#proteintext

I hate overwritten poetry, in general I hate overwriting. There is something frail and beautiful about first drafts which you must be careful not to scaffold into concrete uniformity when editing. I hate the way that poetry is taught, you can't teach someone their own voice, you should not try. I read so much modern poetry on tumblr, in anthologies, or that have won competitions and often I just sit there afterwards and the only thing I can think is 'so?' Something is wrong with the writing if that is the only sensation it can give me. 

It's not because his parents don't love him, they love him deeply but they don't understand what is happening to him. They don't see the reasons behind his 'acting out' because kids just don't talk to their parents about stuff like that. Growing up in the White House, well, he would have had to have been strong for his parents, not bring extra issues to them even when he was troubled. Instead he ended up 'dealing' with his issues on his own and in the only way he knew how, by self medicating.  

You have to wonder how much of his parents anger towards him is actually the manifestation of their own anger towards themselves, how much of their frustration is because they blame themselves, they feel selfish. 

And, it seems so hypocritical of them to criticise him for struggling when they all deal with their issues in unhealthy ways as well. We have philandering but loving Bud, frustrated undervalued Douglas who doesn't feel in anyway shape or form as if he is an interesting and valuable person, Elaine who is so conflicted between making a change for women, fighting against all the years she has been shat on for being female and protecting and looking after her floundering family and Margaret, Elaine's mother, who finds herself rich, comfortable but increasingly obsolete, watching as her family splinters around her under a pressure that Elaine and Bud willingly placed upon it. 

I write a lot but you don't get to see a lot of it, and, if I do post it, you don't seem to see it. I'm just asking for a little bit of feedback if anyone has time. I'm going to be posting a short story that I wrote shortly and I hope you like it (or, if you don't, can give me some constructive criticism on why). If you do like it, please share it, it's difficult to get exposure on writing as it's not as immediately beautiful as art. 

This world is filled with echoes.

  Walk across verdant fields and through night-shadowed valleys and you can feel the whispers of the dead beneath your feet as vespers from beyond the grave.

  I have been following echoes.

  I suppose you could say that echoes are all that I have left.

  There is a road that wends south through the mountains.  Clawing from toothy pinnacle to sharp jawed vale, it is slick with shale, arid, dreamless. I have followed it for days, alone with the scuttling of spiders and the screech of nesting raptors. Hours thinking, humming and composing to myself, pondering on old scars that have silvered out. This pilgrimage, alone, starved, dehydrated, it is nothing that I have not done before.  I have been wandering for many summers past but this is somehow different. It is as if this time I truly intended to die.

  I suppose that, because of this, my discovery of a village sequestered between the peaks was unwelcome. I had reached the point of shambling, dragging my battered body along the path, the tight braids of my hair spined by vegetation, the bright silk of my robes dulled and torn. For several minutes I had considered the shining white walls and vivid eruptions of flowers the flickering images of a final breath. I had slumped and waited in expectation of death.

  ‘Shalor.’ Hello. A voice asked, curious and small, a dormouse of a voice. ‘Shem shalor?’ Formal hello?

  ‘Taleam.’  Tired. I replied ‘Shellac, ya terma taleamra.’  Sorry, I am very tired.

  ‘Are you ill?’ She changed fluidly to the common tongue, well, a dialect of the common tongue that I had never before heard spoken. I raised my head slowly, the muscles of my shoulders aching with the effort, and met a pair of eyes, two suns drowned in the depths of an ocean trench.

  ‘No, simply tired.’ I responded, my tongue slug heavy in my mouth.

  She made a small noise of assent, her eyes moving methodically over my face. Her hair was braided and twisted up with slips of teal silk and heavy golden beads that gave an odd prismatic sheen to the dark tendrils, like the dance of oil droplets on the surface of water.  Warm dark skin flushed with freckles and lips the bloody crimson of rose petals in a small face with bones like a cat. She wore a hooded tunic of gentle turquoise edged by baubles of topaz caged in gold embroidery that looked like little spiders. Despite their delicacy they were dulled by rock dust, clothes for work not the slow leisure that I had first envisaged.

I would have taken a step closer if life hadn’t imploded around me, the licking of flames, the permanent haze of alcohol, all-nighters with carbon clogging my pores until my lips were gibbering amino acids. My week turned into Friday mornings, fixing a smile with tacks because I didn’t want our friendship to change.  It starts as dark circles, five sleepless nights in a row, red mouths where there should have been skin, caffeine pills at 6am. I wanted to be right for you, I forgot that it was alright for me to have something for myself.

When I woke up you were no longer there. Well, you were there and you reached out to me with open arms but I could no longer fully take them…because you had another. It was like waking up from nightmares to find that the warmth of your bed never truly existed. I wonder whether you thought of me, whether you decided that I was the one who wasn’t interested and let yourself love another.

I like the story I've written, I really like it, but I worry that as an entry that could be counted as 'fantasy' I may get overlooked in the face of 'gritty realism'. If so it would be sad, I have an interesting narrative voice, a thoughtful premise and if people would give it time I think they would like it.