MISSING THE BOAT
William lived on the "shady" side of town. He had always lived there. In the old decrepit neighbored by the seaside. The allure of the beach had long since run out and the once tourist trap was left as a ghost town. In fact now that he thought about it there wasn't even a beach anymore, just some gravel thrown down by the waterside to try and stop the inevitable erosion. The town had eroded too. No one lived there but low income families and drug dealers, along with your other assortment of criminals. William never considered himself any of those. He lived there because he liked the atmosphere. He was an artist, he liked contrasting things, and what better of a contrast than the beauty of the seaside and the stench of poverty and crime. He saw lots of interesting things, painted and sketched most everything and everyone around. Art patrons admired his art of it's raw portrayal of society today, beauty of the past mixed with violence of now. But William never considered himself a part of this, merely a viewer. He knew the people in his neighborhood, but only as an outsider. No one considered him part of the world he resided in. He liked it that way. His house was kept up better than the others, a small residence right on the waterfront, converted into a studio. His house was the only one on the street that didn't have paint chipping away and a roof that needed fixing years ago. No one seemed jealous though, it was his observation that the people there almost liked their way of living, and he always helped his neighbors if they were in a jam. So William was the local "recorder of events" so it seemed, kind of like a newspaper done in only pictures, but never one of the subjects himself.
There was a girl that would visit him almost every chance she got. She came from the middle class part of town. Just a college student with a fancy for art, but more of a fancy for him. At first she didn't even tell him her real name, and for weeks he only knew her as "Batty" due to her black hair, love of things macabre, and a bat necklace she always wore, but he eventually came to know her as Gillian. They became best of friends, she even let him paint her portrait, although she was very self conscious, and he let her take his picture of her photography class. She laughingly argued that it wasn't a fair trade, since he never had a problem with his self image. He was gorgeous and he knew it, bleached hair with long bangs dyed blue that fell across his deep green eyes (enhanced by emerald contacts although he didn't need them) and a tall slender male model figure to kill for. She found his egoism cute and smiled as she'd watch him getting ready to go out, standing in front of the mirror with Christian Death playing, dancing and striking poses while wielding a tube of black lipstick carefully balanced in one hand. Hell he could even put it one while dancing around. Lots of other girls found him cute as well, he always had a gaggle of girls to go on dates with, some practically throwing themselves at his feet. He'd date them all, once, then he'd throw them aside, proclaiming to them that his "Art" was more important and he didn't have the time for anything else. Gillian took this with grace, she was his best friend, she wasn't supposed to care if he dated people, but secretly in her heart she loved William desperately.
One day as he was sitting in his studio painting a picture of a fetus in a jar washed up on a beach, she whispered in his ear how she felt for him. His heart told him he wanted to say he felt the same, that she was an amazing and understanding woman, the only one he had ever known who cared about him not just his face or his fame, but his ego told him to say "I don't have time to love you, just my work, you need to find someone else". She left his studio crying. She didn't even call him for two weeks. He felt like one of the criminals in his neighbored, a junkie to his own ego, and totally miserable.
He finally talked to her two weeks later at a show for his new collection of paintings. She was standing looking at the picture he had been painting the day she told him how she felt. He had entitled it "washed up love, unborn love". She knew it was because of her, she knew he had to care, but was her heart was too damaged to ever mention her feelings again, he would have to be the one to say something. He came up to talk to her, they joked around a bit, talked about friends, the club scene, the KMFDM concert last week, but he never said a word about what happened back at his studio, nor did he apologize. She figured it must be his pride in the way. Never the less they kept their friendship, they even got to the point where they'd mess around with each other, kissing, touching, never much more, and never one telling the other how they felt. Every time Gillian saw him it made her heart break, every time they touched it killed her, William could see it in her eyes.
