burned skin and my scars
Didn't I prove them wrong, didn't I try

Wasn't for once the solution to grasp desperation
I never asked for anyone to cure me
To lure me in, make me adjust to their standards
Provide me with their only answer, to conform
Do what was expected of me, forget the ghosts
They didn't see that they were killing me

Don't I longingly speak of you
Sometimes, when everything seems hollow
And I almost tip over, almost summon you to life
Just to make my whispers live again

I was only driven towards my fading dreams because of you
You were the only thing that kept me from drowning
Even though I was in your stranglehold
You were the only thing that made me struggle through
I wish I'll never find myself in need of you, again
But I'll be the first one to admit it's empty without you
And some of that fire that burned me, that drove me on
Is now gone

Don't I longingly speak of you
Glorifying you after you died
As so often happens
I owe my life and creation to you
And so I'll always hate you, but love you, too
Just because my whispers are emptier now
And the old desperation is forced by my own hand
Instead of forged by you and planted in my head
Maybe it's the same
Some would say it was
But it doesn't feel the same
It doesn't feel the same

Words, Words, Words

2011-05-13T23:10:00.000+02:00

Things seem really terrific at the moment, it's almost hard to believe it. I got quite a few things to look forward to. The biggest, and best, thing is that I managed to get a part time job this fall... teaching writing. Writing! Creative writing! I feel so lucky. My employer sounded really positive, already when she first called me up, but I still wasn't expecting to actually get the position even as I went to the interview. And the interview was more of a so-how-would-you-prefer-to-plan-these-writing-sessions and here's-how-much-you're-going-to-get-paid than your traditional interview. I really had no need to be nervous. The position is at an open form of school, where people of all ages and backgrounds pay to take courses in various subjects. The job stretches over a couple of weeks and I can't wait to get started. I'm really inspired and want to get started to inspire the others, too. I'm also excited because the pay will definitely help me get to London over New Year's. I'm so looking forward to that (although I could do without the winter that inevitably follows).

I got into the 3D-sculpting summer class, meaning I'll be learning some well-needed extra 3D modeling during the summer while also trying to work a little bit; and I'm the 8th reserve to get into a writing class in English that would be perfect to take before I start to work. Hopefully, people will have found other things to do during the summer and decline their spots so I can spend parts of the summer writing. It'll be nice preparation and hell, nice fun too. Also, I read about some kind of Nanowrimo camp where they are going to arrange a Nanowrimo outside of November, which I might take inofficial part of. We'll see. I definitely have enough projects as it is, hell knows that. But just in case summer and all this sun I'm so unused to would bore me, ha, ha.

We're taking a class currently called Digital Cultures that has actually made me stop and think (who knew?). We've been discussing the idea of creating worlds, in which multiple, complex and related stories can take place and together make up a whole, rather than creating a single, one-way story. Worlds with multiple stories within it can cross platforms, and play out in different medias, but still be part of the same universe. I've found this thought so enticing that I've thought to experiment a bit with it in my current novel project. Overall I'm thinking to do some changes to the story after some late night thinking a few days ago - I will no longer tell it from first person but instead from third. This is because telling it in first person will reveal much more about the main character's thoughts and feelings, without even me intending so, and I want to twist the story a bit more into the cryptic. Secondly, I won't tell it entirely chronologically, but rather explain some events as I go, to the extent they need to be explained. Thirdly, I will try to create the universe and the idea of the universe, style and intention of it, and then let this story be one of many that take place within it. The real challenge here is to create a world so believable, yet different, and at the same time rich enough to provide a wide network of possible side references (this, to a non-writer, or even some writers, may seem a bit too intricate, but I actually do find it interesting, and challenging). Who knows? Maybe I'll put something together out of bits and pieces of old gems. Or create it from scratch. We'll see. All I know right now, is that Terry Grant is one of the important sub-story characters, that there will be some element of broadcasting (an invention of mine rather than the traditional sense of the word) and that Five-Eyes will be present, at some point.

In fact, I think I'll head off for some world-creating right now.
Cheers,
POET IN THE INSPIRED JAR

Pseudo World

2011-04-24T13:53:00.000+02:00

I have to get my emotional fix
Drench myself in the depths of the sound
Blasting my personal cures to the world
I'm not fully healed,
sometimes it even breaks me down
but the fundamental stays
The fundamental state of mind
And sometimes it's the only way
to drown out the sorrow

I'm sorry if I didn't hear you or even listen
I was in the pseudo world where I belong
The state where I can make and create
Where everything builds up to the greater art
Where everything is about passion, emotion
Where you can feed off air and forgotten love
And you're covered in silver mist and door knobs

I have to get my self-medication
Type in a trance until I drown
Shut out the market of the world
And only feel
Sometimes thought is overrated,
and underrated at the same time
You're not supposed to think
but you're not supposed to feel either

I'm sorry if I didn't hear you or even listen

I was in the pseudo world where I belong

The state where I can make and create

Where everything builds up to the greater art

Where everything is about passion, emotion

Where you can feed off air and forgotten love

And you're covered in silver mist and door knobs

I'm sorry, I know I'm supposed to give of myself

Portion after portion of unconditional love

But I'm a poet, lost in mind, lost in time

Half my heart has to stay mine

Or I might run out of words

And become a copycat, a mime

Or am I lying?

I have no control of my heart

It's a wild creature, intended to fly

But I've let everyone chain it down

And instead I'm stuck with a pretense integrity

Saying I did it on purpose, when I didn't

It was the world that happened to me

and it wasn't self-inflicted

But would you believe me?

Don't you all create your own darkness,

you say, don't you all do it to yourselves

And feel sorry for yourselves as you do

Expecting someone else to repair the damage

We don't

I don't

I can't control the damage

Crucifix

2011-04-21T17:12:00.001+02:00

You tell me to be strong but I defend my right to cry
Why should I go through this short life in pretense
Without giving in to my immediate reactions
Do you really know what's behind the tears
Have you tried to live life with my eyes
Have you ever tried to be me
Or see me

I can't control my stormy emotions
I never could steer them my way
They're part of my muse and what makes me
Part of my inspiration, my desperation
And depression
I won't be altered
Just so I can say I was strong
Just so I can say I died inside

I think you're as prone to weakness as me
You are just too stubborn to ever admit defeat
And to keep away the depths of the dark
You shield yourself with a layer of laughter
Reduce everything to silliness and games
I know, because I used to be like you
I used to act the same way

My crucifix was episodes of comedy
Or songs that ridiculed life and the world
It was to keep the biters away, the fangs
And I kept the flickering screen on through the night
As if it was the defense that would do the trick
Against the old demons
In case they returned

I can't control my stormy emotions

I never could steer them my way

They're part of my muse and what makes me

Part of my inspiration, my desperation

And depression

I won't be altered

Just so I can say I was strong

Just so I can say I died inside

I guess in the end neither of our methods work
And neither of us is near perfection
Everyone has their own way to deal with their situations
And it's not in my interest to make you any different
Just don't change me either in the end
And I'll defend my right to cry
Even when you're right
And I won't question you
If you don't question me

I can't control my stormy devotion
I never could steer it that way
It's part of my muse and what makes me
Part of my inspiration, my desperation
And isolation

Park Ranger

2011-04-20T20:26:00.001+02:00

This is the last time I'll pity you for falling into your own traps
You were always good at poaching, setting it all up in advance
Then walking into them on purpose, as if you wanted to
As if the only thing that kept you breathing was the pain

Could you buy yourself some time if you walked away
Maybe that would keep the demons at bay
If you listened to that voice that told you,
This time you don't need to walk into the trap
This time don't let the jaws slam down on you
And immobilize you

I used to uphold your comfort zone
Where you could curl up and tend to your wounds
Where you told me this time you would heal
I could only see it was a lie on the bandages you threw out
And left like a trail behind you
Stained with blood and sweet deceit

If everything's really that dark why do you stay around
Why do you let yourself be hit and raped
Why do you stand the jealousy and the abuse
Why don't you just take your car and drive
And go far, far from where you are

There's nothing that roots you to the spot or commands you
Nothing but that old shiny bear trap that you made yourself
And you walk into it time after time after time
How can you even believe things will be different this time
Or that you'll be treated like you should because there's a ring
On your finger that you didn't have to pay

I used to say you were the most wonderful girl in the world
The most wonderful girl who just made the most foolish decisions
But you've surpassed all that as you don't even answer anymore
And you probably blame me for not calling although you never pick up
Blame me for living the life I wanted for myself and forgetting about you

