Josiah Jacobus-Parker

Thanks you guys! It's comments like these that make me keep trying to write poetry, even when I've gone weeks without writing a single decent thing.

Have You Ever Been In Love? I find myself on your couch with my heartbeat in my throat And my sweaty palm against yours. Eyes glued to the TV ?though I can?t see a thing. I?ve forgotten all experience. I?m nervous and wanting. Slowly, I turn my head. Your eyes are already fixed on mine, Hazy like you?ve been sleeping for years. Have I been sleeping for years? And there?s your face. We close our eyes in the moment our mouths touch, And suddenly I?m waking up. Water splashed on my face, slapped silly for doubting this ?doubting you. When you pull away I will never be the same. I am wide awake and the world is new. But still we kiss, The waves of motion move from my mouth To my throat, My chest, My heart. It beats slower now. You, my cardiac arrest, Still adhere to my stinging lips. Now I am aware of your touch on my arm, My back, My neck. You are everywhere. I think maybe this will never end, and pull you closer. Do you know that I?m yours? Before I let go, You press your closed mouth against mine, Your muscles stiff, Your lips soft. It?s a hard goodbye to a fleeting moment of perfection. Separate again, like the pencil off the paper, I long for more, More stories, More poems, More chapters in my life? Fewer blank pages. I need you to fill them in. I knew I couldn?t say it, couldn?t tell you That I needed you in my future To make my past worthwhile. You stare back at me And I hope to hell you can see it in my eyes. Will this happen again? Will you hold me an hour from now? A day? A year? There is nothing to do but look up at you And implore you with silence, beg you wordlessly, To take me in your arms and kiss me again. The pages begin to fill, and I am... breathless.

The rain is coming down in buckets outside And I think the best way I could spend tonight is alone Headphones on? Music blaring as loud as I can stand it With the rain coming down in buckets outside Candles lit Incense smoking Stoned The taste of wine on my lips Lying glossy-eyed on my floor Letting the music penetrate my skull So loud and so intense That it vibrates to my very soul. And the rain coming down in buckets outside Like the running tones and melodies Drowning out the world around me And the drifting smoke like curling echoes of harmony Am I hallucinating now? The music is flowing, hanging, pulsing. And the rain is coming down in buckets outside While I?m breathing, sighing, pulsing. Patter on the glass or a patter in my pulse? Veins rushing, pumping, flushing And my skin feels on fire But the music in my ears Is dousing me in water As the flames are climbing higher Up in to my brain And outside it?s still coming down in buckets Coming down as rain.

English teachers and journalists have been passing around a list of self-contradictory rules of usage for more than a century, and we've been collecting and creating them for almost half of one. Now we can offer you one of the largest accumulations gathered into a single space. We call them "Fifty Rules for Writing Good." Whatever you think of these slightly cracked nuggets of rhetorical wisdom, just remember that all generalizations are bad. 1. Each pronoun should agree with their antecedent. 2. Between you and I, pronoun case is important. 3. A writer must be sure to avoid using sexist pronouns in his writing. 4. Verbs has to agree with their subjects. 5. Don't be a person whom people realize confuses who and whom. 6. Never use no double negatives. 7. Never use a preposition to end a sentence with. That is something up with which your readers will not put. 8. When writing, participles must not be dangled. 9. Be careful to never, under any circumstances, split infinitives. 10. Hopefully, you won't float your adverbs. 11. A writer must not shift your point of view. 12. Lay down and die before using a transitive verb without an object. 13. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should. 14. The passive voice should be avoided. 15. About sentence fragments. 16. Don't verb nouns. 17. In letters themes reports and ad copy use commas to separate items in a series. 18. Don't use commas, that aren't necessary. 19. "Don't overuse 'quotation marks.'" 20. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (if the truth be told) superfluous. 21. Contractions won't, don't, and can't help your writing voice. 22. Don't write run-on sentences they are hard to read. 23. Don't forget to use end punctuation 24. Its important to use apostrophe's in the right places. 25. Don't abbrev. 26. Don't overuse exclamation marks! ! ! 27. Resist Unnecessary Capitalization. 28. Avoid mispellings. 29. Check to see if you any words out. 30. One-word sentences? Never. 31. Avoid annoying, affected, and awkward alliteration, always. 32. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. 33. The bottom line is to bag trendy locutions that sound flaky. 34. By observing the distinctions between adjectives and adverbs, you will treat your readers real good. 35. Parallel structure will help you in writing more effective sentences and to express yourself more gracefully. 36. In my own personal opinion at this point of time, I think that authors, when they are writing, should not get into the habit of making use of too many unnecessary words that they don't really need. 37. Foreign words and phrases are the reader's bete noire and are not apropos. 38. Who needs rhetorical questions? 39. Always go in search for the correct idiom. 40. Do not cast statements in the negative form. 41. And don't start sentences with conjunctions. 42. Avoid mixed metaphors. They will kindle a flood of confusion in your readers. 43. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." 44. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake. 45. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms. 46. Be more or less specific. 47. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement, which is always best. 48. Never use a big word when you can utilize a diminutive word. 49. Profanity sucks. 50. Last but not least, even if you have to bend over backward, avoid clich?s like the plague. from http://kpbs.org/Radio/DynPage.php?id=2036

