Don't expect anything less than the title suggests.
This is an unpredictable quill, born at the moment I stepped off the
plane from England to America, and it is no poem.
It's the evolving unreal reality of a girl's mind -- possibly the most
chaotic place in the known Universe -- and it is my attempt to
feel anchored to some vague continuity within my Muse.
These are the broken pieces of thoughts I share with you, patched
together recklessly for the sake of my own sanity.
These are my Words.
These are my Soul.
These are my Ruins.
-Treydayan
City-Sought
You must feel like a bad Latin girl sneaking through these streets. Like some blurry gypsy-brat vixen with her tale glued on, or a turtle-priestess shimmering fading haunting these high curbs and higher puddles. A turtle-priestess on steroids, perhaps, because this is the City and all these tragic City sky-dye thugs eat drugs and drugs and drugs like you eat marshmallows.
But here you are.
Junkies, though, are either higher than Hell or down low low lower than the webs of bad memories you stomp down deep into your scroungey subconscious. Those memories of you when you were barely four years old sprawled out on the floor with a nose bleed on your first day at school. Those memories of your ex being smashed and slammed and split almost to death one afternoon years and years later for the very same reason: BEING DIFFERENT. Those memories of her laying dead, last kick by cancer at twenty. Those memories of your best friend trying to kiss you. That fight everyone had. The fiery tears. The tantrums. The suicidal tendencies. All those bad memories of when Everything Went Wrong that you’ve stashed somewhere deep underground beneath your blood - go down lower than that and that’s where you’ll end up when your toxic high loses its balance and fucks gravity until it hits the bathroom floor. Oh yea, folks, welcome to the soul-scraping highs and swampy-scratched lows of the City. Just be wary of the times when you can’t differentiate between the two.
Especially when you don’t trip.
But yup, here you are. Jay-walking repeatedly and gritting your teeth real hard because it’s time to mentally beat the blood back into the parts of your body it forgot to visit during that last train ride... heh, welcome to the City. Suck it in, spit it out, it’s true the air could use a little work - maybe some bright spark will stub out his spliff long enough one day to chirp happily that he’s invented a new sky-cleansing version of the Brita Water Filter, who knows - but then who needs to breathe these days anyway? This is Portland, Oregon, United Stated of Gawd-Blessid America, and all you need to survive is your credit card and knowledge enough to get you to the nearest Starbucks. Here, no one gives a toss whether you’re that bad Latin girl or a turtle-priestess or some make-up maddened trippy lil’ riot elf. Here, different is normal and normal is something different every time, so don’t give me that look that says, “But I’m a Brit-brat tangled up weirded-out spiffy dykepoet with no friends no hope and no Yorkshire pudding!” because who cares? English or not, deal with it, it was your choice to come here in the first place and you know you’re only whining because you’re pre-menstrual...
And anyhow, what do you mean “no friends”? You’re traipsing back through these sparkly streets after walking your girlfriend to school at the Art Institute. Your girlfriend. The most spunky-fun Alaskan Amazon there ever is was will be AND...she's yours. Yeah, okay, so maybe you don’t have a credit card yet, but you could find your way to Starbucks. And all right, so you don’t know many of the native Oregonians yet either, but you're in a freefall love-blitz 'til the angels come.
Caffeine and love. Heck. Who needs to breathe?
(c) TreyEbonyRavencrest - Tuesday.3.April.2001
Fridge Fairy
Line.
Line-dASh-LiNe.
CiRCLe!
ciRcleD-line.
I wish I was one of those kyds that believe the refrigerator light stays on after you close it. If you believe in anything strongly enough, it becomes real - if only to yourself - and maybe then I wouldn’t be
sitting in here in pitchy scratchy blackness inside a fridge.
I guess at least I know for sure now that fruit doesn’t seem to be scared of the dark.
(c) TreyEbonyRavencrest - Friday.6.April.2001
Theories of an Apple-Seed Victim
I've come to the conclusion that everything anyone in the City ever learns is learnt in a park. Congress would deny this theory aggressively, of course, because if The American People ever heard it, and realized it were true, they'd no doubt be mighty pissed off (what with gushing trillions of their rather amusing green bits of paper into college education and such). So. Here’s the chance for you City folk to get pissed off at Congress.