How can you think things like that, with what we had together
In the comfort zone where there was just you and me
Against the world and against everyone that hated us
I could never forget you, hell, even with these words I'm writing
I'm worrying about you
Even though the connection is old by now I can still feel it sometimes
And instinctively know when something's wrong
And something is wrong here
Even more than it usually is
Maybe you walked into your final trap
And this is the first one you couldn't get out of again
This is the first time you wouldn't heal up again properly
Inbetween your self-inflicted wounds

How should I know what's happened
The link is old and doesn't tell me things
Like it used to
How could I resurrect the zone of comfort
When it was a long time since I last pitied you
For your own mistakes
Maybe I'm selfish
Maybe I'm inhuman
But I can't feel for you anymore
Not when you set this up yourself
Don't you know how much it hurts to watch
I can't be your park ranger
You're outside the park now by far
And other rules are valid there
Rules I can't control

You were always good at poaching
I can only hope you had enough sense
To not set them all off yourself
To leave one, only one
For who's chasing you

Gatekeeper

2011-04-19T15:24:00.000+02:00

Maybe the downfall is just what I need

The downfall into thoughts and doubt

Maybe it can help me break the blocks

Of rock that pile up ahead

And make everything seem impossible

Maybe I could harvest that power

And turn it into something useful

For unforeseen situations

Maybe I decided on the wrong color

For the paint that breaks into dry flakes

On my walls and become like chains

Telling me who to be, how to react

Why would I need a makeover

To fit into your every twisting need

To transform myself, and dance along to your music

Dressed in the colors you chose for me

Why should I tone myself down

Lower my voice so my whispers won't disturb you

When I just wanted to speak my mind,

Regardless if anyone was listening

I prefer not to conform to what you might want

And not to respond to your every wish

There are greater things than the trivial and daily

I want to be there, for when it happens

Pack my every brown paper bag

And drag them on the train

Maybe I'll go when the sun's out

Maybe I'll go when it rains

I tire of you and your grasp on me

I defeated you once, and more

Isn't that enough for you

Aren't there others you can possess

So your voice can be driven out of my mind

I want to welcome the light, the underwater dream

But you always come back to block me, to stop me

Maybe all you want is to be taken down again

Is there a thrill in the downfall

A thrill in the fall

Maybe I could harvest that power of yours

And turn it into something useful

For unforeseen situations

Maybe I could manage to imprison you

Instead of always trying to kill the immortal

Would it be impossible for a prisoner to turn the table

And switch places with the one who put me here

Maybe if I did that I would stand a chance

And maybe it would be your turn to tire, of me

I can't even say that I fully hate you

Without your hold on me I wouldn't write these words

I wouldn't be able to create other worlds

Is that why you are still around

To work in the silence

To enable the gates to stay open

To make me the gatekeeper

To visualize the keys

Jewels

2011-04-16T16:59:00.000+02:00

I've felt strangely wary for a few days, since around Wednesday, a wariness that won't seem to let go of me. I'm aching to create, to write, to paint, to do anything, and still it's like I can't settle down and focus on it, as if my mind is somewhere else. I think I can easily pinpoint my writer's block - a combination of lack of time, and lack of ideas. Also, I have this big idea that everything I write have to come out awesome right away, or it's crap writing, an idea I have to work with getting rid of. It hasn't helped any of my novels to think in these ways and I'm aware of that. So how come it's so hard to get rid of the thoughts now?

To get back in prose I tried a few different things. One was opening my oldest novel for editing, which it needs anyway, but after spending some hours on it I suddenly felt it wasn't worth my time. I then started to look again at Ophelia, which I feel is the best novel I've written, and stumbled upon the draft of its sequel in the folder. It was pretty good. Even though I always felt Ophelia doesn't need a sequel, and never was meant to have one, it might work well to get me back into writing. Ella waits patiently. She is my little jewel. She'll wait until I'm ready for her.

As long as I'm not writing prose, I might as well be writing something. I got a poem written down earlier that's been in my head for a few days and that's at least something.

I'll be off now to check what food I can manage to find in my kitchen and also to possibly check back in on Jake and Madden.
POET IN THE JAR

Shining Letters

2011-04-16T16:37:00.000+02:00

There's an overwhelming sadness in me
That not even your laughter can drive away
It came from the depths where I had deported it
Returned from where I had banned it
That sadness and that pain

It spreads through my heart and my eyes
And forces me to see the world
In a different way
It tells me this is the naked truth
I must trust and follow
It tells me all my smiles are worthless
What do they mean, at the end of the day
When the shadows appear out of nowhere

Can you hunt down your demons with light
And turn them into defenseless things
Can you chase away the sadness
And all the tow it brings
Is that why you always leave the light on

When I wake from a faceless dream
And the contours of the room aren't still
What good will it do me with light
What will be changed
If the room
Is kept bright

I was always told to forget about things that have been
To shun away what I've seen in my dreams
How do I explain that I dream in the day
And that the past just isn't willing to go away

Can you hunt down your demons with light

And turn them into defenseless things

Can you chase away the sadness

And all the tow it brings

Is that why you always leave the light on

Can the smoke in this room become the air that I breathe

Can everything be tiring, everything I see

Maybe the words were right, the words that stood out

In shining letters

Maybe this is really how dark things are

And you can never get rid of the undertone

You can never really reach for bliss

Not even when ignorant, like this

So take your comfort in your muse

And cling to it in the darkness

Use it to channel the subconscious

Into images and words

Isn't that how it was always done

Isn't that how it will always be done

Can you deny that once it's gone

When it's gone and you realize you miss it

You miss the demons

Without the demons you aren't alive

And they were right when they said

You lost the meaning of your smiles

Head First

2011-04-07T00:04:00.000+02:00

How did I manage to drown my own optimism
Drown my waterfall, that I carefully built
Out of dreamscapes and more fragile hopes
Than was allowed to exist
How did I manage
How did I achieve

When did I chain myself to the ground
And sink myself into the river
With cement blocks on my feet
I couldn't even move
I couldn't even breathe

Your words all made sense
It couldn't be the things you said
And your thoughts were rational
Parts of my own suppressed ones
So why suddenly did I take a turn for the worse
And dive into the darkness, head first

Was it the only thing I had to cling on to
The only remnant I had of a muse
When all my other canals had dried up

Although by now I am chained to the ground
I haven't given up on the dreams that I found
And I know there could be more sinister things
I just need to save up for stronger wings

Drown yourself in self pity and desertion
Maybe that way you could run away
And all the problems that surrounded you
Will magically disappear, with the snap of your fingers
But didn't anyone tell you
It doesn't work that way

As long as you won't face what's ahead
And as long as you don't brace yourself
Against the truth
You won't last
And I won't last,
with you

Wound Up

2011-03-31T23:07:00.000+02:00

It's been so hectic all day that I can't even be exhausted. I'm all wound up and I can't really get myself to relax. I don't really understand how I managed to time everything so badly and stress myself up about things, but at this point I guess I shouldn't be getting surprised anymore. Luckily, in the middle of all this stress, there's a couple of good news. For one, I found some missing files that I thought I'd lost, meaning I can hand in files for the project deadline that I thought wouldn't get assessed. That's good. Secondly, I handed in the keys for my old apartment today, and that's really a big weight that's off my shoulders. Even though somewhere inside I worry that they'll call me up and complain about insufficient cleaning, it's still good to know that I'll never have to live in the old place anymore. Even living here now, in the middle of a freaking war zone of cardboard boxes, it's still better than being split up in two different places or kind of leasing someone else's space for a while. As with all my apartments this one calls for a name and I knew directly it would be called The Lagoon.

Moving on.

We're officially done with the game project but also we're thrown directly into the next course which, too, is pretty exhausting. We don't do much else but watch movies and attend lectures all day, but that's just the problem, there's just no time to do the actual assignments. But we'll figure it out somehow, I just wish there was more individual work involved. No offense, but... after the project you kind of don't want to be dependent on your groupmates, for once.

That's all for now since I'm in a stressed period of complete writer's block. I'm hoping to pick up an editing project quite soon to take my mind off things and that just might get me back on track again. I sure hope it will for the sake of Ella, who is currently just lying around in the drawer not being written and being quite bored.

