in-the-noise

[in-the-noise]

"describe a place you think is beautiful"

-- beavie

unofficial issue #9 this is a completely unedited freewriting exercise that took me around 30 minutes to handwrite, the first "real" writing i've done in a while. (it doesn't make a lot of sense, very rambly and weird) will try to do one of these every day and see where it leads me. stay noisy! beavie

I watched as his light, fluttery eyes lifted slowly from their sleep.

He was perfect, the only truly, utterly perfect person I ever could have seen. Beauty of the strongest kind pervaded him, not of strength, or of cutthroat cruelty, of masculine weaponry, but of soft, long lashed and fairy like spring.

It was as if he had descended from the stars to weave wistfully in and out of my consciousness, through and through my dreams. I could see him now, racing through the walls of my mind, light of foot and swift in movement, darting from corner to corner like a hare determined to escape the fox, the toothy claw of my hands. Everywhere I endeavored to venture, the grounded forest of my consciousness, he left behind an outlying scent of vanilla and rose that struck me, spellbound and I would once again be lost in the hunt. In and out, up and down, round and round.

He was mine and ever shall be.

What was he made of? He was made of starlight, of the certain indescribable glow that you had wished to capture and make yours since you were a girl. Late august, dead of night, I remembered the summers I had spent gazing wistfully into the dark tropical hedge bushes of my grandparents' houses, seeing the soft firefly light dance around the humid air, teasing me. Catch it, I would try ; try to clasp my hands quickly and suddenly around this impossible insect lamp. It had to, it must be mine. But, the few times I had found success in their arrest, I had also found them dead in their glass jar by morning.

It was the same dewy, six- legged radiance I saw glittering in my childhood's eye that I saw him in now. It was the same starlight dream upon which I had eagerly tapped my mother's shoulder, yanked at her sleeve and pointed to the pitch black sky, crying out,

"look at the stars! look at the stars!"