I’m sat right now, straddling some splintery backless bench that’s huddled itself with several other splintery backless benches, sometime after eight pm in a small park. “Small” in the sense of Oregon, that is, which is pretty large in the sense of England,
which has more sense than to build a lot of parks in the first place and merely has a lot of countryside instead. So here I am, dormfull of cigarette butts sleeping at one heel from the last occupant of this
splintery backless bench, in the very same spot that a homeless guy sat seven days ago and watched Kara and I play frisbee.
I learnt to play frisbee properly in this park.
I learnt that rainbows even span the mucky skies of Cities in this park.
I learnt that you should never run in mud with long frayed jeans in this park.
There are, in fact, only a small number of City types that don’t walk through parks. Some old people don’t, because they’ve learnt everything there is to learn already, and the rest are merely ignorants that like to thinkthey have, when really they have the most to learn out of any of us.
So there you are.
I have another theory about how country folk like me learn things, but I guess all you City dwellers would have to grab yer laptops and head for the nearest park to fully understand...
As for this splintery backless bench in a spindly
Portland park:
Mothers bring their kids to learn.
Owners bring their dogs.
I bring my frisbee.
(c)TreyEbonyRavencrest -- Thursday.19.April.2001
CHAOS B.C. (Before Chaos)
I think it was a bright, summer's day. Just to scorn me.
I think I glanced up at the sky at one point and swore.
I’m pretty certain it continued to be a bright, summer's day.
The Sun smiled sunnily and peeled oozing shadows from brickwork where they’d melted like tar. It hummed cheerfully to itself as it churned the air, wrapping heavy quilts of sluggish oxygen around the world and, it seemed, vastly multiplying gravity with each step I think I tried to take.
Relentlessly, that same Sun searched for all the cars without air conditioning, and shone on them. It shone on people sunbathing and burnt them. It shone on children eating ice cream and made them eat it faster.
It shone on wilted plants. It shone in squinting eyes. It shone on skin and sweat and magnifying-glasses with marshmallows under them.
It shone on blood.
-?!
It faltered, glancing back in surprise. It shone harder, impressed and - if it did say so itself - rather proud of the way its rays skimmed, flitted, sparkled and shimmered off the thick red pools.
The blood didn’t offer an opinion.
I think I was a little disconcerted. I think perhaps I was wondering exactly why it was that blood was laying quietly like molten lipstick on the sidewalk not offering opinions. I’m fairly positive that blood has places it should really rather be than on sidewalks, and I’m likewise pretty sure that it has things it should really rather be doing than sunbathing.
I think I kept walking a moment longer before I heard all the shouts.
I don’t really recall much of what went on after that point. I don’t remember if the Sun stayed switched on and continued to turn the world to yoghurt, or whether it got bored and went away. I don’t remember what people were screaming. I don’t remember if I chose that moment to tie my shoe. I just recall looking down and seeing a thick smudge of blood glinting across the toe of my sneaker.
I think I almost remember looking left, down a thin, cobbled alley, and I almost remember seeing someone lying there smeared in the same sickly crimson blood that stained my shoe. I almost remember that person's closed eyes, unmoving sprawl, and limbs sticking out at very unnatural angles. Almost. There were a lot of people, a lot of blood, and it was rather a lot to take in.
I think a man was yelling at me as I stumbled through the horde of crowded crowd. Yelling something about the bleeding girl at his feet. Something about him not wanting me to see her. Something about God. I think someone was shouting that the ambulance was coming.
But I’m not sure.
“That’s my girlfriend,” I think I must have finally pointed out. I think the man was holding me by the shoulders as he talked. I think whatever it was he was saying about the broken body I was staring at had considerable importance. “But that’s my girlfriend...” I think I said again, this time a little more certain.
And then I’m pretty sure I passed out.
(c)TreyEbonyRavencrest -- Thursday.4.May.2001
CHAOS B.C. II
Cat-sproutlings at each window ledge:
Packets of frayed fur in the wind,
See their grass-bladed eyes cut open wide
See each arch of scruffy black back flee from the sudden
CRACK
of silence.
Stripped streets, grey, lay scolded.
Squirming, murmuring tadpoles peek
From puddles on pavements and paths,
They are like blood fallen from a broken vein
Sprawling crooked across skin, confused.
And I knew at that moment
That Pride had become our first fall.
In 1997 a girl you’ve probably never heard of called Rowann Lana Camerson was attacked and beaten for being an out & proud lesbian. She was seventeen at the time, and whoever did it broke her leg, cracked her ribs, fractured her wrist, and left her laying unconscious in her own blood in an ally that I doubt you’ve ever been to.
