February 2012
1 post
7 tags
Untitled [Sold]
The man lay beside his buyer, staring into the leaky blue of a stranger’s eyes. His own were as pits. He had discarded himself on the floor, the rumpled pile a monument to defeatism, a shell split of itself. He was tender. “So, what exactly do you do?” His buyer asked, reaching to tuck a strand of hair behind the man’s ear. He closed his eyes – I am of stone – and smiled weakly. He heard himself...
January 2012
3 posts
3 tags
What I Can Remember
“The trick,” he began, “is simple.” I could hardly believe so, especially coming from such a withered and taxed man. He worked some moisturizer into his cracking hands as he continued. “You lie in waiting, for what seems like ages. It’s like you’re a snake in a cave. And outside the sun is rising and falling, and the sky is turning about, and night is...
3 tags
“I wish only to rut and nuzzle in the darksome parts of pillow forts and massage...”
7 tags
Forty More Years
There are a multitude of maladies that I might surrender myself to– In truth, the names of despair are legion– And seated in their long yellow rivers I would wallow my way To the inevitable confession, The repentance, Punishment, Short, nasty, and sharp; Deep-seated in my mid-brain I can feel that this is what I crave.
And would it be that I could call out from my lolling tongue: “These are my...
December 2011
5 posts
7 tags
Recollections on a Cloud-Choked Night
I have seen the world and it is burning; I have seen my flesh and it is burning; I have seen the topless towers of Ilium come cascading Down down down And burning To the deepest pit Is burning And my eyes Are burning and opening wider than I have ever known. But these sockets– They sputter sparks like an engine And scatter cinders in spirals. All this is burning And this is truth.
I believe...
7 tags
An Evening's Thaw [For Those Who Would Like To... →
8 tags
An Evening's Thaw [Part Five]
“Hello? Is that Mr. Jeremy Clapham? I’m afraid that I will be requiring your services tonight.”
When Evelyn’s eyes rolled to again, the operation was complete. Jeremy Clapham, pet taxidermist and avid amateur surgeon, had transplanted the courage of eleven or twelve gerbils – we still are not sure if one got away – directly into Mr. Peters’ brain. He gave a few blinks and regarded us wearily.
...
7 tags
An Evening's Thaw [Part Four]
I thought of leaving him, but resolved that he would only fester in my cupboards and cause a great mess, and so I was forced to root him out using an ingenious – if I do say so myself – trap composed of a burning watermelon. Sure enough, he was drawn out of the dark and toward the sizzling, succulent flesh of the fruit. (I cannot think of a single man who would not do the same.) After that, the...
8 tags
An Evening's Thaw [Part Three]
He fumbled his way into my office a mere three weeks after enrolling in a course I was teaching. I cannot remember the subject. But I can remember the look on his face as he inched forward across my office floor — it was like a sea cucumber, all damp and terrified. Trying to ease his evident panic at having to face another human being, I offered him a cigarette. It was an hour later that I...
November 2011
2 posts
7 tags
An Evening's Thaw [Part Two]
Mr. Peters – Mr. Evelyn Peters – was a milquetoast man of moderate height. He had been abandoned at the age of five for his overtly curious nature, and was adopted by a family of stray cats until they died. At the age of ten he was found in a gutter and promptly sent to the most esteemed boarding school in the Vatican countryside. It was there that he had his curiosity surgically removed;...
7 tags
An Evening's Thaw [Part One]
It was during a brief stint as Professor Emeritus of Razzamatology at the University of Bagtown that he came to me one hallowed eve. To this day I cannot possibly postulate why he might’ve ventured toward me – perhaps it was merely the glow from my room on such a brumal night – but no matter the reason he managed to sadly wobble into my office, dribbling a pool of blackened water behind him as he...
October 2011
3 posts
7 tags
The Life and Times of a Martyr in Sackville
Sorry for not posting in a while; life has been quite hectic as of late. To toss out a paltry attempt at making up for my absence, here’s a piece of short fiction that I’ve written.
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It was during my internship, between bouts of minesweeper and pursuing Wikipedia, that I decided to be a saint. I was already halfway there; I myself am Jewish and becoming a Catholic saint...
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The Slaughterer Swims
I once had a thought wherein the slaughterer swam And echoed hallowed gongs throughout my throat, And wept to me: “I bear the bloody gown, my love; I bear our bloody gown. And if I were to melt away from these etherized corpses, To toss a bid for salvation down the clattering throat of God, I do not think it would shake even the smallest lot in life. So I wear this bloody apron, love; I wear these...
7 tags
The Iron Maiden
An experiment in harsher language.
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The Bitch stood spat out by the night. Ugly. Wretched. Her skin loose on her bones. Her flesh bared against the sky. Her naked form hardly trembled in the evening cold but her teeth rattled loose in her maw and a swarm of a breath was leaking into the air. She stretched out as she walked forward, some sort of slow strut, her limpness leaning out to...
