ArchivedLogs:Poetry

Poetry
Dramatis Personae Jim, Shelby
In Absentia	2013-07-15 Emo attack!
Location <NYC> 305 {Teenhaus} - Village Lofts - East Village
This apartment is bright and airy, its floor plan open and a plethora of windows providing it with an abundance of light. The tiny entrance hall opens into a small living room. Towards the back, a couple of doors lead off into bedrooms and bathroom, and to the right, the kitchen's tile is separated from the living room's dark hardwood floors by black countertops. Above the bedroom to one side, there is higher space; a ladder climbs up to a lofted area looking down on the living room. Another bathroom stands just into the hall and the farthest door leads to the apartment's final bedroom. Furnishings are more in line with broke students than established adults. Cast-off couches and chairs provide places to sit, and the walls have been decorated in a frequently-changed street art style that combines bright, layered colors with exaggerated proportions and abstract shapes. Oh days off: what can't you do? It is a day for resting, relaxing, enjoying one's self. Unfortunately, it's also a day for a humidity rating that leaves the temperature hovering around 106, and the city trapped under a haze of air-bound moisture and trapped smog. In short, it is sweltering and in an apartment without air conditioning, that makes for conditions that don't encourage resting, relaxing or enjoying one's self. Shelby's done what she can though. She has the window in the living room opened, and has hung a wet sheet there with a fan behind it. It's a ghetto sort of air conditioner, the air pushed through the sheet /somewhat/ cooler. Between that and the spray bottle of water she has close at hand, she's surviving. She's damp, but surviving. Sitting cross-legged on the floor near the window, with her laptop before her, she's clicking with one hand and spritzing herself with the other. The effect of the latter is to leave hair plastered to her cheek and neck, with pale freckled skin left glistening everywhere else since she's in a bikini at the moment. It's better than walking around naked, right? Muffled, beyond the door: "Heeeeeeeeeey," clump-clump-clump, some hard fist-like appendage is hammering on the apartment door suddenly. Being Jim's... fist. He's low-utter vocalizing. "Any you fucking rugrats home?" It resonates like he's pressed his face /right/ to the portal. That's a pretty subdued knock, given the source! Shelby hardly startles at all as she looks up at the door. She's up in a flash, after, grabbing a t-shirt from the couch and pulling it on over her head as she goes. Click click, rattle rattle, locks and chain are undone to swing the door open. Fisted hand props against her hip while she gives the tree on the other side a good looking over. "What the fuck, /rugrats/? I dunno what they've got you smoking down there but maybe you forgot I'm not a goddamned /kid/," the teenager complains, tone at odds with the grin she wears. Jim has to interrupt /all/ of Shelby's trivial greetings to demand, clapping a hand over his eyes, "Where are your /pants/." Excuse him, he's invading. Like he doesn't even want to /know/ the answer. Jim today wears khaki shorts, ratty along the lower hems, a hawiian shirt, SUNGLASSES - though the sunglasses are pushed up above his head to shove his overgrown hair back like a headband - and a /frown/. He's also getting a little planty, in a more tropical sense to comfortable live in the weather, his skin a little palm-trunk like, his green shoots curly and fern-ish. He sees a mister. He's GOING FOR IT. "Fuck pants, it's hot as hell out there, dude. 'Sides, I'm covered. See?" Shelby probably doesn't help matters by yanking up the hem of the t-shirt. Hello, bikini bottoms! Or maybe he didn't have to see that, because he's already shoving by. Probably just as well. She closes the door, leaving it unlocked this time, before ambling after him. The laptop is still running, mid-upload of yet another of her many YouTube videos. She arranges herself cross-legged before it again. "You should've been born back in the fifties, swear to God. They all like that down under? All Leave it to Beaver and shit?" "Why, s'that a fetish of yours?" Jim turns the mister on himself like a man intent on messy suicide and pulls the trigger. Spritz-spritz-spritz, he dusts his face with little shimmery water droplets. The skin had already been going a bit 'off' in color, turning darker - the deep scar running down his face remains a surreal puckered road regardless of the texture, though it darkens and crackles the more plant-like he resolves into. "/Christ/ it's like this city's /boiling/ itself. S'it at least fucking air conditioned at that tattoo shop?" He hands the mister back to Shelby - all of his mannerisms tend to be /accusative/, and this jab-handing is no different. Shelby might be pretending to watch the uploading process but she's side-eyeing Jim and the mister. Call it a non-physical mutant thing--she'd never admit it but those outer changes are /fascinating/. "You wish it was," she says of fetishes. Deflection! The bottle is snatched--he does accusative, she does grabby--and turned on herself. While face and shoulders and shirt are wetted down, she says, "They got AC but I'm not scheduled for weekends. Some sort've labor law or something, I dunno. It's fucking dumb. How you been? You coming back up here for good or what?" "You're gonna /love/ labor laws when you get older," Jim mutters, raising both hands with fingers /gesturing/ at Shelby and her mister. Like /bring it on/, c'mon. HIT ME. Me next. "I had a /lotta/ jobs around your age, before they had shit like that. My first job was.. fucking - ski lift operator. Imagine sitting out in the fucking cold, helping sticky fat kids and sad old grannies get their sorry asses onto a lift seat without it throwing 'em headfirst into the ground." He's squeezing up his eyes in expectation. "...Ksh. Never a time I been needed /more/." One eye creeps open, "...how you been?" "You walked there uphill both ways too, huh?" Yeah, Shelby is not impressed. So sorry, Mister Morgan. Once she's used up most of the bottle on herself, she turns it to squirt him with the dregs. Spritz spritz. "What do you mean, needed more? Like /they/ need you more? That's such bullshit." The squirting ends at the same time a hurt note creeps into her voice. Like fuck you, man, no more water for you. The bottle is set beside her hip as she swivels her attention back to the laptop. The upload has completed! So she begins clicking other buttons, doing god knows what. "Been okay. Working mostly. Got my first original song up, people seem to like it." "Yeah, with one shoe to share between the eight of us." Jim grimaces into his misting, dropping down to sit on the floor beside Shelby. A small shower of treebark skips and rolls down the folds in his clothes- maybe a stray leaf seesaws to land atop Shelby's knee. It's difficult to tell if he hears the hurt edge in Shelby's voice, leaning back against the wall with a creak, "A lot of it's bullshit, princess. Doesn't mean it's not true. S'bullshit for /them/, too." He's /eyeballing/ Shelby's mysterious button-pushing with the same level of wary lack of understanding men have observed /bombs/ being built. "-up where? Original song? Why'd I not hear about this?" Nevermind that he's been literally under a rock. Many rocks. A city's sewersystem worth of rocks. “Jesus,” Shelby drawls, “sometimes I think you old people have the one story. You seriously need to come up with better ones.” She’s heedless of the sprinkle of shed treestuff that comes from him as he settles. Too busy with all of that button clicking, which is producing a number of new tabs and a rapid search for the pause button once each page loads. The one on top, that one she allows to play-- it’s of her, in her bedroom (the wall’s decorated with a street graffiti pin up of herself), wielding her guitar and introducing a song called “Daddy Issues”. “Maybe ‘cause you haven’t been around?” she suggests. “Anyway, that’s it. Writing this shit...it’s harder than I thought it’d be. Can’t keep my head on catching the words.” A sidelong look tilts up at the man. “It doesn’t really matter anyway, does it? This normal stuff, it feels like pretending. Working, posting this shit.” But for a moment, Jim doesn't seem to be aware Shelby is speaking. Initially his brows are furrowed, until they gradually ease, as the song begins to play, and his eventual communication is only in gesture of one finger that indicates the volume should be turned up. To drown out Shelby's /talking/. He leans his head back against the wall, features intensely concentrated. He doesn't speak until the song is over - and it comes out abrupt-demanding, like any other inquiry. "You wrote that?" It is entirely against her nature to /not/ talk, even for the three and a half minutes that the song takes to complete. But Shelby’s quiet throughout, after having cranked the volume as high as the crappy inset speakers allow. She’s tooootally not checking out his expression to see what he thinks-- and tooootally not frustrated to find nothing useful there. So that’s three and a half minutes of torture then, which leads to a shrug when Jim finally /does/ say something. The tab is clicked shut, another brought up and scrolled down to the comment section, which she begins to read. “Sure,” she says, teenage disinterested. “It’s not great but everyone was giving me hell for doing covers, so...” "Not great?" Jim bristles - few living things bristle quite as well as a tree, sitting forward again with eyes narrowed, "Someone fucking tell you that?" Again with the shrugging. Shelby adds in an eyeroll for good measure. It’s in the seventeen year old contract that she has to, now and again. “No one /has/ to tell me, I know what good music is, and this wouldn’t even make Top 100. It’s /okay/ but it’s not /great/. Like I told Hive, it’s kinda hard to write right now.” She gestures at the screen. “But folks like it okay, I guess.” Jim shrugs back; big shoulders make his shrug a much more weighted thing than Shelby's skinny set, frowning hard like the tragic half of the comedy-tragedy masks. "Well I fuckin' like it." Said like 'so fuck /you/ very much.' He's leaning all in Shelby's personal computer business, reading her comments. Back-and-forth, his blue eyes scan rapidly. He's getting better at reading atrocious internet SPEAK. "DeviantSpectrum. Like. The whole spectrum of deviance?" All of it's casual-frank, scratching at his scarred face. The stubble makes a bristling sound. But he's propping an elbow on Shelby's knee; some slight pressure transfers through it, "S' keeping you from writing, kiddo?" His I-hate-computers frown hasn't left the screen. “I knew /you/ would,” Shelby shoots back, like it’s some sort of major victory. Her eyes flick down to that point of contact, but she doesn’t wiggle-- just slows down on the scrolling to give him a better chance of checking out her ADORING FANS. “It fits, huh? I’m pretty deviant. And I dunno...just. You ever try writing anything? Not even just a song, but /anything/ that means something?” "So this is like. Who writes all this?" Jim isn't even bothering to seem embarrassed by