codenamewanderlust: (never judge a book by it's cover)
I am learning how to love my own skin 
And all that is within 
 
My heartbeat like crashing waves 
Under abundant breasts
 
Body positivity 

Rejecting impossible standards
Accepting me
 
The self inflicted scars 
Carved into my arms
My Mount Rushmore of bad days
And half remembered pains
 
The birth marks and freckles and 
Misshapen toes
 
My unaligned eyes 
That make strangers nervous
 
I will break through these distortions 
Until I have reclaimed every inch of my skin
Where it stretches and curves
Cherry blossom tinted
Strong despite assumptions
 
I am expanding my expectations 

I am learning how to love myself

---------------------
100 words





codenamewanderlust: (Default)
It's half an hour past the deadline for posting an entry for week 1

I wrote a thing but not feeling right to post now

My writing muscles are rusty

I am NOT GIVING UP!

Still excited to be back on the Idol roller-coaster

LPF: Sign up

Monday, 1 October 2018 10:25 am
codenamewanderlust: (gentleman)

In a world of masochistic creative procrastinators 

One writer will win it all...

LJ Idol Presents: Literary Prize Fight


Join the adventure at therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/



codenamewanderlust: (a novel by josephine march)
Musings 6.25.17

One of my favorite things to do is write in invisible ink

I change the font color to match the background
so I can’t read over what I’ve written so far
and have to just keep forging ahead

It’s all I can do to turn off the criticizing voice
Who is always afraid that I’m wasting my time
Writing nonsense
A useless and unsuitable hobby

But it’s all I can do
Keeping all of those way more interesting realities
Shifting around in my brain from constantly distracting me from real life
Read more... )
codenamewanderlust: (a novel by josephine march)
Of All The Topics So Far (500 Words)

I wish for my writing to be fearless if not effortless

I wish to write for the fun of escaping and the perverse joy it brings to me

Never mind fame and fortune when hypergraphia overtakes me in the middle of the night

Too many tales wanting to be told

Universes full of elegant airships

An underground dance club in a retro-futuristic dystopia

A post-apocalyptic romance, a Mary Sue
In search of a brother who found himself on the wrong side of the law in a barren outpost far from their own
Along the way, Mary meets a handsome drifter who is also the “Traveling Judge” presiding over the brother’s trial
Read more... )
codenamewanderlust: (a novel by josephine march)

The Herald

There is a shadow hovering in the corner.

Julie cannot turn to her head to look but she knows it is there. Just as she knows her hand is at the end of her arm but she cannot move it. She cannot turn her head; she cannot run.

She can breath though,and she can scream.

She does not want to scream but she opens her mouth anyway and begins to to speak in garbled and odd sentences. She is channeling the speech of the masters of the unseen realms that live in in-between spaces by the cliffs and the valleys that are not valleys but roads and the dessert sands. Among doorways and within the dimensions of time.

The shadow descends and they become one and they begin to rise from the bed. They reach the door and stand on the periphery of all things. They step through into the great unknown, the great beyond, the place where here is not there because it was not the here, but the journey.

Julie gasps awake in the light of the afternoon sun streaming in through the holes in the curtains; the dust swirling in the light. Her head aches and she wants to go back to sleep but feels too restless now.

She moves to sit on the side of the bed and slowly rises to her feet. She slips her robe over her shoulders as she walks toward the washroom.

She stops in the doorway suddenly recalling the feeling in her dream with a vivid clarity when she catches her reflection in the mottled reflecting glass above the sink. Then she remembers with vivid clarity cutting her hair with a pair of sewing shears the night before but then she remembers that there is more hash and moves to the window sill where she left it.

She props herself on the end of the cabinet next to the window breathing in a little hair of the dog and trying to recall more of the visions of the night before.

Read more... )

She reaches into the pocket of her robe and retrieves her notebook but instead of making notes she slides out the small cream colored card she’d stuck in the back.

She’s still feeling impetuous, running her fingertips over her scalp recalling the snip of the scissors as her hair fell away. After she rereads the invitation for the tenth time since she recieved it weeks ago she heads back into the bedroom and begins to pack.

