on life

life is an unfamiliar mannequin,
draped with elaborate costumes and
headscarves.
dolled up to look beautiful.

I have the same dream every night. I am falling into the sun.

life is an enigma
pretending to be a riddle
waiting to be solved by someone
with a low Erdos-Bacon number.

life is a swirling whirlpool of circumstance,
a crucified mixture of helpless flowers
an old high school friend
you never want to reunite with.

life is a stranger in paradise,
a utopia for rent.

life is a maelstrom of desire.
a washing machine that eats hope
along with your best pair of socks.

I have the same dream every night. I wake up and I’m alive.

Writer’s Digest: 101 Best Sites for Writers

Article here.

Also added to the Resources page.

April Fool?

It was a fine summer morning in July when I found out I was Death.

The first clue was when I opened my cupboard and found an unusually large collection of black robes. Most were worn, a few had been patched, and there was a brand new one on the far right with a hefty price tag from Zara. I blinked, and dismissed it. My brother had probably replaced my closet while I was asleep.
My second clue came from the garden shed. Someone had removed all my spades and replaced them with heavy scythes. I was reasonably upset—my garden had never required such drastic weed-removing measures. The lawnmower was also missing. Still, it could be one of my brother’s pranks.

I went through the day rather routinely. I hacked at the weeds with the scythe (hey! I improvised!), did my chores, and even fixed that old grandfather clock that sits near the stairs.

The clues melded into a revelation of epic proportions after I discovered I could walk through walls.

It was all rather surreal, until I found myself in a black robe and scythe, wandering around in a hospital looking for a Mr. R. Creevy. I found him in Room 101, looking rather distraught.

‘Excuse me,’ he said huffily. ‘Do you know what’s happening?’

‘Er,’ I ventured, before clearing my throat. PERHAPS YOU ARE HAVING AN OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCE?<
He dug his ear. ‘Don’t shout.’
SORRY. I checked the mysterious hourglass on my wrist. MR ROBERT CREEVY?
‘Yes? Didn’t I tell you not to shout? My, you youngsters have no manners these days…’
I THINK YOU HAD BETTER COME WITH ME.
‘Allright,’ he said grumpily. ‘But I’m having a word with your boss, I am.’ The scythe leaned forward and the monitor beside Mr. R. Creevy showed a flat line.
I blinked. Perhaps I was Death after all. Naturally, I was quite puzzled by the entire affair. Perhaps I needed to see a psychiatrist, so that was where I went next.
EXCUSE ME, I said to the receptionist. CAN YOU TELL ME WHERE I CAN FIND A DR. I checked the name card.DR. BENSON?

‘Down the hall,’ said the receptionist idly. ‘Would you like a cough drop? You sound hoarse.’

I’M FINE, THANKS. HAVE A NICE DAY.
I wandered down the corridor and knocked on the good doctor’s door. ‘Come in!’ I walked through the door and surveyed the room. It was minimally decorated, and the couch was a horrible shade of pink.
EXCUSE ME, DOCTOR?

‘Yes,’ he gestured impatiently to the nauseating sofa. ‘What seems to be the problem?’

I’M DEATH, I said, matter-of-factly.

‘Yes, we’ve established that,’ he continued, still gesturing for me to sit down. ‘Would you like to tell me when you found out?’

THIS MORNING.
‘And how does this make you feel?’
I pondered. A LITTLE STRANGE, I SUPPOSE.
‘And would you like to tell me why this disturbs you?’
MY GUIDANCE COUNSELLOR SAID NOTHING OF THIS SORT OF VOCATION.
-Azuire//lastfactor&c.

A Protest At The Identity Crisis Game

According to newspaper reports, the Ministry of Education is now investigating the Christian-led AWARE exco’s assertions of improper sex ed being offered by their ousted predecessors.

I’ve been following this on the blogosphere – yea, risked my sanity to plough through numerous conservative rantings. I haven’t yet seen a student’s take on this matter, so permit me the liberty of offering mine.

