#e.c. poet

[e-c-poetry]

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[hhowlite]

when i found you, i felt as though i had known you my whole life—and perhaps even longer than that, too.

loving you is divine, impossible, otherworldly. i had no religion before i met you. do all lovers feel like they’re inventing something?

i want to sink to my knees and say here i am, powerless before you, holy and acceptable. let me love in a way that no one else has.

let me lavish you in reverence, please, darling, allow me this honor

- e.c. (apr 2024), untitled

[wildfl0werssslr]

I'm a book, if you want to open and read me. But I'm particularly a literature book, a novel or a poetry book. You will understand me, if you read me and try to understand the metaphors or symbols in my words. Many have given up to know me. Some are confused when they try to understand me. Some only judge me from the cover. Can you decode me?

— e.c.

[musingsofadrunkensailor]

beautiful thorns

Almost like gravity, something pulls me to them. Not the flowers, the petals, no. The thorns, I'm drawn to them. So small, intimate, a reminder in blood that one is alive with a heart that beats, feels, remembers.

Perhaps that's why I love so dearly that which brings about pain.

[lachryprose]

Beyond expectance, you came to me

Clad in utter complexity

How could I get inside that heart of yours?

//

But this, I’m sure of

I want to undress your sophistication

//

Let me see which one is true

In your table of convictions

For yours is a veil 

I could not pierce through

//

Oh yes you are

An enigma I could not translate into words

But one I wish to unravel

In gradual worship

27

July 12th, 2018 // 5:55 PM

[heavenlyyshecomes]

hi sarahhh do u know any quotes or poems that talk abt pining / yearning / unrequited love ???????

“I have the delusion / that you are with me / as I walk through the fields / of flower, under the moon”

—Yosano Akiko, Women Poets of Japan tr. Ikuko Atsumi & Kenneth Rexroth

“...I love you. I wish we were real.”

— Anne Sexton, A Self-Portrait in Letters

oh lover - E.C. - 2020

“The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.”

— Mikko Harvey, from “For M,” Foundry (no. 9, September 2018)

Herakles, Euripides (trans. Anne Carson) 

Echo, Christina Rossetti (both via aridante)

The only time I see you these days / Is in my projections / I need to feel your pulse baby / And I'm holding onto / This unclear connection..

— Rina Sawayama, Where U Are (literally one of my favs <3)

Anaïs Nin

“I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds– but I think of you always in those intervals.”

— Salvador Plascencia, from The People of Paper (McSweeney’s, 2005)

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds

Emily Palermo (last two via metamorphesque)

[evangeline-perry]

Dead Poets Society: Neil x OC: part 6

masterlist

complete series

That evening I hear a quiet creek as my door opens. It reveals Neil who’s come to get me to go to the cave. He reaches his hand out to me and I take it as we quietly and quickly run down the hall to where the boys are waiting for us. The shadows of our hooded figures can be seen moving throughout the darkened halls. Suddenly we hear a dog barking that I remember to be Nolans.

I can see the boys take out dog cookies to bribe the dog, but I simply crouch down and pet him before he simply lays back down. ‘Wow’, the boys mumble impressed. All the while Neil hadn’t let go of my hand yet, not that I minded.

All of us quietly leave the building and set off running across the fields towards the woods.

We search about the trees trying to find the cave, Neil kept my hand in his so I didn’t slip on the unpredictable footing of the wood. I silently thanked the dark for hiding the fierce blush that had come to dust my cheeks. From the corner of my eyes I see Meeks searching around when Charlie leaps up behind Meeks in the dark shining the flashlight up at his own face and grabs Meeks by the shoulder. ‘Arrr, I'm a dead poet.’ he yells.

‘Aww, Charlie’, Meeks whines.

‘Guys, over here’, Charlie laughs.

‘You're funny. You're real funny’, Meeks states sarcastically.

When we get in the cave the boys are trying to start a fire, but the cave is quickly filling up with smoke.

‘It's too wet’, Meeks says, referring to the wood.

‘God, are you trying to smoke us out of here?’ Charlie complains, causing me to laugh quietly. This earns me a glance from Neil who winks at me.

‘No, no, the smoke's going right up this opening’, Meeks points.

Pitts tries to stand up and slams his head into the low rock ceiling. He lets out a yell while the others laugh.

