Discrimination

Throughout my entire life I have been brought up to perceive other Human beings as equals and that it is wrong  to judge by one’s shade of melanin, or by one’s size of feet and certainly not by one’s preferred Church clothes. Of course these are perhaps peculiar features which one could judge a person on, but I’d just like to point out that prejudging someone on their race is just as ridiculous are prejudging someone because they are wearing a rather unflattering brown jacket which does not indeed match their skin in any way and so they definitely do not have a sense of taste or style in any way.

It is very well for one to say ‘I do not judge, I love everyone’, because that is obviously heinous blasphemy to the laws of discrimination. Everybody hates someone. This is not meant to be an indirect attack on the conduct of which we, as humans live our lives, but is merely a statement relatable to us all, even if we fail to admit it. Everyone hates someone, be it because once someone asked to borrow your blue gel pen in pre-school and then never returned it, conjuring up a livid fire of hatred and causing you to make a personal vendetta against that person; or perhaps whilst in your public library, you simply saw someone who you preferred to show distain for, rather than gentle indifference. Indeed, distain can cause pleasure (for the conjuror anyway). Sometimes it is simply nice to not like a person; it shows variety within your range of emotions and human interaction.

However, I am in no way encouraging a rebellion within humanity, sparked by a few controversial words by a nomadic misanthropist who loathes her very existence and that of everyone around her. I am highlighting how it is perhaps worse to pretend that we all get along like bees in an beehive (exclude the episodes when the drone bees gang-rape the Queen and then brutally force her to lay eggs for the remainder of her short life…..) and that we should get off our do-gooder’s high-horse and just admit that there are some entities in Life that we cannot control: our abilities to hate.

Hopefully we are all mature enough not to actually show our hatred, but to at least show a sense of civility and false affections. Yes, here I am accusing humanity to be superficial and that behind every smile there is a pernicious abhorrence for just about anything that dares to show even a glimpse of nuisance. So what? Hate is hate, and like deathly fire, once sparked, it will intensify as time goes on, with only [holy] water to threaten its nefarious glow.

Disclaimer: After reading this prose you will perhaps hate me, the creator of such monstrous and disreputable thoughts. Good. I hate you too. Now get out of my yard.

Only Daria understands me...

Copyright © JRFB 2012

The Uncensored Pen: Do YOU Want To Write Here?

The Uncensored Pen: Do YOU Want To Write Here?: When she's not getting carried away with lofty visions of global success, Floraidh is actually plotting her climb towards global success. Th...

Rouge

I gaze at the fruit as she pulls at its soft skin, tearing it with her teeth which appear to glow a luminous white in contrast to the unforgettable bright reds and oranges as they ooze out.

What was once a pristine, spherical lump of softness is now a misshapen, ugly, mangled mess. She sucks at it - the innards being absorbed from one organism into another. But no matter how natural the process, this image before my eyes disturbs me. For nothing so lovely should be treated in such a dishonourable way. The fruit, (barely recognisable) seems to bleed small fragments of life in its desperate attempt not to prolong its own, but to begin the life of others. Only one escapes, as it glides down the chin of the oppressor, in one long slippery movement.

The others were not so lucky.

The fruit breathes its last breath and collapses in on itself, exhaling a sigh as juices protrude - from ripe, tender skin to a wrinkled, shrivelled husk; thus mirroring the lives of our own species. It is a very strange spectre; like watching a plump, new born baby with skin as soft and smooth as a pearl of the sea suddenly merge into the archaic, crippled old man it is destined to become after a lifetime of memories, wither away into the darkness from whence it came.

*

It no longer resists. The oppressor has won and celebratorily wipes her mouth with a handkerchief of the same white as her teeth. Horrified, she is taken aback when she catches sight of a dark red, clotting like blood as it seeps into the open pores of the handkerchief; the blood of her victim.

As she frantically rushes to the nearest pale of water, to inspect the damage done to her mouth - where the danger had begun - the one and only spawn of life from the fruit lies still on the damp earth. Silent; waiting. Waiting for Light to come, to appear from hiding and nurture its growth. The girl screams with hysteria as her blood-shot eyes spark after fearfully gazing at her mouth in the pale.

Dripping with cold, dark, sparkling blood, its smell is repulsive - like decrepit jagged metal rusting on the side of a deserted road. Although no one is around, the smell lingers, adding a weight to the air, hoping to intoxicate the next living man, woman, child, or fruit that has the misfortune to come across it.