She gets to the end of the pier just in time to watch the last airship lift away from it’s mooring and sail into the clear blue sky. She drops her leather case onto the damp boards beneath her feet and sits on it panting and shading her eyes to watch “The Sailing Junkband” get smaller and smaller.

She's walking back to the boarding house when she sees the tinkerer's cart. She looks back up the street weighing her options. She's heard traveling tinkers will sometimes take on passengers and she did go through all the trouble of packing. She decides it's worth a try before giving up entirely.

He is standing beside the caravan holding a flaming torch and working on some gizmo when she approaches with her hood up to hide her unseemly cropped locks.


"Excuse me, I am looking to ride west,” Julie says loudly, akwardly.

He looks up from his work and turns off the torch.

"What reason have yuou to be heading west?" The tinker asks in a watery voice.

"I'd rather not say."

He nods and turns back to his instrument.


"Someone I love is in trouble," she says. "I need to warn them. I am — it’s not safe for me here."

"It isn’t safe for an unescorted lady most places in the twelve kingdoms, I think you will find."

"I can take care of myself."

"Of that I have no doubt. Do you believe one can find what they are looking for by running away?" He shakes his head in response to his own question. "You girl do not know what you seek and so you will never know when you have found it."


"I can’t stay here," she says, it is the truth at least.

"Can you drive a mech horse?" He asks motioning to the steam powered mechanical next to his cart.

"I can learn," she says.


"The truth suits you young miss."

"You know I am older than I look."

"To be sure, but, when you are as old as I am there is naught that surprises ye much."

"So will you take me along?"

The tinker smiles and waves a beckoning hand to her.

codenamewanderlust: (a novel by josephine march)
Full Text Below Audio



Distance Means So Little...

You protected me even back then Layla
I can say to you now,
And wonder at the bond that has made us soul sisters
Despite all the odds

I was a queermo in a small town
a bad influence on my peers
Because I was intrinsically different

Afraid to test the theory
There was this ever growing chasm between the things that you knew
and I did not
My very thoughts damming me to eternal hellfire

The color guard captain who mixed a clear bitter liquid into our juice when her parents weren’t home

But I remained the bad influence

Because my mother was scandalous
in the small town
where you protected me without my ever even knowing

There were times I spent nights on my knees sobbing to a deity
Who never answered my prayers

I found love
in the arms of a troubled young man who was born into a female body
We picked the scabs off each others souls until we were raw
because we liked the taste of each other’s blood

Grasping the phone to my ear at 2am
I will never make it through this Layla...
Read more... )
codenamewanderlust: (a novel by josephine march)

Cue Thunder

“I have had a vision mistress that Sir Henry will be lost at sea,” says the young actress crossing to the proscenium.

In the small box on stage left a small towheaded boy watches through a peephole as the drawing room of a town house begins transforming into a scene of the open ocean; a back drop painted to look like a churning sea with white capped waves is lowered and a small replica of a double masted ship is rocked back and forth by unseen stagehands.

A soft but sharp whistle interrupts the boy’s enchantment and he turns to the prompter who is glaring crossly at him.

The call-boy moves away from the peephole and the prompter whispers fiercely at him, “Git to the green room lad and tell the actors there’ll be notes after the rehearsal and to meet in the auditorium.”


Read more... )

codenamewanderlust: (a novel by josephine march)

Intersubjectivity
She shoulders her laptop bag and steps into the aisle joining the off boarding line.

When she makes it to the side of the bus she retrieves her pack, checking to be sure Mimzy her stuffed traveling companion is secured to the side, before hoisting the large pack up onto her shoulder and following the crowd into the passenger waiting area inside. She scans the inside of the station noting the restroomsand,the closed for the night food counter.

She checks the clock on the wall and the time on her ticket. She’ll have to wait here for an hour before the next bus north.

She sets her pack on the floor up against the one long bench seatand sits back, sprawls out her legsand stretches her arms.

