wb :

i resolve not to pine
over the apples
not to let tart
comments get to me
to set the dust dogs free

to find someplace
that produces those
love letters
or perchance somewhere
one can roost
free range

in the middle of this spring
clearing
to find some time
to watch the sky turn
orange

"I feel sad, write a story to cheer me up!"

I looked over the tops of the stacks of books at her pout, almost comical in its childishness. Time didn't leave its trails on her; her eyes twinkled as tender as the day we met. Mine were perhaps a little duller now, but she thought nothing of it. I shifted my gaze back to the books, glanced across the gilded letters on the worn leather spines.

"Well, there are many stories here that are nice to read..."

"No! I want you to write one!"

"Surely you haven't read them all?"

"I haven't! But it doesn't matter, and my name's not Shirley!"

I chuckled and shook my head, and the beginnings of a smile crept into the corners of her lips. It took hold soon enough, and she couldn't bear to hide her glee.

"So, are you going to write one? Mmmmm?"

How could I refuse? But then, I thought, she ought to work a little herself.

"Come over, why don't we write a story together?"

It must have been her plan all along. With a grin from ear to ear now, she lightly stepped over, drew up a chair, and sat down beside me.

"Alright, where do we start?"

A story is a strange thing, fragile as a fledgling, beautiful as it buds, grotesque as it grows, silent in its suffering, and divine in its death. I wanted the story to be hers, as much as one might "have" a story, anyway.

"Well... we need to start with the sad parts, I think."

"Why can't we start with the happy parts? Hey, this is supposed to cheer me up, you know?"

"Yes, but everyone knows what the happy parts feel like, mmm? It's the sad parts that are different for everyone."

"Can't I have just happy parts, anyway?"

"Well... if you don't know what sadness is, how can you feel really happy, instead of just... pleasure?"

While she was mulling that over, I pulled up a piece of paper and two pencils, and drew a little dot in the center.

"That's our beginning."

With a few flourishes, I drew a few spokes from the spot.

"And that's where our sad parts are going to be."

"Shouldn't we have a line instead? Like, a... time... line?"

"Memories don't work like that, you know. They don't go in a straight line. They obey their own laws... and since you're making the memories, you get to decide what happens to them."

She took the sheet of paper from me, squinted melodramatically at my crude drawing, then turned the sheet to the other side. She drew another point in the center, but instead of spokes, she drew a two-armed spiral coming out from it.

"I think I want these memories to... to circle out from the... back into the beginning."

She held the pencil up, and, staring into the air, absentmindedly touched it to her nose. Then she looked down again, and put a little cross on the arm on the right.

"That's where the sad parts are going to start."

Her forehead scrunched for half a minute or so before she turned to me again.

"What sort of sad parts do you usually put into stories?"

I sighed. It wasn't quite easy to describe.

"Uh, as I said, the sad parts are different for everyone..."

She rolled her eyes and pouted again, but turned back to the sheet of paper, still pensive.

"I think that I'll put in... loss."

"What sort of loss?"

"I don't know! Mmm... loss of... you said that time doesn't matter when we're writing it, right?"

"That's... right?"

"Alright then. I'll put in a loss of the future."

I raised my eyebrows at the thought. She stared at me and sighed, as though I were a silly skunk.

"You know, when people make decisions, that's it. That's a loss of all the other futures that might have happened. And you know what's worst? It's that you don't know what you've lost, and you never will. And you'll always wonder."

I paused in thought, my hands almost-unconsciously finding each other, and my gaze fell to my lap. She soon went back to smiling and sketching on the sheet, the scratching of the pencil soothing the strands of my senses. At length, I looked up with a little worry in my eyes.

"How could anyone be happy like that?"

She laughed at me (and she said, said she) with a smile like the rose in June.

"How could you ever feel really happy, knowing that you would be happier or sadder in the future? Mmmm? When you don't know what will happen, then you're free to enjoy whatever you have as much as you want to."

It was my turn to smile. I knew then that she would be a great writer of stories.

"Well, I think I can leave the rest up to you now."

She looked up and smiled at me, and those eyes!- as tender as the day I lost her mother. I rose and stretched a little, and went to get myself a drink. After all, stories don't just have a beginning- you have to watch them as they grow up.