The seed of life listens, but does no hear; it breathes but does not inhale; it grows, it flourishes, it lives. For it comes - even the darkness and dreariness of the commotion and horror cannot obstruct the pureness of nature's gift to our troubled world: Light.

Comforted by the warmth of Light, as if by instinct, the seed of Life stretches its roots down passed the screams of death and into the cool earth, embracing a chance for new life to begin.

The sounds of the girl are lost. Only nature can be heard now. The inculpable, pure shoots sprout from the spawn of the fruit, slowly curling and uncurling in euphoric replenishment. Energy is re-released back into the soil, the earth quivers with excitement as it soaks up the new Life. 

Much time may pass, yet still in the garden of men, although nature seems to be lost, the strong, tall steams; the broad thick leaves; the glorious, ripe red fruits all remain on the tomato plant - spawned from death. And not a single fruit from this plant of righteousness is to be harmed.

Copyright © JRFB 2012

The Chill

Good Gentleman, Good Lady, oh I wish that you could see – 

There’s sincere truth that comes with Civility, 

A certain charm lies in my heart 

Begging for yours to stay 

Until tomorrow, for just another day. 

Having parched my heart with burning scorn 

Drier still like the Sahel, the Corn 

Of my love cannot flourish, 

In an Empty garden – fruitless 

Are my efforts – unless collaborated with your prowess 

For your secret utterance so sweet 

Yet Devious, fell from the ivy tree 

Strangling your ability 

To love a soul (minus your own) 

Hearing the magnitude of the fall - 

For Hours I perched, alone; afraid

For your echoing Voice haunts me, above my grave

Slipping               out            and              in

Those weak and crumbling shelves of terror

Heavily Stowed away  – my mind is a Mirror

Crushed, shattered, splintered, broken –

Nothing can fill space left -  the words unspoken

Misery ubiquitous, hopelessness lost

The Frosty whispers chill

Our Flame, hardened, brittle – still.

Copyright © JRFB 2012

Walking In The Snow

.

These pale flecks of frosted emotion sting

my skin (bare) when I walk

with you.

A seething so sudden, that

at first, it is unnoticeable: purely snow.

Then Cold turns to cinders - turns to

Ash; scoring, cutting, infecting

my Body with your Curse

.

I blame the snow, but I should blame

You.

The numbness in my fingers

stings from your cold spite -

.

Yet I continue, persisting on our voyage across this icy road:

My heart, once again replenished with flaming desires - childish yet

visible; today, after your bitter touch

Falls to the ground... Cracking,

Splintering with an essence of you

.

The warm face of the sun, distant and rare

Shines no more -

Not in winter, at least, whilst

.

Walking in the snow
.

Copyright © JRFB 2012

Home.

She came home last week. Her soul, delayed for six years, dragged back here by her weary, wandering, impoverished feet having already deserted their own helpless body; floating aimlessly in the abyss of day dreams and night time terrors, she landed here, on sandy shores, sprinkled with prickled bushes and beach shrubs..


Her body, though encrusted with seaweed and bitter brine from the waters, glimmers like the crystals of water running free down her body, as if they were enjoying their freedom for the dark sea. She is not shipwrecked, nor lost, nor washed ashore on some heavenly bay of the gods, she is home; but she is unaware of how much significance the lapping waves, tainted by milky white tips have.


The sun is up high, it must be nearing midday, but nothing of time or reality can really be felt, only the ecstatic giggling of waves as they gently glide down on the hard, cool sand, before softly retreating home, back into Neptune's cave. Those sparkling waters, the serenity, yet brutality of the waves, the high sun's rays brightening everything in sight; it was all so sublime, so exquisite. Despite her awe of the enticing landscape, Cherry failed to notice the way the Wind, mindful and gentle, charmingly motored a light breeze mirroring how a mighty hand might nudge someone on their way from the sloping hard sand onto the paler, more inviting grains with gentle caresses of his invisible forces. Cherry, on reaching the top of the slope, faintly collapsed in the way that weary bodies keel over after utter exhaustion. The chalky sand began gently soothing her grubby feet, prickled and pinched bythe dune plants which peeped among the fragments of the warm silk beneath her. Cushioning her raw soles, Cherry could not help but allow the delightful massages from the rippling grains and softkisses from the sun to overcome her, and soon those soporific lids yielded to the warm breezes.


