afterthoughts.

04. Heartcage.very into anatomical stencil paintings as of late....

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:31:00 -0600

04. Heartcage.
very into anatomical stencil paintings as of late. i wanted to do something more technical than abstract. i may add to it eventually.

acrylic paint on canvas panel.

03. Five Poems for Five People.

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:25:00 -0600

i.
i know you bleed in private, that
you have bad habits and dim yourself
to darkness. i have found fragments
of evidence in bathroom stalls and
on tabletops, and all i can do is whisper,
sadheart, it’s not as ugly as you see it.

i worry that the foundation of our
framework will crack, that the door
isn’t strong enough to hold both of us.
stop being a voice with no body and
a heart with no follow through. stop
stopping where and when you please.

little glimmer, you are shining in all
the wrong places. if i knew how, i
would tuck you in the pocket of my
jeans and make you mine. if i knew
how, i would always have you close,
so you would never get lost again.

ii.
i have watched you ladder down
the barrel of a rifle, suffocate in
cheap adoration, and build God
in the hollows of your heart. i have
watched you try and fail and try
and fail and fail and fail again.

the sharp of my tongue was meant
only for the monsters who tempt you;
it’s just, your love got in the way
whilst i was trying to fight your war.
i failed you with unrestrained advice
of how your world should end up.

i suppose you’ll never know you’re
half of the wind that set me adrift.
you’ll never know i wore your bruises
like a badge. but i have finally sealed
my lips and so, should your new ship
sail, my words will sink instead.

iii.
i woke up every day for weeks feeling
out-of-sorts because i was on the side
of the bed where you had slept the only
night i’d known you. once in a while, even
now, i look at the single picture and i pray
that you end up wherever you deserve to.

i haven’t forgotten the way your lips felt in
the morning snow. i hold vivid memories
of the last second your hands were on my
arms; the way the cold rushed in when
you pulled away. by two in the afternoon,
the snow was gone and so were you.

i believed in you the way i believe in
pointing fingers, but yours are longer,
leaner, stronger. i’m saddened that
you’re content with getting hard when
you should be trying harder. give me
a heartfelt apology now or never again.

iv.
i learned from you to pretend that cotton
balls are clouds because sometimes
the sky is too high to reach. you taught
me that vengeance is just a lazy form of
grief. that every girl is manic depressive
and every boy has a broken arm.

there are two types of people in this
world, the kind that walk into a room
and say, well, here i am! and the kind
that say well, there you are. you taught
me to never be the latter. you are a
bulldozer and a dove in the same cage.

you smoke marlboro cigarettes locked
behind your bedroom door. i’m scared
of sugar in blue packets because you
told me it causes cancer. these days,
i’m searing my skin in attempts to
extinguish the fires that you’ve started.

v.
we loved like we sinned, breathless
and ignorant. we were the tea-at one
in the morning type. you reminded
me that things like freckle-covered
shoulders and lost tourists and
broken fingers can be beautiful.

you were a believer and a dreamer;
a dusty library window and thunder
raking through my bones and leaving
my skin vibrating. you whispered to
dandelions because they do not know
how to hold grudges or forget you.

when i said it’s not you, it’s me, i wasn’t
lying. sometimes words really are what
they seem. but don’t forget me. write me
a goddamn letter. pick up the fucking
phone. i’m sorry if i let you down.

02. - Blonde Bones. Blondie here was inspired by my trip to the...

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:05:00 -0600

02. - Blonde Bones.

Blondie here was inspired by my trip to the oral surgeon today. I asked to keep my x-ray and the doctor wouldn’t let me, so I had to make my own.

Acrylic paint on canvas panel.

01. the cement pigeon.

