In her eyes reflected the crisscrossed silver of the powerstations ascending into the sky. She always felt so lonely and vacant and filled in a strange emptiness staring up at them. Like heavens and all of the cosmic drainpipe were to sizzle and stain those rods, to slink down in pouring electricity, a way to commune with the galaxies.

Peculiar imaginings riddled her with her legs crossing in their spritely chorus to the bottom of the jutting station, fingers reached out for the cold silver hot in the stinging rays. She slumped back against it, closing her eyes and just listening as the earth and skies trembled at her back, and zaps of telekinetic freefalling energy made static her hair.


Who was this lovely little lady? Where was it she was heading? Removing her shades she tucked them at her purse resting at her hip and placed a foot back behind her. Small songs dug out graves in the stomach and heart of her sampled, crackled vinyl mind. Discs warbled on precarious edges, giants pirouetting in moors and mire, her words breathless feeble descriptions. A tilt back as her jades, swept in stormy sea green overtures, wrapt their way at the distance and the growing dust and dirt that filled its sky, she longed to ride the clouds and mystery of, the faraway grew ugly and frantic in splotches of umbrish and ash. A twister was near, and the panic startled an excitement within.

Where the desert had her romances, and arid secrets hid, was where Lerida knew to trek. To hide her own pueblo scented treasures. To bask in the pasts knowledge, to power on into a future, uncertain, but thrilling nonetheless.

The glassy sky, that sky, glittered down in the clover green. Sunset was soon, and she walked over to the bonnet of her car and crept onto its rusty red-raw surface. She watched the earth and wind and sky blend together in a warped entrancing spire. A steeple, filled in agonised torrents of dirt and air pressure, a religion of earth, her only spirituality. She looked on.....at one.

written late night, the 29th of October, two days before Halloween Night.

Williamstown, I've always said, is the kind of town you don't have to know about. It's of one of the same as those sprinkled at the ridges of Death Valley; nothing, plain, uninteresting. Even to those that call it "Home".

To me, it's not so much the spectacular sunset and skyline that breaks out over such a landscape; unrelenting, empty, endless, arid. It's the people.


The best euphemism for the people of the town, is that where rivers of red should run beneath their skin, is sand. They are a course people, well-worn, resilient, and you rub them the wrong way, and they'll grind back twice as hard. I know, I've been the recipient.



My tale begins when my brother, Lennon, pulled me into his room, pushed me against the door grabbing my wrists as though to snap, then backed up, stared me hard in the face and told me he was there. That the moment my eyes opened in a crib in a hostel in the some county northwest, and the crone, Aunt Gertrude, set her own on me, my destiny, or at least a big part of it, was set.

Our family has an old old blood, it's a scarlet red, not a deep crimson, and it spills cooler than most and freely. Lennon knows, and others do too, when the 99 scars that skitter across both arms and the backs of his knees are seen in fluorescent light at the discotesque or on some trek, and he's got himself in a position, forgive him, that all can see his history. Painful. Jagged. Nails at a coffin he just cannot pry off.

That same blood, that pain, haunts the blood line. Gertrude, it's Mother, from whence the Curse came, that hot, ugly place. She was the progenitor, the womb, the evil. No such thing as magic as most know it. Yes, I am an Enchantress, I've been a Rogue, but this all hasa contemporary feel to it, a different semblance. There's just something about the On'Esand. Just something, they say...


I don't know why me, I wasn't a particularly vivacious child, I was always making wreathes out of dandelions and drawing, or sitting in the backyard for hours and hours and hours, just watching the sky. The clouds move, and the off-putting notion of me there, so still, but it was addictive. Surreal..


And so, things changed. My brother was expelled from the house, he was a rock in the way of a river that was going to be dry before it gave up its testament against its obstacles if it didn't get me first. And it did. And I drowned, how I drowned. I was taken apart, my magics exhumed, toxins filling my flesh, my eye, my heart, my inside. That place, the soul..and it so began. I was a black pawn, a black market baby, a pinnacle for her plots, she too weak to hurdle herself and so I ran for Gertie. I passed the bodies through the slots and watched the children be sung to slavery and sex, before their time and should never have been, the drugs were there accessible and marvellous, and there was me-manipulated, easy, drunk on a life that wasn't my own. It was my body, but not my mind or heart that did things. But as long as it was my fingerprints on in the sand, signing off my name, then it was Me. Lerida Nyx.