-~-

Written for a writing prompt on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/3u2e9u/wpi_feel_sad_write_a_story_to_cheer_me_up/cxbaj8e

sometimes you can tell
it isnt meat to be
some are too nutty
others are always in a jam

sometimes it's obvious -
someone who sets
the lab on fire
isnt good at baking exactly

true, life's not a picnic
and anyway
there's always the threat
of dengue

sometimes all goes smoothly
but the glucometer reads HI
or you discover
a cavity

sometimes you find the perfect
gingerbread
but the season is over;
it's too latte

Russet leaves and sunset eaves
Calm the heart and quake the knees
Like some melodious disease.

Always the first iniquities
Are the sovereign bonds and the equities
That titillate the intellect
With just enough of fict and fact,
A mediocre tease.

And then, with promises of ease,
The deeds and debts to properties
That one half-willingly contracts
And half as willingly forgets
Upon the payment of the broker's fees,

And the termination of the lease.

---

The spilling amber paints its ease
Upon the cracked mahoganies.
First your hands, and then your eyes,
And then your mind will tell you lies,
Even your gilded vanities.

And with their careless vagaries,
Years on years in every crease.
Clouded eyes and candleglare
Trace each callus, trace each care
Measuring your disabilities.

When did you turn your faculties
To petty things as these?

---

Beside the bottles and the lawyer's sheaves,
Familiar faces, faded memories:
The hanged man, Justice, Temperance,
The hierophant, the empress,
And the lovers- now the divorcees.

Tender laughter, ever may it tease
Your pains away.
Let it linger, let it stay
With the comfort that it guarantees.

Still- wherefore, whence, and whither these
Pangs and pains, o these regrets,
With your philosopher's degrees?

---

Rugged hands that wait on ragged knees
Warm themselves upon the sunset leaves.
Moving with their careless vagaries,
Years on years in every wrinkled crease
As they trace the cracked mahoganies.

Beside the bottles and the lawyer's sheaves,
All I have left are faded memories
And half-forgot philosopher's degrees,
The measure of my disabilities.

Just ask the lovers, now the divorcees-
Only comfort has its guarantees,
And those are merely gilded vanities.

Always like some melodious disease,
Tender laughter- ever may it tease.

Tears drop in the rain
I want to lose again,
see what things are really there.

fold
the stars into consciousness
and the sand into the sky
and see what things are really there.

Tomorrow
is another screen
for the projection of today
Go into that sweet sleep,
remember,
remember,
I will carry your wave into the future.

two signals
converging on NOW
now bright,
now then,
soon we will remember
to see again.

Salt.
Inside of me
dead like the sea,
better than aphrodisiac or pain
shrivel in sun
water gets between my toes,
salt, in the core of me and surrounding me.

I let salt go into the cycle that gives my molecules momentum
Let go:
the rivers flow to the sea
and remember salt, the basis of body
and its temporal inheritance.

Soon,
when we're sitting by the TV,
stars explode,
burning solar systems
streaming neutrinos through our skulls
while we, unbeknownst, munch on
peas

Cosmic wind, give the sight
that remembers how to pass
untrammeled through the universe,
stopping only to be born
and to die.

Someone asked if there was a teapot
floating around Mars - well, orbiting,
which is like falling on nothing.

Mr. Teapot:
I am sorry we left you there.
There are comforts in the dim sky
the red glow is a friend,
there will be a beginning,
a return to peace,
an end.

If ever you have paused your step
Upon the shadow of a sheltered light
And gazed upon the neon-neutered night
Then, mayhap

If you have also heard the voices
Calling, that never listen,
Purring, with every piston
Of a billion vices

If you have heard the cries at night
Of those that wander, those that drink,
Those that halfway peer across the brink
And shudder too with fright,

Then, perhappenstance, you know
That virile madness that is darkness
Must share its terror with its tenderness
And has to go.

And eyes that stare into oblivion
Shall find respite in stuttered lamps,
In limp caress of lukewarm damps
And blind delirium.

The old bells of the city
Are the ones that ring the softest,
Yet the clearest through the air,
The autumn air.

 Their sighing comes to me across the branches,
Echoes off the ivy-scattered bricks,
And wakes me from the beating of my feet upon the road,
The stony road.