She reaches into the back pocket of her denim cutoffs and pulls out the worn paper folded in fourths; smooths it out on her knee. It looks like one of those trope movie ransom notes, cut and pasted words in different styles and colors and, she supposes, in a way it sort of was.  It was a map that would lead to the answer. It was more than a game for her it was the only thing she knew.

Read more... )

(no subject)

Monday, 17 April 2017 07:00 pm
codenamewanderlust: (Default)
Full text below audio
Audio Content Warning: there's a string of curse words near the end



Sestina: The Main Character (MC)

This is a story about an MC afflicted with passion.
Who, like the restless needle of a compass,
was forever seeking the Horizon.
< spoiler alert > the ending of this story is already foretold
and is the same for every single being in creation.
It’s been said we’re all just players of some unseen narrator.

A nameless, unknowable, spiteful, narrator
who in the throes of passion
might decide to kill his creation.
So, this MC has a heartbeat like a needle of a spiraling compass.
For as is true for all, inevitably, death has been foretold.
Even for this MC who loves a thing known as, horizon.

They’re forever stupidly longing for that ever distant, damned Horizon.
Yes, damned, is the opinion of this narrator,
Who is actually wondering if there is even a point, if it’s all been foretold?
But I digress and the MC curses the will of my passion
as we drop them on the shore with naught but map and compass.
Do you see, that this MC is a stubborn, monstrous creation?

(I do confess I also find this fixed verse form to be a monstrous creation.)
What would happen if the MC ever reached their figurative horizon?
Perhaps an HEA* is greater than my abilities can compass?
But what good is an MC to a narrator
if they do not have passion?
We must all live with knowing that eventual, ending foretold.

From your very first breath, there being a last has been foretold.
It’s a bargain; the uncanny act of creation.
But back to the MC with all that all-consuming passion.
(Wanting so badly to reach that god damned fucking gosh darn horizon.)
The man who would dare defy the narrator
but is just a feckless wanderer lead by a faulty compass.

There are always dropped stitches and pricked fingers within the compass
of the tapestry woven as it is being foretold.
Does every narrator
hate his creation
for seeking beyond the horizon?
Being able, as the other is not, to fulfill their passion?

In the end the MC lets passion become the compass
and each moment a horizon. The last moment cannot be foretold,
the MC learns, for any man, or his creation, or even a humble narrator.

*HEA stands for Happily Ever After




with much thanks as always to [profile] lolaslaughter for being the best cheerleader a gal could have
codenamewanderlust: (a novel by josephine march)

Full text below audio link

there's a string of curse words near the end
https://m.soundcloud.com/rswndrlst/the-main-character

Sestina: The Main Character (MC)

This is a story about an MC afflicted with passion.
Who, like the restless needle of a compass,
was forever seeking the Horizon.
< spoiler alert > the ending of this story is already foretold
and is the same for every single being in creation.
It’s been said we’re all just players of some unseen narrator.

A nameless, unknowable, spiteful, narrator
who in the throes of passion
might decide to kill his creation.
So, this MC has a heartbeat like a needle of a spiraling compass.
For as is true for all, inevitably, death has been foretold.
Even for this MC who loves a thing known as, horizon.

They’re forever stupidly longing for that ever distant, damned Horizon.
Yes, damned, is the opinion of this narrator,
Who is actually wondering if there is even a point, if it’s all been foretold?
But I digress and the MC curses the will of my passion
as we drop them on the shore with naught but map and compass.
Do you see, that this MC is a stubborn, monstrous creation?

(I do confess I also find this fixed verse form to be a monstrous creation.)
What would happen if the MC ever reached their figurative horizon?
Perhaps an HEA* is greater than my abilities can compass?
But what good is an MC to a narrator
if they do not have passion?
We must all live with knowing that eventual, ending foretold.

From your very first breath, there being a last has been foretold.
It’s a bargain; the uncanny act of creation.
But back to the MC with all that all-consuming passion.
(Wanting so badly to reach that god damned fucking gosh darn horizon.)
The one who would dare defy the narrator
but is just a feckless wanderer lead by a faulty compass.