THAT'S ALL, FOLKS
POET IN THE JAR

Glorious Stress and Other Things

2011-03-23T22:46:00.001+01:00

Things are stressed like hell, the final presentation of our game is on Friday, and I have to pack my entire apartment during the weekend and miss school on Monday in order to move to the new place, while Monday is the day when our new courses start and we have to have the game and all the other reports and stuff sent in by Wednesday at the latest. It's hard to focus on anything really, when my mind is flying like this, I just can't concentrate on the slightest thing... also I am worried sick, not only for the friends of the family that I got news about yesterday, but worried sick because I seem to have lost my touch with writing. There's just nothing there, nothing at all, no ideas, no stories, no poems, there's nothing, everything I write sounds completely off... perhaps the first real case of writer's block that I've ever really experienced. It's not so much the time that's passed as that I have to force it, and when I do I'm not happy with how it sounds. I wonder to myself, when did I become so critical of my own things? I keep returning to the thought that rewriting one of my old novels for publishing purposes would be the best way to go about it. The poetry is fine, or theoretically at least. I can always force at least a couple of lines of that... but I miss prose, and I miss being so into it that everything else ceases to exist. Is this what happens when your focus is relocated to the visual media? Why in that case, has it never affected me this way before? The way it used to be, I used to find novelling a necessary escape, and a relief, even, from the real world, but now it just feels like it's another burden, and not even writing stories seems to be fun anymore.

My bet is that once the stress is lowered, around some time next week, and I get installed into my new place, the juices will start flowing and I really hope that is what's going to happen. We'll see. I don't really have the time to think very much about it (which probably is a sign of stress itself).

Either way, even writing these ranting entries at least keeps the language working, so you might be looking at a lot of these posts for a while, but it doesn't really matter since I'm not really writing them for your sake (you'll have to excuse me) and therefore you don't have to bother reading them. Just keep an eye out for some real material once that gets up here again.

Too much things on my mind...

Something cool though is that two of the promotional assignments I made for the game got chosen to represent it. Surprising but happily surprising.

I really should be writing the log book or the report rather than this.
POET IN THE JAR

Clashes & Crashes

2011-03-17T21:25:00.000+01:00

You were intimidated when your thoughts strayed

And decided to come and go as they wish

You tried to clear your mind,

but everything clashed, in violence

Everything crashed

And you couldn't control the images flashing by

Or choose what they'd remind you of

The faint nuances in that old song
That could only be read by you
They could only be read by you

They said it would take a while,
to clear your thoughts
That it would take a couple of battles
To win the war
You don't think they've ever been in your mind
Or known what it's like

Isn't it glorious to be misunderstood
And alone in your pain
Isn't it more grand and epic that way
Isn't it?
The way you've shielded yourself
And consciously torn away from everything

Everything that crashed

Time Flies

2011-03-06T22:30:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow is Monday again, and there's loads of stuff coming up. It feels like time really flies by right now. On Wednesday there's the graphics session after school followed by friends performing at the pub. Thursday is the deadline for our individual assignments and Friday the unofficial deadline for the game. Saturday I'll be driving home to attend a dinner with old friends and Sunday I might visit my niece. By the end of this week it'll already be March 13th which is fucking halfway to April. May will be here sooner than I'll know, and I'll be arranging to move out, and it'll already be halfway to summer. Finally...

I managed to trade myself a working weekend in two weeks and that'll hopefully earn me a little extra money. I'll need it if I'm going to have money for the summer and to be able to do some of those things that I'd really wanna do. A bit of bad timing, perhaps, cause it's the last weekend before our final presentation, but hopefully it won't affect school. We'll see about that.

It's been a good weekend otherwise, had a nice time partying and whatnot, being around friends and people from our year. It's different here, much better and more fun than last time I studied when I didn't have time or took the effort to hang out with anyone really. I'm sure my years here will turn out awesome. And hopefully this happy sort of mood will follow me into the rest of the week, cause I know what I'm like and that my mood usually changes more often than I breathe, but hey, let's hope for it, anyhow.

I have a few ideas for that writing competition by now and think I can make something of it, but still haven't decided. The deadline isn't until May so I've still got time to crack that one.

Oh and I hope the Dark Tower will be kept standing.
POET IN THE happee JAR

Artificial Light

2011-03-01T21:24:00.000+01:00

I'm listening to Shinedown and thinking about things, just got off the phone with Mum. She always manages to make me feel better about things. I had a rather weird headache attack earlier that freaked me out a little bit, but it's all settled down by now. I guess it was a stress thing. Stressing out about things that I don't even need to stress out about, really. I guess I just need to get it through my thick head what my priorities are actually about, and, maybe even more importantly, what they're not about.

Even the man in the moon disappeared, somewhere in the stratosphere...

I try pretty hard telling myself that I'm not affected by the long winter here, but it's getting pretty unbearable. I'm so tired of the cold, of the snow and ice, of the darkness. The sun isn't even out in the day, it's just cloudy and gray, gray, gray. I was thinking maybe to go to a solarium this week or the next, just to get some artificial light and trick my body into thinking it's summer, or something. I've heard spring this year is supposed to begin on March the fifth. I can live with that (if the weather people should happen to be right, for once). And again it is confirmed that I'd rather not spend the winters here in the future, whenever that future might be.

Since it turns out I could get that funding I applied for, I found myself buying the next novel in the Dark Tower series. I'm currently reading Song of Susannah. It's nice to have a novel to read again, and something to fall back on that isn't writing, or games.

Speaking of writing I found a local writing contest I really want to enter, but I'm not sure with what. I'd prefer to enter with some new material, maybe a short story or something. But I think you can submit more than one piece, so I might submit some poetry as well. But I can't really focus on that just yet, as long as we're still doing the game project.

I really gotta kick that up again soon though.
POET IN THE JAR

Delicate

2011-02-19T23:51:00.000+01:00

Do you know how many times I thought I'd just let the car crash
Into the side of the mountain on the other side of that rail
Or how many times I stared into the sea
Wishing it would swallow me
Did you ever consider how much the sea at night
resembles the sky
Just without the stars
Just darker
Vaster

Inviting you

Do you know how tempting it is to listen to the voices
The silent ones, that seem to beckon you
Circling you like vultures that feed on desperation
Every drawn symbol on the gray surface,
disappearing on you

Do you know what it's like

Do you know that someone died that day
And how unbearable grief can be
When that someone was part of you
And had become you
And taken over you

Do you know how many times I had the thought
That it would be so much easier to end it
How many times I wanted to
How many times I tried

Do you know how much it scares me that I did
Do you know how relieved I am, that I didn't
Do you know just how much I rely on you
How delicately I have faith in you
How fragile you are

How I love you

How I love you

Delicately

Jackpot

2011-02-13T16:03:00.000+01:00

So, it turned out that I did get that apartment, and I'm moving May 1st, at the latest. If someone's willing to take my dorm room earlier than that, I'll also be able to move earlier, since the new place is available from March 1st. I gave it some thought, and realized that it'll be the sixth time I move in five years. Restless? Not at all. I'm looking forward to it though, since I feel like I could use some change of scenery. And this place, in all its tinyness, is starting to make me wary. It works fine for a while, but if like me you're used to more space, it feels pretty claustrophobic after a while.
I went to the new place a few days ago to check it out, and it really spoke to me. I think I'll enjoy it there. I'm going to the landlord tomorrow to sign the contract, and then it will feel a lot more real, all of a sudden. I'll ask Mum to start putting boxes away already.

Other than that I haven't been doing much besides working with the game project for school, and I haven't had energy to do much else. I've applied for some job in Norway over the summer, hoping I could go there, work in some nice hotel or something, and get to see a new place with new faces and make money at the same time. There are tons of things I'd need to finance, mostly travelling and perhaps fixing up some old tattoos, but it doesn't seem possible at the time. If I land a job in Norway or not, I hope I can get something at all. Finances for the summer will be tough, otherwise.