September 2011
8 posts
7 tags
Waiting Rooms
Toothless men keep visiting me, Chattering up and down these rusted halls As though I am I a recording booth stretching into infinity And they are begging me to take their voices from them.
I could store them in boxes and seashells and little vials on my walls.
Men keep visiting me with their hair falling out, Pretending they are snakes and this is only a rebirth of the flesh And proffering...
elyktc asked: Hello Elijah, I just wanted to let you know your writing has inspired me to enroll in a creative writing class this year. Keep up the good work!
7 tags
This Place
Almost my entire existence in this place is being stirred in a teacup: Dirty. Haven’t cleaned it since I got here. Cheap chinatown tea with spittle spilling through it As though my backwash were the ocean’s tide, My lips some insurmountable force, My hands the moon. And the dusty lamplight does no justice to me, Not to my glory, Not to my majesty, Not to whatever I have left behind to be here; My...
7 tags
Aflame
How I would wish to be aflame and unquenched– My thirst legendary amongst these dried dunes of desert lands– Rather than slosh amongst this purgatory of promises, Frothing in my impotence. I would wish to be the burning man With split ends screaming in my marrow As though my hair were on fire And this world were on fire And my eyes were blood-buzz-shot-blank-wide as anything I have ever known; As...
4 tags
Anonymous Ponderings
This was dropped in my ask box anonymously. I think it might be a response to this, but I’m not quite sure. In any case, I thought I’d post it up. Enjoy. (And thank you to Anonymous for taking the time to write.)
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you type an email to the future, like a time capsule detailing everything, everything you want her to know. [space]
when it becomes the most important thing that...
7 tags
The Sagging Man
I am the sagging man, the hollow man, Who skimps and scrapes and masturbates In discreet washrooms — alone in my lovely hollow Where the thoughts of the world cannot reach me. And with a dwarfed dick I splurge myself upon the walls Until they drip with love poems and the grisly scent Of perdition. Ah, the toothsome lick. I would like to hereby condemn myself to eternity; What horror to wander...
radamron asked: I Want You To Know That "Greater Things" Is One Of The Most Beautiful Pieces I've Ever Read. I Absolutely Love It.
Anonymous asked: Hi, I was wondering if you could elaborate on a piece of writing you posted back awhile ago. It was titled "An Exercise In Writing". I really enjoyed that piece, but I'm a bit confused on what it was about.
August 2011
7 posts
“I can still remember being left behind, all shiver-bones and suffocation, and I...”
flamesof-fire asked: Greater Things was awesome. Keep it coming, bro! (p.s., i think you should publish these)
7 tags
Greater Things
Part of me still sleeps in the midday breeze, where the clouds trawl above me and eat the sky. There is a inkling in my mind that there were once giants in this place. And they would scrape the heavens with their limbs; they would swing the moon on their chains. Part of me wonders where they went. Part of me has no reason to wonder: it cries murder in the treetops, points to the rivers — here,...
6 tags
Dandelions
And perhaps if we were dandelions we would know cruelty; The wanton children popping heads And laughing at the scattered seeds floating down to concrete, That sit unfulfilled And float like the smallest caskets of the sky. The wind has borne death on its tongue In the saplings not grown, but rather lost Somewhere in the gray-plated glory of dominion. And perhaps if we were clouds we would know...
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Something Stirred [Part Eight]
Do you know what day it is? It’s my birthday. And this series has worked out wonderfully well for ending on this date (the eighth part on the eighth day of the eighth month!). So, here is the final portion of the writing, as well as a link to the whole work. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
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Go down, south, deep into the ground until the tips of the flames can feel your boots all...
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Something Stirred [Part Seven]
And there were so many sharpened smiles. And his brother was at the doorway, picking himself through the house. He leaned hungrily over the man. “Be calm.” Deep in the stomach, something stirred. The sway in the curtains. The poison on the threshold. Curling in the eyes of his brother like a half-man windstorm. Soft skin. The silence pounded at the front door. And his brother moved up the stairs,...
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Something Stirred [Part Six]
His eyes snapped open, heart racing, panic quivering in his eyes, fear trembling through his flesh, flickering, flitting through him. The night swept in hurricane circles, the black gyre swirling as a maelstrom all caught up with doubt and dread and demons, a swirling panic churned from some sea floor. But wait – hold – for a finger reassured him, pressed gently across his lips, the stirring thing...
July 2011
13 posts
8 tags
Something Stirred [Part Five]
It stood framed on the threshold, poison coiling in its mind, flesh blending with the blackness, limbs climbing in and out of the night. The man lay in his bed, sheets draped lovingly across his body, the only divide between his flesh and the world. I let him in. Dreams tumbled within dreams, the twines twisting. The man still slept. The thing stepped closer, moving through the half-light, the...