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:16:00 -0600

january sixteenth. today i chose to walk down my favorite street. it’s greyblackblueish and there’s tall building and most of the sidewalk cement is covered in pockmarks from too many winters. it’s like a windtunnel. i pull my hood up and look like a polar bear or a whalehunter or a druglord. i greet the ugly one-winged pigeon with “hello there, ichabod” because that is what i’ve named him.

no one important really walks down this street and i think that’s why i like it. it’s always just me and ichabod and the legless bone-thin man who sits on the corner in his wheelchair with his dunkin donuts cup. sometimes he puts a red clown nose on and waits under treebranches for the businessmen to go on lunch. that always makes me sad.

and right around the corner there is a highrise that resembles one of those castles in my fairytales, with a grungy facade and gargoyles guarding the roof. i’ve never been inside; i think it’s where all of the coke boys live, but it makes me feel at home. there is a small flowerbed out front, and all of the tulips are wilted except one, who stands tall and valiant above the rest. she looks proud, but inside she is broken because all of her friends are dead.

i cross the street to admire the other side of my empty street, but i find that it isn’t empty anymore. there is a boy sitting on a graffitied bench and the wind has hooked through his skin and looks like it is going to carry him away at any second. i feel sick and then hollow and then i shiver, but i think it is a good shiver, because the look on his face has hooked me like the wind in his veins.

sheep, meet slaughter.

april twelfth. the moment i leave my apartment my face is bitten by rain. i should have mentioned that i have developed a crush on thunderstorms, because they are spontaneous and reckless like the rest of men. the clouds paint themselves a dark grey and i find it invigorating. this day, the rain is saturating my aqua jacket with rainwater, and there is only one thought on my mind. him.

i know i can find him most days on his bench, and luckily today is one of them. i decide to say hello today and as i pass, i ask, “hello sir, and how are you doing today?”

he simply nods, and i make a mental note to remain mysterious, and so i sit down to his left and tell him about ichabod, because it is the first thing i can think of. i can tell he thinks i am strange for naming a one-winged pigeon, but he is strange for sitting on this bench day after week after month so it doesn’t really bother me.

i wait for him to say something but he stays quiet, so i walk my eyes across his cheeks and forehead and his corpse-thin lips. dew droplets are clinging to his ink coloured hair and i think he is the most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen. but before i have the chance to mention stendhal syndrome or maybe how i’m partial to the color of bumblebees, he stands up on knobbly legs and leaves.

goodbye, i am saying to myself. see you soon?

july twenty-ninth. i have diagnosed myself with loss of balance because i like the way my words can dizzy up and fall from my tongue without effort. i know what i truly suffer from is just confusion, and as i walk past ichabod’s tree i realize he isn’t there.

i feel the sadness rise in my chest and i ask it nicely to go away, but mister misery loves company and has already acknowledged that i’d be the perfect wife.

i am on the far end of my street and the boy is here again. i grin despite my sadness. “you again,” i joke. “are you following me?”

he gives me a disconcerting look and speaks. “i didn’t think i’d stick around long enough to see the lights in your eyes go out.”

i can’t breathe after that. “what?” i ask him. he has not been long around at all and he has never before said a word. who is he to tell me such? and what lights did he see to begin with?

“long enough.”

and suddenly i become the legless man, ichabod, and the pockmarked cement, but he has stepped on the cracks and broken everything.

the lights are hung, the tree is up, and now i'm lacking a project.

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:23:00 -0600

salutations!

i suppose this is where i should introduce myself.

for those of you who don’t know me, my name is ashlee. i am a twenty-year old journalism and marketing student who is lucky enough to live in chicago, the best city in the world!

okay, okay. even that was a little too cheesy for me. truth is, it’s cold here. really cold. sure, the snow and the city lights are pretty, but i’m the type of person who prefers to enjoy her nature from the other side of a window.

anyway, i’m now on “holiday” break until late january, because i attend a college that believes the less time spent in a classroom, the better. i told you i was lucky.

however, i do harbor an intense curiosity for everything around me. i am most creative in the wee hours of the morning. this is a direct result of my transylvanian heritage. or not.

i write. i paint. i begin a lot of projects that i never finish. this is my new one.

every day until january 28th, i will be post one new project. some days it will be short stories. on busy days, i wouldn’t put it past myself to publish just a photograph.

this is mostly just a place for me to deposit my creativity.

you can pay attention, or not, but i need to know i can do at least one thing every day to make myself better.

and it starts now.