Off to the world of laundry and games now, until something more creative comes along.
POET IN THE JAR

Modification

2011-02-07T02:14:00.000+01:00

No, I'm not here to change man

For I have no desire to be changed

And made into something I never was

Made into a product of mind

That perhaps never was in existence

No, I'm not here for modification

There was a transparency in my words

Although I'd never want to be transformed

There's so many things I'd alter

Should I have the chance

Which is the greater one of us

When both of us wants the other to change

You said you fell in love with perfection

I'm not perfect, in any way

I'm aware of my own selfishness

I thought I'd use these years to dream

Of simplicity, and completion

When we can complete eachother

Without depleting eachother

I'll be at ease

Environmental

2011-02-05T17:25:00.000+01:00

I just applied for a slightly bigger apartment, crossing my fingers that I'll get it. Somehow I have the feeling that it's exactly what I need, but then again I've moved every time I've gotten this feeling of restlessness. If not else, it's a temporary change of environment that'll hopefully make me feel more at ease with things. The cats sure would need some more space, and so do I... That's really the only problem with this place; that it feels like it's so small that the walls are closing in on me. This apartment is twice as big so it should help. It's also more expensive, but I'm hoping to get that apartment funding that I can hopefully get now that I've paid everything back of the old one I had; and in that case it'll actually be even more cheap than where I live now. We'll see when the landlord calls on Monday, I want to see the place for my own eyes before I accept it, as well as talk it over with Mom.
Well, this made me even more disinclined to clean this place.
Off for decadence now (the kind where you ignore the dishes)
POET IN THE JAR

Twigs

2011-01-23T21:01:00.000+01:00

Do the beautiful ones stay awake at night
Do they starve like us
Do they bleed
Where are their thoughts
Are they ever distracted
Do they feel

Beautiful ones, do you ever get sick
Do you ever dwell
Do you have your own version
Of personal hell
Is there any depth
Are you just a shell
Beautiful ones,
Magic tricks

Do the beautiful ones fade
In comparison to us
As they grow old
The beautiful ones
Do they ever mourn
Do they ever worry
Were they all born with sixth senses

Do the beautiful ones stay awake at night

Do they starve like us

Do they bleed

Where are their thoughts

Are they ever distracted

Do they feel

Beautiful ones, are you ever sick

Do you ever dwell

Do you have your own version

Of personal hell

Is there any depth

Are you just a shell

Beautiful ones,

Magic tricks

Will you always be the beautiful ones

Even when age and life has taken its toll

Will you forgive us for tearing you

Unable to bear something so pure

And divine

Will you always be the beautiful ones

Even when we've broken your twigs

And you know there won't be any spring

This year

Beautiful ones, are you always beautiful

Do you ever dwell

Do you have your own version

Of personal hell

Is there any depth

Are you just a shell

Beautiful ones,

Magic tricks

You're going to have to forgive us

I'll struggle with the same ordeal

Why is it we can't keep the pure

And let it be free and wild

Why is it we have to enclose it in cages

Or make sure that it dies

And how is it we'll never run out of excuses

Reasons why it had to be done

Why we had to salvage

The beautiful ones

Beautiful ones

Daytimers

2011-01-14T01:48:00.000+01:00

You've become a representative of hypocrisy
The same ideals that you used to despise
You've been blinded by the temporary
Until everything's been erased
What about all the dreams
And all the thoughts
All your takes on life

And yet you're quick to criticize others
Who didn't fall through with their youth
Who left their old grand plans for dead
You call them imperfect
You're the greatest cynic of all
At the end of the day,
Who was it who discarded their dreams

And you said you'd never turn into one of them
You'd never become proud of the plain
Even the ordinary would be extraordinary
In your world

And everyone would know your name

What did you settle for
The same routines you avoided
And your nocturnal mind traded away
You've become one of the daytimers
Just like every other cog in the system

Forget the times you used to read Lovecraft
And cherish his dark imagery as art
Forget the times you were an individual
That hadn't yet been corrupted
By the moment

Live for the day, you used to say
And now your words don't mean anything anymore
No promises are meaningful
When you decide to desert them
I realize that life changes
But there's a core to things
That shouldn't shift

Yours did
But I won't be warped
Even when there's changes
That I haven't predicted
My mind is different from yours
I won't be warped

Because I'll still remember
Who I used to be
And what I used to read
And whenever those changes
Are about to hit me
I'll still cherish
The same imagery
As before

Horrifics

2011-01-13T00:02:00.000+01:00

Listening to Shinedown and trying to be poetic, which doesn't seem to work. My mind is entirely blank. I wonder if that's what happens when you get a couple of days away from school for once. We've studied so much lately that I barely know what to do with a day that I don't have to study, and still I seem to be bored by virtually anything. But what the hell, some music and some writing always helps, and if my mind should keep being blank maybe I should novel rather than keep at it on the poetry side.
Other than that I'm looking forward to Saturday when we're having a back-to-school-party and I plan on getting as drunk as I can possibly get without the whole passing-out-part or the black-holes-where-the-memories-should-be-part. I was tempted to drink tonight but then passed. I've been in such a weird mood all day, pretty depressed for some reason or other, and I wouldn't wanna make it worse. Now I'm eating pineapple directly from the can and trying to withstand the horrific, I'm serious, the horrific meows that Zelda's making. I've booked her an appointment to get sterilized, but since she just entered her heat period thingy apparently we have to wait around a month... and that means there'll be no sleep for me at night for a couple of weeks. It's been a single day and I'm already fucking annoyed.
New course starts on Monday and we'll be doing our first game project, some random game in 2D, it'll be nice. Though with my luck I'll end up in a fucked up group with a fucked up game idea thanks to the designers, no, wait, I'm supposed to try and look at things brightly and sunnily. With my luck, that I make myself, like all the greats do; I'll end up in an awesome group with an awesome game idea. Wish me luck (that I'm supposed to make).

Me and Karo have taken up our poetry project again, and found someone to do the proofreading and stuff for us, so now we just have to find a good way to get it published and most easily available. There are a few alternatives so far. Time to start thinking about an appropriate title, since we seem to have forgotten the suggestions we brought up last time. There's a Swedish site that I know is reliable and good, I'm thinking about possibly putting my novels up there eventually while waiting for that big break or whatever.

I'm still as cynical as ever, as DJ pointed out, but at least things are looking a little up. I just gotta remember that they are and not fall into the same old shit that I used to.
POET IN THE BLANK, YET PONDERING JAR

Whispers

2011-01-11T22:55:00.000+01:00

We whispered in the darkness
Does it matter who whispered first
The words still stood out like screams
When written in the night
Like fragile promises,
Despite self-preservation
Despite everything I had taught myself
And everything life taught me
About repossession

You said it was possibe to be reinvented
That I don't have to be limited by old designs
Was that part of your whisper
Inbetween the lines
Or was I just reading lips
Searching for invisible words

We whispered in the darkness
As fleeting shadows on the wall
After the lights had gone out

Will you still be here when I wake
And will you be the same
Remaining unchanged
In the silence, in the night
When the lights have gone out

Will you still whisper to me in the darkness

Silk, Oblivious

2011-01-11T19:56:00.000+01:00

You were more appealing before your insight
When it was more important what you saw,
than how you appeared
Now you've framed your eyes perfectly
With charcoal and straightened hair
And to someone who was oblivious
Who didn't know what you used to be like
To someone who didn't know you
You'd be perfect

Is there anything left in those eyes
And are they still amazed at what they see
Is the world more beautiful dressed in silk
Than plainly, like you used to
When there were still strokes of paint
Across your face

Of course I know nothing of your pain
And nothing of what goes through your mind
All I'm implying is you were more appealing
Before your insight
Before you had to try so hard
You don't have to try so hard

Circle of Pretense

2011-01-09T23:26:00.001+01:00

You think you're living in a dream, when you aren't
And it's so obvious to me, you're so transparent, and I see
I see everything that you worked so hard to hide
I've seen everything from the inside
And I was there when it all happened
You'll always deny you were thrown off track
How long will denial be there to have your back
It'll surely replace me you see
If you ever counted on me

What does it take to force that smile and that lie
To live in the middle of makebelieve
Maybe I'd accept it if you chose it
See, I live for dreams
But they're a different kind
Well anything goes as long as you survive
If surviving is all there is to life
Can you tell?