8 tags
Something Stirred [Part Four]
Sea-sprayed and rising it sang through the teeth, hissing, spitting, clutching at itself in a desperate bid to be whole, to spite its severed parts, to grow and to tempt and to bring men to their knees – women to their knees – their dirty, dirtied knees falling skinned and bruise-bent; what a breath would drip in whispers, doubled and dribbling on the floor while waiting for a pinprick, a slight...
8 tags
Something Stirred [Part Three]
But still something stirred. It crept through the house, breaking, clambering through cracks and corridors, its horns pricking through scalp and skin to taste the kick of the world – a breaking thing – until at last it came to the door, gingerly, as a mistress would when wreathed in night. In the hallway behind, a vicious raping darkness glowed. It was all lace and lash, leather and lust. It...
blakbirdy asked: I'm not super into tumblr, but you're pretty much the only reason I visit it. You and some cartoon artist :)
alsoupicecream asked: I think splitting "Something Stirred" into parts was the best thing you could have done with it on tumblr. It's building so much suspense this way.
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Something Stirred [Part Two]
Still, something stirred. Its path was one of quiet ash. Its footsteps were of fading. The floorboards groaned into a hush with each hoof-trod, splintering silently, breaking softly, weeping lacquer in long laments that left half-dwindled sentences still twisting on the tongue – I met him on a rainy day when I knew not his face – and then: silence. It had passed. Yet still streamed a darkness...
8 tags
Something Stirred [Part One]
Something stirred. Deep in the viscera of the house, something was moving. It flitted across the creaks in the floorboards, the dark in the shadows, the sway in the curtains. It swam through the house like a slow-worm winding thin through a ribcage, wishing to be warm. And, undulating along the skin of night, it shifted velvet through cast shade upon shade, fold upon fold, picking through the...
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Something Stirred [Introduction]
Thank you very much for the feedback! I think I’ll be posting this longer piece in short segments, with a link in the final segment to a page with the whole thing all there all at once. I’ll be posting new segments every Monday and Friday.
This particular piece is, in fact, one that I’ve posted before; you may remember it as Something Stirred. However, I have extended it much...
Thoughts?
I’m thinking about posting a larger piece of prose here on Tumblr, but I’m wondering if it’s worth it…should I post it all at once, as it should be, or should I cut it up so that people may ingest it easily? Do you think that anyone will bother to read a fair chunk of text sitting on their dashboard?
6 tags
I haven’t thought up a name for this one...
alsoupicecream asked: What's the longest piece you've ever written? Was the process mostly linear or did it expand from a few core ideas?
Anything You Want to Tell Me? Anything You Want to... →
7 tags
Hegemony
I had a dream of grey eyes, Lacquered and longing, Burrowed softly into the brow of a Green Man Who stepped with roots unfurling from his legs And the lilacs savagely pruning against him. It was a rainy day in April when he came to me. And the storm plashed against his back as though he was a workhorse, With bellows driven by lightning lashes, And his moss-skin weeping water across the city...
June 2011
5 posts
1 tag
“We are like butterflies, you and I: we crumble in an instant in the hands of...”
7 tags
Iron
I can still remember a time before the taste of iron started weeping through the boards of my house. It’s quiet; still. I remember how the sun used to dapple through the windows in the morning, how I’d shy away from its molten skin. Leprosy. I cannot recall if it can be caught in an instant, like a butterfly, but I’d heard stories, and so I kept my distance. Still, I remember how slightly the...
7 tags
The Evening Wind
There is a particular moment in the evenings, or the mornings, or truly any time at all, when the wind grows manifest. It swirls and grows thick in a maelstrom of rush, flowing briskly over hillsides and splattering on the backs of buildings. It is all feet, this wind. It runs to the battering of a hundred horse-hooves. And in an instant it transforms a forest into a battleground, ravaged by the...
7 tags
The Smell of the Rain at 12:46 in the Morning
I wanted to say that I loved you Like baby-blue ribbons spread out on the floor, Like sparrows and footnotes scattered in the wind, Like the bottom of a wine glass When you’re almost there. Tell me I’m a little closer than yesterday. I’m tired of being chained to an earthquake, Split-stuck inside of an avalanche, Wondering if my quivering will start a war Or just another pebble, rolling, Clinking...
Hello all! Just letting everyone know that I’m back from my hiatus, and am going to resume posting things. I should have some new work later today.
I’m going to be taking a brief hiatus from posting here for the next two weeks or so while I get my life sorted. (Sorry for the lack of posts lately, by the way.)
My apologies.
May 2011
14 posts
Anonymous asked: Please post more music... I love that song you posted. Please, please<3
youtakewhatisreal asked: i really like your improv :D