The news came about a month after the art show. It was just a simple phone call, Gillian was ecstatic. "I've met someone! He's asked me out.", she exclaimed. William felt a lump in his throat, but he pretended to be happy for her. It's just a phase he thought, it'll pass, and after all he had his art. Gillian stopped coming to the studio very often, she saw William less and less, although she often called him to tell him about how happy she and (whom he had come to know and dread as) Kristian were. His paintings got more violent, so did his outlook on life. The people he saw in his neighbored were more lowly and disgusting than ever to him, and without the light Gillian had shed on his world everything look ugly, even the seaside gave him no peace. He stare at it for hours looking at the ships passing by, thinking how they would never remember this little place, how unimportant it was compared to the whole ocean. He began to feel that way himself. He was sinking into a depression that only Gillian could save. Gillain called him the next day in tears, he couldn't tell if she was upset or overly excited, but he hoped the former, he hoped Kristian had dumped her. "Kristian asked me to marry him!", she yelled into his ear. William snapped, he couldn't take it, the sound of those words hit him like a slug to the head with a two by four and resounded in his ear like the sound of shattering glass, the shattering of his heart. "What!!", he screamed at her, "No!". He was almost in tears and by the end of the conversation he was. Gillian didn't understand, "I thought you'd be happy for me". "But, but, I love you", he cried, "I always have." Gillian got quiet, William thought he heard a little whimper, then a long sigh. "I'm sorry William, you had your chance, I gave you all I had to give, I laid my heart right in front of your face, but it was always 'my art, my art', you had your chance...but you missed the boat." Then a long silence came and finally, "William I have to go". Gillian hung up.
William went into a depression that turned into a kind of insanity. He shaved off his beautiful hair, he burned the pictures she took of him, along with his whole studio. Then he disappeared for about three weeks. When he came back he was shell of what he used to be, he hauled up with a drug dealer in a dirty old crack house. Gillian never called him again, even if she could have found him she wouldn't have, she was too busy grieving of the disappearance of her fiance.
The winds were very blustery that day, blowing the stench of the neighbored all over the gravel-ridden beach. William pulled his car down to the water's edge, he got his canvas out of the back seat, and an easel, he placed the painting he did of Gillian on it. From his trunk he drug out a dirty old sheet, with something heavy wrapped in it an laid it beside the easel. The he pulled up a rusty old fold out chair and got out a sketch pad, this was to be his final work. He took much care in drawing the still life, and still life it was, for The body of Kristian would never move again. He drew the sea and the picture of Gillain he drew the bloody stabbed corpse of Kristian, and a boat sailing off in the distance. He sighed when he was done and wrote the title of his work on the back of the sketch, then laid it in the seat of his car. The wind felt cold, like a banshee ready to carry him away, cold like his heart had become, cold like his ego had made him. He looked out at the passing boats then back at the neighbored hood with it's homeless and criminals. He had become something he never thought he'd be. He had become one of the people he used to just observe, he was a criminal, the lowest of low, dirtier than any dealer in the neighbored. Art imitates life he thought, now my life imitates my art.
He picked up the painting of Gillain, ripped it off the canvas and tore it to tiny shreds and put it in a glass bottle. Placing it in the water he sent it off to sea, and he followed it. Walking until the water covered him, Gillain would float away and be free, he would go to the bottom, where he belonged. His ego had never taught him how to swim, but that was his plan.
When the police found his car and the body the next day it made the front page of the newspaper. It told of the murder of Kristian Borno and William's suicide. But it also told the account of the strange sketch found on the seat of his car, how the man must have been a truly sick and tortured artist, but also how that picture told the story of how and why everything happened as it did, an account of a mind made sick by obsessive jealousy, through a picture entitle "Who Missed the Boat Now..".