Her favourite colour was red.
She had a pet sheep called Can-It.
She was, at the time, my girlfriend.
StornsRayneBeat
Storn wasn’t listening to another damn word the frog said.
It was true, admittedly, that it hadn’t said anything at all, for in the scheme of frogs saying things it was a rather shy frog and preferred to say things only to the daffodils, who were its friends, but it was too shy to mention this fact to Storn.
She wouldn’t have listened to a damn word of it anyway.
“The difference between you and me,” she stormed statically, “is that you think that everywing who isn’t right is wrong, and I know that everywing who isn’t right is just imaginative.” Her hand darted out: slender fingers snatching at a daffodil flower and ripping its stem. “Imaginative! Benadixia knows, even mazed between life and death and life, she knows. She has to understand that even if my bringing her here wasn’t quintessiantially right, lore of flight and fist cries that at least it wasn’t wrong. She belongs here in Mirraly, with us. You, frog, what wisdom have you on this war?” Storn gazed down expectantly at the small sack of froggy green skin, crumpled petals of yellow-gold daffodil falling silently from one fist. The frog couldn’t bring itself to look at her. Storn scowled. “Be lucked then, mucky dragon-kin, that my quest is to fight death and not to pulp you to yours. Every wing in this forest will hear me, and I’ll take a thousand summers in a jam-jar before I let anywing push Benadixia back to Earth. Eye me so!” With an indignant screech, Storn split her wings and streaked up through the forest canopy, birds chittering jealously behind her.
The frog stared at the headless daffodil swaying gently in her wake.
“Flood you,” it mumbled shyly, and hopped off.
(c)TreyEbonyRavencrest -- Wednesday.9.May.2001
Extract from "Tattoos Aren't Camoflage" - the official sequel to "Why Ben Ate Harry"
DreamSpit
These are the best moments of my life: I’m in a Greek chariot thundering up and down 69.2 aisles of Brawl-Mart - the new open-air Xena-themed department store for lesbians only (ID required) - when suddenly, WHAMO!! War-horses scream, wheel-rungs shatter, over 2 thousand years’ worth of the dyke comic “Sappho-Strips” go hurling about like chickens trying to fly and SMASH - my chariot collides with that of Sigourney Weaver right there in the www.Amazon.come section. Heck. I’m thrown 50 feet clear into the air and there’s that sickening lurch as my stomach pinballs itself into my little toe. Not because I’m falling. Not because I’m afraid to die - chhh, no Xenite’s afraid of death - I feel sick because I’m falling like aerodynamic bird poo and in approximately four seconds I’m going to splat all over the ground like a waterlogged slug RIGHT in front of Sigorney Wazzit. Hell, what an unbloodygraceful way to go.
Fall fall fall. I’ve got the song “Dying” by Hole glued to the back of my brain as I plummet past shelves of battery-operated folk-singers, bike oil body lotion, vegan-friendly cat food... past pickled rainbows, bent triangles, leather diapers and Aroma of Womyn’s Festival scented-candles. Fall fall fall. Ciao Sigorney, it’s been fun. I manage a blurred-smile as I pass her. I wonder if she’d consider signing my gravestone. Y’know, or maybe carve it into the - blink - what the fuc -?! For a split second my Terror drops out of warp and frowns to itself distractedly...she can’t be...surely not...th-those aren’t?! Oh but they are. Sigorney’s wearing an original handmade punky pair of silver-duct-tape-wrangled Doc Martins that she mustuv bought at the deli counter out back. Whadda womyn.
Suddenly I find myself in an aisle shelved completely with chocolate cheesecake and Slinkeys: the perfect location to set up camp, I decide, and fall asleep.
(c)TreyEbonyRavencrest -- Thursday.24.July.2001
Rotten Little Toad
There were seventeen of them in all: tadpoles and snails that Benadixia had collected from somewhere a little left of the Angel’s Aquarium.
Seven snails, ten tadpoles wide,
Shalt show where scales and Fen-moles hide.
And when ten tadpoles sink as snails,
So thinking thrives and fighting fails.