I don't mean to ruin your idea of things
Or bring this up after all this time
But it amazes me, how you pretend
All the energy that goes to your image of perfection
When there's no such thing as perfection
Will you be happy living in your bubble
In your perfect little world
Until it cracks
Until it's scratched
And you'll be like a record on repeat
And it's stuck on the same old song
Glitching and scraping

And I have no desire to return, no desire to go back
What would there be left for me, just a black hole
And thousands of reminders
Remember why you made that bubble
Remember that you did it because of that day
And of that trespass, of that betrayal
What hand did I have in it,
Except I happened to be in the way

And everyone covers for you
And everyone's friends with you
And everyone cowers behind you
Afraid that someone might break that bubble
Afraid that someone might blow your cover
They all said they were with me but what happened to that
Now they're all part of the same circle of pretense
And I'm left to myself and to my own defense
Cause if your bubble bursts, so will theirs
They might have to wake up and realize they're in the real world

The real world is much darker than you'd want to know
And that's the reason you're putting on this show
But what's the occasion, for this illusion
I'd rather hate truth than live in a lie
And in the end I'll be the one who can look back
Without regretting things

See I decided to make life about new memories
Rather than dwelling on the old ones
And suddenly life seems to go a little more my way
When I consciously let it
You'll still be blind
While the pain kills you from inside

I'd rather have the truth
Than live like you

Eye Condition

2010-12-15T18:01:00.000+01:00

Do you remember what it was like
When you were younger and less apathic
Before everything gradually lost color
Before things seemed so fleeting
And meaningless

Do you remember that you were stained
By age and by the same repeating days
That you slowly forgot how to breathe

Do you remember that you put up with things
And that you weren't always like this
That you'd do everything you hated
Lacking any other choice
While waiting for another life
That existed in your dreams

Do you remember how anxious you were
At the end of every dull day
You never claimed to be a genious
But nothing new would ever happen
And you grew tired of when things repeated themselves
When the tired old faces never changed

Do you remember how a few simple things made you last
Like scribbling words and listening to the saddest songs
Do you remember that opening your eyes took the greatest effort
And that once you'd opened them you wouldn't close them again
Afraid you might die while sleeping and unaware
Afraid that you'd die before loving to live

Do you remember how you fleed to pain
That the sensation made you alive again
It's true that it was temporary
But it was better than the angst
And it led your thoughts away

Did you forget what it was like
At the darkest and furthest edge of the world
Not necessarily real other than in your mind
But your thoughts was all you knew as truth
And you were tired of lying
Tired of the world's charades

Do you remember what it was like
When you had to put a mask on to the world
And did you notice that there's still flecks of it on your skin
To cover half your face and one of your eyes

Do you remember that no one seemed to understand
And that you wouldn't let anyone close enough to try
It was easier that way, or so it seemed
So it seemed to the voices in your mind

And now it's invisible for anyone who glances at you
At first sight you seem to be undamaged
Some might even say you were at ease with life
Some might even say you seem to love life

You've tried to wash the remaining flecks from your face
And you've tried to see clearly with only one eye
Imagining everyone else was blind
You might improve your current condition
And some might even say you were close to perfection

But those few flecks will always stay
And some old things will never change
You just sort them from the newer ones
With the sense of priority you recently acquired
Label them as unimportant to the present
And try to learn how to love life again

Just trying to be alive again

Solutions

2010-12-12T04:17:00.000+01:00

How can you be sure you're the one who's mad
Just because you happen to see things differently
When everything's shrouded in clouds of white light
Woven in silk strings and stained golden doorknobs
And the voices from your home whisper to you
From the chimney and the windows and the doors
That all you need to do is run away
Run away to the final solution

Did you see any visions before you knew they were there
Before you were told you weren't allowed to dream
And you weren't allowed to weave yourself a world
Where everything still existed the way it was
You weren't allowed to imagine things differently

How can you be sure you're the one who's mad
Only because your life was shattered once
And the pieces became your safe place,
the place you lived in inside your mind
And every now and then you pick out a shard
And return to it in your heart
Where everything replays like old footage
Except you always know what'll happen

Did you mourn death or did you long for it
As the claws struck down on you
And you were enclosed in the jar
Were you aware of yourself when you were hit
And your sanity left the back door ajar

How can you be sure you're the one who's mad
When you weren't the one to label your mind
And you'll never be able to fully compare
The only thoughts and emotions you'll know
Will always be your own

How can you be sure you're the one who's mad?

POET IN THE JAR
A piece inspired by Chasing Ella, my current novelling project

Alteration

2010-12-10T01:38:00.000+01:00

Every word feels like it's already been spoken
And every time I redecorate it looks the same
I'm so keen to try and keep up with alteration
That some things never seem to change
Is this a paradox?
Perhaps

Perhaps it is

I feel like I've been to every place there is
And I know what you'll say before you do
I know we'll soon fall into old routines
How passionately I'll fight with you
Is this a paradox?
Perhaps

Perhaps it is

I'm independent, dependent on you
And I forgot how to fall asleep alone
I'm in a trance, while dancing with you
The confusion is exclusively my own
My own

Are there really little things worthwhile
Does it really matter how I spend my time?
I chose all the meaningful, over the trivial
Still something is missing from my life
Is this a paradox?
Perhaps
Perhaps it is

I'm independent, dependent on you
And I forgot how to fall asleep alone
I'm in a trance, while dancing with you
The confusion is exclusively my own
My own

Do you think of things the way I do?
Which one of us thinks the most?
Will I ever be able to really read you?
Or will I never really know?

I'm independent, dependent on you
The way I always wanted things to be
So why this confusion, entirely my own
Did you also forget how to sleep alone?

I'm not saying anything is perfect
And I'm not saying I'm ready to let go
Or to be dependent
But maybe this time it'll be different
Maybe it'll all be different

And I could take a couple of steps
In the somewhat right direction

Maybe

The Game

2010-12-01T22:02:00.000+01:00

I can foresee how you will twist your lies
And show up when you think you're the least expected
Sorry to disappoint you but I had already predicted it
And you've ceased to be as dark and intriguing
As you wanted everyone else to believe

Still every now and then you manage to stab me
With a lucky shot, that you aim at me in spite
Can't say why, when you were the one to deny
Everything that felt even the slightest right
Everything that had to do with me

It's as if you're the one who can't let go of things
When you never lifted a finger to stop it
And as if you just had to kick me one more time
While I was lying down from the force of your punches
I had a feeling you would, I had a couple of hunches

But seriously, isn't it time to give it up and let me heal
Haven't you dealt me enough bruises already
Did you know that last time gave me a concussion
Isn't it time to aim that anger of yours elsewhere to
You were worse to me than I ever was to you

Why is it so hard for you to tell when the game has gone overboard
When you're the only one still enjoying to play
And who said you could decide the game's every fucking rule
That the world would just abide by your every need
Excuse me if I don't pay you that heed

You should have taken me if you wanted me
Instead of standing idly by
And only yourself to blame
When I decided I was out of the game

So you're on your own now, just thought I'd tell
You can sit up late at night with your book of rules
And lose another friend by every morning when you wake
At this rate you'll have lost them all
Before you realize it's too late

Fireflies

2010-12-01T19:34:00.001+01:00

You'd think that I'd learn at some point
And that I wouldn't pace back in my tracks
That I wouldn't turn down the same roads
You'd think I learned that,
At some point

What would I have told myself years ago
If I could send a message back through time
And would I care to listen, care to mind
Would it make me change anything
Or would I find myself tiring
And ignore my own advice

I always push it to the limit
I can never turn back in time
I have to chase the fireflies
Although they burn me with their light
I crave the bittersweet desire
To remind me that I'm still alive
I can't resist the heavenly fire
So burn me, burn me, til I die
My smoking, burning firefly

You'd think that I'd know at some point
Enough to not repeat my old mistakes
And not fall into the same traps and graves
You'd think I'd know that,
At some point

What excuses will I lay out to the future me
Will I say that I didn't see the signs
Though they were displayed in bolded lines
What words will I believe, to cover up for things
Mythomania, ensuring
I won't see through my lies

I always push it to the limit
I can never turn back in time
I have to chase the fireflies
Although they burn me with their light
I crave the bittersweet desire
To remind me that I'm still alive
I can't resist the heavenly fire
So burn me, burn me, til I die
My smoking, burning firefly

So maybe I was taught to be indifferent
And survive by aiding selfish needs
Never hope for the dawn
In case disappointment would come
So?

So maybe I was taught to live and pretend
And never be the one to be abandoned
It's better to attack than to defend
In case disappointment would come
So?