Tell me what you come up with when you're sure. I'd be interested to hear what different people get out of it.

C'mon Graeme... can't you see it's a story about the dangers of smoking? :p Oh yeah that's it. Don't smoke. Cause if you do, you'll get... raped... and then blow up in a car crash... and you wont be able to finish your cigarette. THERE IS A LESSON FOR US ALL HERE.

So, after hearing about it all on the news and reading about it here ----> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/13/nyregion...ei=5070&emc=eta I got all nostalgic and wistful about the snow and started writing a poem about it. The whole thing sort of took off from there and became a little more self-reflective than I had meant it to be... tell me what you think! It is snowing. I see it flurrying down at a sharp angle, Bigger and bigger pieces Light as feathers Alternating between swirls of fanciful misdirection And bulleting down on a kamikaze mission towards earth. I see from my six-foot windows It?s piling on the roof of the building below me, And the cars iced to the parking lot, Trashcans frozen shut. At my very core I am warm, But on my edge there is a blueness: My fingers and toes are as chilled As they might be were I out there. Just imagining the flakes dampening my hair, Sprinkling my coat, Dusting my eyelashes gives me a childish joy That nearly erases the rest of what I feel. I want to go out there in it today, So I might grab some books and walk to the library to read. It is Sunday, and I have things I must write, But I am not sure I have the energy at the moment. If it weren't for the snow to motivate me I'd not have the energy to leave my bed at all. I hope I see no one familiar except strangers I've previously run in to today, Ones I've never spoken to but know well, But only as well as that. If I saw someone whom I have spoken with, Or a friend, I'll be trapped in that conversation And hello's and good-bye's And pretending that I only look so angry out of habit Rather than because I always actually am, Don?t worry, I'm fine, And my eyes are only sunken because I have not slept well As opposed to being because my calorie intake is low And I am ill with a mystery illness, One that plagues me tauntingly, Hardly, Off and on as if it could not decide If it should manifest enough to give me proof, And a disease of the heart. I wonder, If I were stranded on an island With only salt water within reach Would my thirst be emphasized? Would not having it at my disposal Make it that more irrevocably present And impossible to ignore? I say this because I am thirsty now And seem to have not drunk a thing in over a day, But I am lazy and have yet to find it in me To get up and make myself a glass of water --I'm too busy staring at the snow. Perhaps only it can quench this anyway.

thanks man. I thought your two valentines poems were amazing and so powerful too. But I couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't seem platry and weak next to them. So I just held my silence and keep reading them over and over.

Bad... pun... overload... :oops: cannot function..... ACK!

Dear 'Last Sheet' Dear 'Last Sheet', Yes, I'm talking to you, my pitiful paper pal. You, as the last sheet of paper in my printer, Hold the toughest job I imagine all office supplies And equipment must hold. People shriek at the near sight of you, But you aren't so horrifically deformed as to merit it. So, here is my apology, and the truth: I see you today, as I have before, Laying there alone (and cold, as my room is arctically so), And I know it is time. You're pushed to the bottom of the stack continuously, As I constantly refill my printer And place you farthest from use. How many times, I wonder, Have you been kept from your inky destiny! I imagine the grief of those numerous rejections, And I'm filled with it myself. Oh, Last Sheet, you are not hated. Make no mistake, for indeed You also hold the most important job. If you were to vanish I might find myself Inexplicably dealing with a paper deficiency For which there was no warning! I'd be finishing last-minute projects, Printing typed-up journal entries, And so on and so forth, And suddenly I'd be plummeting into despair, For I'd have run out of paper And no Last Sheet was there to tell me so. Still, however, Apologies and reassuring importance restated aside, I fear one day I'll find you dead on my floor, Having whisked yourself from my upper desk shelf To float down in a whimsical suicide. White surface to wood floor. I know loneliness overshadows most good things. Like a ton of bricks, it hangs from negatives, Burdening and highlighting, so that positives, Though often out-numbering, are still out-weighed. I know. Don't desert me though, Last Sheet. I need you because you mean hope. You mean promises for more to come. Sincerely, Your loving neglecter.