I was to live there when I grew up. I had dreamt of the mechanically- fashioned, tin and lead spaceship where I would sit tightly, rocking to and fro in the solar winds, where I would take off at night and never return to this cruel, blue planet. Yes, I would land safely on those stars, live in their fire and burn with them endlessly as my new home of white hot passion wrapped and enveloped me, keeping me warmer than those humid, sultry nights spent outside at grandma's house. I would no longer be the wistful, the hopeful, or the dreamer. The stars would finally be mine. As I looked down upon the Earth from my incandescent plasma home, I would see the same blue waters and jungle hedge forests from a new perspective.

~~~

His eyes were the worst part. Something about the long lashed, freckled and round lid shape, contrasted sharply by his piercing green hue, startled me. I could never recover from the lasting infirmity, the permanent injury that stuck my innermost heart that inflicted me every time that green orb of pleading cruelty met mine.

It was not fair.

Yes, I did hold and guard him as if her were my own, I did fiercely claim and struggle for mastery over his will; but it was truly in his eye, the defiant and mystical, sharp and satirical, crying almond eye that brought me utterly and truly to my knees at his mercy. I could never resist.

The hare had been playing tricks, inside its light and quick foot he held a weapon, a secret move that he would bestow upon the fox forcefully and sneakily at his own delight. The chase through the forest floor, the endless howling and panting, the unsubtle cry for freedom and for posession, all that comes to an end suddenly, definitively, when the fox was injured with the hare's dazzling look.

It held me like a spell, not one that needed to be chanted, strengthened with dried herbs and pig's hearts and lion's feet, stewed in a cauldron until ripe and ready, but it was one that was cast instantaneously, all too suddenly and gripped me everlasting.

All he needed to do was say the magic word, and I was gone, lost under his endless waves of softness that filled me with a certain hopeless light.

I could find it nowhere else, this light had breached through the very fibre of my being, touching my fingertips, my hair and my feet, taking my heart and lifeblood along the way.

This light had claimed me.

[in-the-noise]

for a dear friend

— beavie

she lives for sunlight, leaf and root

she dances in her well worn boots

she laughs, she shouts, she smiles so wide

her mind is music, her sadness subsides

and when she finally comes to rest

my heart pounds deep, in my chest

for who I lay right beside

is the very best of what life provides

unofficial issue #6

happy birthday, aycie. from your dearest friend

stay noisy!

beavie

[in-the-noise]

daylight changes things

- beavie

last time i was in this bed

you were in with me

we shared the blanket under the soft duvet

we spent the night with hands interlocked

puzzle pieces, fitting together

leaving your scent on my bedsheets

and when the sun rose

i shut the blinds

so the light wouldn’t hit your pretty eyes

i felt your soft hair on top of my pillow

i grazed your chest with my fingertips

so gently, the night overtook us

and we were gone by morning

[in-the-noise]

red and yellow (part 8)

- aycie

"Hey." Tension crackles like fire in the other girl's voice, but she rolls it off with an almost effortless movement. "Thanks for waiting."

The landscape blooms vividly back into a coloured focus like a blush of blood and roars. The hush retreats, injured, and inevitably subdued. Something real and raw releases above their minds and chooses to sit, silently festering, and chooses to watch those bloated red and yellow skies amalgamate into another crush above their heads. Suddenly, they feel small, standing there, foreheads touching with the weight of a universe, an eternity, locking them into place. Somewhere above, the necklace snaps, and falls in a circle around them; they are imprisoned and united by the fall of secrecy. And the beads spill, slowly at first but then faster and eventually they know that those thoughts will become words. And the words will sting and bite between them and against them but now, pain seems impossible as they nestle in the security of beauty. But the burden has found its place, settling right there, balanced above both of their heads, not quite halved but equaled and her grief takes the shape of a journey. And they embark together; just the two of them for now but there will be others and there will be colours. But until then, there are two; red and yellow.

[in-the-noise]

red and yellow (part 7)

- aycie

"I'm tired." she repeats, suddenly nervous, and her fingers shift against each other. She decided it's probably better, easier, to close her eyes.

"I know," she whispers back, and the words blow into the hair on her head.

Eyes still closed, the girl hears a scuffing and the hands that hold her wrists guide them back down to her lap. The shuffling continues until even the touch on her kneecaps is absent and she feels like a link severed, with only the ground willing to hold her weight. So she opens them, in case the other girl has disappeared, and sees only that she has stood and her hand reaches down to her. With an undeniable relief, she grabs it. The girl stands up and finds the sunlight has been swallowed by her own silhouette.

[in-the-noise]

red and yellow (part 6)

- aycie

Their kneecaps touch, perfectly opposite. Suddenly, she's looking down, red-eared at the colonies of tiny pebbles below but unmistakably, something shifts in the air. She is here, and she is here, and she is here with me, under the same sky as me and this thought bursts from her chest as she melts, almost, from the heat of her euphoria.

"I'm tired."

Her weight slides back onto her shoulders. The words escape like a breath and an unexpected grief curls into air with it and fans across the other girl's lips like a question. She did not mean for its release, but her eyes flicker open to watch the other girl's reaction anyway.

She responds vaguely but her fingers snake up the curve of the girl's shoulders, and then her neck and settle criss-cross behind it. There is finality there, and security in the grasp behind her neck, she knows that. Her own fingers gingerly brush down the other's arms and wrists, sending them into gooseflesh and she knows that (she knows that) on the other side of the mirror, there are scars and scars and scars there. She breathes again, and there are tiny nail shaped crescents of pain that are as intense as the sun. There is acceptance in the air, and there is a welding like hot iron between the girls as they bind to each other, with the dreamlike sky as witness.