I always push it to the limit
I can never turn back in time
I have to chase the fireflies
Although they burn me with their light
I crave the bittersweet desire
To remind me that I'm still alive
I can't resist the heavenly fire
So burn me, burn me, til I die
My smoking, burning firefly

So maybe I wasn't taught like this, but differently
So?
Maybe I don't care how I was taught
Maybe I want to forget what made me
And maybe I want to chase the fireflies again
Just to see what'll happen in the end

I always push it to the limit
I can never turn back in time
I have to chase the fireflies
Although they burn me with their light
I crave the bittersweet desire
To remind me that I'm still alive
I can't resist the heavenly fire
So burn me, burn me, til I die
My smoking, burning firefly

POET IN THE JAR

Sculptures

2010-11-26T02:17:00.000+01:00

Did you believe I was a written page
Ready to be read, laid out for your understanding
That you'd grasp everything right away
As if I was mathematics, as if I was formulas
That could be calculated
With all the rights and wrongs
That I possess

Did you believe I was entirely blank
And that anyone was free to sculpt me
From the block of marble
That I looked out through shiny eyes
That just had been made
I'm neither, I'm none
I'm half-created,
I'm half-done
And I can't predict myself
And I can't take care of myself
And I prefer myself when I'm decadent

And I prefer myself when I don't care

I can't go back and unwrite myself
Or unsculpt what was sculpted by others
When I didn't control my own world
And I can't predict what'll happen with the brush
With the typewriter and the ink
I can't predict what I'm going to feel or think

And you can't undo all your thoughts
All your words, all that you felt
That they cut your fingers while you knelt
So you should be exactly like me
And your story is as untouched
Most of it's a story to be

But you never begin on an empty page
And you never calculate it like mathematics
It's unpredictable, and unstable
And steered by many hands
At the rodder

And it's a flying ship in turbulence we crew
And it can sail through air and on the sea
Sometimes with, sometimes without you
Sometimes with, sometimes without me
And this rickety ship is life

And the serpent in the ocean is almost death
But only almost, with all the pretty gems it swallowed
Only almost, as it allows for our touch
Only almost, as we saw it die

Did you believe everything was mathematics
Did you believe that you were free from dreams
When I have seen you sleep
And you have the nightmares too
Even if you don't remember them
When you awake

POET IN THE JAR

Frozen Flower

2010-11-21T16:15:00.000+01:00

I'm a little bit like a frozen flower
Requiring time and warmth to defrost
Waiting to open for the sun
Like a frozen flower
In the parking lot

I'm a little bit like a frozen flower
I'd rather you didn't pick me
With my roots intact
And plant me in a pot
On your window sill

I'm a little bit like a frozen flower
That always wanted to be a bird
I'd rather you tore me off at the stem
And let me drop from your balcony
And I'd pretend to fly
And be free

Exceptions

2010-11-17T18:49:00.000+01:00

And when the frost ceases to be
It won't know what became of us
And the footprints we left in the grass
It won't remember you, or your dreams
And the things you've seen
What you and I have been

When the frost ceases to be
And turns into dew drops
It'll bleed under our feet, in the grass
And we'll see our faces in the dew
But it won't recognize me, or you

When the frost ceases to be
And the glittering pearls are silent
There is no sound when you walk
Across the grass
When the frost ceases to be
To make way for something new
It seems to forget me
But trust me

It doesn't make exceptions for you

Rorschach Test

2010-11-15T20:23:00.000+01:00

These numbers on my hands
Do they say anything to you?
Or are they just markers
Reminders, like that little red string
Tied around your finger

And these letters, on my wrist
Is there a message somewhere
Hidden, that I failed to see
That used to mean something else to me
Are they still just letters?
Like written images in the wind

I really don't want to remember
Why did you have to remind me
And write these figures on my skin
I don't remember anything
Anything

What do these eyes tell you
They look different to me
In the glass of the mirror
And are these wings really wings
Or broken dreams
For decoration only

What did you want to symbolize
When you drew these lines
Can I paint them over
Will they bleach with time
For decoration, only

I really don't want to remember
Why did you have to remind me
And write these figures on my skin
I don't remember anything
Anything

What's that taste again
Taste of a falling heart
Falling in the darkness
But the darkness is just figures in ink
So many that they're sprayed together
Into one single rorschach test
What does it tell you
These numbers
These letters

Are they still just figures?

I now remember everything
Why did you have to remind me
And write these figures on my skin
Soaking me in my every sin
I remember everything
Everything

Sheesha

2010-11-12T20:05:00.000+01:00

Doesn't all of it disappear
When the smoke parts from your lips
And forms circles in the air
With your fingers
Doesn't all of it go away?

When you become your own
More of a person you'd want to be
Nothing will trouble you
And you find yourself thinking deep thoughts
About life and yourself and everything

Although you can't put it in words to say
You know you found the answers
You were looking for
When the smoke parts from your lips
And the illusion is completed
The illusion that is the truth

Is it strange to long for another round
To pass the sheesha, from hand to hand
When it gives you a few hours of freedom
A few hours of liberation
To be carefree

Doesn't all of it go away?

And aren't you relieved?
So don't judge me
Until you've been me

Emotion In The Tea

2010-11-10T02:23:00.001+01:00

What if I was exhausted and wanted to sleep
But my entire life would spin before my eyes
Keeping me awake, and turned into a lie
All the details that kept me alive

What if the pain sort of healed me
And the darkness lit my way
Would you understand me
Or would you step down again
And regret me, regret us

What if I used to have so much to give
So much love and so much heart
So beautifully painful, it tore me apart
And now I'm cut open for anyone's share

What happened to what was exclusively yours
When I needed you, and there was only emptiness
And there was a new kind of pain, that didn't heal
And a kind of darkness that I'd never felt

Smuggle emotion into my tea
The only way you'll get to me
I'm cut open and given away
But it'll never be the same
It'll never be the same

Drunken Conversation

2010-10-29T04:09:00.000+02:00

What were you doing in my drunken conversation
Stirring me to tears that seemed completely irrelevant
To everyone else
I thought I told you I had shunned you out
And that you weren't welcome, inside my head
I thought I told you it would pass with time
And you wouldn't make these appearances
In my mind

What were you doing, interrupting my life
The one I always said I dreamed of
Maybe in my dreams it wasn't this decadent
But what is the difference

Except that you were a part of this dream once
And now you're only part of nightmares
And you made me lose faith in everything
And you made me suspicious towards everyone
And I can let them close but I can't let them catch me

What were you doing, with the drunken me
In my drunken conversation
I never asked for you to come.

Rain & Snow

2010-10-23T16:29:00.001+02:00

It's like when the rain washes the snow away
And forgets when it used to sparkle in the night
And how it fell against the artificial light
There'll be no falling flakes anymore
When the rain comes,
When the rain comes

And I cherish the rain
And everything it takes away
Every bitter drop of pain
And I understand you
For embracing the gain
For standing still in the rain
I don't blame you

When you've rusted, will you remember me
That I never left my marks on you
Instead I unfroze and sugarcoated you
There'll be no one to have your back anymore
When the rain's done,
When the rain's done

And I cherish the rain
And everything it takes away
Every bitter drop of pain
And I understand you
For embracing the gain
For standing still in the rain
I don't blame you

But when you look out through your window pane
And let your fingers trickle with the rain
When you've seen the sun hit the drops and then
Create a rainbow
Remember that once, it used to snow
We used to snow

Purple Sky

2010-10-21T05:49:00.001+02:00

When did lightning strike
Down from the purple sky
When was I electrified
When did all my honest words
Become bubbles and secrets
When was I driven to hide

Away from the world
And shielded and safe
Detached from things
Cradled to sleep
Cradled by the void

When did I hear thunder
And when did the storms stir
When did I cross these plains
To no man's land
Building castles,
Castles of sand

Away from the world
And shielded and safe
Detached from things
Cradled to sleep
Cradled by the void

I held a mirror to the world
To face my own reflection
What insights were there
That was me
What mirage was there
That was you
That was you

And then lightning struck
Down from the purple sky
And I was electrified
And I became a secret
That no one would ever know
Wastelands, wastelands
Where the wind will always blow

Away from the world
And away from the mirror
Away from the words
And I became a secret
And I drove myself to hide
Down, down, down
From the purple sky

Insomnia Child

2010-10-17T06:46:00.000+02:00

We're supposed to be young
Breathtaking and immortal
So swift that we'd dissolve
Under touch
Angelic, flawless
Perfected
Blooming

The sun goes down, down
And colors the sky
Right before the stars appear
With all the questions about life
Every how and why
Every lie

Only you were the goddess
And my fingers trembled
Over your skin, your hair
What must you think of me
I'm not that young
I'm only mortal
As you can see

The sun goes down, down
And colors the sky
Right before the stars appear
With all the questions about life
Every how and why
Every lie

Don't you know that we're all sinners
We're all free and decadent minds
What good is insomnia
Except it bought me time
And still I'm sleepless again
And I've put you on the piedestal
Just like back then
I've made you divine, my friend

The sun goes down, down
And colors the sky
Right before the stars appear
With all the questions about life
Every how and why
Every lie

Am I still young if I'm aged in mind
Am I still fearless when your fear is mine
When my trembling fingers no longer reach you
When you dissolve, under touch
So you were angelic, then
At least I know that much

The sun goes down, down
And colors the sky
Right before the stars appear
With all the questions about life
Every how and why
Every lie

The sun goes down, down
Insomnia child
Right with all the remaining fear
With all the questions about life
You will always be wild
You will always be a lie
And after all the truth is just a teaser