Tracy Robertson March '98
Wind
~Life passes by me
changing colors
like the rain on faeries wings
Lily petals bending under
drops of dew and golden rings~
~Softly hummed tune, twisted through air
nettles twined in maiden's hair
So soft a vioce
lost and barely
a whisper on the changing tide~
Oh high tower by the sea
the crisp air reaching out to me
the gentle morbid darkening sky~
angels kiss and angels die
~on the wind
Stange how the call is singing my name
gentle roses on a grave~
Singing tunes of soulitude
the air is still and darkness soon
High on a cliff overlooking the sea~
my soul is calling out to me
to join the love that died within~
so long ago
~to join the wind~
Fingers streached out,arms outreached
the wind the cradle to the sea~
curling all around my form~
~so still there for a moment~
Then as the quietness goes past
like angles trumpets~comes a blast
of sea and spray upon the rocks
and for a second my heart stops~
and breaks to pieces on the beach~
falling to the stones beneath~
Despair and love are softly carried
on the breeze~ before the bodies buried
~souls are carried~on the wind.
tracy~'96
CATACOMB DANCE
Dance through the crystal wind on the trees
under silver tapestries
over molding seplecures
bending underneath the stars
velvet dance on ringing drums
echo loudly through darkened halls
swing past face with miles of silk
glittering glowing ethereal
Flowing freely lover's stare
with each step in frozen air
in dark caves with mossy walls
Dancing on the music calls
Dancing on the evening falls
and each dancer knows thier fate
floating toward what lies in wait
beautiful faces china white
dancing in the tombs of night
music drowing out the light
Spinning around the stratosphere
the dancers on the dying sphere
the earth bound travelers to and fro
crying silent as they go
the waltz time past and brought to life
reeling bleeding under knife
death of all things dark and gone
but the catacombs will carry on
weeping
dancing
reeling
spinning
in the night child's world
loving every forgotten lyric
cherish every poet's word
embrace the mode that was forgotten
dance the catacombs...
Tracy, Dec. '96
In Her Room
~Opium Den
Posh
Incense, Candles
Witchdocter
Shreds of fishnets
Various items
Clothing
Trinkets, scattered
Sleeping
Under blacklight
Porcelain
White, lifeless
Scattered
Rose petals
Breathing in
Barely
The heavy scent
Thickened air
Sprawled
Across sheets
Satin
Slippery, unnatural
Taking their own life
Holding
Her form
Posters
Plastered, peering
A thousand eyes
Watching
They know her well~
Trembling Dawn
yesterday like a dream fading in and out
blazing up into memory
are feelings once forgotten
the world changes shape with each
touch of him
things are strirred
things laid dormant for some time now
churning the soul around
to reach for new exsistance
yet it doesn't seem attainable
confusion sets into the mind
feeble cries for comfort
and a heart left feeling out of place and lost
trembling for the feelings he gave
wondering how to keep beating
is this feeling fleeting
or is there hope of renewal
will the day rise again on a lost soul
or will the order of things fade
back into the staleness that is this life
-Tracy Dec. '98
GLITTER KISS
The glitering brightness of the summer sun
doesn't seem to phaze me today
and the sparkly glitter of the neon night
has never seemed to glow so bright in the sky
my head is spinning with thoughts of candy and kisses
sugar coated warmth sends me tingling wishes
never let this go away
please never let this go away
-Tracy Batty, May '99
THE QUIET HOUSE
we were sitting there moving in a silent room
where all that traveled was your haunting smile
and your eyes on me and my eyes on you
and a wind brushing through the night
lifted my heart like butterflies like lilies like a song
to the great outside full of stars and wilder things
back to the inside walls were I lay gazing up at you and your glittering eyes
we were sitting there talking, talking without speaking
a thousand words when our lips were meeting
and your heart all racy and my heart all beating
and a million dreams manifested in the light
carried our thoughts away nestled in darker shades
to the future place full of laughter and deeper meaning
back to the inside walls where I lay and you lay, fixed to glittering eyes
-Batty June '99
DREAMS ON WATER
rain falling
sweetly like soft powdered snow
brings a chill to the air of the summer night
and you and I sit in our seperate rooms
but we are dreaming alike
-Batty June 21st '99