A deep mist invaded her psyche, objecting light's admittance into the corridors of her brain. Her eyes flicker from empty room to empty room. Her legs mechanically run, never conquered by fatigue, but fueled by horror. Her chest pulses rapidly. However, like a grandfather clock being launched out a five story window, no time at all seems to pass whilst she darts around the empty chambers, frantic, searching, lost in her own mind; on her own soil.

A tumultuous clap of thunderclouds shakes her from the internal darkness of her mind, but now the hellish gloom pervades reality. The rain beats down. The sand is ripped apart. The grains which were once as soft as velvet are flung up and hammer into the concrete ground. All forces focus on their victim: vicious and merciless, the razor-shards of sand tear at Cherry's salty arms and back as she leaves them exposes having recoiled into a less vulnerable position. She cries out a devastating scream when the relentless stony jabbing now draws blood on her shoulders, but her shouts for mercy do not seem to inspire any sympathy on those who control the weather. Weak, dehydrated and now with her body covered in blood and sand, Cherry seeks refuge by slowly, but productively heaving herself back into the monstrosity that brought her to this doom in the beginning: the Ocean.


Never in her life had anything been as refreshing than the instant Cherry dived into the stirring waves. The violence above the surface softened abruptly and an air of tranquility arose. Cherry descended deeper and deeper into her liquid garrison of still numbness, frantically trying to shake the raucous sound of the splattering pebbles of rain. With her eyes shut and her breath held, she waited. The mist was seeping back into her thoughts; that awful darkness. But the storm, the precipitation, it would rip her limb from limb, shredding her bones, heart and body; she must remain under the refuge of the compassionate sea. The oxygen gathered when inland was depleting, Cherry thought that if she did not surface now her body may collapse and just one sharp intake of salt water may drown her lungs and destroy her. Yet the rain was like icicles plummeting from the dark sky, shivering, waiting to kill. Either way, Cherry was against some force of nature (the Water offered only temperamental relief, she was not expected to stay under forever).

With the light fading, and her head soaring away from consciousness, away from survival, Cherry dragged her now weighty arms through the thick water towards what she believed to be ultimate death directly above her.

The water parted for her struggling head and neck when she came up, vehemently spluttering and coughing out the significant volume of water which had begun to pervade her organs during her dive. Her eyes, kept shut due to the brine burned when she pried them open; the light trickled down from the heavenly sky.

She opened them wide. The rain had stopped. There was the high Sun, smiling, coaxing, as if it had never experienced a storm in its entire existence. The sand hugged onto her body, as if each grain had absorbed the golden elation emitted from the inviting rays of the Sun and wanted to share their joy.

Cherry Reason, perched knee deep in the shallow, lukewarm water scanned the shore: the glowing sand, the deep greens and purples of the vegetation on the banks, the smooth, crystalline sky, free from any clouds.

Here she sat; she is Home.

Copyright © JRFB 2012

Free Indirect Narrative (practice..): To be revised

I am an aboriginal being. I come from quitea distance, actually. My mother brought me here in her automobile. It’s big,this city, a labyrinth of leaden streets, winding this way and that.

The elderly man, sitting opposite the brownboy noted these odd utterances, shaking his head, admiring the fluidity of thechild’s speaking (for one does not tend to speak English in The Saway);glittering rays smile over the huts, the stream trickles on, nothing bites atthe soul more than the hard antithesis between two worlds: the status struggleof the city and the tranquil serenity of the countryside. For that, Gregorycould account for.

I want to help. I can change things – stalewords. Stale, cold, undeniably false words. I know where the power lies, whatreally lies beneath the silt of the world; but they had after all brought thisupon themselves, it was their transgressions, their obstinacy which evoked thetar of the soul, the Maelstrom. Twisting and untwisting, the pale blue smoke,inhaled by the darkbeaters palpitates around the room. Mr Clark seems to beunaware and continuous looking on with admiration at the wonderfully rare,bronzed child in front of him.

Of course, of course, Gregory. His eyes,mismatching, both light brown, but the left, spiced with yellow flecks, staredahead, statuary and determined; this is the Son of the Souls, thought Mr Clark,scribbling a conclusion conveying the maturity and conscientiousness of theboy.  He was glad that the youthappreciated the severity of the situation, for he was their only hope.