Thanks! :)

Glad to hear I got my message through. I was just sort of reflecting on a discussion my friends and I had over lunch that day. About how people put on facades with certain people and what they mean...

That is why we look pretty when we cry I look at you and all I can think is 'Stunning, absolutely stunning'. How very complicated and strange you are, My dear. Oh but how beautifully you wear your identity. So quick when you seem so slow. A difficult illusion to maintain, I know. It is much easier to come across foolish And simple than to be complicated. We both understand that. Make them laugh and they wont remember we have feelings. It isn?t a horrible, self-pitying thing to do. It?s just much simpler than thinking Everything there is to be thought, And then discussing it with people who may not understand, Not for lack of intelligence, But for being different from you... Me... Us. I?m sure they have thought over their very own everything, And we wouldn?t follow the half of it. C'ect la vie, my love. That?s life. Besides, I think you would agree with me saying That laughing produces much more attractive wrinkles Than the lines formed by a brow furrowed in thought. The thinker's face is etched and creased in such a way That it gives the illusion of sobriety Even at the thinker's most joyful state, Where as the laugher's tearful face still shines With glorious, forgotten happy memories. That is why we look pretty when we cry, My lovely. That is why we look pretty when we cry.

That, Mister, was a bad bad pun. I applaud you good sir. I hadn't really considered the rest of it. I just got to a point where I realised it was already very long and I didn't know what else to write at the time. I intend to come back and work on it some more eventually... when my muse permits. :roll:

Honey, I am a Tiger. Hear me ROAR. grr.

Pain. Little electric signals Pulsing from the nerve endings in your skin All the way to your brain, And back again, in a single second. That gnawing, ripping feeling In the pit of your stomach as the internal shockwaves Fight for a way out. Why. The ever-present why. Why it doesn't hurt at first when You accidentally brush your fingers Against a hot pan fresh from the oven, Until you realize what is happening. Why it doesn't hurt at first when You drag a jagged piece of glass across your forearm, Only to feel the sore, swelling throb Of the cuts as they begin to heal an hour later. Why it doesn't hurt at first when He whispers in your ear, Wrapping his arms around you, Until the sweet tingles of ecstasy Running from your toes to the crown of your head Turn into white-hot daggers stabbing At the very depths between your legs. But it's happening all over again. A whispered word, A gap in the story left to the imagination, And all I can feel are the harsh shockwaves of agony Vibrating inside of me, And the feeling of my breath dying in my lungs. All of this, without even a touch. And I can't control it. I have no say in it. So tell me. Where's the poetic justice in this? Knowing that we won't be able to make it past A timid kiss without my need to curl into a ball And clutch at my stomach until the stabs of electricity Die down? Is that the fucking irony in this relationship? And he worries for me. Worries over the pain, Knowing it's partly his doing. Worries because we can't even speak candidly About possible future exploits Because just hearing his voice whisper Such luscious things brings about convulsions of pain. I don't care if it's because our love is so passionate. I don't care if it's because I have so much pent up sexual tension and frustration. The point is simply that it will send stabs of pain Through me for him to touch me in any sexual way, And I'll be damned if this isn't some kind of cosmic joke. It's a pain I can't control. It's a pain that blocks me from living Any kind of normal life. It could easily be only a barrier That can be broken down in time, But that doesn't change the fact That it's harsh electricity coursing through me. And he's far too hesitant to help me conquer this. Nothing makes sense anymore. I was happy until this. And now I can't help but cry. It's something I can't control, Something I can't understand, Something I've never even heard of happening before. One moment it's a sweet tingle of arousal, The next it's a cacophony of pain Blasting through every nerve ending From my heart down to my toes. And I don't understand. And don't any of you dare lay any pity on me. It's cruel enough to have this taking place to begin with. -------------------------------------------------------- No, this wasnt about me. No, I'm not a cutter. No I don't have spasmatical pains. And no I'm not massively distraught or depressed. But yes, this is a work in progress. What do you think?

