Between

Filled up with sounds noises from people with a passion for loud. To hear their own voices lining the net to trawl all the water to gain some respect. 

To drown all the feelings that they have inside to walk the same line to know your beside.

Joined to the masses the majority rules no space for magic, no time for the crude, but I ask you this can you remember the last, time you and sat and stare at the sky watch all the clouds just pass you by.

Sit there and sit there and feel the wave the wave of silence fill the divide. The space between all your thoughts these are the spaces we never were taught. 

So open your eyes and hope you have dust on your wings to help your life spin. 

Instant

It’s strange, sometimes you just know, you pick your head up and see it. The picture is clear it says something to you straight away. You look them in the eyes and instantly there is a connexion. But then, all the shit gets muddled, the perception of them, the self perception of you and the ‘what’s the right’ just gets in the way, so you stop. You reach the end of the road and that’s that. The eyes don’t look the same, the feeling in the heart is different and there is just a little sadness in the mind. What might have been, what could have been done differently, it all moves away.

I wish I would really seize the moment, capture it, act on it, stretch out that first flash when you saw the picture, when you felt the bite, like the tickle on your teeth when you bite down on a perfectly ripe nectarine. Or maybe if I did it would be awkward and bitter and the reality would be much worse than the thought in the imagination. Maybe the teeth would just find the stone.

Melissa

Melissa hurried to the back of the shop, picked up a scrap of paper and placed it in the front pocket of her bag. From the safe door she turned the small key with a red tag three times to the right, withdrew the key and placed it in the same pocket of her bag as the scrap of paper. Her nightly lock-up complete, she then walked out from behind the counter and in-between the rows and rows of DVD’s to the light switch. She looked back into the shop her heart rate increasing, she paused with her hand hovering over the switch looking in and out of the maze. Had she forgotten something? Had her colleague definitely left earlier or was he hiding behind one of the sets of shelves? She dismissed the thought, flicked the switches and the room immediately fell into darkness. She opened the door, stepped outside, out from the warm island created by the heating system above the door and into the cold damp air of winter.

She pulled the door shut and out of her bag took a large set of keys flicking through the set to find the one that fitted the lock. Her hands were stiff and her heart was beating quickly, she found the correct key, raised it to the lock and as she did her fingers faltered and the set dropped to the floor. She looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but there was no-one who cared, so she bent down and picked them up.

Ugly

They were breathing heavily as they crossed the motorway. It had been a long walk along the side of the fence until they had found a way up and over. They crossed the lanes quickly as the traffic was thin and now with fatigue setting in they needed somewhere to sleep. Slipping and sliding across the loose earth on the banks below the metal barriers, they slowly forced their way through the thick brambles towards the silhouette of a building in the distance.

After 40 minutes or so they arrived, the windows and doors boarded up but the building looked solid. A concrete masterpiece. After a few minutes they found a gap in the fence and had climbed the sharp edges of the spiral staircase, when they reached the top Billy pushed forcefully against the old door and it caved in.

Looking Up

‘The eye gets used to stuff, the more you see of the same thing the more mundane it becomes.’

‘So are you saying we need a better angle?’

‘Yea, we need an unusual angle, but of something we have seen before.’

‘Ahrrr I see… a new perspective.’

‘Well I wouldn’t go as far as call it a perspective, but just so the image freshens the eye, or the mind… So you look at it, maybe even tilt your head, let your eye roam the image…’

‘Okay bird’s eye view?’

‘Yea let’s try it.’

Old and New

James stood there looking out at the horizon. He smiled to himself as the blues and pinks blurred together where the sky met the sea. He raised his hand, held an imaginary brush and started to paint, softening the lines where the colours met, blending them together in his mind.

After five minutes of work, the colours started to change, he stopped, sat on the tree stump and cocked his head.

‘needs more orange’ he said to himself out loud…

…and continued, dipping his brush into the pallet and detailing the new colour infusion. How quickly things change, how hard was it to capture a moment. His thoughts drifted away from the make believe painting to how the horizon might have looked before the huge electricity poles, before all the houses and industry soaked up the water of the valley like a sponge. ‘I bet even then the sunset then would have been different. Green perhaps?’ he laughed to himself.