There are always dropped stitches and pricked fingers within the compass
of the tapestry woven as it is being foretold.
Does every narrator
hate his creation
for seeking beyond the horizon?
Being able, as the other is not, to fulfill their passion?

In the end the MC lets passion become the compass
and each moment a horizon. The last moment cannot be foretold,
the MC learns, for any man, or his creation, or even a humble narrator.

*HEA stands for Happily Ever After


with much thanks as always to [livejournal.com profile] lolaslaughter for being the best cheerleader a gal could have


codenamewanderlust: (camp nano 201)

When I sat down to write this week my Camp NaNoWriMo characters for this session decided to get involved take over.This part is told from the POV of a tiny shape shifting magical being named Sparkie but who has just been referred to as "the imp" by Claudius, his Master's rich (possibly nefarious) benefactor.

Sparkie's Story

He doesn’t mind being called Imp. Even though that’s technically not what he is.

He was brought forth from a wisp of smoke and evolved over his journey’s with Tremaine. Though he insists he was made from flame and this led the man to dub him Sparkie. Spark, Sparkle, and sometimes Firestarter.

Names are what you make them, Tremaine tells him.

That was one of his first lessons. They will identify you as what you mean to them.

Good morning sunshine.

Rise and shine super star.

Get some rest now little friend.

Tremaine needed a companion and Sparkie learned that meant growing up quickly; becoming curious about the world around him. Figuring out the important things.

With Tremaine it was easy. He was exuberant in the life he was leading. The great treasure hunter. Notorious.

Their first time aboard an aether ship together made Sparkie understand completely.

________

Sparkie loved Ree from the first. She was the young ward of Tremaine’s benefactor, a man named Claudius, who mostly sent Tremaine to exotic lands searching for rare books.

Ree was the one who taught Sparkie about love and how the heart could ache.

They had tea parties.

He taught her how to play pirates.

She always wanted to wear a cape.

She read out loud to him from great leather bound tomes.

A is for abalone.

B is for bishop.

Their visits were always too short and by the time they returned it was, dancing at balls, curating the library, needlepoint, baking apple pies, card games and chess games.

And then one day during a round of Beggar My Neighbor,

Do you think fairies are real Sparkie?

I am real.

Yes, but you are a dragon.

So dragons exist but not fairies Ree?

Can you truly become fire? Like Trem says.

He wishes to please her. To make her laugh. To be that which she enjoys.

He sighs and feels alight. He com-busts in all directions. Summoning fire hurts, consumes.

He has known he is Wisp. He is soft scents on gentle breezes.

But he had become an actual pirate by then. He had learned to wield.

He was also Weapon.

He was steel and stone. He was pure magic. Born of smoke. Summoned by a lonely man on moonless night in the forest of Everglen.

_____________

Tremaine chooses each piece of wood and lays down incense and herbs. He says words of significance and then tosses a match dipped in sulfur onto the pile.

Nothing happened for a long time,Tremaine would say when telling this story. He went about and made camp. Heated a bit of food and coffee along the edge of the fire. Just as he was about to doze off, a bit of smoke swirled about his shoulder and then hovered before him and dissipated into the air leaving behind the daydream of a cloud of fine particles, an entire life lived in but a single breath.

Sparkie doesn’t call his master by his surname, like most, when they are alone. He is teacher, he is summoner, spell caster…demon catcher.

You are not a demon Sparkie, Tremaine insists but Sparkie is not so sure.

He doesn't mind being called Imp because he secretly wishes it was closer to the truth.