O Titan bells of muted bronze,
Release me, if you would, from out your gentle grip,
For vespers leaves us with the shivers of the air,
The autumn air.

You're leaving with the calling bell,
You'll never see how Mother weeps-
Oh, may you see a blessed spell,
And may the heavens weather well.

But come ye back when Summer sleeps,
And Autumn nestles in the well;
And oh! The stories we shall tell!
And, oh!- the stories we shall tell.

I left the city in a daze;
I remember the snow pooling at street corners.
Night constructed blue and clinging haze
to threaten the mourners

with the possibility of a new morning
(how they scrambled, and talked,
and violently ignored each other on the train,)
while the bright edges of clouds were forming
over the hudson river and the drain.

such sights passed behind me, though
I went northward on a steel chain
and thought 'No more of this gyrating flow
and no more sleepless pain.'

so escaped I; there were lawns now,
and wood. The fireflies danced the evening
as I lay, hearing my nieces shriek and play,
holding my fingers against the leavening
stars stretched across the branches like fabric,
waiting for the coming of the day.

and I imagined they imagined I was
a mote on a strange feverish planet filled
with prime numbers and like selves
and pi and beethoven and cups of water on dirty shelves

and I thought if they could do it,
they might very well imagine a dusty me
dreaming of snow on street corners
riding south into a constellation of wonder and spit.

A candle and a table spoon
delores in the living room
she's forgetting all the fables soon

always imagined that time
would freeze for me
like a pet refrigerator
at my beck and call
i thought i
had control of the electricity
supply



the future seemed like a
pale macaron
details unseen but correct
it would be cherry-pie perfect
the chocolate pianos
in the shop window
but



i hadn't counted on
the salt and pepper shaker
storms. or the
wasabi
or the food poisoning
the salt statues
may include me



but you are off
somewhere else
eating eclairs

Softly, sun is rising
I'm gonna begin my day
if I can leave my numb feet at the door,
sleep no more, baby,
it's time to get on your way

used up all my lives
i'm turning the knife in the tale
Let me dream, it's all that's keeping me awake
for your sake,
my body will be a jail

cauliflower fist of gold
combusting in the rain
steam is hot skin when it's rising up
to cup the drops of sky-
after, only tears remain

let me go to there
I wanna dry my hands
and say fuckyou, man to the ceiling
we're stealing the show
and sloping to the badlands

There once was a logician called Steve
Who fucked a mathematician, believe
She waited a week
then peed on a stick
And told him, "dear, I'm contrapositive".

start like this:
fascicle
now forward,
to moscow!
the fads of moustachioed
bound like pages in
a big brown book, berets and black coats
in imitation.

poor brown Stanislaw!
now,
in a ditch in a
                      mug

spit
then,
rot,
mouth of steel, mouth of fog

-- I came to this mud town ere before long
and the harmony of thought,
is equal to the harmony of song)) --

**

but glorious Stanislaw,
we knew him well,
a lass. now gone,
now black like the mud of some last Russian song!
but I came to this town ere before long,

so let me go,
spit!
fog
horse thrust,
i whipped him (he cried, Oh m)
and soon stopped moving and he had stopped moving

pot


fist

left him,

left him there, my raven my lehre
left him for the butterflies and the humming birds
wearing Marx and muddy coats,
he had the body of a clown
so go, fashion figures,
go to! earth now deep,
now shallow, (he is underneath,)
face down

we are all ships passing in the night
sometimes it is smooth sailing and
sometimes it is all for nought.
there are those cruising through life
like a great white and others
going down with amigo icebergs in glory.

and you, my knight, my amore, my
lighthouse, my porthole to the world -
today we slip off the ropes and draw
up the anchors. we return every last
lifeboat, lifejacket and storm provision
we borrowed. the sea-legs return,

the seasickness comes on board.
as you dissappear off the horizon
with your nets and fish caught hook line
and sinker, my rock-climbing facilities,
champagne, hors d'oeveres, chandeliers
vanish as i shrink to

an invisible fishing vessel struggling
with the boom that would keep on hitting
my head. like the story of pi, except the
happy ending; i live off the shark fins
jamming my rudder and the salty sea;
i am no longer in osmotic balance

i'm lucky that i know
how to walk on water