I need to write this out, to let the story run clear. I'm me, again, I'm free. But my body still reels from the side-effects of a life unworthy. A scoundrel in black chiffon, silk, satin, velvet. Me and my henchmen, my red hair, my Dalamar and my hideous beauty. My heart was an ashen pulp.


But it was not me. This is what those I love need to know. What Lennon needs to believe, sitting there in that darned psychiatric ward, what Icer, Aurthur, Tera, Brian...what they all need to know. This is me, And how can I show them? How can I really forget so much of a life this heart and mind never really lived. It was existed..

As for Val. ...Oh boy.

Lerida

She was around. Just.


TThe knot entwined her legs, a bruise ran the extended of her jaw through to the left hand side of her chest. Restrained.

There was a way out. There always was. Out of anything. Even if that option was death. She'd almost taken the route, at the belly of addiction, armful of lovers and spitefilled face.


It was not ok. Not ok for her turn to end so quickly on this carousel, she'd only just gotten on, swung her leg over and smiled, and now she was bound, gagged and sitting in a loft. Looking out over the wasteland.

"I can show you fear
in a handful of dust"

Was this the end, already?

Conflicting notions teetered precariously at her tongue, her every toe and finger was aching from the bind, the taut twine and dock rope that encircled her. It was less the rope and more the fact she was again caught.

Gertrude, or some business associate from the days of yore. She was frantic, but silent. With a gag, not much choice!


She'd been walking home last night when she'd seen the vans and coaches milling around the close of Ermine street, the exit of which led down the washboard trail to her house. She'd run off, straight away fearing that she was to be brought to justice. She wasn't a fugitive, Gertrude was. Not her. Gertrude...


She scuffled forward, her bare feet pounding against the floor as she looked around. There was no way out of this. It had been set up. They had been watching for days. Why hadn't they taken her when she was drunk? Why had they waited till she was on her way to Val's? The scumsuckers had mounted every move carefully. And now she had a deadend.

A drop of her heart and a sudden gagging on the cloth stuffed right into her jaw. The uncomfortable grind of tooth against cotton. Spine chilling. Nauseus. Her heart rose into her throat, as foot steps sounded from the staircase. Her eyes settled on the gap beneath the door, waiting for their shadow to fill the daylight that poured there....

You're not of this time

Neither am I

We don't belong to anywhere

scrawled on a tree trunk, down the road from her house. Nearby lays a dead hawk; out of place and yet looking so peaceful. She couldn't resist writing it a good bye.


There was no use in introducing herself all over again or focusing on herself or the past. The red re-growth was happening and her eyes had once again developed that emerald-glaze. That disconcerting spark; too bright, too intense.

She tried to hide it all beneath her favourite hats and wearing eye shadow that didn't bring out the green. Didn't bring out the mean memory. Her weight had plummeted and she'd kept her ether doses limited. Only a swipe once a day in the past week, she'd kept herself in order but her gaunt cheeks and the baggy once fitting brown mohair turtle neck was making her feel nauseas. None of this was what she had wanted. It would be more of a skid to a stop then any kind of abrupt stand still.


She leant against the door, scrunched scarf in her fist, staring at the world outside past her porch and the pebble pathway to its first step. The gravel was only stirred by her feet and Bob's. The dog was sitting at her feet, lapping at his paws and pointing those black eyes at the sun. Irreverent and goofy, the best companion she'd had. And yet, so alike that stranger in the white coat. She giggled and bent down to stroke his neck and stare at his short lashes to cover his dark dark eyes. He was a joker and a free spirit, and he too loved the guitar. He'd always sat by her feet as she played her lullabies. She hugged him close and finally sat down, to watch the great yellow eye fall behind the distance, and be replaced in dark velvet blue. Where pinhole stars were to shine through.