I’m fifteen going on sixteen. From among the top schools, so yes, I do have a middle-class bias. I’m a liberal on social and political issues. I’m a baptised, confirmed Catholic (Roman, not Eastern), but intellectually deist no matter what canon law says. I believe in secularism all the way. And I’m not the only one, let’s not make that an issue.

Look, sex ed or not, you do realise, don’t you, that your average teenager is a horny bastard? And by no means completely naïve, either. I look at the class next door and I tell you most of the guys there watch hentai, and lots of girls read porn (and it could be vice versa, I just don’t know the girls who watch or the guys who read). It doesn’t mean we’re having sex like rutting bunnies, or that we’re sex fiends, or that we’re going about indulging in paedophilia or nymphomania. Or even having sex, really. Theology of the Body is so not our issue, and believe me, the ethics of Humanae Vitae don’t matter to us. ‘Condoms are evil’ isn’t going to work on science students, nor will the ‘sex must be procreative within a heterosexual, monogamous Christian marriage’ meme.

Do you honestly believe that we poor children know nothing of homosexuality? And so are liable to moral corruption? Honey, you think none of us are queer? In “http://sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20090501/tap-252-awares-comprehensive-sex-educati-231650b.html”> another  article, a trainer is quoted as saying that ‘trainers use the word “partner” instead of “husband”, for instance, so that lesbian students do not “tune out”’. Well duh. Religion has nothing to do with this. In my admittedly limited social circle I know one lesbian, and she is a practising Catholic.

And in any case, half the guys I know are yuri fanboys, and another friend skipped out on her class outing yesterday to drop by Kino and pick up more yaoi. Slash by any other name is still slashy, m’love.

Shelter your coddled fundamentalist kiddies all you want. This is your happy, uncensored next generation, unafraid of your condemnation, content in actually being human. ‘Live and let live’, at least, if not totally an ally and totally a liberal secularist.

You know, the only sex ed I’ve ever had in school has been the abstinence-only kind. I found out later that the speakers were from some Christian group. I nearly stormed out when they made a presentation on gay people being perverse, more likely to commit suicide and be depressed, drawing no link between this and the atmosphere of persecution they /you promote. Mind you, I am in a government-founded independent school, a secular school (a secularism that’s been raised before by the vice-principal at morning assembly).

I wrote an email to my mentor, I here present a pertinent excerpt:

The sexuality education programme, unfortunately, seems to adopt an alarmist approach towards us. Besides facilitators’ inextricable linking of premarital sex with STIs, unwanted pregnancies and abortions, misleading statistics are used; for the first session of the Year 3 sexuality education programme, for example, the speaker highlighted the fact that over 750 youths aged ten to eighteen contracted STIs in a given year, which is a blanket statistic that overlooks what one of the people I was sitting with pointed out to be obvious: ‘ten-year-olds don’t get STIs because they’re having sex; they’re being raped.’ Personally speaking, I find it distasteful that such statistics, which give real cause for concern, should be subverted simply to fit the agenda of pushing abstinence as part of sexuality education.

And the presentation the sex ed facilitators made, which pissed me off so bad? Came at a time when one of my level-mates was coming out and I was just starting to realise I was bi. Sheesh. I love those people who protested. We hadn’t even any clue the facilitators were religious, the school didn’t tell us that. I knew only because I asked.

The values that these conservative extremists claim to promote in ‘our’ interests – ‘their’ youth, my people – are not our values at all. Stop deluding yourselves, and at least be honest about the fact that this is an attempt to control and not protect our very bodies.

This content is published from a source that does not necessarily reflect the views of the team at lastfactor&c. The original author reserves the right to repost or adapt this content (in print or electronic).

Voices

i. Daniel

Crows are numerous beings like
crowds in the city,
sooner or later they
steal you with their gaze.

