[x]

What We're Here ForLawrence Bradley was grading papers when the door knocked. It was muted by the heavy wood of the door, or perhaps the person on the other side simply wasn't knocking hard enough, but there all the same.

"Just a minute," he called. Finishing the last of the comments on the current paper, he capped his pen and went to get the door. He was surprised to find Autumn on the other side, textbooks in one hand and a small wicker basket in the other.

"What can I do for you today, Miss Fanshaw?" She was looking far better now than the emotional wreck of last night. She gave him a smile.

"Nothing today, Professor."

He nodded at the basket. "What's th

PaperI asked a published author what the greatest accolade they ever received for their work was. It wasn't being on all the bestseller lists, or the fans, or winning the Pulitzer. It was the one person who bought a dozen copies, ripped out each page one by one, and wallpapered their home with his words.

The Darkest Evening of the YearThey had met at the café before, but this was the first time by happenstance. He spotted her first as he opened the door, just as the barista was passing her what he already knew to be hot chocolate. Autumn got the exact same thing every time they met here on the darker side of the year; hot chocolate, made with milk, don't hold back on the whipped cream. He didn't have to wait long to be noticed; he barely had time to call out before she had already seen him.

"Lawrence!" Her face lit up with recognition. "Out for a bit? Leaving your poor cat alone again?"

He knew he was being teased, but he smiled anyway. "You know that furball can't

(A)Musing - Part OneIt took ten minutes for Lawrence Bradley to realize he was still on the same paragraph, reading without actually reading. He blinked at the page rather dully before opening the bedside table drawer and fishing out a bookmark. The story would not progess tonight, not as long as these thoughts weighted heavily on his mind. He folded up his wire glasses and laid them on top of the book. Sighing, he slouched his way into a more horizontal position.

It would have been a lie to claim he wasn't attracted to her. And Lawrence Bradley was, among other things, a honest man. He was attracted, but he didn't know why.

She was quite sweet, but no more so

(A)Musing - Part TwoWhen she found her pencil doodling swirls and nonsense pictures in the margins for the third time, Autumn sighed and gave up, throwing the offending instrument into the jar on her desk. She stretched her arms above her head and brought them down to ruffle the back of her head, yawning. Papers wouldn’t write themselves, but she couldn’t finish anything tonight.

She wondered if he would invite her to tea again sometime. Or should she? Was there some sort of protocol to this sort of thing? The memory of his bustling around his kitchen brought a smile to her face and a warmth to the bottom of her chest that she wasn’t unfamili

My spine is a ribbon unraveledYou asked me to write your eulogy,
but there’s three sides to every story
and it is not enough to write.

There is no more music in me:
You bound our spines,
vertebral curvatures
stitched together
where I end and you begin,
but maybe you never belonged to me.

Hardback TextbooksIn retrospect, Gender Studies wasn't the best class for a non-confrontational student. But it was too late to drop now; there was no way she'd get her deposit back. She pretended to study her textbook very hard, trying to filter out the class discussion going on around her. Why did the professor have to use discussion circles?

"I'm just saying, if a chick is, you know, wearing fishnets and a halter top, mini-skirt halfway up her knee, slinking around all skanky, you can't really blame a guy. She obviously wants it - if she looks like she wants it – "

The book snapped shut. That was enough. She gripped the textbook in one hand and threw

Lighthouses and Rockets1. Lights Out

He lived in an abandoned lighthouse. Always said he'd get it fixed up, be a light for lost souls, but he never did. He always ended up spending his income on coats and shoes for the homeless.

We buried him at sea last week. It was a cold, grey service, but our feet were warm.

2. Lost

I drove from San Francisco to New York, Seattle to El Paso, down every back road and blue highway, all the late night diners and greasy
spoon truck stops, checked into every hotel, motel, bed and breakfast inn, and campsite. Then the neighborhood library closed down and no map could lead me back home again.

3. Pink and Yellow

His first word wa

SuperimposeHe doesn't look like a gymnast. He's all button down shirts and frazzled grey hair framing wire spectacles, a picture perfect professorial archetype down to the very tips of his frayed shoelaces. But he was a gymnast once, or so he tells us, and I believe him because he smiles like he knows something while he's chatting before class.

It's strange to see that image superimposed over the current one – the distinguished professor in pressed khaki slacks and a jacket, worn brown loafers exuding a faintly courteous manner (you can always tell them by their shoes), and a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand – versus the athletic ki

Second Impressions"Professor Bradley?"

He turned from the copier to respond to the voice behind him. One of the girls from his Literature class stood half in the doorway, one hand on the frame, the other gripping the satchel slung over her shoulder.

"How can I help you, Miss... Fanshaw was it?"

"Yes. I had a question about our first assignment if you don't mind?"

He caught the question in her tone. A shy one, then. He tended to be rather fond of his quieter students – they didn't make waves and turned everything in on time. They made up for the boisterous ones.

"Ask away – I always have time for my students." He pulled the stack of sheets from t

Will-o'-the-wispShe wears a necklace made
of bones,
ossified phalanges gripping
her throat
like a rasping phantom.