Benadixia hated riddles. Any riddles. All riddles. Especially those which called for a person to acquire slimy creatures and haul them halfway across the countryside before lunch. Quite frankly, if it weren’t for the fact that a possible solution to a vast problem concerning life, death and eternity (not to mention all the awkward bits in between) depended on her ability to discover the answer, she’d have no doubt forgotten the whole stupid rhyme by now and gone squirrel-lobbing with Storn instead. As it was, she was stuck knee-deep in Swamp-Lickers’ Marsh Mud holding a box of singing, stinky snails and a leaky jam-jar of semi-enchanted, self-intoxicated tadpoles.
Immediately she recognized all the symptoms of what surely must be another horrific Monday morning on Planet Earth.
***
“Ne’er heard o’it. Can’t be all that nice if I ain’t heard o’it, this Mark Sand-Spencer place. You a goblin?”
Ben snorted exasperatedly at the Little Rotten Toad. “No, you prat, my boots! My boots were from Marks And Spencer, not me.”
Benadixia had, by now, escaped from the Swamp-Lickers’ Mud Marsh with the aid of a moose and a string of sentient icicle lights which had seemingly appeared from just beyond no-where. But good fortune as that may have been, the whole mud-wrenching experience had left her in no mood to explain British chain-stores to anyone. Least of all the mouldy lump of amphibian which sat before her.
“Well, no need t’get touchy wi’ us, like. I’s only sayin’, I was, ‘cause you’s stupid enough t’go ‘oppin’ about in me marsh like it ain’t mud. Tsk! Must be doin’ a runner, she must, I thought t’meself, must be gettin’ away from sommit. Mark Sand-Spencer. Makes sense, dunnit? Bad place that, bad place.”
Benadixia stared at the Rotten Little Toad. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I can ‘elp you’s, like, I can. Give us a kiss, an’ yer boots, an’ I’ll not tell none I saw y’ere. Run t’edge o’ lands, t’very hoof o’ Sky Stump: I’s show y’lass how’s t’reach it. I’s show y’lass how t’scape.”
Ben stood up. She’d often wished she knew what animals would say if they could talk. Now she thoroughly regretted it.
“Nah, nah, dun go tha’ way, like, ‘s only Felp in ‘em forests. Dangerous folk, Felp are, bite the ‘op outta yer feet they would, an’ worse. Worse. Better off in Mark Sand-Spencer y’are if yas wantin’ my ‘pinion. Oi! You’s deaf or sommit, lass? Ain’t nought in ‘em woods but trouble. What ya wantin’ down that way?”
“Storn,” she said bluntly, and if the Rotten Little Toad had possessed eyebrows, he surely would have raised them. Everyone in Mirraly knew who Storn was, and those that didn’t weren’t worth counting.
“Storn?” The Rotten Little Toad asked, and paused. “Felp Princess Storn?” The Rotten Little Toad asked, and paused. “StornsRayneBeat Storn?” The Rotten Little Toad asked, and paused. “Well,” he said, suddenly crawling in Ben’s wake, “‘s ‘nother matter then, ain’t it? ‘S Storn. I’ll come wi’ ya. Show you’s t’way, like, else sommit’ll kill ya fer sure.”
Ben darkened. “Look, you stupid little git, just bugger off before I...before I...” she couldn’t think of anything brutal nor crazy enough to express the way she felt. Bitterly, she smashed one of her boots violently against the sodden ground; so close to the Rotten Little Toad that the two could have mated in less than a twitch. “Just leave me alone! I’m sick of you bloody, bleeding creatures. I’m sick of this bloody, bleedng place. I want to go home. I don’t have a home. I wish I were deader than this. Just please! Leave me the fuck alone!”
The Rotten Little Toad made a very strange noise. He made very strange noises regularly, because he was a Toad and because he was a Rotten Little Toad and because he was fairly successful at being a Rotten Little Toad. But this was the very particular very strange noise that one makes upon realizing that the stranger one has just witnessed staggering out of one’s swamp is actually the most notorius creature in Mirraly. None other than Benadixia FelpSkin.
The Rotten Little Toad made a second very strange noise, and belly-flopped as quickly as he could into the marsh.
“Oh.” said Ben. She had never been tremendously good at making threats, and was genuinely surprized that she’d scared the silly sod off. “Well then,” she muttered, and contnued toadlessly on her way.
She hated to admit it, but Storn was really rubbing off on her.
(c)TreyEbonyRavencrest -- Monday.10.December.2001
Extract from "Tattoos Aren't Camoflage" - the official sequel to "Why Ben Ate Harry"
These are the works of Trey Ravencrest. They belong to her. If you wish to print, publish, or in any other way use her words - ask first, alright?
|