They stood, exchanging handshakes, theyoungster managing a smile through the air of hefty silence, tentativelyretrieved the satchel and left. 


Copyright © JRFB 2012

You Can Never Be Mine

As you clasp my Heart it crumbles into

Nothing.

When I breathe in your beauty -

It chokes me inside;

Every time I leave you

it's like half of my Life has gone,

the flames of existence brutally diminished -

Ghosts of sorrow remain -

But I know I'll only hurt you.

Seeing what I have done to you

Breaks my Heart;

it was never my intention to see you

Fall -

Hearing the very words I dreaded; ones I made you speak

engulfs my parched Soul with seething ruin.

But eventually, I wish to be

Free

         of the horrifying Truth.

I know now that things may never be the same:

every time I see your Face

the wounds in my Heart sting

and your own Heart - splintered -

With my own Selfishness.

                      Self-forgiveness for how I've made you feel is

Unthinkable.

I would choose you over my own Dead body

Always - Love leads to ruin,

Friendship leads to yet more pain.

Because of Me, it now hurts us both

to look at one another.

Because of Me, our whole lives may be shattered

and rebuilt with missing and ill-fitting fragments. 

Because of Me, this agonizing cycle of love

            Will never end - 


Copyright © JRFB 2011

My gift to you

The best thing about life? You don't have to be miserable, if it suits you better. To see the world through rose petaled specs is more rewarding than defiling the gift of being alive.
Time is limited on this side of paradise, so I would advise overlooking the strenuous 'ache' of beingness and appreciating the ardent flames of life!

Copyright © JRFB 2012

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died (video): by Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air -

Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset - when the King

Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away

What portion of me be

Assignable - and then it was

There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -

Between the light - and me -

And then the Windows failed - and then

I could not see to see

By Emily Dickinson

Life: an entity we can all enjoy

Life is something precious. I feel that we sometimes forget this, overlook it,or focus solely on what isn't going right. Life can be guided and misguided; shaped and re-shaped; lit up and distinguished. My Life is something which I have learnt to value very much. Although I am fortunate enough to have never experienced a mishap which would alter my way of living for the rest of my existence, it is this reason that I feel blessed to breathe the fresh breeze every day, to feel the pulse of the Earth under my toes.

 Of course there are those days where all rational thinking about the sanctity of Life is lost, and I much rather would stay enclosed, stuffed between the bed and the duvet, blocking the Sun and all other sources of vitality from my clouded mind. I have appropriately called them my 'Dark Days'. They occur approximately once a fortnight, and everything seems to crumble to lonesome, fragile dust and self-pity (and loathing). I seem to forget that this moment is fleeting and I will soon return to my headquarters of optimism, golden hope and a genuine adoration for the spiritual connection between Light and Life that I feel when everything is running smoothly.

Life is exquisite, differential, purposeful; but only if you allow it to be.

Every day, having been roused from the bed of dreams where my soul is allowed to explore beyond the 'limitations' of Life, I seek to discover an intention for my waking, a reason for my rupture of sweet slumbers. I discovered this: each day is different, therefore each day there is something different to live for.

I did not have to look far, for I did not even leave the house; gazing at the burning Sun, inhaling an air of light, darkness, joy and sorrow, I realised. The slight tittering and fluttering of morning birds, ecstatically soaring around the sky, seemed to burst into lurid colours: deep greens and browns surrounded the light, bursting like works of fires, shattering into burning shards of feathery glass. There; the smell of recently mowed grass, sharp and sweet like an exotic fruit juices invaded my nostrils, overcoming any doubt of whether to turn of the light and retreat back into sweet sleep. 

This beauty, this euphoria, these sensations which Life provokes within, surely make vitality Victor in this battle - a skirmish between dreams and reality day and night, light and death. Yet, on both sides, the adversaries seem to drift together, blurring any such boundaries between them. In short, there is no distinction. Life is what you want it to be; it may indeed be lived through Death, or Imagination or Midnight Hours.

Each day I try to perceive Life as something new, a Friend, a Lover, a Stranger - all are equally as satisfying a seach other. All are unique. 

I adore Life and its changeability.This is the beauty of Nature, of the Soul.

Copyright © JRFB 2012