Fear It doesn?t think. It doesn?t feel. It doesn?t laugh or cry. All it does from dusk till dawn Is make the soldiers die. It will not pause. It will not wait To set you on a bier. To make your insides turn to run And your courage disappear. You cannot run. You cannot hide. There is no safety near. The one thing you cannot escape: That horrible thing called ?Fear.? The Mind A chorus, a choir Screams and moans ?They merge The mind sings, Though at times it sings a dirge. How to ruin a wedding No. 54 Not something old, But something new. A borrowed corpse, Lips turning blue. Walk it down the aisle And sit it on a bench On the young man?s famlee?s side, Next to some poor wench. Wait until she jostles him, turning to the door And then you?ll see our borrowed corpse Sprawl lifeless across the floor. Death Once, I dreamt of death But now it dreams of me And only rats and rotting flesh Can hear my silent plea. Some say banshees are the hounds of Death, Baying to herd their prey. Death?s gaze? The closest thing in kin? The ending of the day. On my death, I give you this treasure: The knowledge that life is hard yet too soon past. The touch of death is never gentle And to most it comes too fast. For some though, it comes as welcome boon And death?s embrace need not be cold Creeping, slipping across the floor, Caressing the broken, injured, and the old. But beware anything born among the dead. For life and death are two sides of a coin And all that dies Ought never be returned. Nature is an endless dance of life and death And life has always been the dance It?s only fitting that death should sing the tune. Bones you see, never have the chance. This last one I wrote a few years back for a History assignment during a trip to the WW1 trenches in Belgium. In the Trenches and the Dark On watch, I stood, for the full five hours. Five hours of fire and hell. Then the platoon stood and charged, And the machine guns opened fire. Twice they charged, And then twice more. A whistle, a thud, the rattle of guns And the battlefield lies still. ?Till the next troop marches in, To charge twice, And then once more. Two bearers dash past, Then the shells begin to fall. When the smoke and dust clears, One stumbles back. His arm dangles as I meet His pleading eyes. They sent him home, To a ?special? institute, with honors. Freud would have a field day, Over what we?ve seen, In the trenches and the dark.

*GASP!* you wouldn't! no never mind. we both know that's a lie. you would.

hahah Joey is fine. Or master. Master works too.

hahaha did you read "A Bittersweet Victory"? i might have a few others tucked away somewhere. I'll try and dig some out. They might need a bit of work though.

relationships can be a bitch like that. :(

Bird I saw him flutter and flap around, Torn wings useless as he sprawled on the ground. Feathers soaked in browning blood Wings caked with brackish mud. Watching him, it was so sad But too late! He was had. As he shrieked and struggled about and flounced She flexed her claws and suddenly pounced. She bit, tugged and tore off his head And carried him away ?Dead.

It's interesting to hear that a large number of towns and cities in the US are not showing Brokeback Mountian anywhere. I saw it on saturday night with eight friends. We ended up seeing it at a late viewing of 11:15--why? Because of the four cinemas in Cambridge, it was the only screening that wasn't already fully booked by thursday night. Incidently, ten minutes after we arrived and picked up our tickets, the ticket office sold the last two seats. We were all surprised by the turn out. It wasn't just filled with steryotyped gay men and women who love to read gay erotica. Oh no, it was packed with teenagers, elderly, men, women, gay and straight. A group of sixteen year olds arrived after we did, consisting of no less than five straight couples holding hands. Amazingly, only two people walked out during the movie-- and no, it wasn't during the gay sex scene. It was during the scene when Anne Hathaway pulls of her top. The man left saying (and I quote), "fucking Princess Diaries," while tugging at his wife's hand. Anyway enough about the audience. The film itself was absolutely amazing. It had comedy, it had romance, it had heartache, confrontation, remorse... in fact, the only thing that was bad about it, was Jake Gyllenhaal's mustache (OH PLEASE DEAR GOD JAKE DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN). There is surprisingly little gay sex in the film-- in fact, hetrosexual sex takes up a much larger portion. The cinematography though was stunning, showcasing the bleak, but majestic landscape. I won't give anything away about the movie, but I will say that the last scene was one of the most moving I'd seen in years. As the lights came back up, our whole row was crying and half of the audience were clutching tissues. I haven't had that much of a roller-coaster ride of emotions in a cinema since... god knows when! All I can say, is it was the first time since Hero that I came out of a film feeling like I'd acutally spent ?4.50 on something worthwhile. Even if it meant I had to walk across Cambridge at 2am in the freezing cold to get home.

Perfect Let?s lie in the grass And stare up at the stars As the moon rolls past Out here, away from the cars Away from the city And the people who rush around Always so busy But out here I can feel the ground I inhale the warm night air Your breath sweet on my face I run my hand through your hair This is the place It?s perfect for us.

Thanks you guys, I'm glad you liked it. There are a few minor things I'm still not quite happy about, but over all I like how it came out. Blue, I'm not sure if your comment was meant to sound as dirty as it did to me... so I'm gonna pretend it wasnt. And thanks TalonRider, I'll take that as high praise. heh. :D