She thought back to the dead hawk. If someday when the tree was overgrown in herb and brush, someone might see it. Might remember, might imagine. That the bones of the perished would be dug out, given back to the stars. She felt that sparkle inside, and closed her eyes, as blue sunlight warped forwards, a tumble, cartwheelng limbs of cloud, in amniotic coat of midnight and sunrise colour, wrapping her up. Keeping her warm.

She's a bad egg
in a broken shell
sitting stiff on the highway
she's a little noose
hanging from your tune
ready to be strummed out of the way
she's a nuisance
shes a heckler
she's the queen of the worst five cards
she carried me home from a dangerous slumber
on an isle of pines
on a thousand waves
all tossing me south

to your grave

So Marban was opening up for her spilt in dried weed trail and shanty-style huts littering the meadows. She stood alone in one of those fields, smoking, watching the dirty-brown sky in its cloud infested hike upon the blue. She smiled at that, and this, being away, on some stretch of land that was hers. They say no man can talk unless a state they call their own; and so it was all about amalgamation, rearing in the 'nancies and pulling the blame on the sunshine..And a few too many swings of the rustwind.

A turn then, she knelt to the ground and gathered Bob to her chest as he had been licking at her toes wanting her attention for the last twenty minutes. And, she was a hundred short; damned son of no one and nothing but allie with all that shone ghastly grey, and blue in his case, was its hundred more than she. But she wanted her derringer, and she'd be damned if she wouldn't get it, though along his edge she'd be damned and dead too if she spoke too many a word. She didn't doubt his effects and threats; one of the few in this town to follow through.

Wait, not this town. This was a different place altogether. This was a crying out loud and it echo's for hours sort of place. This was Marban. This was her home. Of her heart of hearts.


Bob licked her cheek, one parting wallop of taupe-tongue and then he was off to skiddaddle as he should this land, this stretch of swaying field. Where he might not find love, but he would adventure.

A pause then in her thoughts, and she looked over to the house, alone on the hill. Her soul swam loosely from its joints and that panic wracked her chest. That twinge in her belly re-started, a groan from the machismo that it was drowning. A baby.

There's a trend to air here. It is sickly and like twine to my vocal chords, but I'll get used to it.

It's thicker and more dreary, but I do feel comfortable. That other house was a void for trouble. I didn't like it much.


I'm holding in my hands a candle and its holder, brass and heavy. I am tired but I like the view, out over the hillside. I bring its light to the curtains as I spread out across the dried weed at my feet, an apparition I would appear as I go adrifting. Like always.


Ever so happy, I get that giddy feeling sprite in my gut, and I make a look to the east, to the track leading to my own. I stand there tall and proud with my eyes two playful pools; come on dive in. I can call out but my voice is lost, I am drowned out in the steady night wind.

Roving over my pores and each features the hands of an invisible Man, the wendigo in black down the track..off the cuff. Off the hook. I miss him, strange little willowwisp. Cattail. He lived in the trees. He lived in the soil and the sky. All around but never to be seen.


And then, as the candle flickers, refusing to be snuffed, I blow it out from the hot breeze inside, and close my eyes. I can feel the man for me in the air, in my hair, at the back of my neck. I can feel him closing in on my house, baring down on all that is mine and making it ours. He's a hero to me. He's a magic man.

A shrill excitement splices me then, and my eyes fly open and into that satin blue night sky. I am thick and slick with my wanton vibe, I am moist and lush for the picking. The branch bends....


The wind urges me sometimes, too that baby, and the tigress. The many dimensions to a simple woman. I am only one of those of those aspects at heart.


I carry myself back inside then, with quickly cooled wicker-curls rising like goblin arms from snow. I trespass the feelings with a close of the door and leave the outside to its restless self.

Contentment I did not know I would find. There has always been a role to play, a costume to fit, a mould to break. Now, without these three burdens I feel light and free of cosmetic lie. I am eager and new and I am proud.


I sink into my sheets and let my hands make their way south. I open up like a petal wet, and I close my eyes and my tongue it furls. I hold back my gasps and my tweets. I place my hands into my camisole and make taut the peaks of the mounds beneath, I make music from and for myself. A melody only my body can play to, and only my foxy little troubador can make resonate. Makes me feel wonderful all times. Even without him there.