Her heart is hard
and heavy,
full of dust and debts
unpaid.
Her corset is laced
too tight;
her ribs are being crushed
by lace
and internal pressures crawling
up her throat,
where the necklace chokes them all
back down.

They never found her
lover's head,
guillotined under train wheels when
he tripped
over rails hidden from the pool
of light
cast by the cast-iron lantern.
The railroad
men said it was a tragedy.
She said
he was pushed.
They carried
her by the arm, back to her porch swing
and left.

The hushed glow of distant
lanterns
beckons;

Off TopicIt takes twelve minutes
to assemble sixteen desks
in a perfect circle.
Or as perfect as I can get it.

Then it takes another hour
for the first stragglers to wander in, seating themselves.
The professor always arrives seven
minutes before class begins.

He sits on the left side
while discourse flows easily among
the discordant voices.
The exchange rate on ideas
is ten seconds of silence for a halting opinion,
unsure of itself,
but backed up with a quoted passage
from page one twenty-three, read aloud then cut off -
contradicted by a second opinion.

The first voice breathes easy;
the spotlight eyes are elsewhere.

In the

TurquoiseTurquoise
beads hang from
her throat, wrists, ears,
braided into her hair,
clinking like an abacus.
The earrings from her mother
with a bell laugh.
The tasteless bracelet from
her cheesy sister who shared
her black licorice hair.
The heavy pendant from
her frail grandmother who wore it
fifty years until Winter
claimed three generations.

SandcastlesI want to know your hands like I want your hands to know the wrecked coastline of my body, knotted kelp hair and driftwood spine, shell pink skin and sea glass eyes. Your hands are made for building sandcastles from leftovers; I have all the materials you’ll ever need if you’ll just make me beautiful.

beaut(if)ulYou exist in the
space where beautiful is a
question unanswered.

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Joy in Sorrowi.

A simple backflip
to tease the audience – now
take a deeper breath.

ii.

A beat of silence;
the audience hanging on.
The clowns know you're there.

iii.

Do not twist that way
before the tall man in black
walking on crutches.

iv.

Look up – but not down.
Let go if you want, but the
net won't save you now.

v.

Youthful insurgents
flip together in perfect
synchronization.

vi.

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cold.

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She was born along the sea strand, where the ocean met solidity and pounded it into tiny grains. Perhaps she was delivered in a clump of seaweed or crawled her way out of a pink conch shell and learned to swim before learning to walk. She carried an air of calm serenity that rippled around her like an aura wherever she went, content to flow ins

Periwinkle TeaIt's only about 1AM but it feels so much later and I don't know why.

I get nights like that sometimes, especially when I've spent so much of it reading and everything I've ben reading on dA tonight has been soft or sad or subtle or bittersweet or any combination of those things and I'm typing this with my entire left hand and only two fingers of my right because the thumb and forefinger still have residue from the bag of potato chips I can't stop nibbling on.

I'm out of tea and this makes me sad because I don't really want to make more this late but maybe I will anyway because I'd like to trade in my potato chips for chocolate sticks. I thi

Drowning in Reverse x. I still have your phone.

ix. The boardwalk carnival was shut down a few months later, roped off and boarded up like a condemnation of joy. The ferris wheel still rose high above the skyline, towering in silent reminder.

viii. The funeral was on a beautiful, balmy, sunny day and somehow that made it all the worse. The wind would pick up a little and ruffle your goldspun hair and I could hope, just for a moment, that you were still here.

vii. It was a cold, white room. I don't know why hospitals are so cold. Or maybe it was just me - maybe it was just me trying to siphon out all of my warmth and channel it into you.

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Babydolls and RacecarsDear Rosie,
I have your baby doll. Give back my racecar or she gets it.
- Tommy

Dear Tommy,
Don't you dare hurt my dolly. Racecars are stupid anyway.
- Rosie

Dear Rosie,
Baby dolls are stupider. So I threw her off a bridge.
- Tommy

Dear Tommy,
Mommy got me a new baby doll because she loves me more than you. So there.
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I don't care. Daddy took me out for ice cream and then we went to the park to play catch.
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Something Like OptimismHe loved the city most at night.

Not midnight – midnight was cliché, passé; midnight was for Cinderella, and he was never leaving this ball. The fog rolled into the San Francisco bay on a gentle wind, the slightest touch of cold ruffling through his hair. The golden bridge shone on clear nights but tonight it glowed, softened by the natural blanket and cast a smoldering warmth in the black.

He cast one leg out, dangling over the lip of an abandoned, rather Victorian looking house. From here, his unobstructed view could take in the massive expanse of water on three sides and the distant gleam of a delirious nightlife, choking

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The Watchmaker's Lover - Revision

by =SilverInkblot, Oct 18, 2012, 7:46:17 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

_{Your clockwork appendages
were cold to the touch.
The industrial complex of your mind
was grating gear against gear
where the unoiled works
kept clacking away; your atrium
was a tick-tocking machine
that counted the hours while the rust settled in.

The mainspring spiraled round
your mechanical heart tensed
so tightly it showed in your face,
in your quivering hands,
your troubled eyes.
The unlubricated escapement never
released, oxidized into place
from ages of neglect.