[in-the-noise]

red and yellow (part 5)

- aycie

Drifting into focus is a face between the blurred lines of drowsiness, a face that seems dark and unrecognisable against the blaring reds and the burning yellows but it is a warm human face. And the face smiles, so warmly and genuinely and gratefully that the girl can't help but feel the corners of her lips lift up, as if by the strings hanging from a delicate hand. Her eyelids open fully as the face moves into recognition and becomes a person, standing like a human goddess in front of her. She is incredible. The girl is tired, though, and as she wades up and out of sleep, she is lighter, as if halved. And the half sits in front of her like a perfect mirror and she knows, with the surety of deep internal revelation, that she has finally, finally finished waiting.

[in-the-noise]

red and yellow (part 4)

- aycie

The girl is suspended in that odd state of being between sleep and wakefulness. Her eyes appear to be closed, but somehow the reds and yellows squirm and leak defiantly underneath her eyelids. There is another presence under the sun but, in her half-consciousness, she does not understand it. She untangles herself from her cobwebby drowsiness and she feels sensations pour back to her, and finds that she can feel her legs on the ground and everywhere, pressing against the shape of her body against the sky, is the heat. Something else; she feels touch. Her hand that had rested on her lap is being gently cradled between two others. Foreign familiar fingers slide into place between her own, with a movement like honey, and the touch shifts until she is held, sweetly, by another. Desperation roils into the touch as she almost feels it will slip away like a lucid dream but it doesn't, it stays for her. The warmth of humanity and the delicate lace of a touch shared becomes as certain as a mountain under a red and yellow sky.

[in-the-noise]

red and yellow (part 3)

- aycie

The girl is tired, and the landscape urges her to sleep. So ever compliant, she moves her hand through thick air, to rest under the curve of her jaw, and her elbow to her knee, where the circle of pressure turns the skin raw and red. The action seems to encourage the spell of sleep, and now it melts over her like a cat's grin. She feels raw, sitting there on a blood-warm ground, slowly turning in the heat under the sky. Her eyes close, and the bright landscape is reduced to an ambiguous darkness between her eyelids, and there in that muffle, she finds a content but flitting peace. Her mind is tamed into a temporary obedience and it witnesses the constant passing march of wayward thoughts, like soldiers, and she watches them trail and release into the red and yellow sky. She finds a quiet thrum from the landscape, that turns into a pulse and then a beat at the back of her head, throbbing and pounding and all her soldiers of thought react with mental metal gunfire and she wonders distantly how she never noticed the noise before. But the landscape roars right back and a rush of power silences everything it touches and the wind falls like moth bitten fabric into her lap with a sigh and a stir. The reds and the yellows continuously throb in the sky, pimpling and pulsing with an energy so grotesque and dreamlike that sleep returns like an obedient cat and waits at her side for her succumbence. And soon, even the landscape loses its vibrating energy and the lull proves too much for the girl to bear alone, so she acquiesces to the comforting arms of sleep, and falls backwards into its embrace.

[in-the-noise]

red and yellow (part 2)

- aycie

She is waiting there, by the side of an ever-stretching road, where her only company is a dry dust that stirs with the hushed wind. The girl is tired, but she waits, furiously patient, and she feels the sting of tiny, malevolent rocks beneath her hands, as she rocks backwards. The girl waits, with her legs brushing the dust and each other and her eyes watch the maddening lull and shimmer of the sun on an oddly pulsating ground. As if the earth below were molten and gold, and some slumbering creature stirred from its molten dreams below. But the girl is tired, so she dispels any thought of monsters of ground and of gold and watches through a bleary, disassociating veil as the colours warp and blend to the rhythm of the heat. Something sings, or perhaps it is simply the noise of thoughts being sent upwards into the hot silence, where they remain high up forever in some anonymous purgatory. She contemplates such a fate for herself, alongside her thoughts, but instead she waits, and sends them ever upwards, like advocates of her very soul. Up and upwards they drift, until each of them becomes beads on a long, delicate necklace that connects her, on the ground, to the red and yellow heavens above. And as she contemplates, the sky hoards, like an envious dragon; all the thoughts that no one ever shares.

[in-the-noise]

red and yellow (part 1)

- aycie

The girl is tired. She sits, slanted and angular, under a weight of her own and a sky that lends her some curious apathy. The sky is tender but loud; let any muted blues diffuse from your thoughtscape and the burning reality is instead a swathe of red and yellow. All that remains under the sun are the reds, and the yellows, and the girl. A girl who sits now, cross-legged, under this cosmic tempest above her. She's unaware, perhaps blissfully so, and all she can feel is the heat feathering across her eyelids. She revels in its light, solitary touch and her head is boldly upturned, witnessing the swell of her own weighted thoughts, and she sits, and she basks in the sky's unassuming gaze.

unofficial issue #8 just a piece that is closer to my heart than seems reasonable. on the topic of dreams, this one was also inspired by one that i had. i dont actually know how many parts there will be but stay tuned and stay noisy! said with love, aycie

[in-the-noise]

midnight desires

- beavie

violent thoughts were never my own never thought of,  never shown. 

.

but midnight makes a monster of us all, exposing what we want more than what we can conceive

.

In a dream’s haze, he stood by me i moved quick in his pain Relishing the ritual  A sloppy crunch of bones

.

my hands turned red with conviction I bathed in his life Lost to me, who need it more than all else

.

i woke, not in terror, not in fright or remorse But in simple delight

.

For i had taken what was his And made it mine With violence as my muse.  

unnoficial issue #7 i wrote this in a fit of confusion after waking up from a really weird dream that felt like a personal attack tbh it's formatted weirdly

stay noisy! yours regardless, beavie

[in-the-noise]

what once was

- beavie

