Jack the Girl

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:31:34 GMT

so if anyone's still tuned in, i've moved here. Probably no more fics, but some poetry and music videos and all sorts of things that make me happy.

Sat, 27 May 2006 23:51:10 GMT

Title: I don't know.
For: speakwrite_
Note: Fuck you, this was hard.

Her voice reminds him that if he is not feet first on the skin of some planet, he is floating only.

He is smiling now, knows she is too, but he has a boat to pilot, a crew to feed, can’t be thinking of inky, witchful eyes; forces himself to move.

I don’t know. A woman’s answer if he’d ever heard it. But a good one. As he crawls up into the cockpit he is reminded, once again, of a man aiming a pistol over his shoulder, a blind shot in the dark, smiling all the while. Knows she’ll stay.

Title: Edges.
For: westingsea
Note: When you said "pre" bastogne, I took it to mean...like...two seconds before bastogne. Which is still pre.

Too frequently has Roe felt death’s fingers brush over his (pressing his thumb into another forehead, bandaging soft wounds) and they are not cold, like the poets say, but hot, the last spurt of blood that is sick and slippery. While the other boys feel it hanging over their heads, he is used to it at his fingertips. Easy to feel it’s motives as another man’s eyes go out - or maybe at the foot of an explosion - or standing at the edge of a forest as deep snowy clouds gather on the horizon and the trucks roll out, roll out...

Title: What's good.
For: elendar
Note: This is actually 105 words. But we can keep secrets.

The first thing that Lewis said after the kiss was what the fuck is this all about?

Dick could not answer - how was it that the inches between their cots and fingers had been traversed and how was it that they were still kissing through words and Lew’s hands were soft and warm and whose idea was it to promote him into Dick’s tent in the first place and...

What is this all about? Dick didn’t know. All he knew was that he was kissing Lewis Nixon, the indolent school boy who had somehow stumbled into Easy and into Dick’s cot, and it was good.

Title: Lonely
For: sparrowette
Note: You made me write bill/babe. You even made me like it a little bit. Gloat while you still can.

Wild Bill may be too loud, too drunk sometimes, but he’s no fool; knows all the hep new lingo, the inner workings of a rifle, not to look his enemy straight in the eye, what men resort to in the bottoms of foxholes when the snow and the lonliness starts. He sees Babe’s eyes following him sometimes, fights the growing warmth at the thought of fingers that cling too hard and for too long, grinds his back teeth and frowns.

“Not today, kid,” and Babe knows enough to back off, leaving rattlebone Bill in all his wild sins alone, alone.

Title: Stepping out.
For: witchling
Note: Ahh, nostalgia. Kiss.

Inexplicable, these twists and turns - from the crash to the school to the clubs to the new kid (with his sunkissed skin and cowboy hips) who bristled with secrecy thorny to the touch - and they had touched, rough kisses caught between headstones during the interludes, hearts pounding with the danger that any moment, any moment there would be monsters. And inexplicable how the wet grass felt against the back of her neck and inexplicable how she had arched in his hands, more than alive knowing that they may not be tomorrow.

Inexplicable how her happiest moments lay still in graveyards.

Fri, 19 May 2006 04:10:01 GMT

The first 10 people to comment on this post get to request a drabble – ~100 words – on a subject/character of their choosing from me. In return, they have to post this in their journal. Post all fandoms you’re willing to write for.

Band of Brothers
Newsies
Firefly
Pirates of the Caribbean

Tue, 02 May 2006 02:51:22 GMT

(graceisdead.livejournal.com has been deleted. if you are graceisdead, you have a period of 30 days to undelete your journal. but please don't, because i really, really want that username. just having a fic journal doesn't cut it any more. in the meantime, don't mind me.)

Concerning the things I have not yet earned:
Scars, worlds, tattoos, I remain
Perpetually unmoved, call me a cynic,
But remember that Diogenes found true

Happiness at the bottom of an abandoned
bath tub...but let me be brief,
Foxholes are not my forte, nor talking
Business with clever fathers and wire-tongued

Associates, nor the heady conversation
Of socialites and cosmopolitans, and
Strangely enough, wining and dining
Redheads...but that’s a long story. Let me

Be brief, what we have stumbled upon
So cleanly, so soundly, I carry with me like
A talisman, stitched into the linings of
Jackets and old army boots or, in the

Throes of lonlier nights, like a wound
Tucked away under cauterized skin, I
Will bear it up bravely, oh yes, you could
Almost mistake me for something unafraid

Something soldierly - Listen, you know
I am not the type to shoulder a rifle,
Nor lick bullets and run field offensives;
I leave that to you, and sit in your wake,

Minding these maps of mine and
Trying to recall the way the small of your back
Dipped under rough, needy palms and...