codenamewanderlust: (elf ears)
Alive and Well in The Sunshine State

The smell of the breeze through the open windows
The fading light being swallowed by the darkness
The the hum of the highway
The susurrus of swaying palms
Brings me outside
It’s still too bright for the street lamps, casting a cozy orange glow on the atmosphere
The honeyed shadows of the golden hour
Fading to blue
And then black
Florida
You are trying to seduce me
With your sunsets
When
Watching the sun sink behind the waves of the pacific ocean
on the beaches of California
Is still so fresh in my memory
Means you don’t stand a chance
You are trying to tell me your secrets
Standing on a knife edge
I am the fireflies of my childhood
in New Jersey
Caught between palms
Innocent
Curious
I am trying to belong
Trying to confide in you
The restlessness in my spirit
The pain in my heart
You have given me a safety net
Florida
You fill me with this
An unexpected stillness
I am captivated
By the white hot glow
Of the crescent moon
Framed by the clouds
The stars that hide in the daylight
A place for sleep
A final rest
Florida
I beg you for another sunrise
Wake me with a gentle caress
Tempt me with mornings full of expectation
Give me anticipation
Make me proud of the sweat on my skin
As winter becomes spring
I want to burst forth
Like the jasmine blossoms
And the avocados
Florida
I’ve been down before
And afraid and alone
In the inbetween spaces
Is where I have made my home
This time
I am ready to fight the darkness
The scars of a life
Having been told
Having made the journey
Finding myself
Florida
This is not the final chapter
This is not the thing that breaks me

________________________________
300 Words
;
codenamewanderlust: (elf ears)
She Takes To the Road

She zips up the bag and slings it over her shoulder wishing she had some whiskey to wash down the regret. She grabs her felt hat and resists looking over her shoulder as she heads out the door; tying her bandanna around her wrist and tightening the knot with her teeth.

She walks along the side of the road judging the cars that come around the bend; turning to walk
backwards and holding her thumb up in the air when she feels the right vibe.

She keeps moving. Trying to put as much distance between herself and that mess she left behind.
She looks up and sees a hawk circling overhead. She raises her arms and closes her eyes. Imagines for just a minute that she could lift off the ground and fly away.

She takes a deep breath and gives in totally to the fantasy for a moment, tilting her arms as if she where a small child pretending to be an airplane.

She hears another car coming and turns to look. It’s a white minivan. Soccer moms don’t tend to pick up hitchhikers but the woman slows as she approaches.

“Give you a ride someplace?”

_________________

She makes up a story about who she is and how she came to be walking along the side of the road with her whole life in a backpack.

She’s 25 (give or take six years but somehow being under thirty makes her seem more trustworthy and like less of a fuck up). She just graduated college. She just came to the area to visit family.
She smiles. She laughs at jokes; watches the scenery. Calculates the miles in her head against the cash in her pocket.

She hops out at a strip mall. She waves until the car turns onto the highway. Then she crosses the street and goes into the greyhound station.

Thankfully there isn’t a security guard checking tickets at the door so she finds a bench to sit on and leans her head back cradling her back pack on her lap.
_________________

They pull off into a coastal rest area with fire pits and campsites. She says her goodbyes to her traveling companions and she hops out to pitch her tent. Her new neighbors offer her scrambled eggs and rice wrapped in tortillas.

She’s only a few hundred miles from the punk house.

In the early hours of dawn she peeks out of the tent flap to watch a few of the caravans drive on down the highway.

She stays wrapped up her blanket listening to the waves in the distance until the fog burns off and then crawls out of her tent. She breaks down her camp and hikes up to the highway on-ramp. She makes a sign to prop against her bag and then changes it after an hour.
_________________

She sends postcards to the addresses scribbled on the inside cover of her notebook. Dropping them in postboxes like sowing seeds she will never get to see flower. Her boots kicking up dust. Clinging to her like memories, stamping her feet on the dry earth trying to shake it off, trying to forget.
Getting lost in the dirt roads off I-5 into Bakersfield.

It feels like a hedge maze and they consider they made a wrong turn but the GPS is telling them to turn left and she thinks about the satellites circling the planet plotting a trajectory of the car inching along the the bumpy terrain.

It’s the mountains in the distance that she longs for, getting high enough to look down; beyond and further than she’s ever been. Fading into the horizon. Betting the world against her courage.
codenamewanderlust: (elf ears)
The Train Test

Sonia Terra grips the ladder and gives in to the temptation to look down at the track rushing away beneath her. She pulls herself up another rung. She has to keep going.

