When I stretch, I hear my bones crack
spluttering
staggering
stunted trees hobbling through a gale,
their knotted roots
gnarled, arthritic branches
horror stories trickle
in through the door.
Some days,
we grow old:
our memories
folded,
packed away;
little love letters,
dated and sealed,
a correspondence
of youth,
dumped
on the roadside,
incongruous
with the fag-ends
and drifting crisp-packets
of the fast lane.
He passes under
the dying streetlamps'
orange halos,
darkening splashes on his face,
cloud-lungs heaving
against the rooftops.
The tarmac, painted with his footsteps,
whispers, purrs,
white lines of vertebrae
tickle along its back.
Lovely glass, shattered fragments
ruffle the curb of the pavement,
strands of rainwater
whisper along the gutter
in hymnal honesty; and sunlight seems swallowed
by the swollen beast of night.
The stars
prickle at the back of his memory,
a nervous pattern of speech,
syllables of iambic chattering
teeth against the cold:
the hotel window, shining with
the gaze of a thousand tourists' wonderment,
is where his ow
i.
The devil watched me dreaming,
kissed my wrists
and painted my lips with blood.
ii.
I bartered for my place in heaven,
but I was buried too deep
to be heard.
iii.
He pushed me
out to sea and I
valiantly tried to drown.
i.
She sits all alone by the sea
before the empty stretch;
whispered winds wandering through,
without any hope
of a realisation.
ii.
The hush of skin on skin,
such submission in her posture
to shimmy past boulders and pebbles alike
into the vast emptiness --
what a wonderful death it is. To drown.
iii.
Wooden clunk of boats
rocking against the gentle, rippling tides;
brightly painted sides
and glowing edges
and well-ripened lichen and a lining of barnacles
which soothes the onrushing memories.
iv.
Gravel-like hiss of sand on the
sloping route up wooden stairs,
creaky, crumbling boathouse;
faded outlook under grey-blue c
The Ogre rises up among its brother and sister peaks, the Monk and the Virgin, a craggy limestone buttress looming above most of the north-eastern part of the Bernese Alps.
The Eiger: 13,042 feet of sheer rock, cracks and treacherous ice-fields.
Many attempts to scale this uncompromising weather-battered mountain have been made over the years, but successful attempts didn't begin until 1938, with the brave perseverance of a team of four German climbers. As a twenty-year-old eager climber myself, I knew all the facts. The windswept North Face (Nordwand) was the height of all climbing careers when I'd been growing up. 1952 - the great year of
These Dreams Run - Chapter 1 by 91816119, literature
Literature
These Dreams Run - Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Corleanne High wasn't, and never had been, a 'looker'. Tired, slumping mesh fences measured out the perimeter of its grounds, and the once proud, grand white front with its pillars and steps were a sad and sorry affair. The ribbed, Romanised pillars were blackened from the fumes of passing cars and tobacco, yellowed at the bases with foul-smelling stale urine. The school motto, Ex uno disce omnes From one person, learn all people was hidden beneath years of pigeon scum, the words barely showing. The stately stairs leading to the huge, double-doors which marked the entrance to the school were worn and withered with t