I am so so in love. And I am so so alive, again. I love these moments of escape. I was wrong about so much for so long. Takes a hand to hold your own sometimes, to let you know, "it's all good"

Down the track she headed off, a large long branch in her right hand, slim and gnarled into clots at random sections of its part, as her shins moved through thistle and her finger tips of her free fist ran across their tops, delicate wisps of golden powery baubles, waving quietly in the afternoon.

The sky was a thousand shades in all different splotches across the Northern sky, where light became dark and stole the blue into its hungry, greedy tangerine depths.

Beneath a tree she stopped, to catch her breath and dampen her chest and neck with a cloth. She leant into the shade and let its shadows colour her skin in tattoo's of black. Coloured shadows, like fairylights at the carnival, dancing across her thighs as they kicked out across the crowd, her body lean and stretched to its utter reaches and limits on rope, wire and tetris beams. A spidery dance, all her own.


"This track never ends..."

Bob came up and leapt up for some attention. She scratched his head, loose fur moving back and forth.

"Come on"

And then they stepped out of this bifocal orange and black embellished walk, this mirror of the sky and shadow on display against her pale skin, and they were off. Two wanderers searching for the endless dawn, hunting it down. Unforgiving the sun shone...nameless, faceless, bright.

I painted last night for the first time in a long long time. Felt kind of uneasy with the brush in my hand and directing it where I wanted it, splotches of colour reminiscent of the afternoon's sunset.

Through all my drawings I criss crossed the spires and silver, but not in that hue didn't have any gray or black or white paint, so I made them crimson, like my nails, and livened up the mellow with a fire. I felt that way at the time. A flame. A whirlwind.



But back to the picture, and my state of being hypnotised. I looked at the gun on the window sill, silent and deadly and somehow real pretty, real elegant in its silver mess. What it could do, with my finger on the trigger. That important fact. What I could dispell in my myth; or just confirm the lies?

I'm thinking of taking Raye on her offer, running with it. Like the wind, like I said I wanted to.


Lerida

She's convinced she can hold back a glacier..

But she couldn't keep baby alive.

"Spark"





I had a wonderful, relaxing evening. I played guitar, had some time out with Val. Then got the anxiety again. I miss what I never had. Regret is not doing what you should have, could have, maybe even would have.

In this instance, I didn't even have the choice.

Thoughts as she stares at the pitter patter droplets across her window. Naked, for the pale blue silk dressing gown across her shoulders, she shudders and turns to climb back into bed. Alone.

Her thoughts turned to needing Val's hand in hers about now, although she ground her teeth, jaw set in her sleep. To needing his comfort while she felt so down. So pathetic. It wasn't her fault, she had wanted it. Wanted so much. For selfless reasons. Just to love it. Now she wanted one, to feel good, to feel like she had a chance to make herself new.

Such complex, irrational thought attended to her, a nasty bedside vigil. She found herself weeping into her pillow. She felt cold, within. A hurricane churning, relentless. No handkerchief soiree would fix her either. She wept and wept, till the sun's rays brought out the blonde in her helixed locks, sprawled across the pillow, and she sat up and hugged herself. Eyes down cast. What a horrible value to have placed on herself.

A defiant look crossed her features and she left the bed. She needed nothing and no one. Just a chance to heal. And she was the only one to give herself such a gift.

I found this today. So I'm going to attach it to this page, a little tape and look on it whenever I think of baby.

I can relate to this. Felt nice.


Sonnet XVI
-Pablo Naruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-
rose, or topaz, or the arrow of
carnations the fire shoots off. I love
you as certain dark things are to be
loved, in secret, between the shadow
and the soul. I love you as the plant
that never blooms but carries in
itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid
fragrance, risen from the earth, lives
darkly in my body. I love you without
knowing how, or when, or from where. I
love you straightforwardly, without
complexities or pride; so I love you
because I know no other way than this:
where I does not exist, nor you, so
close that your hand on my chest is my
hand, so close that your eyes close as
I fall asleep.

Naruda

Her expression was plaintive as the closet was closed and she turned her back to it, fingers knotted at the small of her back still clutching the closet's brass handles. Cold. Unrelenting.