She hears Lynessa’s cries in her head again when she is violently jerked sideways as the train approaches a bend in the track. Sonia is granted an expansive view of the landscape ahead; squinting through the night.

There’s still twenty miles to the bridge she knows is no longer there.

Sonia swings herself onto the roof of the rear car and starts moving along the train as fast as she dares.

A Protector in love with a mortal, how adorable. I mean really, they are just so very fragile.

Elias could have just turned her in to The Authority but instead he had taken Lynessa, had tortured her.

Sonia doesn’t have a plan but if she can warn the operator she might be able to save Lynessa and keep the train from plummeting into the canyon.

A sharp pain shoots through her head and Sonia drops to her knees on the corrugated metal. Her lover’s screams call out to her again and Sonia cries out in harmony gripping her temples.

I’m coming my love, I will save you, don’t give up, she begs silently hoping Lynessa can hear her through their blasphemous psychic bond.

The whistle of the train brings Sonia back to the present and she pushes herself to her feet.

Elias had removed the bridge with a wave of his hand. Said she couldn’t save the train, as she was bound by creed to do, and save the woman she loved. Told her she would have to choose.

Love makes you weak Sonia Terra.

You’re wrong Elias Dorran. I will save them and then, I will come for you. That is a solemn vow.

Sonia walks down a darkened passenger car. Most of the riders are sleeping but she pulls up her hood in an attempt to hide the markings on her face that might give her away.

She’s walked the length of two cars before she sees a patrolman approaching.

She sidesteps into an open seat and sits down waiting for him to pass on to the next car.

“You’re a protector aren’t you?” comes a female voice from across the aisle.

“I am that which you have named. How can I aid you believer?”

“Please, I need healing.”

The woman’s hand is hovering in the air covered in the pockmark scars of the wasting illness that has been turning mortals into something inhuman.

Sonia can’t afford the strength it would take to help this woman, she has to get them to stop the train without exposing herself and hope that she will be allowed to return to her beloved.

Sonia reaches into her pocket and offers the woman a string of beads.

“Take these to the Oracle in Vohpolis, you will find the help you seek there.”

Sonia continues her quest to the engine car. The clock is ticking and she has promises to keep.

_______________________
510 words


Edit: here's the link to the poll for this round - http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2063445
codenamewanderlust: (elf ears)
Test Subject Eight

Dr. L.J. Weeks adjusts his bifocals as he looks over the file one more time. He chances a glance into TS8’s holding cell but the subject still shows no sign of improvement. She’s huddled in a corner with her knees tucked under her chin. Her lips are moving slightly repeating the same phrase over and over again, the only words she’s spoken for days now.

There is a sigh and Weeks looks up into the eyes of his colleague the young Dr. Lydia Idyl.

“I fear her madness is progressing,” Idyl says staring wistfully at TS8.

“She was the perfect candidate for the experiment,” Weeks says removing his glasses to rub at his right eye.

“So were the last seven. How many will we go through before you admit that it can’t be done?”

“We might still be able to isolate the variab-” Weeks is interrupted by a high pitched laugh from TS8’s cell.

Idyl moves to the wall and presses the button to turn on the intercom system. Instantly the lab is filled with the frantic whispering of their young test subject. “No. No. No. No comment. No comment. No comment.”

“Turn it off,” Weeks says tiredly.

Idyl complies and turns her back to the cell.

TS8 laughs, hysterical, and begins rocking slowly, running her hands through her hair and yelling loudly enough now to be heard through the Plexiglas walls of the cell. “No comment! No comment! No comment! No comment!”

“It’s time. Give her the sleep serum Lydia, if you would?” Weeks says rising to his feet.

Idyl nods and begins filling a syringe.

Weeks steps up to place a hand on the Plexiglas. TS8 looks straight at him.

“You were by far my favorite TS8.”

She smiles broadly and mouths the words no comment.

________________________

Exactly 300 words (not including title)

[For Lola, my favorite mad scientist, thanks for never giving up on me]


Update: Here is the link to the Poll for Week 8: http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=2062850

We made it to the top 100, so go show some love to the Idyl Idol community!

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