spokenleaf-a - Tumblr blog

[spokenleaf-a]

this version of leaf is no more!

thanks for the love over the years xo

[spokenleaf-a]

[spokenleaf-a]

[spokenleaf-a]

everyone needs to log right in to their spotify and listen to this iconic track right now (in full)

[spokenleaf-a]

softmalldrifting​:

The note, the words she reads through for the twentieth, no–fiftieth time that afternoon, unmistakeably written about her, clutching this paper between thumb and forefinger for fear of dropping it. The author leaves her in a perpetual state of wordless agony, it’s not fair, it’s not bloody fair, she thinks. Why doesn’t ‘he’, reveal himself? All she asks, is an opportunity to show her pure gratitude. Yes, she’s certain that it is a man writing. (cont.)

for the final quarter of the show, all he could think about was what he was going to say to her. and if it were possible to get high off of sound alone. if you’d asked him, he couldn’t recall the physical journey of finding himself backstage, who he had to talk to or how he had to get there, the blind courage that carried him right outside her dressing room. it all dissipated after a few long moments of waiting. 

he didn’t feel like the leaf who sold a million records. hell, he hadn’t felt that anxious since the godfather film screening accompanied by a certain kind of upper. in search of stimulation outside of his buzzing skin, he went into his back pocket. touched his carton of cigarettes. stifled his learned urge to light one up. felt under his nose, and absently sniffed the scent of nicotine off his fingers. she sure took her time. pretty women always did. he thought back to the girls from earlier, the sea of teendom who’d follow him around, still, in hopes of something more than a shared smoke, hit of acid, or a record from his personal collection. always hoping. what had he hoped for in this instant? he wasn’t sure, and anything profound or prophetic and best-read-on-paper flew away from him. when he saw her, all that was left was this:

“you’re like a painting…”

he said, almost as if he couldn't help it, with a hand over his jaw like a stupefied art critic, his voice low, steady and thoughtful and with subtle notes of wear that his face didn’t show. it was the kind of sound you might not expect from someone of his stature. his height wasn’t anything remarkable. neither was his build, elements of masculinity and muscle hidden beneath well-worn denim. the poet didn’t wear his addiction like a mask. (”twenty-seven looks good on you, leaf”). he was, as always, thick-lashed and clean-shaven, honey-eyed and handsome. a real reason for the teen-girls to chase. he leant forward from the wall he’d been up against and smoothed his hand down his neck, found the skin of a warm collarbone beneath the collar of his white tee, scraped his thumb over a bony peak. nervous habit. he couldn’t take his eyes off her. there was too much to see, only this time in high definition: the copper, the silk, the silk… there was a quiet kind of laugh from him, one even he might call pathetic. “i’m sorry, i’m a mess.”

[spokenleaf-a]

look at all these people, absolutely sauced and loving each other and having such a great time. will we ever return to this 

[spokenleaf-a]

[spokenleaf-a]