She stared dead ahead upon her mattress free of sheet and pillow, throw and Bob's sleeping form. It was spacial and empty and discomforting. Her entire house had that feeling lately, and she wondered often of late to herself if Marban was where she belonged.


It had appealed to her right away once the ransacking and kidnapping had returned her to a state of fray; it was old and harmless and reminded her of the granges outside of Williamstown. It offered her a counter to the bad times, a sweet reminder. However sometimes things left were best kept that way, and as she relinquished her hold on the doors and trudged towards the bed to place fresh sheets on it, neatly piled on the single simple-framed wooden chair behind her, she felt her stomach convulse and that twinge grow into a taunting, nauseas tug.

In shock, and frustration, she fell to the matress in a prolonged gasp; amber lashes fluttering as she winced and grabbed her stomach, winding thoughts of sandy miles long gone and that floating imagery of a purple baby withering at the back of her mind. She clung to the matress, and whimpered as she crawled upwards to sit on her knees, beads of sweat at her brow, hands clammy and her neck moist.

It didn't feel as though she were to gag, it felt as though her insides were being made rope and twisted in twine; as though she may be pulled inside out, into nothing, through her belly button. That umbilical cord to night; to the stars.

She groaned and fell face forward again, fingers clutching at the unclutchable matress; hard mounds of cotton flat against her writhing figure, teased by an indescribable lurch within. She sung out, shivering, knees folding in then straightening as she flipped onto her back and screamed; her body racked and slapped, hips swaying along the bed, wrists pinned to each side of her head as she felt a weight dropping against her.


She lay stunned for some time, grappling within her mind, putting process to what had just happened. Lashes batting slowly as she made to sit up and gasped.


There stood Aunt Gertrude; Lennon a slip of a man at her side.

Lerida snarled and made to move further, only to feel that queer urge to stay down. Silent. Scared.

With her might and unyielding determination to better things, this life, scratched enough by the crone before her, she smiled. Bright, forced, but still warm and radiant.

"This is a surprise!", she muttered bitterly, her laconic mouthing only enticing a cruel sliver of a smile from Gertrude.

"Un' it is ah saaprize fo' uhs ulll, Lurr-eeeeee-dah!"

Her mouth popped into a close as that awful grin disappeared.

Lerida stared at her Aunt, in complete and utter distaste. She had to look away, had to look at the slur of her scarlet nails across the bed. The way they shook and trembled.


"God damn it....", she crooned softly to no one.

Swallowed whole. Consumed. Devoured. Enjoyed. Digested. Crepuscular break down; this flower blossoming by eerie glare. She moved towards the windmill, hands outstretched, tripping over her own feet in this haze, this daze. She bent down to pluck a flower, a sister, and breathe in her vespertine elegance. It was stark and holy in this place. So dreary, but so beautiful.


She sat down on a large flat stone and read aloud to the No one how the cloud's appeared; galloping horse, puffs of palm, bunny ears, tinsel patterned trees. She was roped in and held onto by the twine of the night of the sky of the unknown; what it once was and being forgot.


Things was hasty and off kilter. It was time to run, again. So long Rhy'Din, however heavy it made her heart.

By mistletoe and bell. Not alone, not afraid. New year, new hope.


She walks out to touch the world, spread her self like a cosmic butter along the hill, pine and gulch, to sink into the sand and into the leaf.


Songs glisten and smoke towards the sky. Hello and goodbye.

I am the horizon. Pressed thin between a heavy sky and a weightless ocean.

I am not as graceful as I used to be.

I sit in leathers of different shades by an old tree and watch the long dirt road before me swelter in the glare of the sun. Water running from the snow.

I am not intrigued by myth and legend and I do not want to be either. I long most for the orange shadows these trees provide. The subtleness. The simplicity. The sepia glow in his canid eyes.

Uncurling herself from a ball on the couch she sat to face the door. Alone and afraid, most suddenly, she dunked her head and stretched her arm to the cloth laced in ether by the couch she lay upon. Habit was a funny thing, digging at the bones, probing and questioning and undoing. But she was deliberate with it. Death cannot delete Death, for she was Venusian, she had to keep retelling herself her story.

But limp and bedraggled she knew the nonsense of her thinking. Addiction and the Feed all too much to push away. She would always have the toxins in her body. It unhinged her day by day...