No no, I’m not saying they’re owls, just
that their beady eyes watching you like hawks,
they should have ‘crow-like’ instead.
and maybe, they should have them outlawed.
(I think crows are smarter than owls)

Crows and crowds, crowds and crows,
ravens, never, never, only ever crows.

ii. mindmeld

destitution,
substitution, indiscretion,
impression, isolation, depression.

your song is not for
listening, I am trapped in
rusty harpsichords.

game of alliance,
suppression, oppression,
defiance.

iii. Jason

wrap up, da capo,
take it from the beginning,
steel whispers, gold lockets
and hockey masks.

fold up, against the glass
it blocks the morning sun
drift in poppies of red, blue
grey, gregarious in their disposition.

skin cold to touch, like ice,
fingers scrubbed,
red and orange
as the peel washes off,
landfills raised to the fallen.
the poppies sway.

open it up, da capo,
take it from the head,
chopping boards,
and hannibals.

iv. mindmeld

destitution,
substitution, indiscretion,
impression, isolation, depression.

she sings like broken
guitar strings, shrieking loudly,
music to my ears.

game of alliance,
suppression, oppression,
defiance.

v. Melissa and Mildred

A direct statement (isn’t that what you asked for?) I’m sorry,
Sir? Sir? Are you there?
I wrote a poem on the subject instead. So
Can you hear me? Sir?
here we go:

Silver, silver’s good, it kills werewolves, looks awfully shiny too, shiny silver, made of
A couple of mice down the back alleys–
Euphoria, you’d feel happy with shiny things, they’re absolutely hypnotising, is that my locket?
I insist you remove them! Annoying,
Tick-tock, when I snap my fingers you’ll be a clone, hello? Are you
Zarking voices, open and close, close and
Ready? That blank stare is starting to creep me out–but,
Open, yes! Down the back, that way
Aha! You are in my power, subliminally creeping to your doom
Past the Kwiksave.
Are you sure you wouldn’t like to phone home? Have you–
Have you lost your way? Excuse me, sir
Become extraordinary in some way? Beam you up? Sure?
Really, you’ve got to remove them, their very
Existence is scaring the sheep. Sheep? Yes the sheep,
Not the voices, no, they’re not afraid, just
Irritated, they can’t wait for a
Cure, hey, thanks for the arsenic.

Don’t let me stop you.

vi. mindmeld

destitution,
substitution, indiscretion,
impression, isolation, depression.

wondrous rainbows seep
in and out of my window
as the sun rises.

game of alliance,
suppression, oppression,
defiance.

vii. Boscoe

screams in bubbles not as runny
as a tremendous quatch of funny,
piled with drops of money.
floating in the air.

I went dancing off somewhere
loaded with guns and pears
hastily clothed in glares
and sparkles of ice.

there’s no outright price,
for being completely concise,
I tried to break out twice,
and failed.

so I was re-jailed,
to halted clockhands nailed,
soon enough derailed
by a rainy day.

I turned a ghostly grey,
entreated us to pray,
whispered “cuio mae”

but it was much too sunny.

viii. mindmeld

destitution,
substitution, indiscretion,
impression, isolation, depression.

Inked promises, drip
upon a failed eulogy,
I have mourned enough.

game of alliance,
suppression, oppression,
defiance.

ix. Edward

On my discerning palate
In Crewe and at a time distinguished,
Rests a lonely locket.

I have knees blistered from pants
And fancy dresses.
I am indifferent to
Prophets and oracles,
Opinion and gestures,
(what are they but words in the dark?)
and yet,
I have a most effeminate locket.

It is most certainly not my own
Unless I have elected some new paradigm
Within archaic tombs of medieval kingdoms
But I live in the Millenium,
as unsullied as this is pure gold,
A perpetuity so unlike diamond
In its metal wisdom and brittle
Inside parchment.
‘For Faith. From Jason.’
I do not know a Faith.
I do not know a Jason either.

As I rack my brains the candle becomes the sun
Runny and old in its cantankerous ways,
A boundary of semantics and temperament.

A crow perches outside my window.
I briefly consider this enigma,
And engage my synaptic capacities
In these shadowy theories
Of karma running over dogma.

