.diana

.

There will be thick sleep tonight. Drugged on the dull anaesthesia of lullabies,
even the anchorless feel the tug of the deep, consuming like a love, a hunger.
Above, the moon sucks in the sky like a craving, wide-eyed. Dilate. Diana ditched
the forest for the midnight; she's stitched herself to the undersides of stars.
She spears and speaks through the mouths of clouds. Moondrunk, she's sunk
into the currents of our mumbled conversations; our fumbled demonstrations
of humanity. Hunting a heartbeat amongst a fleet of ghosts.

Sleep is her uncountry; the estuary that feeds her sea of sky. She steers
past the arms of drowned suns and daughters that reach from the waters.
Taking names, notes. Traces of heartbreak in the wake of her boat.

War-torn wishers, we flit and fall like sycamore seeds, feeling not high, but afloat.
Even here she hounds us, smiling like a child, dog-hearted. She is ellipsis, eclipse,
the call of the wild slipped behind the scythes of her fingernails. We close
on the guise of the city, the immutable face of a father, and collapse back
to our tiny premature deaths: sleepscorched breath and the smell of surgery.
Flight, distilled. Diana sits and sighs, the virgin queen, unravelling the night
into morphine; saline; the salt of sleepdust rusting round the eyes.

.

* * *

I wrote a lot about sleep whilst I was away. This is largely made up of ideas I salvaged from the wreckage of my attempt at a longer project...
Anyway, at least Greece (and its amazing mythology) was inspirational. I might make a series of these.

Also, some exciting news! Guess who's been given the chance to join the questioning panel for dA's An Audience with Margaret Atwood as part of their 10th birthday celebrations? Hell yes. :D

(R)evolve

daughter of wind and water, caught in a corner
at birth, i was cut
from birdnests of radio wires and disconnected
phone cords by earthworms,
and formed from jurassic dust. for me,
life is the in-between,
where i must parachute endlessly, cutting seams
into the sky – markers
of strewn hearts for the cliff-top gulls to pick clean.
sitting pretty, smug;
clammed shut as a pill bug. queen of voiceless calls,
i revolve.
that is, until i evolve, and hit the freefall -

when all that's left will be dug
deep. my spine,
laced with loose stones;
my barnacle-studded bones.
i'll root with heather,
teeth and hair,
and weave a kether of ferns
for me to wear
as i break from air
and turn,
and knot
into the clot of sleep.

* * *

GAH! WHY IS BLOGGER FORMATTING SO UNBELIEVEABLY CRAP - NAY, NON-EXISTENT!?
Ahem, in other words, please please read this in its proper format here. It just doesn't make sense without the structure.

Inspired by my holiday on the Jurassic Coast. In fact, I wrote most of the basis of this on a deserted cliff top. It's the kind of place where you feel like you've been enveloped, caught between three senders - earth, sea and sky - and you're lost, but so definitely there. Surreal, yet very real.

Happy New Year

Just a quick post to say:

*Happy New Year, everyone!*

I hope 2010 brings much joy, love, and change for the better!


A few resolutions

• Get a better work/play balance
• Focus more on my writing, and learn to persevere with things
• Learn to relax (haha, c'est impossiblé!)
• Be happy (and that's an imperative!) - have even more lulz than in 2009!

Paper Planes

Sometimes it feels as if the world is
turning in on itself, and that I too
am curling up, folding away, and

learning how to fly.
For we were all born
from the insides of stars,

spouting words and colourforms
and every shade of moth-backed night imaginable.
Even me and my stitches.

And to stardust we’ll return.

Maybe I’ll fade through this filtered sunlight,
back to me at five,
discovering the world underwater:

the sun split and scattered across the surface;
the mouths puckered, full of streams; the skin
that flickered and wavered like a mirage

that was not your own. Floating:
that feeling of weightless freedom.
And maybe -

dustclouds opening across my eyes -
I'll be able to come up for air
once more.

* * *

Another poem. I keep getting random urges to write poetry at the moment, so I'm trying to use this opportunity to work at it. This went through a lot of transformations before it got to this state. I didn't really have much idea where I was going with this one!

Less Plath this time: I hope that means there's more of 'me' in this one.

As always, comments and critique are more than welcome.

And of course: Happy Holidays everyone!!

Greetings From Beyond the Embrace of Catatonic Nightmares

The gates to the palace of Versailles

Dear Internets,

So, as you can probably guess from the mere existence of this blog post, I have returned from France! It was really hot and sunny - not that I have anything to show for it, of course my tan has disappeared in the two days I've been home (typical!), although my feet are still a curious shade of purple after being slightly roasted. I visited several interesting places including the Zoo de la Palmyre where I got to feed giraffes, the town of La Rochelle, Disneyland, where I was accosted by thousands of wasps and walked too many miles and, of course, the amazing palace of Versailles. Well, the gardens at least. Typically we chose to go on the one day of the week that the actual palace is closed. Just my luck.

I've now been back long enough to get my head back together again (a messy process) after a couple of weeks when I was actually able to relax for a while (haven't done that in ages, it's not a word that normally features in my vocabulary at all!) and get over the drama of results - which, fortunately, were fine. But what with all the excitement and dangerously-rare relaxing I haven't really had time to write any more articles for a while. What I have been reading is mostly British women's history and feminist theory for my history coursework - and hopefully something will come out of that for here at a later date (I'm currently reading Germaine Greer's 'The Female Eunuch' which is very interesting, so expect something on that at some point), but nothing really suitable to write a short article on.

Hopefully I'll soon get back in the swing of writing, though, and I'll be able to update properly again. I've got several ideas for articles to write, including posts on Emilie Autumn lyrics and J.D. Salinger shorts stories (yay!), but until then, you may have to be patient between posts, I'm afraid!

Yours truly, Terra x

Intermission

Parlez vous français? Bien, je peux parler un peu. Je ne peux pas en mesure á parler français bien - qui est probablement évident! Mais je dois rappelle des phrases parce que je vais a France aujourd'hui pour mes vacances. Je vais visiter des plages, la ville de La Rochelle et la maison très célèbre et magnifique de Louis XIV: La Château de Versailles!

Malheureusement, cela signifie je ne vais pas capable d'écrire un autre blog pour des semaines – parce que je ne vais pas avoir un ordinateur! C’est très triste, mais vrai…

Je vais vous manquez beaucoup!

Et je retourner en des semaines!

- and sincere apologies for my awful French – but I did manage to enlist the help of my lanaguages-savvy sister, so it isn’t as bad as it could have been!