Your lonely footsteps echoed
under orange gaslamps submitting
to the glare of red lanterns.
Used parts are yours for the taking;
here, a hairspring; there, slender
legs under shredded petticoats.

The joints of your fingers corroded
with arthritis and green rust,
curled around curls
of Caryatids uncalibrated
to your pendulum swing.
Your flinted eyes filed flaws away,
groomed for the fluxing process.

Oscillating gears locked into place
before your backlash recoil
forced the dual mechanism apart
with shallow breaths emerging
from beneath the beck iron,
until dawn glances from the window
and your mainspring rewinds itself,
annealed,
awaiting the next night uncoiled.}

The Watchmaker's Lover - Revisionby =SilverInkblot

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

Original

I asked (who else?) Dr. Minnick to look over this for me a few days ago. One of our conversations revolved around clarity, which reminded me of this piece; I've always been kinda nervous about my Technical Romance series, because I'm never quite sure the terminology does what I want it to - I always worry that the vocabulary obscures what's happening. That said, here a glossary of terms so you can put the puzzle together for yourself:

The mainspring is the power source of a mechanical watch - this is the part you wind up. When the tension runs out, the mainspring has to be rewound.

The escapement controls the motion of the gears - the contained energy of the mainspring "escapes" here. Responsible for the ticking noise a watch makes. An unlubricated escapement cannot tick, therefore cannot release the tension.

A hairspring controls the motion of the balance wheel, which itself controls the speed of the escapement.

Caryatids are decorative female figures that are often carved into the pilaster or column of a clock.

Files were once an integral part of clock making, used to shape nearly every part of a clock.

I'll let clock-dictionary.com explain this one: "Flux: A substance applied to metals which are being brazed or soldered. The flux is designed to help the liquid brazing and soldering metal properly to 'wet' the parent metal or metals being joined by reducing the risk of an oxide film forming on the work."

The beck iron is an archaic term for the stake or anvil where metal is bent or hammered upon.

Annealing is a heat treatment that removes the effects of previous hardening. Insert your metaphor here.

Sometimes I also worry that I'm a huge nerd, but I never worry about that for long

- [link]

Questions

1. Is the terminology too much? I realize I've kinda provided my readers with an entire dictionary, but do you get it even without knowing the specifics? Or does that fact that you have to put it together yourself help reinforce the metaphor of a well-made clock?

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*MineralAccident Jan 14, 2013 Student Writer

I adore the terminology. The flow is definitely a bit better and there are parts you linger on in this one that enhance my own enjoyment of it. Mechanical, and yet entirely savory.

=SilverInkblot Jan 14, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you! That's pretty much what I was aiming for right there

!travelgirlxx Jan 14, 2013

Hi! Your poem has been featured as a fave on my 1st ever Sunday Feature journal!
[link]

=SilverInkblot Jan 14, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you!

!travelgirlxx Jan 14, 2013

~intricately-ordinary Jan 11, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I'm a little bit of a bad reader here... but often, unless I am very confused, I don't look up words I don't know

That said, even without knowing the vocabulary (I read the description before but skipped the words to see if I would still understand it) I still found it clear and very technical and mechanical in the sense I think you wanted. Since you are comparing it to a human, it made it easier to have a rough idea of what part represented what and what it all meant in the bigger picture. I do believe some people would be put off by not understanding; but me, ignorant to technology as I am, adored the metaphor and read along easily.

A couple suggestions:
This piece is prose-like in the clear and concise grammar and sentence structure it has. So, these lines
"The mainspring spiraled round
your mechanical heart tensed
so tightly it showed in your face,"
really felt off. I believe, if I read the phrasing right, it would help to have a comma after round.

Also, and this is a personal opinion so I understand entirely if you don't want to include it, I think the piece would benefit from a small break in the mechanics to talk about the person on a human level. I think continuing the metaphor is great, but if for a second you managed to halt the flow and add a sense of vulnerability to the person you are describing, it would enhance the lasting impact of the poem.

I think it works excellently for a Technical Romance series, wonderful job utilizing this terminology so well!

=SilverInkblot Jan 11, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I think that a comma after round would separate it too much from the next line; the spring is supposed to be winding around his heart and that causes the tension in his face. A comma after round sets that line too far apart and makes it sound like a different piece of his mechanism altogether.

I don't want a sense of vulnerability to the watchmaker - he's intentionally unlikeable, or is supposed to be. That's why he reduces people to spare parts for his use

He may be my protagonist of sorts, but he's no romantic hero.

~intricately-ordinary Jan 11, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Oops! I did read the first phrase wrong then, I think? I wasn't sure where the pause was because there are two verb phrases. Perhaps, then,
"The mainspring spiraled round
your mechanical heart, tensed
so tightly it showed in your face,"

Alright! I certainly understand why you would want to keep it that way, it's wonderful as is.

=SilverInkblot Jan 11, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

No; no commas anywhere in that section please. I might be able to reword it differently, but as it is now, it needs to be whole.

~RaccoonNinja Jan 6, 2013 Hobbyist Artist

this is so beautiful

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