Edgar Allen Poe

This is my attempt to mirror his personal style of writing...

In the small, white room she sat. The only form of movement in the room was of her shoulders, as they moved up and down struggling to keep time with her persistent lungs. Inside her body though, a battle raged on. Her heart beat with intense and uneven lurches of pain. Her mind spoke so loudly that she was unable to scream. Her blistered hands were tied to the wall she rested on with decrepit, dirty ropes the color of sewage water. Her eyes remained shaded in an odd color of pink, always stagnant with tears that never faded. Shattered remnants of hope and love that once possessed her lay unrelenting and unwavering on the cold linoleum floor of her chamber. For her love, for him, she would live in this corpse like state until her lungs gave out. Only in this action would she understand that as fast as she catapulted herself to the highest depths of self sacrifice, she fell through the shallow, icy surface of her failures. She was not alone though; in her barrier of loss sat four figures of unthinkable scope. Three of these were of her likeness, in physicality and emotional stature. They, as still as she, were cloaked with truth so that their eyes shone a bright blue, so cold it could penetrate skin. In each pair of eyes lay her story; the sacrifice she made, the expectations she never rose to, the truth she never had courage enough to face. Despite the fact that each unyielding glance she received from her angels tore through her like lightning, it was the fourth member of the circle that carried the most power over her. He had outsized eyes, wet with tears and brimming over with emotion. He wore a complacent stare, full of passion that lay unwritten in her own, stale watch. The sentiments that filled her heart each time she looked up into his facade subsequently sent her into a more hysterical silence than before. A familiar, smug visage; a look worn by one cradled by the safety invested in the worship of another. A look of love; a look she once wore. The familiarity kept her in her corner, fixed to her rigging made of movable knots as weak as her body's rhythm. As weeks passed, the look of adoration developed into a tangible sound. The lips of her company lay immobile as always, yet her eyes lay wide with shock as she heard the whispers become more prominent. At first they were merely a montage of phrases her love once spoke to her. As hours departed, words of anguish; of the darkness that consumed her and drove him away, appeared and faded like smoke. Her heart beat too fast, her sobs welled up in her chest causing a raw, burning pain to melt its way across the planes of her throat like licks of orange flames. The stares of her visitors grew stronger, breathing in time with the murderous poetry. As the fifth hour curved closer to the next, her hands curled into fists. As they began to slither with motion, they slipped from the confines of their chains. She stood, slow and steady, on her knees as she felt the blood pulse through her veins, too fast so that they created a shivering sensation throughout her body. As she gazed through the corner of her eye, she stopped, only to shoot a glare across the room to the corner where her guests once sat. She peered with increasing curiosity into the once full space, pondering how it could now lay so still. It was as if no one had ever moved in the room besides herself. With less than eager movements, she maneuvered herself onto her hands and knees and began to progress to the tall white double doors, carved with glossy patterns and gleaming with the reflection of light. She turned the cold, silver doorknob and stumbled into the bathroom. Now shuffling faster, she crawled, dragging her knees and tearing her skin, to the unusually white base of the sink. with struggle she stood, and felt her body convulse under the unanticipated feeling of her limbs under her nonexistent weight. Slowly, in one minute movement, she lifted her head to peer into a foggy pain of glass hanging above the fixture. her breathing ceased as she took in the ghastly sight. Deep rings of purple overtook her face and radiated from the bottom of her under eyes. Her cheekbones lay sallow, like craters. Her skin took a ghastly, yellow tone. This was a face that had come to her in nightmares, a face that had haunted her memory since the moment he closed the door on the future that had been promised to her. Her boney, shaking hands positioned themselves upon either side of her face. she shuddered, and bumps rose along her arm and stomach. At that moment an emotion shot through her, stronger than the first that had engulfed her aching heart not moments before. Who was this body? this cadaver that only sought to breath in truths meant to damage, meant to kill. There was no life in this corpse. its only purpose was to serve as a casket for the soul that lay inside, painfully waiting for the day it would be carried away to a better place. With impetuous actions, two arms reached top pull a wooden stake from the pule of untouched firewood. Rapidly, she swung her arms, sending the wood into the basin of the sink. Her hand quivered as it reached to enclose itself around a rather jagged piece. In one fleeting shift of her fingers blood began to drip from her wounded neck. As her body emptied itself of the life she felt it no longer deserved, and before her eyes could completely fog over, she was afforded a glance to the entrance of her deathly chamber. A familiar, mud brown loafer carried its proprietor through the french doors. It took only three words to bring her to life, and three words to carry her out of it.