Midnight Walks

2010-10-15T02:34:00.000+02:00

And taking midnight walks calms down the thoughts in your head, stirring and screaming as always; calms them down if only for a while. It smells of fallen leaves, smells of long days outdoors, smells of an innocence that went lost a long time ago. And you aim your old sneaker shoe at the piles of leaves and for a moment you remember what it was like, remember when the little things used to mean everything.
When the little things used to mean the world.
Nowadays it's dark when you are out, and you wander your routes to distract yourself from the feeling that the walls are closing in on you, that you will suffocate if you stay but a minute longer in this room. Nowadays you look up at the stars and you don't imagine space travel or different worlds with different life than here, you look up at the stars and you feel that you are meaningless. How everything is meaningless. Where in the picture does the little things come in? How can little things be meaningful? You gave meaning to all the details so you wouldn't have to look at the whole picture, where nothing mattered and where your entire life was molded by chance. How does that feel? Can you feel that knife of cold stabbing through your heart?
It smells like childhood, it smells like October, it's not yet full moon but you can see the brightest star of the sky and maybe, if you really tried, you could imagine it with orbits of planets surrounding it, planets and places and worlds where things were different from here, where maybe there were people who didn't fuck everything up, where maybe things were pretty much like here but at the same time pretty much fucking different. Even so, what would it matter when we'd never know of that world, never know of those places, and even if they existed they would mainly be a creation of your own mind, in order to tell yourself there are other worlds than these. Better worlds than these.
Maybe then you wouldn't find yourself where you don't want to be, maybe then you wouldn't get hurt, maybe then you wouldn't let yourself be used, maybe then you wouldn't be so decadent, maybe if there was a hope for something else, someplace else, someone else, then maybe.
Then maybe what?
There'll always be another maybe, another what-if, another if-only; and you'll keep backtracking your life without ever moving forward and you'll be scared of dying though you're aware you can't affect it. And every night you'll be sleepless, and every other night you'll go for another one of those walks, and every now and then you'll feel like the little things actually matter while other times it'll all be meaningless. And you will change like the seasons of the year, and still you'll always stay the same; cause everything you could never predict will make changes that never seem apparent to you while all the changes you wanted to make will be left alone and you'll swirl further down the spiral of decay, the spiral of decadence, the spiral of youth. One time things won't matter, two time things won't matter, you'll tell yourself you're only in it for the sex while all you wanted was to fall asleep in someone's arms without any demands. You'll tell yourself you only drink because you want to socialize and then you'll be looking at the stars alone over an emptied bottle of wine and you'll wonder why there's salt on your cheeks and why someone wiped the smile off your face. You'll quit smoking a thousand times and then still light one more up when you're standing on the balcony and trying to see if anyone else is awake, if anyone else is up at this hour, just so you could see a sign of life, just so you could feel you weren't the only one who couldn't sleep because you were fucking paranoid.
Does it still smell like childhood?
Does it still smell like long days outdoors building tree houses and drinking warm cocoa when you came back in?
Does it still smell like when you used to play in the woods and for once you could be who you wanted to be, you could forget about the bullies in school and that they teased you because you happened to like books; you could make yourself a makebelieve world and you could be anyone at all, anyone you wanted?
The thoughts in your head are calmed down if only for a while, and then they stir again; and then they scream to you louder than they ever did and speak to you in voices from your past. And you wonder if there was ever any innocence, even as you were young, even as you remember that time you fell down from the cliff in the forest and you fell down onto the sharp rocks below and the fall felt eternal and when you lay there you lost your breath and you saw stars, not the kind of stars you'd see in the sky but red and green stars dancing before your eyes, and everything seems to become darker even though it's in the bright of day, and you have no thoughts or feelings, just a numbness spreading through your body before it hits you that you were lucky, I'll be damned, you were lucky. And you're not bleeding, although tomorrow you will find bruises all over your body and feel like you had been pulled back from something close to death, something close to dying; words you'd never use to describe it then but that suddenly seem real and fucking true now that you think about it.
And you take midnight walks to shake it off, every bad decision you ever made, everyone who fucked with your head and everyone who broke through to you; everytime you took pills, everytime you took out the needle, everytime you ripped the skin off your lips until they bled, everytime you imagined you were happy while you knew you weren't, every time, every time, every time.
You take midnight walks and at least now it's in another place and at least this time there's someone to walk with you and at least this time you don't feel quite as lonely.
At least until the walls close in on you again.
POET IN THE JAR

In The End

2010-10-11T02:51:00.000+02:00

It's all easy when you're thinking it over
And you talk it over, logically, sensibly
With the voices in your head
It's all easy, when it's in theory
Easy as can possibly be

Is it still true, the logic in your mind
When it's given you up,
Time after time
What is there to care about
What is there to find
It won't make a difference
Not in the end

In the long run, you think you've done yourself a favor
That you've analyzed things to break your fall
That knowing what'll happen will ease the pain
And by knowing what's been
It won't happen again
Will it matter in the end
When you never listened

Is it still true, the logic in your mind
When it's given you up,
Time after time
What is there to care about
What is there to find
It won't make a difference
Not in the end

It's not as easy as you made it out to be
Not everything can be broken down
And looked at, piece by piece
It's all fucking complicated
The way things are with me
And it has to shine through
Can't you see?
You've got it too

You can't tell yourself what's more true
Or tell yourself what you should want or need
When it comes down to it you'll still have forgotten
And you'll go against yourself again
Mistakes on repeat
Mistakes with me

If mistake is the word
If decadence doesn't cut it
If my mind can't win me over

The Kite Flyer

2010-10-08T01:54:00.000+02:00

I keep them butterflies in a jar
In a glass jar with a solid lid
In a glass jar in a cupboard
In a cupboard that I lock
I pity them, in shock
They're parts of me
Them butterflies

Every now and then I let them stretch their wings
Let them flutter and discover things
Until they reach the end of the string
That's when I stop them
And reel them back in
I'm their kite flyer

I feed them butterflies from a vial
A glass vial with a glass cork
A glass vial on a velvet pillow
A pillow in a chest
Beating, at best
They're shards of me
Them butterflies

Every now and then they pull at their strings
Wanting to let go of things
Wanting to fly on fragile wings
That's when I stop them
And reel them back in
I'm their kite flyer

But occasionally it happens I'm not in control
I become the butterflies, become the tow
And disappear among the crows
Black, black wings
I'm the kite
Not the kite flyer
The kite flyer was a lie

What happens is I'm flown by you
And you're the one to pull my strings
Steer me away from everything
Everything I ever wanted to see
When I struggle the most to be free
That's when you reel me in
And put an end to me

I'm kept in your glass jar
In your cupboard
With the glass vial
On the velvet pillow
That's my drug
Vaporize me
I'll never fly
Pin me here already
I'll make it worth your while
I'm not the kite flyer
The kite flyer was a lie

Skeletons

2010-10-04T03:45:00.001+02:00

What drives me to do this
To constantly change
Drift around sleepless
Wander about restless
To be uncertain about everything
To doubt why I laugh
To doubt why I cry
Who am I
Who am I

Surely you couldn't have done this
Surely it couldn't have gone that deep
What happened to me happens to them all
And would have disturbed anyone's sleep
It couldn't have been you
It should have been done to you

Why do I tell myself I left you behind
That everything's buried deep and forgotten
I've been told I'm not supposed to remember
I dug you down with the skeletons in my closet
Dug you down where the treasure was not
Now there's only bones
Where X marks the spot
I buried you inside my head
And grieved it all
Before you were dead

I'm not expected to believe in your ghost
Not supposed to let you haunt me, still
Most days go on without you
Until there's a shadow
On the window sill

Suddenly, you're there again
In every voice, every letter
Every scribbled word
Suddenly, you're there again
In my eyes and in my tears
In every song unsung
Unheard

What pushes me to drift like this
Surely it couldn't have been you
Surely you didn't cut me that deep
Surely they all told the truth
And my restlessness can't be blamed on you

In fact I never buried you
Although I grieved you many times
And not remembering would be a lie
But I no longer cherish you
Or see you as divine
It wasn't fate what you saw in me
It was chance that happened down the line
And I'll get better sooner or later
If not live then I'll at least survive
And we've got an appointment now
The world and I
So haunt me later
In a couple of years
When I can afford nostalgia
And a couple of tears
Who am I
Who am I
I'm restless
I'm sleepless

And you drove me to this

Damaged Goods

2010-10-01T05:03:00.001+02:00

I can't say I'm sorry I hurt you first
When in the end, you hurt me worst
And now I'm damaged goods
This side up, it's labelled
Fragile, it says, on the box