She would have to confess to her friend her concerns. She'd just murdered. She'd just spent a week doped out.

A junkie, a hopeless huntress about now. Stripes and swords or no.

I want red wine and Coltrane.


The Enchantress, the Huntress, the Alien stood in meadow. She was wearing a simple black gown and held her guitar strapped to her bosom and barefoot. Night and day were in collision as she strummed the first notes of a long time.


Yardsticks.



Leaning back in a chair and observing a Lord, A Norse-a fateful kiss. If only to edge her away from town.

Her trip to the field of wildflowers with Brian. Wandering and experiencing heightened senses. Friendship.


The Black Feather. No name and no skill. Balanced on her knuckles. Jack, offering her lighter in return for a gift not yet given. Loss.


Strangely so, flirtations with his paramour, Trueblood. A brief dance. And then a wave and a seat taken, a seat offered and some wild course of romantic zeitgeist, psychic hearts. Valcroix.


She smiled and began her walk down out of the blowing golden to the desert track, west. Coarse road and a tender heart.

With the sugar sickness
You spy the kidnap kid
Who kids you to oblivion
It's the perfect hassle
For the perfumed kiss
He makes you miss him more than home

You love him
You love him more than this
You love him and you cannot, you can't resist
You love him
You love him for yourself
You love him and no one, no one else

Past sidewalk ashes
A last lovers arc
You come apart to intertwine
It was all so simple
As you watched him move
Across the darkness in your room

You love him
You love him for youself
You love him and no one, no one else

And the winding vines
The pretty boys dive
And through the pinhole stars
Into the shadow mind
You will lose him then
On some gentle dawn
This boy is here and gone

You love him
You love him for yourself
You love him and no one, no one else
You love him
You love him more than this
You love him and you cannot, you can't resist

You love him...

~the smashing pumpkins~

-------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------

Passed out on the couch on newborn dawn, with neonate lips puckered and her gown half off, she felt her way past the wide white walls and staircase and couch to the puddle of morning joy that sat in a pot combed of its heat but bitter tasty to her nose.


She poured herself a mug and then stretched out against the wall, in divine dance with her shadow; she felt alive and like a cartoon-animated to a perfect feeling. Love. And more than that, the strong possibility of falling into it in a way she had not. Shredder, heart-pulp destroyer. She shook off such skin and sin to paw about the furniture and charm and serpentine lover's knot taking place in her mind. A gift! A gift! There was still a faith to seal, trek and jewel the same.

To lyrics passing from the vinyl snap she twirled, pressing hands to the ceiling and bed and windowsill and heavens and cool, fleeting waves. Enchantress considering a proper mortality. She was not quite eternal, now was she?

Her signature in the soil. The meadows were crawling, raising their cropped crowns to peer. The wendigo moved below, and she danced unbeknownest...


And who was the Wendigo? Gargoyle tall and clawed when Striding. He tilted his nose to the wind, a gloved face in leather, to scent out the rush of spicey smell-fig, cinnamon, vetiver....

Lerida.

Her name burned. He leapt through fiery loop and wheat and headed for her door. Phantom walking through the wooden frame, up the stairs, to stand at her door.

But she would not know him. Not sense him. Not value. Her heart was with another. Her Enchanters blood less straining. He removed his skull cap and let loose the reigning knee length raven hair. Braided down his spine, skull shaved on both sides, his burning red eyes tore away and walked back down. He sat in sail-white blouse and leather pants, a desperado of Moscow. He plotted and sobbed and felt so alone. Exiter was less than a passing breeze to her. The Enchantress stunk of mortal coil. She was no longer a bruised, haunting lamentation to the old days, the rough ones, back stalking cathedral spire with their black feathered wings. She hid no longer wrapt in masquerade. She was a proud, sterling denizen of Rhy'Din, of Marban, of someone else's heart. She was no longer killer and huntress as she may have fantasized on an ether strung highwire days ago. He had seen it all.


He stood, ash and wrinkled leaf to fly. Black Eyed Bob whimpered by the couch and observed. Metered captions of forgetfulness and snowy Russian evenings. A dream. He was gone.