‘You okay?’ I ask, touching his arm. He smiles and tells me he’s fine, though he mumbles something about: ‘Oh God. Clowns.’ referring to the boys.

‘All right, all right, forget the fire. Let's go gentlemen, and lady.’ Neil finally opts, before standing up before the others with the book in hand, and takes a drag on a cigarette before passing it on to Charlie.

‘I hereby reconvene the Dead Poets Society’, he states, causing the boys and me to cheer. Charlie tries to skip me to pass the cirgatette to Pitts who sits next to me. But I snatch it out of his hand and take a drag, causing all the boys to look at me surprised. I breath the smoke back out without coughing, this wasn’t the first time I’d smoked after all.

I pass the cigarette to Pitts who takes it looking at me astonished before I turn back to Neil with an innocent expression in my eyes.

‘Welton chapter’, he says after gawping at me for another second, ‘The meetings will be conducted by myself and the other new initiates now present. Todd Anderson, because he prefers not to read, will keep minutes of the meetings. I'll now read the traditional opening message by society member Henry David Thoreau. "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."’

‘I'll second that’, Charlie interrupts.

‘"To put to rout all that was not life, and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.’

Several boys whistle softly in reaction to the poem, I just smile.

‘And Keating's marked a bunch of other pages’, Neil mumbles as he begins flipping through the book as he sits back down next to me and sliding his arm around me for warmth.

‘All right, intermission. Dig deep right here. Right here, lay it down’, Charlie orders.

‘On the mud? We're gonna put our food on the mud?’ Cameron objects.

‘Meeks, put your coat down. Picnic blanket’, Charlie states.

‘Yes sir, use Meeks' coat’, the boy in question mumbles to himself.

‘Don't keep anything back either. You guys are always bumming my smokes’, Charlie demands again. Meeks lays his coat down and everyone dumps their food on it. Amongst the pile are chocolate chip cookies, a box of raisins, a few apples, an orange, and half a roll.

‘Raisins?’ Neil states judgily, making me laugh.

‘Yuck.’

‘Wait a minute, who gave us half a roll?’

‘I'm eating the other half.’

‘Come on.’

‘You want me to put it back?’

Neil grabs the box of cookies and offers me one. Though when I try to reach for it, he keeps it just out of my grasp. I pout and he laughs, before handing the cookie to me.

Neil, lit up by a flashlight, begins to tell everyone a story.

‘It was a dark and rainy night, and this old lady, who had a passion for jigsaw puzzles, sat by herself in her house at her table to complete a new jigsaw puzzle. But as she pieced the puzzle together, she realized, to her astonishment, that the image that was formed was her very own room. And the figure in the center of the puzzle, as she completed it, was herself. And with trembling hands, she placed the last four pieces and stared in horror at the face of a demented madman at the window. The last thing that this old lady ever heard was the sound of breaking glass.’

‘Ohhh… no…’

‘This is true, this is true.’ as Neil says this, he pinches my side, causing me to squeel.

The boys and he laugh as I punch his arm, ‘damn it Neil!’

As everyone's voices begin to calm down, Pitts begins reading from the book.

"In a mean abode in the shanking road, lived a man named William Bloat. Now, he had a wife, the plague of his life, who continually got his goat. And one day at dawn, with her nightshift on, he slit her bloody throat." The boys laugh as I cringe as a shiver goes up my spine. Neil seems to have noticed, because his arm went securely around me again, I scoot a little closer and snuggle closer to him for warmth.

‘Oh, and it gets worse’, Pitts notes about the story.

‘Alright, who’s next?’ someone asks.

‘E.C. “It is so easy

for me to love you

that it frightens me.

I’ve never been good

at anything.

But I’ve never wanted

anything so much as

I want to hold you

every waking minute.

And every night while I sleep.

The question had ceased to be

‘How do I love you?’

and has become

‘How would I ever stop?’”

The emotion in his voice gave me goosebumps, I looked at him with a look of what must have been pure admiration before I feel a tug on my sleeve, it’s Knox. ‘He’s got it for you real bad’, he whispers, causing me to blush and him to snicker.

He sits back down and glances at me. As I realize I just got caught staring, I quickly look away.

‘Lady’, a voice snaps me out of my thoughts and Charlie stands above me holding his hand out. I give him a questioning look and he just nods towards his hand. I grab it and he helps me up and spins me around as soon as I am on my feet.