There is a crow outside my window.
There is a locket on my plate.
‘To Faith, With Love, Jason.’
I do not know a Jason.
I do not know a Faith either.

x. mindmeld

destitution,
substitution, indiscretion,
impression, isolation, depression.

She has a
Mona Lisa smile, which
I think would be so cool,
if she wasn’t going to eat me.

game of alliance,
suppression, oppression,
defiance.

xi. Faith

A lifeless thing but now alive,
A ghost that only comes in fives
A shadow in the daily path,
As these we stand at last.

I know the mountain, rocks and seams,
I know the old man’s nightly dreams,
Are not dreams at all, I know this now,
With this I stand at last.

We know this beauty, things of ours,
Hold the clock and ticking sour
Hearts in blazed unions smile,
With these we stand at last.

I know the mind, its cracks and ways,
I know its poison’s depths and haze,
Are we not here, with these footfalls,
With these I stand at last.

Left for dead, we claim our lives,
With solemn hands and broken knives
With raven hands and nevemores,
With these we stand at last.

A ghostless thing but now full-formed,
A lifeless thing has been reborn,
A lantern takes the shadow’s place.

Here we stand at last.

xii. altogether

destitution,
substitution, indiscretion,
impression, isolation, depression.

game of alliance,
suppression, oppression,
defiance.

-Azuire//lastfactor&c.

Modern Metathesis

In collaboration with Fitzy.

My toaster is made in Korea
or maybe China and the engraver lied;
My mobile phone is Swedish,
but it insists on French,

La belle langue.

These office supplies, are meant
to make life easier and lighter,
but I’m piled with instruction manuals
Thank you, I can break them without
you telling me how.

The international radio is psychic,
so it’s probably by Apple,
And my ability to make lunch
Has sold itself to the “AUTHENTIC THAI”
restaurant down the street.

I’ve lost track of the phone book
And forgotten how many bank accounts
Exist under my name;

The Greeks are playing German football,
Curry is plotting world domination,
And I’m turning Japanese.

I can only express my desire
to save the ogapogo with
recycled paper from Thailand
and fifty foot tall robot-trucks.
The electric mice that live
in my holey pocket holiday in Sardinia.

My iPod is on a roll of Croatian music,
And I don’t think my calendar knows
It’s a few decades behind.

My watch is as Swiss as the
Belgian chocolate that shipped
Out of Shanghai yesterday,
Passing through Sarah Palin’s backyard
Only to melt on the suburban
Built-by-south-of-the-border-
labor gravel driveway.

Vancouver is a subset of Kowloon,
England isn’t English at all,
And I’m turning Japanese.

The speed-dial calls a
New Delhi taxicab instead of
The pizza delivery man and yesterday,
My therapist tried to sell me
Poached South African ivory.

I mix up Buenos dias and ni hao
I confuse the and die,
I have lost the bloody phonebook,

And I’ve
Turned Japanese.

-Azuire//lastfactor&c.

Untitled 3

I.
I went looking for Peace,
in all the wrong places,
under the bridge
where Freedom lurked.
(She was busy with a spray can,
and she ran when I approached her.)

I asked Madam Justice,
on her pedestal, preening her
limestone mascara.
(She was still depressed over OJ.
I left her alone.)

So I wandered through,
New York and Africa,
London and Asia,
(I got an elephant ride and some tea.
Uncle Sam thought I was a waiter.)

I kept looking.

II.

Say no to drugs.
Say yes to tacos.

III.

I knocked on some doors,
and accidentally walked in
on the Universal Board of Directors.
(The economy’s so bad, the sun was fired.
I think they’ll retrench God next.)

I’m still looking for Peace,
in the right places, I’m sure
because I saw War just now.
(Dude, have you seen how fat that guy is?
He needs a crash diet. Seriously.)

Nobody seems to know
where Peace is,

(I think I’ll check
the men’s washroom.)

-Azuire//lastfactor&c.

To Tokyo… and other places!