by now the band had really made a name for themselves at gazarri’s, and their show at the whiskey turned out to be what they’d call a “full house”. the thrill of it all. it all looked fine on paper. he was making more than enough for rent now, a round of drinks on him and then some, but things were starting to change on the sunset strip. a few days after their full-house set, when leaf went out for coffee to some any-old cafe he’d never turned up at before, the waitress called him by first name. a one-off incidence. flattering, even. the following night, some drunk hobbling down hollywood boulevard slurred and spittled his own lyrics at him, his own emotional baggage packaged up in a nice little verse, word-for-word...of course, our leaf, who enjoyed all kinds of people, even when they couldn’t tell their left from right and sometimes even more then, was pleasant: “right on, man. right on.” it was happening. one thing after another. that’s why he hopped on the greyhound and left for san fran, finding comfort in the fabric of unfamiliarity of a friend-of-a-friend’s sofa. the band was due for another set in a couple day’s time, but making an appearance wasn’t high on his to-do-list. this was not a good sign. so what if he was the guy, now. our leaf never subscribed to all that idol-worship, not even when he sat all nice in the church pews during the morning sermon with his nine-or-ten brothers and sisters, so when he bowed into that silver cross around his neck that afternoon, that same one he wore as a child back in the suburbs of toronto, there was a sense of irony there. all because ”you should wear jewelry when you go out with a woman,” his mother said. he remembered that. outside the diner, he’d sucked back one or two player’s cigarettes to ease his mind. inside, he had a spot at table seven.  table five had a sickeningly sweet elderly couple feeding each other sandwiches. table six had an ex-con who could surely crumple our leaf up in his palm, easy. table seven, his table, had a lady with pink hair and a bright yellow jumpsuit. he wondered, then, if the hair was a wig, and if he’d seen anyone with pink hair before. but he felt good about the jumpsuit. he’d hoped she wouldn’t be in fancy dress, because he hadn’t packed anything particularly fancy with him. he had on the same old mock-cowboy getup: the well-loved denim jacket, jeans, cowboy boots and a t-shirt. the jewelry. his date introduced themselves before he got the chance to ask. so this was his blind date. she was just a tiny thing up close. “cherry martini...” he repeated after her in his quiet, thoughtful voice, just to get a taste of it in his mouth. the name bore repeating. he leaned over the table some to take her hand in his own, necklace bobbing against his summer tan and catching a silver glimmer beneath the table light, “pleasure to meet you, i’m leaf.”  he drew out his chair and sat himself like he normally would, comfortably, with his slight-slouch,  legs apart and ass near ready to fall off the seat, only this was no normal situation. he smiled at her from across the table, just a little one, with the shy, private knowing of how unusual this all was that only they could share. “so, uh, cherry...what, uh...turns you on?”

        Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. More or less, anyway. The concept of a home, as well as what it signified, were things Cherry would ruminate on in the not so distant future, on an unsober night of unbearable isolation. For now, San Francisco was home, and it was here that she met familiar faces with not so familiar ideas. 

    Blind dates, as far as she knew, were little more than concentrated capsules of desperation and dissatisfaction. No one who was content with their life decided to throw a wild card into the mix. Even cruder, it meant admitting that one needed the assistance—that they were incapable of drinking themselves into the caprice of bedmate by roulette. But it was also how Elinor met Samira, and if anyone had a steadfast and level head on her shoulders, it was Elinor. 

    It was only by the gentle teasing of her now-and-then housemate that Cherry had been roped into submitting herself for the blind date column of a local paper. A key difference was that her friends met at the behest of mutual associates in their overlapping circles; this was little more than a lottery. Then again, a lottery was tantamount to roulette anyway. And, if she were to be honest, Cherry was curious to see what sort of person the universe saw fit to fit her with when she left it truly to chance. A gamble bigger than usual meant a bigger potential payoff, and if she met some ho-hum accountant with a combover, there would at least be a story to tell afterward. Perhaps she could learn something. She wasn’t a credentialed CPA. She hoped her lottery lover was an accountant.

    In her seat at the diner, her posture melted and shifted like an art model cycling through poses. There existed an ideal opening scene, a snapshot for the mind’s camera, such that anyone who walked through the door would ascertain her in an instant and go home with a story of their own. All she had to do was land upon it. As she experimented with different ways to hold the menu, her eyes landed on a mop of curls that did not belong to an accountant.

    For those precious first seconds, she thought it belonged to a woman and that there had been some hilarious mistake. She wasn’t opposed to a woman’s company, but a wholesome American newspaper might have been. Her half-smile stiffened. This was only a man after all.  A one-note buzz vibrated through her teeth: disappointment. She never got what she wanted. What she wanted always changed.

    “Cherry Martini.” 

    It wasn’t an order, but an introduction.

a blind date with @spokenleaf​

[spokenleaf-a]

remembering This photo of leaf on this day.

[spokenleaf-a]

[spokenleaf-a]