His thoughts continued a pace, ‘maybe 30 years ago the electricity poles would have looked so ugly on the horizon, but now they are strangely attractive, I wonder what human ugliness will bring next, and how we will start to love it.’

Complex

Joe picked up the dandelion and a little milk spilled out from the stem, he looked at it, ‘the blood of the lion’, he whispered to himself twisting his head in acknowledgement. Thoughts about writing science fiction and fantasy sprung into life. ‘Real world situations’ how could they be transformed into fantastical elements that would bring a smile to readers faces. You know, the ones where the ‘rules’ in the fantasy world are created and then some real world application is given clarity later in the book. You put the book down and smile to yourself, nodding in appreciation. That’s a good moment he thought to himself. But milk from the dandelion… hmmmm maybe not.

He pushed the flower further away from the lens and clicked the shutter… then pulled his head back as the imaged flashed up on the lcd screen. ‘Wow…’ he sighed, ‘complex’. He pinched the screen to zoom in a little further, the seeds were beautiful, they fit perfectly into each other, one leaning on the next delicately touching the heart of the plant, holding on but not too tight. He smiled and looked back at the plant, blew and watched the seeds helicopter away with the breeze.

‘Hold on but not too tight’ he thought to himself.

Dragons

I remember playing with the kids, I remember what it was like to step into a room of children and feel their expectations. They were always ready to have fun and cause mischief. But the greatest thing about the children is that they didn’t carry any of the adult shit their heads, their minds were simple and they saw the beauty and excitement in everything.

That’s what inspired my journey, that’s why I left the city I wanted to look and to stare at the simple things, see the beauty in the ugliness, see the beauty in all the small things that we ignore. I wanted to look at things with a child’s eyes, to not worry about what everyone thought, to turn the brain off and kindle the excitement inside me for the world and the people in it.

… and so I did, I stopped to look at things and found Dragons.

The Break Up

I didn’t understand it. I had so many questions inside my head, but none of the answers that I could come up with made any sense. And the worst part, I couldn’t stop the thoughts, they constantly bombarded my every moment, it was exhausting.

By the time the third day after the break up came around I finally found the energy to pick myself up and do something healthy, to try and make me feel wanted again. Somehow I needed to feel good and worthy. So I did all the things that when I was happy I put off, it’s funny how when you are happy you don’t need to do anything, you feel loved and that’s enough, if you are loved then what you do doesn’t matter, success or failure you will be loved. But when you are down, wow, then you need some medicine.

But after one day of feeling myself again, I saw her, and she was with him. My heart melted and it was back to questions, self doubt and no sleep. I wondered how long it would last, would I feel shit forever? Would the sadness pass? I don’t know, I promised myself that time would heal me, to be patient, but my temper flared and there were moments where I could not control myself I became violent to myself. I was desperate to cry to release everything, but I couldn’t bring the tears, I was numb.

I tried to pick myself up again, restore some energy into my life, but all I could do was think of ways of getting her back. That was the wort thing, all this pain and suffering I was feeling, caused by her, and all I could do was try get her back, return it to the place it was before, the place I had left it, the time when everything between us was natural, when we didn’t have to think, we were just good together. It was magic, like I genuinely believe that it was magic. But was that what she felt at the time? I don’t know, it seemed that way, maybe she was just a great actress.

Sometimes Leaves Go Up

They ran, they ran and ran, they couldn’t stop, not to think, not to look, not to pause for thought. They were making all the wrong decisions, they went right instead of left, they tried to scramble when they should have stuck to the path. They called to each other when they needed silence. But they tried. They both knew that there was a way, they both wanted to find a way, but every decision they made ended in a clash and because of this, they stopped. They stopped trying to escape and were caught.

And here only when hope was gone, when captivity was inevitable did they see each other, they felt each others touch, the pain and friction between them melted away, they looked into each other’s eyes and their hearts beat together. Despite the desperation in their situation, they smiled and felt the warm glow of each other’s love.

They turned away from each other, away from their captors and looked out across the countryside, the landscape was wild, unkept, the terrain uneven and the fauna sharp and aggressive. But there was a peacefulness to the energy, an acceptance from the couple in their fate. They smiled together and looked up to the clouds. As they stared towards the sky the autumn leaves rose up above them swirling, spinning, drifting, bouncing like a butterfly… sometimes leaves go up.