i miss it already, their laughter in the next room. our home forever, preserved in an endless bubble

.

beyond our front door, the world fades away. what simply matters is the warm couch- hugs in which I remain

.

what is left of me stays on the dining table, where we once sat, and ate with laughter and shrewd debate, it is on the bed, where we read stories, and slept in haze until the morning came

.

why must we change? why must they move on? why can't the only ones who love me stay for more than a moment?

.

i grasp at their tails, moving faster than i am ready for, leaving only me behind, to rot, alone, on our cold couch.

.

I miss it already.

.

unnoficial issue #6 venting, but make it poetry! im really sad right now. which is unusual, because i should be happy. i'm with the people whom i love, existing peacefully within our own world. but being with them only reminds me of the impermanence of our company. i want my childhood back. i want to be held by them. i want to wake up in a household filled with them, and watch movies on our sofa. i don't want to have to bargain endlessly for a single day together. i miss them already. stay noisy! yours regardless, beavie

[in-the-noise]

just a thing <3

- aycie

The island seems normal at first, because, at first, your eyes can detect only an ambiguous mass. Only when it has swallowed you and the clouds, can you comprehend it and when you do, all the stories fall flat against your eyes as they wander the height and breadth of the island and you finally see it, silent and sleeping amidst grey rolling waters. It’s presence hums invasively under your thoughts as the fog shies away and the greyer skies behind provide a dismal, burning backdrop for the constant thrum of the monstrous machine below. Its most definitive feature has to be the holes in the ground, thousands of metres in diameter like vast and perfect scars littered around the base of the metal mountain, and your eyes can only travel up from those ghastly cavities, black and grinning at the base of the island. Onwards and upwards is the tottering progress of man, skinny and growing. The product of the constant grind of machinery is a large beast of parts and places, growths and spurts and just metal and metal and metal. And the metal moves with a mind, and speaks in an eerily musical clatter and clang as it laboriously heaves under the weight of itself and the burden of its own impossibility, so warped and altered and modified until the beast has been lost amidst the cogs that grate to hold it together. The sky pales against its silhouette, as iron breath beckons like fire, huffing a hidden rhythm, so you must go as it compels you to. And closer you get, and closer it comes. 

Then from the gaping mouths in the ground, comes the mindless crush of noise, manmade and rumbling, rolling like a tongue, enveloping the air around like a snaking heat. As you walk closer, the noise transforms, different to every ear, but unmistakably the noise becomes a song, dark and united and desperate from those yawning voids. Each syllable grinds against the ears and a glance into the singing abyss reveals an earthy spiral going down, down downwards into the heated dark and the ever-noisemaking queue of ant-like men and women with shadows that loll with the worms and bodies glazed. The shadows reveal with sly, winking glints, rows and rows of lethal curves slung over rows and rows of lilting shoulders. Descending and darkening, and always behind them and their minds and their mouths, and always behind you is the Song of the Mine.

unoffical issue #5

very much in a steampunk mood. i did quite like this piece though, especially "behind them and their minds and their mouths". this is also 100% fuel for my morbid obsession with industrial dystopias, they're just so good tho!!!! i also don't know how to indent stuff but im sure beavie will do it for me. that's it for this one.

stay noisy !

said with love,

aycie

[in-the-noise]

english countryside

-- beavie

rolling hills, like eyes,

prickly bushes look soft under the sunlight,

the sunlight that brushes over everyone, everything.

a green blanket with twiggy ruffles folding over the country,

little white pom poms grazing together under cover of sky.

viridian. It stares back at me. 

it passes so quickly through the window pane. 

fluorescent lighting in stripes up above,

and dark blue thrones for our unfortunate souls,

sound of wind through the laminated glass,

quiet dust settles on the carpet.

indistinguishable shapes I often mistake for real people,

but no, they are bystanders to this nothingness of a train ride,

nothing but figures God used to add texture,

texture to his endless painting,

pleasing for my eyes,

extra stitches for the blanket.

unnoficial issue #4 i wrote this poem without an internet connection on my way to scotland on the train. five hours sitting in a chair does something, huh? stay noisy! yours regardless, beavie

[in-the-noise]

a poem for h.w

-- beavie

harshita, my friend, my love at all times

a smile so bright, she inspires these rhymes

our yellow star in the dark, our sweet guiding light

shining and sharp, a bark and a bite. 

hopeless romantic, cookie dough sweet

she’ll crack you up, she’ll trick and she’ll treat

the windowsill love note no one can define

writing silver tongued poems i’ll never outshine

but she means so much, i hope this shall do

harshita, my friend, nothing compares to you

unnoficial issue #3 this is a personal poem that i wrote for my dear friend H.W's birthday. each line here describes an element of her personality and how siginficant she is to me. i hope you can get even a small sense of her loveliness through the screen. stay noisy! yours regardless, beavie

[in-the-noise]

an elegy for escapism

- aycie

i slouch, and my eyes stray from the paper,

withdrawing my sanity,

my thoughts clatter and caper for

ways to earn my individuality,

instead of spending a childhood,

forced into a schooled reality.

where apologies feel bitter on the tongue,

when uttered through the shackles,

that weighed us down when we were young.

the concept of my very existence,

is drilled like a debt and,

relies upon my muted resistance.

where deprication is a learned discipline,

look down at the mirror and up to the eyes,

that forced us to be the impossible heroine.

demand from me whatever you please.

my soul is a shipment and my body is stamped,

with the unfulfilled cries for a stringless release.

if our voices are heard, we drown in the guilt

and the fear of disapproval and being the other,

de-throned and de-thorned, rose, wither and wilt.

so i wade in the white of 'i will be quiet',

but the flowers are dead, and with fingertips red,

i hereby declare this my unwritten riot.