The end.

Copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

At Eighteen

When I was nine years old, my biggest wish in life was to be twelve. Indeed, twelve was a good year. Thirteen marked the beginning of my foray into the world of dating (during that time dating was when a boy you liked asked you to “go out with him” at the local shopping mall only to wither under your sadistic attempts to hide from him in the school hallways). Fourteen was a year full of blind faith and false promise, a.k.a. high school. Looking back I feel I should have known better than to believe that there was anything remotely resplendent about the gray, pyramid shaped roofs and pretentious royal blue lettering marking each department of the school. Fifteen and sixteen were a blur of heartbreak and obsession, **** was all I wanted and I nearly shredded my internal organs pining after what I believed would be the most intense and prolific love affair in the history of high school relationships. Sixteen was also the year I was sleeping on my aunt’s floor, eating peanut butter and pretzel sandwiches and wishing I was Bella Swan. At seventeen I developed a taste for whiskey, snuck in snippets through cracked closet doors. It was also during that time that I gave up any hope for a life that didn’t end with fourteen studio albums and 30 plus years of sold out touring. I wrote songs, read East of Eden three times, and felt both genuinely happy and completely alone. I spoke the truth to a void, because he was a good listener. I bought denim jackets and a poster of a rocket ship, and realized that an obsessive need to fill my room with material possessions acquired at various secondhand shops coursed madly through my veins. Now I’m living through eighteen. It’s only been a month and yet it has filled me with such sorrow and confusion. The world is asking me to be the “vs.” between growing up and staying young. I’ve never been one for conflict, and now each morning I’m faced with a boiling hot feud between two separate and arbitrary sides of myself. Eighteen is the year they thrust you into the real world with a handful of “I told you so’s” ,“go get ‘em tiger’s”, and “I believe in you’s”. Eighteen is the year they expect you to make your own decisions and not fuck them up. But at eighteen, all I want to do is sing in my closet and eat peanut butter cookies. At eighteen I can’t stand to look at photos of myself prior to 2003. At eighteen I find myself a victim of somniphobia, sifting through and cataloguing my short life in mental file cabinets. Alphabetical order. Beginning to end. Is this the beginning, or the end?

Copyright Yasamin Aftahi 2011

Welcome To The Rileys

Sore throat.

I've only recently realized that my insomnia is due to somniphobia, or a fear of sleeping. Last night as I mulled over a set of lyrics I had been working on, I realized that I had been making excuse after excuse all night to keep myself from sleeping. Whether it was some studying I had failed to do, or a song I needed to listen to, the reasons just kept on coming. And by this point it was 1 a.m. and my "eyelids felt like lead garage doors", as the lovely Tegan Quin would say. Now, what are some reasons one would fear such a lovely escape as sleeping?:

-The dreams/nightmares that are inevitable with someone who has such a high wired imagination as I do
-The lack of control one has when asleep. You're unconscious, there's really a limited amount of control you have over your environment
-A distrust of one's subconscious; It is responsible for all the rash judgements and decisions you make, plus the bad habits too!

I could probably think of a lot more, and although that would help in my quest to avoid sleep I don't believe I'll be helping my situation by feeding the flames with fresh sheets of scrumptious notebook paper.

I think of all the phases I've gone through throughout my time here on Earth, this one has proven to be the most self destructive. But then again............I have written some pretty fantastic lyrics, if I may brag. So I'm going to, just this once, go with the flow and see what else this somniphobia can do for me. Perhaps we'll become close friends, and take long strolls through snow covered Montreal in February, sharing dreams of disastrous Valentines days from our past.

Sweet dreams to all you sleepers out there!

I Was Young Enough I Still Believed In War

How do we all end up the way we are?

Why is it that some people turn out confident, and overzealous while others seem uninterested in just about everything? Or how others can form coherent sentences while others struggle to get across messages as simple as "may I please use the bathroom?". I know that there are simple answers to these questions, but it still seems so.....human. Almost in a cruel way.

And why do I wake up some days and feel completely grounded and sane, only to make a U-turn within a couple of hours and feel no relation to where I am or who I'm with?

Why is it that sometimes when you need "home" most, your own "home" feels less welcoming than anyplace else? Just like Andrew in Garden State explains, you get to a certain point in your life where that idea of home is just lost?