they didn’t know him in san francisco yet. in san francisco, leaf didn’t know himself, and he preferred it that way, with his eyes closed, beneath a tree in one of their parks near the water he didn’t catch the name of. he had a book sprawled over his lap, open-faced and down, the cover something vague and poetic, the innards eroticism shroud in academia. his mind painted a renaissance scene of him and many lovers, the lovers in nothing if not sheer, silken robes, dancing, loving and fucking, feeding him grapes by the stem, dancing, loving and fucking, loving and fucking... perhaps he’d go out tonight. he’d go out tonight if he could catch a break from oscar, who he had been staying with, who he had rescued the other day from the draft and had a chesterfield with ‘his name on it,’ who preferred late-night monopoly, chess, and battleship unironically, and who seemed to have no interest in meeting women at all. maybe he’d encourage him out for a beer. hey, maybe oscar’d like to dance. “heya, kid,” rumbled a deep, baritone of a voice. there was something nice about it, like it’d do well in an animated television show. “enjoying the weather?” our renaissance artist opened his eyes a crack, and wider then to take in the large mass of a man the voice belonged to. he was unkempt: a faded giants baseball cap, perspiration on his brow and what looked to be a mustard stain on his white shirt. he must have come from the hotdog truck across park, leaf concluded. maybe he, too, came to enjoy the breeze coming off the water.  “you bet. must be hot out there in the sun though, eh?”  the man wiped the sweat off his upper lip with the back of his hand. “uh-huh. i’ll suck you off for a twenny. i mean...” his confidence dwindled mid-way. “i mean i’ll give you a twenny if you let me suck you off.”  leaf’s expression barely faltered. he sunk his elbows into the cool, shady grass.  “sorry, man..i don’t do that stuff.” he almost felt bad for him.  “oh...mind if i sit down?”  leaf shook his head, dismissive. “no, man. get outta here. there are plenty of trees in this park.” he sat up and folded his book closed, and watched the stranger’s backside as he nervously dawdled off.  on second thought, he thought, he could go for a drink right now.

[spokenleaf-a]

Kim Addonizio, Lucifer at the Starlite; "You with the Crack Running Through You"

[spokenleaf-a]

workshopping a new set of characters............................

& here’s one of them 

what is he not going to be??? leaf with a fucking mustache what is he going to be?? more satirical

[spokenleaf-a]

Richard Kalvar Kurdistan, Amed (Diyarbakir) - taking a nap in a car trunk, 1979

[spokenleaf-a]

itsalltoobeautiful​:

Those sleepy hues, though with some wear under the lids, still managed to look at Leaf with a certain warmth that she couldn’t hold back from him. She watched him and eyed his bandage, seeing it start to come a bit undone from his slumber, as more and more memories flooded back from the night before. They’d danced and of course, had a drunken conversation about William Blake— it really was a nice night, despite the boulder that now resides in her head in place of a brain.

It was good to see him and just be around him again; it’d been a little bit since their last tryst and well, she thought she may not hear from him much again— though deep down she knew they might find a way to reconnect. That just happened to be in the form of a little party… with a large array of alcohol and an entertained crowd when Leaf tried to make his speech. And she did find it kind of him to bring that to light; their disconnect- even though it was clear that he was highly intoxicated, it managed to somewhat mend the melancholy that it gave her.

Taking another big sip this time, slightly cursing at it still being quite hot, Whitney smiled softly, moving her form so she was sitting cross-legged on the cushion.

“Yes indeed,” With a gentle hand, she then reached out to inspect the bandage further, pads of fingertips gliding across his forehead as she concentrated on the wound for a moment. “You took a tumble for sure- I didn’t want you to have a bloody head, so, y’know- I just helped clean it up a bit and patched it up.” She shrugged her shoulders, again giving him a little sweet smile, before it turned into a sympathy grimace. “How does it feel this morning?…”

with all of his great strength and will, he lugged his brick of a head up off the couch to mirror her, and held himself very still as she tended to him once again. the bandage was met with grace, her feather-light touch amounting to almost no discomfort at all. he'd ruminate over his ‘tumble’ for not a minute more. what seemed like part of his internal dialogue came from his slowly smiling mouth. “god, you’re good..” always had been. a lot of the time he didn’t deserve her affection, he thought. not someone like him. she was the type you could bring home to mother, easy. so why didn’t he bring her home to mama? “oh, you know,” he began, addressing her question. he leant into the couch real slumped like, putting his hands into his black and curly hair and trying to make something of it. to look nicer for her, even though she had seen him like that another time before. “i’ve felt worse...i’m sure you’re not surprised...” it looked the same after he messed with it, his hair. “how do you feel? you were really sending it last night.....weren’t you?....were you....” he was joking around now, and looking at her from under his arm. his mouth made that little smile again. he really couldn’t remember a thing.

[spokenleaf-a]