‘We’ll be back’, he says to the boys as he escorted me out the cave. I keep my eyes locked with Neil, whose jaw was clenched.

‘What do we need to talk about, Charlie?’ I ask as we step out of the cave. He nonchalantly shrugs as we step a little further away. He sits down on a large rock and then pats the spot next to him. As we sat and both look off into the distance.

‘Don’t hurt him’, he says after a while. I turn and look at him.

‘What?’ I ask, obviously confused.

‘Neil really likes you and that boy has never gotten anything he wanted. He has only done what his dad has wanted. And right now he feels on top of the world. He’s doing this club and thinking for himself. He gets involved with you and if you break his heart… well, he won’t feel so on top of the world.’ He might still have this club and us boys, but I don’t think I’ve seen him want anything more than to be with you. And you breaking him would crush him. Neil is the greatest guy, I know’, he says and I shake my head chuckling.

‘We’ve only known each other for like a week’, I say and he smiles at me: ‘But he’s spent almost every second with you, hasn’t he? Neil isn’t one to obsess over girls, but there is something about you that he’s drawn to, so that makes you pretty special. I know you like him too so why don’t you get it over with and start dating already’, he says and I blush.

The clock tolls two as the boys and I silently run back to their dorm. Neil walks with me as I make my way to my dorm. I open my door before turning to Neil. I put my hand on his arm as I lean up and kiss his cheek.

‘This was fun’, I tell him, causing him to blush.

<- PREVIOUS / NEXT ->

[nellygwyn]

Good books I’ve read recently: 

The First Iron Lady: The Life of Caroline of Ansbach by Matthew Dennison - A non fiction biography about Caroline of Ansbach, the wife and queen consort of King George II of Great Britain. Caroline was politically astute, a patron of the arts and of science, an Enlightenment princess, an Anglophile, and a model wife, mother and queen. 

Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton - This is a novel about Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, who was a philosopher, poet, playwright, novelist AND scientist of the English Restoration era. She wrote one of the earliest examples of science fiction, ‘The Blazing World,’ in 1666, and was the first woman to attend a meeting at the Royal Society in 1667. 

The Poison Bed by E.C. Fremantle - This murder mystery is set in the early 1600s, during the reign of King James I of England. It follows Robert Carr, one of King James I’s lovers, and Carr’s current infatuation and eventual wife, Frances Howard. In real life, Robert and Frances were both convicted of murdering Robert’s old friend, Sir. Thomas Overbury, via poisoned cakes and jellies, whilst Overbury was imprisoned in the Tower. This story sets out the tale of that gruesome murder from both Robert and Frances’s perspective, as well as breaking down the factional politics of the Jacobean age, and embracing the unreliable narrator. 

Blackberry and Wild Rose by Sonia Velton - Set in Georgian London, this book follows two protagonists from wildly different worlds who find themselves entangled. Sara Kemp is a sex worker, under the thumb of a tyrannical madam. Esther Thorel is the wife of a respectable, but unaffectionate, Huguenot master silk weaver. Esther’s charitable impulse leads her to offer Sara a way out of her trade, after she witnesses Sara being humiliated by her madam in the street. Sara takes her up on the offer after an unnerving encounter with a client and seeing her madam’s terrifying disinterest, but Sara is sceptical as to whether working as a lady’s maid for Esther will be any less of a drudgery than working as a sex worker. Their tale becomes even more precarious, as Sara becomes frustrated with the hypocrisy of the genteel and falls for the firebrand leader of a disillusioned group of weavers and weavers’ apprentices. They want to demand better pay from their masters by any means necessary and their dissatisfaction is about to reach boiling point. Esther, on the other hand, tries to pursue her dream of designing silks and proving herself to her unfeeling husband, and in doing so, she begins an intimacy with one of her husband’s most talented apprentices. 

The Corset by Laura Purcell - This was not as brilliantly terrifying as Purcell’s The Silent Companions but it was still deeply unnerving. Set in Victorian England, we follow middle class phrenology enthusiast, Dorothea Truelove, a rather eccentric young woman, deeply dedicated to her Roman Catholicism (much to the annoyance of her father) and who visits the local woman’s prison, both to indulge her penchant for charitable giving and to feel the inmates skulls so as to prove her theories about the mind of a criminal. There, she meets a teenage seamstress and murderess, Ruth Butterham, who is accused of killing her mistress, slowly and painfully. As Ruth recounts her oft-horrifying story, Dorothea will question everything she has ever accepted and decide whether Ruth, who says her wrongdoings stem from some evil power that lives inside her sewing needle, is a) a guilty lying monster, unhinged by her trauma, b) completely innocent of the crime to which she confessed, or c) truly possessed by some supernatural entity that only reveals itself when she sets needle to thread.