I think it's unfair that the times you feel most like a screaming are the times where you can't seem to make any sounds escape from your black hole of a mouth.

Heavy Hearted Goodbye

Goodbye. I hate the word. I hate the sound of it. I hate what it feels like to hear, whether from your own mouth or another's. Why is it that everything has a positive and a negative end? It makes it impossible to brood in peace. As Summer comes to it's inevitably bittersweet close, I can't help but feel this massive itch inside myself. A hole that just a few, short weeks ago was filled with lazy Summer day dreams and the pleasing smell of coconut sunscreen, is rapidly becoming a safe harbor for productive thoughts and the sound of pencils scratching across crisp, lined paper. And the greyest of clouds blocking the sunshine from my days is threatening a downpour of massive proportions. Can't saying goodbye be easy? Could it be that sometimes the sweetest of times occur within the shortest of time frames? Months, weeks, days......And those are always the hardest to let go of.

Lucky for me, I fill my voids easily and quickly.

Trouble, Oh Trouble

"You're eatin' my heart away and there's nothin' much left of me"

Now for a little something of my very own creation:

losing your shadow as the crowd tears it from your skin
best stop cutting your puppet strings
they'll catch you lying through your teeth
and they'll just as soon sew your truths
hang them up for all to see

losing the star that's guiding you through
to pale yellow streetlamp light
taste the salt pressed to your cheeks
convictions splinter beneath your feet
hang them up for all to see

wake up you're metal heart
bring it back to me
wake up your metal heart
bring it back to me
don't fall any further down
without taking me with you

I'll fall asleep with the phone resting on my stomach
So if the world is spinning too fast
Come to me and I'll slow it down
I'll keep a foot inside your circle
I could never let you go
Under my skin, You've gotten under my skin

Write away who you are
Cause you're only playing a part
I couldn't see through
And all I wanted was you
And I would kill off my light
To hold you even through eternal night

Copyright 2010

Don't Waste Your Time, I Mean You're Already a Voice Inside My Head

Do you ever stop and really examine your day? Every thought, every word, every action...only to realize that you did absolutely nothing important. And the funny part is that, for me at least, lying in bed all day writing or even just sleeping feels so much more proactive than running errands. I can't stand myself when I'm playing the society game. I fear that as I grow older my introverted tendencies will only worsen. I enjoy being by myself too much. I enjoy wasting time too much. I enjoy doing things that benefit my mind, body, and spirit rather than society. Ghandi said to "be the change you wish to see in the world"; I completely agree with that statement, but I can't bring myself to believe that planting a tree would make my heart feel warmer than a warm cup of mint cocoa and my Westside Story DVD. Does that make me selfish? God, that does make me selfish. I'm almost ashamed of myself, but maybe by sorting this all out in the open I can make sense of it. I feel that taking time to get to know oneself, to forge a friendship with oneself, is the only way to successfully understand who it is you want to be, and in turn how you are going to leave your mark on the Earth before the time comes for you to leave it. Although I would use the word impulsive to describe myself, I feel that when it comes to the big stuff it's all about preparation. If I don't feel ready to leap, then why not stop and take an extra breath? Not every decision you make in life comes equipped with a second chance guarantee, in fact very few do. And for people like me who tend to disregard the consequences for just about everything, it's not smart to rush into a decision that may just have a much larger impact than initially expected.

I don't really know how I got so off topic. The main point is, I feel that I haven't done anything truly important in a very long time. And who am I to say anything I've ever done was important? I need to create something and put it out into the world in order to feel like i'm contributing somehow. I'll have to replace another excerpt of ridiculous, psycho babble with something I've written lately sometime. Perhaps tomorrow. I tend to save the good stuff for my journal, and the insanity for the blog.

I'm going to invent a pie. I'm going to finish my song. I'm going to post my cover of Lua on Youtube. I'm going to finish the two books I've been simultaneously reading. I'm going to continue to take my vitamins daily, as well as sweat through 100 sit ups and breathing. There are not enough hours in the day to read, be productive, and satisfy my need to create words and music. Note to self: Your life isn't that hard, stop complaining.

Sleep sweet.

P.S. A Love Song For Bobby Long was wonderful. It made me fall in love with my guitar again. I sort of disregarded it for a week as I've been teaching myself how to play the piano. I'm slowly making progress with the UP score.