Dear all,

I will be going on — what’s that word –  a hiatus. I’m entering my first year at college in Japan soon, so I’m not sure how my schedule’s like before I get in the gear of going to school again.

Meanwhile, be nice to crimson.

Cheers!

-Azuire//lastfactor&c.

Experiments with Form VI: Sestinas

If you, like me, took days of research trying to understand sestinas, you might find this useful.

A sestina (also, sextina, sestine, or sextain) is a highly structured poem consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by a tercet (called its envoy or tornada), for a total of thirty-nine lines. The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time; if we number the first stanza’s lines 123456, then the words ending the second stanza’s lines appear in the order 615243, then 364125, then 532614, then 451362, and finally 246531.

First stanza, ..1 ..2 ..3 ..4 ..5 ..6
Second stanza, ..6 ..1 ..5 .. 2 ..4 ..3
Third stanza, ..3 ..6 ..4 ..1 ..2 ..5
Fourth stanza, ..5 ..3 ..2 ..6 ..1 ..4
Fifth stanza, ..4 ..5 ..1 ..3 ..6 ..2
Sixth stanza, ..2 ..4 ..6 ..5 ..3 ..1

Concluding tercet:

(line) ..2, ( line) ..5
(line) ..4, (line )..3
(line) ..6, (line) ..1

This organization is referred to as retrogradatio cruciata (”retrograde cross”). These six words then appear in the tercet as well, with the tercet’s first line usually containing 1 and 2, its second 3 and 4, and its third 5 and 6 (but other versions exist, described below). English sestinas are usually written in iambic pentameter or another decasyllabic meter.

An alternate form exists using a couplet, instead of a tercet, with the word orders 123 and 456 or 135 and 246.

The sestina was invented in the late 12th century by the Provençal troubadour Arnaut Daniel. Elements of it were quickly imitated by other troubadours, such as Guilhem Peire Cazals de Caortz.

Example I wrote:

dawn brings with it the smell of rain
streaks of yellow light the city
dewdrops lift from their sea of green
snow melts from its fortress of stone
dawn in the call of the mind
as an age rests on the streets forever.

but what makes eternity last forever
entombed in thunder along with rain
lost in the byways of the mind
crisscrossing the avenues of the city
bored holes within their concrete and stone
tufts of moss break grey with green.

dawn swiftly covers ruins with green
that remain a broken monument forever
even lower than plaques carved into stone
eroded now by the torrential rain
blurry memories of a forgotten city
that serve existence only in men’s minds.

what calls whence and wherefore, the mind
it dwells in its haven of blue and green
tripping, soaring above its dream city
will it cease to fly forever
should it encounter the rain
and lose itself in the solitude of stone?

dawn brings illumination to stone
towers that rise in the chasms of the mind
grey clouds gather to fling down the rain
covering and nourishing  hidden green
it pours down joy and tears, forever
upon the makeshift name of “city”.

soft yellow melts the cold, merciless city,
with its buildings in quiet, blissful stone
they resolve to stand forever
fragments of an unyielding mind
dawn brings the promise of green
and relief from the enduring rain.

if there was a city, if there was such a mind,
that still sought stone consumed by green
let it rust in peace forever, beneath the algid rain.

-Azuire//lastfactor&c.

Porcelain Doll

Spontaneous poetry composed from prompt “Porcelain Doll”. This fixed form of poetry was invented by kiwi-damnation, a deviantART user. You can find more information on it here.

Porcelain Doll: An Absammydarian

Alabaster your vision, under-glazed blue,
Cold to the touch, desperately
Eager to skin alive the hands that feel.

Gold your reflection, halted
in shadows, carved jungles
knarled and ugly, whispering loneliness.

Mauve your dream, splayed and nocturnal
Oblivious to pale pointed prophecies.

Quell your china soul, ruby-rust repository,
Slim and precocious you may be, silenced by tedious
Urns in their fool potter wheels, you are vocal,
Warily, and extraordinarily–
Your wonder is unmatched, even by rainbows and zark!

I dropped you.

-Azuire//lastfactor&c.