Murder Most Unladlylike by Robin Stevens - This is the first book in a series for younger readers. Set at a girls boarding school in 1930s England, the (Chinese!) protagonist, Hazel Wong, comes across the body of the school’s science mistress in the gym, only to discover, to her horror, that it has disappeared 5 minutes later. She and the rest of the Deepdean School for Girls Detective Agency now have to hunt for a murderer and, more importantly, prove that one actually happened in the first place. The Audible audiobooks of this series are read by Gemma Chan!

[rivetgoth]

I keep wanting to talk about my stupid band OCs but when i try i forget what words are idk. theyre an industrial band called Heat Pit and there’s three members and they’re kind of an homage to all my favorite bands but really fucked up and stupid. the three members are E.C., Eris, and King Ramses.

E.C.’s name is Eric Christian & he’s from the deeeeep South. he loves trad goth and old school industrial and experimental electro stuff. he plays keyboards of all kinds. he’s extremely extremely shy and quiet and people mistake that for him being sweet and nice but he’s really just sort of a dick in reality. he’s very self absorbed and hates most people and is just standoffish and likes to be left alone. he bitches constantly on tour cuz he hates being stuck with his bandmates for too long and he never goes out and does fun things with them and he’ll disappear ALL DAY before a show and barely make it back in time. he’s very... detail oriented, he likes to construct weird little inventions and creatures with little scraps of things he finds because it entertains him, he likes puzzle solving, he really appreciates little in-the-moment things, he loves nature and stargazing and watching the clouds and shit like that. because he’s so shy he refuses to sing and hates his singing so his solo work is always purely instrumental unless he’s collaborating. he also tends to wear some kind of face covering on stage so he has this weird mysterious aura around him, he almost never does interviews and if he does its with a bandmate and he almost never speaks. he worked in a record store with Ramses after graduating high school because college was miserable for him and he went to the same high school as Eris so he’s a middleman between them because he knows them both.

Eris’ name is also Eric cuz I thought it’d be funny to have two characters with the same name as an homage to you-know-what -___- His music taste tends to be like, synth stuff, new wave, post punk... Eris was born in LA but his family were like devout intense Christians and they moved to some shitty small dirt town in the South cuz they said they were called by God or w/e so Eris was dragged across the country to the pit of Hell and it was miserable. He was miserable. He hates God and he has religious trauma xddd. He was a choir boy throughout school and everyone praised him for having the voice of an angel. He learned to play guitar and did low budget local Christian rock gigs in high school. everyone loved that. he didnt. He realizes he was gay and his life fell apart. goth culture provided a place of solace for him and he started exploring harsher scarier shit in part to get away from the whole “uwuw what an angel!!!!” rep he had with his ugly christian rock stuff. Eris’ original stage name was Eros but he changed it cuz Eris was edgier. He wears fucked up gothic pseudodrag a lot and he is very excitable and energetic and very unafraid to aggressively speak his mind, but he doesnt really know exactly who he is or what he wants to be, hence the frequent name changes, and he ends up struggling the most with drug abuse as the band relations get worse over time :(

King Ramses ends up changing his name to Anubis later in life and he’s a major character in my novel LOL. Ramses is into all industrial stuff and metal and especially industrial metal. he’s from Europe, Greece I think, he’s Greek and Egyptian and he moved to Britain to go to university there and get a philosophy degree. he was a poet his entire life and he was exceptionally good at manipulating people and presenting himself however would best suite him, he adopted a very very upper class british accent and made himself out to be this elite rich intellectual despite being a foreigner from a pretty poor home. he’s incredibly good at reading people and then conforming to what will suite him best in their eyes. he’s a control freak but he’s good at it. he’s fascinated with the occult, with spirituality, with art, with philosophy, and he comes to consider himself a neotranscendentalist. hes an attention seeker and a thrill seeker and he played multiple instruments so he decided to move to the US and become a musician. he needed a band because he thrives so much on leading others, being a solo artist bored him, so he convinced E.C. (who really had only wanted to do solo stuff) to form a band with him after they met while working together at a record store. Ramses becomes increasingly fascinated by body modification and performance art & by the time of my novel he’s gone through extreme extensive body modification but that’s a whole other story 🤗