Well...

God dammit.

Let me be brief; tin stars and jump
boots weighed with soft, rotten
earth mean little to me in light of
A thin, hard body curled next to mine.

Layered in the clean, hard sunlight of a few months that are,
Best forgotten, I suppose, amidst this fuckin’
Frozen ground.

(And because I was tagged and feel incredibly obliged)

Once you are tagged you MUST write a blog entry about your 6 weird habits/things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next six people to be tagged and list their names.

1. When I say something that I am afraid others will find stupid, I say it in a low voice and then pretend to study something far off in the distance as though the statement had slipped out without me noticing.

2. If I have nothing to say, I will stretch. Usually with my palms facing down, fingers braided, and shoulders up around my ears.

3. I really enjoy taking the top bead of my tongue barbell and rolling it back and forth between my lips, to create the illusion of an independent bead travelling from one corner of my closed mouth to the other. It never works, and people just think I'm being stupid.

4. If I'm very close to someone's face I get the urge to kiss them, regardless of whether or not I like them. Just to see what would happen.

5. I always have the urge to pick out patterns in floor tiles and walk them.

6. Sometimes I find myself locked in perpetual motion, as though the cessation of my movements would result in something absolutely dreadful. If ever you see me opening, flipping through, and closing my notebook with absolutely no pause in between, I'm in one of those moments.

speakwrite_
_illuminez
oldsarahjane
sappho_cried
vanagontwisty
boobo

Traiteur

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 07:13:36 GMT

If he remembers her it is in bursts
of knotted veins and sweet smells
And fault lines that ran through her palms
Trembling under someone else's fevers.

In the mean time there are deep
Bowls of wounds, reaching hands
And open baby bird mouths and he
Fills them up as best he can, and is

Entirely sick of the hollows behind
The eyes and tongues. He wants to
Run, like a shadow, but his nerves are tangled
Tight in the fists of the wounded, so

He stays, purses his lips up tight like
A puckered scar, and when he sleeps
Her hands draw out the sick magic
Under his forehead and she tells him that -

It doesn’t matter, because they’re coming
Hard and fast now, and he is running
Skinless, like he used to through the
Swamps except the air is cold here.

The blood blossoms on chests and thighs,
Explodes - the vivid, poisonous
Red that hides furtive under rough,
plain petals, you wouldn’t know it was there.

Hard and fast and when it’s over
There are bodies to be shipped back
To the girl with the soft fruit of a
Mouth that he would like to kiss,

Run his thumb along the ridge of
Her chin, alone in the pristine
Sanctity of an empty church
No bodies this time, just his

Words against that mouth, words
That are not French words and
Are not English words, they are
The words that they speak between

The edges of countries.

He sits in the hole that carved Muck
And Penkala out of their bodies and thinks
Of insects that swarm up from
The leafy darkness and bite like

Bullets and of his grandmother
And voo doo and bad Catholics
and French grammar lessons and
That mouth, that is a good mouth to

Have - but they are coming hard
And fast now and as his hands
Disappear into somebody elses’ flesh
He recalls a small boy

Blistered, narrow, running wildfire through
The swamp, catching flies with his bare
Palms, tipping them into the wide
Bloody mouth of a Venus Fly Trap,

Trembling in awe as the insect
Liquified, disappeared, as petals
Curled inwards, hiding the wound.

Untitled #2

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 00:06:44 GMT

You are awkward, bordered not by crystal and brocade curtains and artillery, but by guileless, graceless space. There is so much of it here, oceans of it, you are still nervous as you light your cigarette, glance furtively backwards at Jersey, wave the smoke away - and there’s you are at fifteen, secreting away your dad’s whiskey, choking on the virgin burn of it. Lewis, when they still called you Lewis, thinner but with the same aching face, developing a taste for the finer things in life, burning cigarette holes into the backs of the velvet sofas you disappeared behind...