I never wanted to be dependent on you
I'm a free bird, I wanted the world
Now I'm part of the cargo on a derailing train
That will crash in due time
Smashed against the rocks

Did my sins matter
When they were that small
They must have mattered enough for you
To condemn me
But no one's perfect
You were sinful yourself
Makebelieve angelic
Makebelieve free

I can't say that I'm sorry
Or wish we'd never met
That I didn't finish you
Is my one regret
I should have seen it coming
And defended myself with my life
Instead I let you torture me
And now I'm damaged goods

Smashed against the rocks
Damaged goods, in a fragile box

Of Blood And Butterflies

2010-09-28T03:06:00.000+02:00

I've never been on the inside before
Never seen everything from this point of view
Never been the one to be careless
The one to end things that weren't there

On the outside, your world will crumble
Changing everything you thought you knew
On the outside, you will stumble
And I will have forgotten you

All of this is a first for me
What for are all these blasting guns
What for is that river of blood, on the floor
Do you bleed?
Was that me?
I'm blank
I've no memory

On the outside, your world will crumble
Changing everything you thought you knew
On the outside, you will stumble
And I will have forgotten you

Did it hurt you when you passed me through
When I was nothing but a ghost to you
Did you see my cracking and faltering smile
Did you even notice it when I died?

On the outside, my world crumbled
Changing everything I thought I knew
On the outside, I stumbled
And I'm less than nothing
Invisible, to you

I guess I needed it to be done to me
The only way to become apathic and free
If you had known I would become you
That I'd do what you did to others like you
Would it have made any difference?
Would it matter to you?

What's your life now
Apart from an illusion
What happened to your dreams
And everything you wanted to be
Did you pursue any of them
Or did they end with me

You'll never leave
You're rooted to the spot
At least I did something
You did not
Good luck with it all
With imagining things got better

On the inside, your world is crumbling
On the inside, you are stumbling
On the outside, you'll pretend
Pretend until the very end

POET IN THE JAR

Lemonade And Skin Peels

2010-09-26T23:47:00.000+02:00

Right, time to do another one of those neat little rants I usually do so well. Redecorating my room in order to redecorate my head, as usual; keeping myself busy to keep myself off track. Nothing new in this, nothing new at all, like in the way I will peel off the skin from my lips whenever my mind and heart tells me it can't make it anymore. I drove, and drove, tired of driving, tired of having to be alert, tired of missing turns and running out of gas; drove while my lips bled, and colored my teeth red. This time there was just a bigger wave than usual with the tide, a worse than usual visit to the city I called home for four years, the place I used to think was big and exciting when I was young and the city I used to associate with my grandmother and lemonade and cookies on the porch. I got older, the world moved on, and the associations got replaced with other visions and other memories that cut me through and feel more real. The memory of a lover who left, the memory of an almost-suicide, the memory of sleeplessness and therapy and depression, the memory of friends failing your trust, the memory of an almost-rape and violent thrust. Old, old, old. I'll rather have the lemonade, rather have the cookies, rather run around on the lawn while my grandfather sprays us with water and we laugh; rather have all the warmth and all the bike rides in the summer and that we used to take sticks and pierce through leaves while pretending we were printing ink in books. Instead I have the times I drank, the times we got high, the times you left me, the times you killed me, killed me, killed me.
It would be so much better if I had ceased to feel, ceased to care, if all the voices in my head had shut up, if it had all had at least made me into a convenient vegetable, then I could understand the point of all this madness that came by randomly but felt as if it was the universe's dark side directed against me personally. I wish it would have taught me not to fall in love with hopeless cases, taught me not to be a hopeless case, taught me not to drink so much, taught me not to care, not to think, not to thoughtlessly hook up, not to thoughtlessly fucking bother. No matter how many times you change the place you live the rest'll be there, luring in the background until it can stab you in the back. Even in a new place, full of new faces, there'll be the same drama, the same tension, the same human fucking disaster that's infected everything and everywhere. The difference is what you choose to do with it in the aspects that you still might have any chance to choose, any chance to affect. In Chasing Ella, Jake says to himself, 'I have to believe I am still in control, I have to believe I can still affect things' with the desire to be in control of what is going to happen and what he is going to do but even as conscious as he is about this he fails. We'll all fail. Even if there's no great destiny out there for us, even if you as Maddy describes in the same book only 'could be something', we still can't pick what's going to happen. We can plan perfectly where to live, what to study, where to work, but we can't choose what we're going to feel, and in my eyes that's what we're all down to in the end. Towards the end all you'll ever really be able to know is what YOU know, what YOU saw, what YOU felt. It makes no sense to dwell on what other people think or see or feel, or try to interpret what they mean by things, when you'll still never be able to quite fully figure them out; and still it's what we do, over and over again, in our meetings with others. We analyze and analyze and analyze and never get them figured out and we never get ourselves figured out and so we pay expensive money for some therapist to try and figure us out and do all the hard work for us. But what can they tell you that you don't already know? You can only know what you know. Experience points, my lad, is what it all comes down to in the end.
POET IN THE PONDERING ANARCHY ONLINE-ISH JAR

Middle Of The Storm

2010-09-24T02:07:00.000+02:00

Three minutes away from the storm
I close my eyes and wait for the calm
That maybe the heavy winds
Would suddenly cease
Three minutes away from the brink

My heart racing again
And a million mushrooms
Are sung to my ears
And I laugh, I laugh,
I laugh to myself
Three minutes away
From the brink
From everything

Starting with the ladybug
With the baby carrier
On old-fashioned wheels
With the ominous clouds
With that ominous feel
Three minutes away
From the storm

I laugh, I laugh
I laugh to myself
Three minutes away
From the brink
From everything
And a million mushrooms
Are sung to my ears
I laugh to myself

Laughing in the middle of the storm

Piece Of Paper

2010-09-21T03:26:00.001+02:00

I hold a piece of folded paper in my hands
Origami, a letter without letters
In the draft from the windows
I blow on this piece of paper
Meaning to give it wings
Let it fly where I never did
And look at the world with my eyes
Look at it all sadly
And shake its little paper head
Until it's hit by rain

And I close my eyes
And see all the places it saw
Feel its fear, surprise, and awe
It's so small, and shivers
New to this world
Already shunned away

I built a field of torn pages from books
That will never be written
And I made roses from the blank sheets
While the ones with words became the streets
You can step on everything I ever wrote
Step on it to see
All the paper that is still
Empty

This is a little piece of origami
My last chance to make it out alive
A little bird, in my shaking hands
Without words
Without a heart
Only a faint and frantic heartbeat
Afraid of the air, the ground
The staring eyes
Of winter

Please, please, fly
Please, don't crash
I need you to live
Little bird, please
Don't die

You're an extension of me
The only way I can explain myself
To myself, in words
Just fly, don't let your heart explode
Just fly, be blank
And let me go

Little bird
Little piece of paper
In my hands

Melancholia (Castle Made Of Sand)

2010-09-18T03:03:00.000+02:00

So, you're some kind of hero in your own eyes
Heroic for saving yourself from pain
While everything else corroded, in the rain
Everything that made sense
And mattered

There is a melancholia you can't explain
You are distant, and turn inward again
Remember the sand that you ran through your fingers
Sand to dust
Dreams to rust

Were you scared of dying or did you value life
When someone took your spark away
The reason you ran, while you were in chains
And nothing made sense
Or mattered

There is a melancholia you can't explain
You are distant, and turn inward again
Remember the sand that you ran through your fingers
Sand to dust
Dreams to rust

Why is there silence at the end of a smile
And hints of truth in every lie
And every night, with every dream
You're shivering
Afraid to sleep

There is a melancholia you can't explain
You are distant, and turn inward again
Remember the sand that you ran through your fingers
Sand to dust
Dreams to rust

Castle made of sand

Green Glass Bottles

2010-09-17T03:52:00.001+02:00

I wish love came in green glass bottles
Pop it open, and drink with greed
It would grow into a drug, into a rush
An addiction
That you need

I wish passion came with harpsichords
Then all I'd have to do was listen
It'd be effortless, and painless
And finally
I'd glow

Maybe if there was a stock market for things like this
Everything you ever felt, up for trade
Every emotion, bought and sold
All that you were
Slowly to fade

I wish I wasn't dependent on vials
That I didn't tremble when the glass shattered
All the green glass, the coins, the sounds
The unicorn in the merry go round
It all broke down
It ceased to matter

Drink, with greed
Love, in a bottle
All you need
Listen, and glow
It'll all be crumbling
before you know