Heat Pit ends up falling apart cuz frankly they’re all assholes LMFAO. They all hook up with each other at various points and whichever one isn’t currently in the relationship ends up being a really bitter third wheel. they’re all very much control freaks in their own way and very uncompromising. In the end the final instigator is another OC named Sugar who’s a goth macabre pop performance artist & model. he’s really into self mutilation in his work. he’s fucked up. he meets Ramses at a club and the two start dating and Sugar’s influence is abhorrent. things collapse after that. Sugar actually ends up killing himself eventually which sets Ramses down this path where he becomes fascinated by the art of death and death as art which is when he becomes obsessed with body modification stuff. E.C. and Eris eventually reconnect after not speaking to each other for a long time and start dating in a slightly healthier fashion but things remain awkward forever. Eris disappears off the face of the planet and is presumed dead for like a decade but he’s “fine”? Yeah. Shit happens. :/

[esoteric-codes]

ESOTERIC.CODES is up for a Webby. For those new to the site, e.c covers code art, esoteric programming, disruptive codes, differential thought platforms, the digital ephemeral, paraconsistent calculi, and other experiments in language and code. It brings together computational and conceptual works by hacker/hobbyists, digital artists, and code poets, crossing genres and media.

As the most *esoteric* subject in this year’s personal blog category, it can use some help in the voting round. C’mon nerds, let’s get this to the top

[violettesiren]

My deep need of thy love, its mast'ring power,

I scarce can fathom thou wilt never know;

My lighter passions into rhythm may glow;

This is for ever voiceless. Could the flower

Open its petall'd thought, and praise the dower

Of sunlight, or the fresh gift of the dew,

The bounteous air that daily round it blew,

Blessing unweariedly in sun and shower,

Methinks would miss its praises: so I drink

My life of thee; and put to poet's use

Whatever crosses it of strange or fair.

Thou hast fore-fashioned all I do and think;

And to my seeming it were words' abuse

To boast a wealth of which I am the heir.

To E.C. by Arran Leigh (Katherine Harris Bradley)

[e-c-poetry]

healing feels too much like breaking

I don’t want to face it anymore

at least when I pretend it’s okay

it feels like nothing

e.c.

[hhowlite]

i keep having dreams about her finding out. surely a product of guilt that has embedded itself deeply in my subconscious, a side effect of knowing you’re doing something wrong yet being unable to stop.

i spend early mornings watching the the sunrise through the cracks in the blinds, and studying the glow-in-the-dark stars against our popcorn ceiling. my mom reminds me to be careful and i tell her that we are. aren’t we?

stolen touches in the kitchen and secret kisses at the dinner table, cut short by the sound of feet on the stairs; hushed voices and whispered confessions, warm hands on hot skin behind closed doors, my face pressed into the pillow and your lips against my neck. it’s only a matter of time before they find out.

— e.c. (nov 2020), november

[wildfl0werssslr]

some things are better left hanging; unanswered, unexplained— like us and everything in between. the story of us. be it grey in the back of now. place our heads up high, not bother looking back. doesn't it ever feel valuable enough for us to look back? oh, don't you think it wouldn't have come to an end if it was valuable for both of us? yes? i know. now please, will you excuse me? where? i am leaving.

i am going home.

— e.c.

[musingsofadrunkensailor]

If I Could Fly

I closed my eyes and listened to a song, and blind to my surroundings, I saw you. I saw a life  never to be lived, memories turned to ash, the embers burning in my hands, and felt rum-drenched tears running down my cheeks,  notes and melodies ringing in my head, jarring loose straggling sentiments clinging to my eyelids. All I could wonder in that moment was what I would do if I could fly...

[lachryprose]

Ocean's Mirror

I lost the one who tore the sheath And witnessed the truth underneath Across an ocean of spirit I voyaged through the infinite

Before our hopes torn asunder Our hearts were beating together When my gaze was caught by the fray You had chosen to walk astray

My vision was obscured by smoke Clouds of air coalesced to cloak But I let the world grow darker Until I saw a flame flicker

The ocean now begins to clear A sound image of you draws near At long last, you came back to me I found myself smiling in glee

28  August 9th, 2017