It’s nice, you say. Oh yes, nice, the house. Rotten to it’s foundations and sharp with odour, but nice. Reminds me of that P.O.W. camp we liberated near Frankfurt.

Lew?

Yeah, Dick.

Shut up.

And you are eighteen, you snap jokes with reckless abandon, wander the house with your itching fingertips stuffed hard into your pockets, not quite knowing exactly where you want to end up, when your mother is out and your father has disappeared you dig your heel into the smooth hardwood floors and your mouth is filled with the furtive, thrilling taste of curse words.

And there’s you at nineteen, the women who visit are starting to call you Lew and they have stopped ruffling your hair and started eating you with their eyes, piece by piece, you smoke more and eat less and start reading Hemingway, Donne, and spy novels late at night, flashlight under the covers, still just a boy.

Stop looking at me like that, you say, and suddenly we are no longer standing together in Lancaster country, I am crouched over you, fingers catching and holding and waiting for you to stop looking at me so I can stop looking at you, realizing that the smooth skin that stretches from temple to temple is unbroken and solid and warm and you are impossibly, impossibly, impossibly...

We live in layers, every moment is a flashback.

Like what?

Like that. You smoke nervously, puffing away, breathing through your cigarette. The way you hold it - nestled in the crook of your fingers - makes you look like you’re trying not to laugh every time you take a drag.

This is you at twenty, another product of old money and cunning mothers and clever fathers, another dark eyed son sent away to Yale, to Harvard, to Oxford; you study economics, business, ancient Grecian mythology, every night there is a different girl in your dorm because you have discovered how to be slick and charming and, well hell, why not?

This is you at twenty one, you’ve failed economics, are failing business, reading Fitzgerald with more and more hunger each and every day - your father keeps calling but has less and less to say to you as the term drags on and you begin adding a soft, slow heaviness to your frame, no longer a boy. The war breaks out in Europe, and you barely even notice.

You kick at the door frame of the house and the whole thing rocks on it’s hinges - perhaps I deserve that look you give me, half a grin, one eyebrow set on a high angle. Son of a gun. I say this, and you laugh.

Son of a bitch, Dick, you say. Just say it. Son of a bitch.

Alright then. Son of a bitch.

Well, jeez. A smile cracks across your mouth, and you are laughing through your cigarette. Well jeez, I’ll be.

Nixon. You have spent your life as a man surrounded. You once read the bible cover to cover and declared yourself an atheist. You stole your dads cigars, made friends with the hired help and obstinately, beautifully, cracked dirty jokes when your mother had Ike and Mamie Eisenhower over for dinner. You were accepted at Eton, studied at Yale, were scooped out of a horrific downward spiral by a horrific war. You smirked your way through training, drank you way across Europe. You never fired a single round of ammo throughout every battle, every conflict, every moment of those two years that stood as lifetimes all on their own. You smoke, you drink, you cuss, you fight. And yet, you have never sat up all night just to watch the sun rise.

And you expect me not to look at you like that.

This is you at twenty three. I am twenty four. You are rounded at the edges, hands still soft and fleshy where they have not yet learned how to hold the clean lines of a rifle. I am just beginning to burn, cursing red hair and fair skin and Georgia with it’s sticky summers and hard, clean sunshine. We pass, my hand jars your hip, sorry, we say this to one another at the same time. Keep walking.

Untitled

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 20:39:50 GMT

Perhaps he is a monster, this narrow boy,
Shouldering his rifle, jerking the laces
Of his boots tight enought to cut
The circulation to his toes. And he shoots

As though it’s personal, lips curled outwards
Squares his hips and narrows his eyes
Watches as the blood flowers, vivid, on his
Enemies’ khaki shirt fronts, moves on.

He is used to the spit of bullets, now,
Used to the low thrum in his ears and the way
His fingers hurt after each kill, downplays it,
Discusses the dead, wounded, missing with

The pacific air of someone
Commenting on the weather.
Perhaps he is a monster, but perhaps
He can already taste the gas and know

The bite of sharp, small blue pellets
Littering the skin that could have been his
Drawn, taut, naked, choked with heat
A thousand bodies to every three chemical raindrops

Perhaps he is a monster, he shoots with ease
Aplomb, even, carves notches into the
Butt of his rifle and waits to finally meet
The stench of gas on the other side of

That thin red line that they draw on all the maps.

surprise

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 19:13:06 GMT

Now I am a fic journal.