his ignorance in the wild world of Youtube, "Just people from anywhere?" Watch out, he's stalling - Shelby's question may be part of why he's keeping his face turned to the glow of the screen. "Yeah." He mutters. Finally. "Before your rosy red ass was born, guess I tried writing -- christ. Poetry. Stupid shit. But I wasn't really in a fit state to write a god damn /rent/ check." His head turns to put Shelby's face in stabbing range of his peripheral vision. "But you, kid. You got /talent/. What's holdin' you back?" While he stalls, Shelby snorts at his ignorance. But it’s a fond, amused sort of snort. Okay, /Grandpa/. “Anyone who logs in, yeah, from pretty much anywhere. You’ve been on the internet, right?” Wait, don’t answer that. Why? Because she won’t /hear/ it. Mostly because she’s staring at the man, for his admission of poetry. It’s one of those odd moments, when he can probably watch her trying to picture a young James Morgan, maybe around her age, frowning at a much worn notebook. Maybe chewing on his pencil. Those blue-green eyes blink, once. This time...she doesn’t snort. Or laugh. “If you have any left, I wouldn’t mind reading it,” she finally says. “If it’s like the stuff you quoted me. In the park. If it’s like your pictures.” And that’s all she says because two can play at the stalling game. "Haha," Jim's face twists into a smile - the twist, primarily, coming from the scar, but not entirely, "Pablo Neruda? 'I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. // I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too'?" He quotes it hard, speaking low to his teeth, hunkering alongside Shelby like some junkyard dog. "Agh, princess, I don't think I got anything left over from last /year/..." He scrubs a hand up the back of his neck. “Yeah, that,” Shelby says, a thread of wistful sliding into both voice and expression, “Neruda. See, that’d make a good song. Maybe changed up a little. I loved him, and sometimes he loved me too? I’d buy that song.” And then he goes and does it. Pet name plus poetry means that the junkyard dog gets a damp teenager leaning up against his side, taking the opportunity of that raised arm to tuck in beneath it. “I dunno why I can’t fucking write anything right now. It’s just not coming out.” Jim looks down, not exactly startled by the damp teenager tucking in against him, but the possibility hadn't taken much root in the forebrain. He succumbs to it, dropping an arm across the back of Shelby's shoulders. His body isn't particularly hot or sweaty; plants don't maintain a core body temperature, and while still partially fleshy, it's not a radiant mammal heat she leans into. "So," he drops back his head again, relaxing slowly. "Don't then. Who was it that fucking said - something. Like, if you don't got time to read, you don't got the time or the tools to write? Or some shit. Pick up a /book/. You like Neruda, I'd bet like hell you'd like some John Donne. He's the fucker that wrote 'Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.' I'm gonna get you some books." If it /were/ a radiant mammal heat, she’d probably shove him away. It’s /hot/ in here. But it isn’t, and he’s not, so Shelby is quite comfortable in bending in that boneless youthful way to slide her arms around his waist from the side. “I could read,” she says, though she doesn’t sound particularly enthused about it. Downright reluctant, in fact. “Or you could come up more often and quote it for me.” Silence follows but it’s a weighty quiet. There are thoughts in there, trying to coalesce. When they do, she sighs, “I didn’t think settling down in one place’d be so...weird. It’s like instead of me moving, everyone’s moving around me. And away, y’know? The only people paying any attention is...” A slight nod, towards the computer screen. Yes, she is withering away from lack of attention. Jim doesn't seem entirely sure what to do with a young woman draping against him, arm still slung across her but with hand flexed up. Then /gives up/. Hand drops back to hang off the bony edge of Shelby's shoulder, puffing up his cheeks and then slowly blowing it out like a balloon. Just - sans the shrill rubbery squeal. His other hand crosses over to /noogie-scrub/ at Shelby's scalp, either to abusively console or, just as likely, low-scale /punish/ her for being SAD. Scrub. SCRUB. "Yeah," he breathes it out short and sharp, the way you might tear apart crusty bread. "S'rough." He takes in a breath, squinting up at the ceiling as he drags together ragged edges of memory broken up by years, change, hard living. And, finally, he begins to recite. Slow. Ratty-smoker voiced like grating a carrot. "Do you see these hands? They have measured Earth, they have separated mineral from mineral, cereal from cereal, They have made war and made peace, They have conquered the distances Of all seas and all rivers And still..." It’s perhaps fortunate that Jim lacks telepathic ability--though none may be needed, because Shelby is absent mindedly gathering and releasing his ridiculous shirt in bunch handfuls as he recites. Grab, release, grab, release, like a cat’s kneading. But when he’s finished, she pulls a breath and uses him to push herself up to an upright position again--and lets go. “That’s fucking dumb,” the girl says, “mentioning cereal in poetry. Throws the whole damn thing off, you wondering if they’re talking Cap’n Crunch or Cheerios or what. Here. Check out this one, I liked this one.” And so she angles the laptop towards them again, bringing up a new tab to showcase one of her past cover songs. Choosing, for now, to set the sads aside in favor of fishing for more compliments.