Help Him

      He stood surrounded by walls of fire. Smoke wreathed about him, caressing his body and scraping at his throat. Tendrils of flame flickered about his toes, burning holes in his dull grey socks. Blue eyes looked past the raging inferno around him as it fought the engulfing darkness that held him heart and soul. The mind was far away, sneaking stealthily between wooden trunks and creeping shadows, hunting desperately for glory in an anonymous world.

    The ceiling blazed above his head, groaning in the intense heat. Singed flakes of white paint fell and flecked his blackening skin. Burning hair battled the suffocating smoke which filled his nose. Time was running out, it had always been running out, but still he stood and still the shadow gripped him like a frightened child. Tears fell from eyes bereft of eyelashes, evaporating as they tried to fight down his blackened cheeks.

    Hope was gone, shattered, broken. Heart and soul consumed by shadow. Mind taunted, tricked into a far-away place. Body burnt by a terrible fury. It was hopeless, they said, the professional men. It happened too fast. All he ever needed was a touch of emotion. There it stands now, in the charcoal ruins of a lonely bedroom. Bleeding.

(Source: readmyjam)

Countryside.

    He walked the winding path in the full glare of midday. Backpack weighing him down, he carefully navigated past strong roots and brittle twigs that littered the trail. The world felt different, in a way he couldn’t quite figure out. Once he thought it was the silence, the way that civilization ceased to exist in this unsullied wilderness. Yet if he stopped and gave his ear to the distant sounds, the steady hum of a motorway could be heard, slight but endlessly roaring, a mechanical waterfall. Once, a bird flew past his head twittering while a squirrel hopped across the ground, acorn clutched in his teeth, and he decided it was the network of nature and his delicate place in it’s beautiful circle, the perfectly balanced harmony. Yet the squirrel ran from the echo of his footsteps and the bird madly chased his fellows from tree to tree, fighting for berries. It seemed chaos blasted away his desire for meaning.

     The rough, earthen scent of forest paths stayed with him as he reached the turnstile that marked the edge of the wood. A painted landscape lay before him, brushstrokes of green and brown following the valley’s contours. Square seas of yellow divided each cluster of trees, occasionally dotted with a weary tractor steadily forging parallel waves. This truly is a beautiful place, he thought. Ignoring his aching legs, he adjusted his bag and swung over the turnstile.

(Source: readmyjam)

Theobiographies

    My life, when it is over, will be (I imagine) a book. Hopefully a lengthy one, with a gripping plot and numerous interesting characters. If someone decides to open the leather bound cover and peruse the crinkling paper pages then they are very much welcome to. If they they decide that they enjoyed it, then fantastic! They are welcome to devote their nights to an ancient wing backed armchair, reliving my life’s work over and over. However, if the book is dull, poorly written and full of mistakes, I perfectly agree that it should while away eternity gathering dust on a tired old bookcase or in the depths of a cluttered cellar. There is one thing that I would ask my readers though. No matter how much you despise my book, you must promise never under any circumstances to burn these pages upon which I live out my life. Or anyone’s book. Why? Because every word is sacred, of course. 

(Source: readmyjam)

Convalescence

    The cold, refreshing wind blew down the blue-grey street, the dim early morning light suitably capturing the melodramatic gestures with its sepia tinted rays. Amongst the numerous sky puddles - the memories of a rain-filled dusk - dotting the otherwise mundane back alley, a man and a woman stood facing each other, something quite like fate hanging between them. It draped over their shoulders, like an invisible blanket drawing them closer and closer, until the world erupted in a kiss.

    Seconds and hours contrived, and they relaxed back into their shared cloak. She tilted her head, a summer smile and eyes like the spring rains piercing his heart and holding him captive. Three words of unparalleled beauty, trust and truth escaped in a whisper from his trembling lips, baring open his soul to her surely scornful laugh. With a soft sigh of pure delight, she soothes his open wound, preventing the scars from settling, healing him with the force of her reciprocated affection.

    He brushed a quivering hand through her autumnal hair, not quite accepting the too-good-to-be truth that flows so sweetly through his fingertips. A rose appeared there, in the contours and curls, blood red petals almost hesitantly reaching for his touch. To his mind, it spoke befittingly eloquent words of perfection, steadying his heart and firming his grip to the thorny stem. Bringing it down from it’s loft, he holds it between them: a dreamlike, clichéd - yet somehow wholly right - symbol of their love.

(Source: readmyjam)

Real Defined

    When new things blast out at you from the currently mundane and constantly greying world, you’ll believe. Never seen colours will jump out at you from the cracks in the pavement, from all those hidden holes covered in shame, and desire for perfection in an imperfect world. They will sweep you off your feet, pushing you up higher than the birds twittering in the sky. Your head will revolve and your eyes will pop at the formerly faded objects that suddenly surround dull, dragging memories, bringing warm and vibrant life to the sorrowful. They’ll make you believe, dancing with your saddened mind, teaching it to step in time to all the beautiful music that is now caressing the revitalized streets. Imagination will run wild in fields of vivid grass jumping up from those concrete cracks, running a hand through petals that sway to it’s gentle touch. Insects jump from leaf to leaf, flying and floating on the warm breeze of creativity, droning opera’s that would make the most stone-hearted weep.

   You will believe, when your head stops spinning and everything starts to make a whole lot more sense as reason and logic begin their recovery operation. The world may start fading to sepia on it’s descent into the iron grip of thought, but you will always believe.

   In what? I have absolutely no idea. I could tell you my beliefs, but they would sound hollow, and unconvincing in your ears. A true belief can’t be explained in words or actions, it can only be felt, through the great powers of our creative minds. So what will you believe? One day, I hope, you will discover that vital essence of you. I hope it makes you smile.
I believe it will.

(Source: readmyjam)

an attempt at art

    I’m a shit artist. My entire life I’ve known that I can’t draw shit. My car’s look like houses. My dinosaurs look like deformed dogs. And my human’s look like they’ve gone through a black hole. Sometimes I get a picture in my head of something that I regard as beautiful. The picture fills my mind until I simply must get it out of me, so I foolishly sit down and attempt to bring to life this imaginary composition. 5 minutes later I crumple up my faded dream and throw it into the bin.

    This time I’m not going to waste my time or ink on a doomed attempt to create an image. Instead, I’m going to commit this picture in my head to words, which hopefully won’t end up looking like a drunken scrawl.

I see a man. I can’t tell if it’s me, or some random person. He seem’s to be jogging, and his tracksuit bottoms and sleeveless top definitely adds to the theory. In mid-step, the man has one foot resting on a shaded patch of ground, with his other up in the air behind him. The world surrounding him is mostly white, and other than that single shaded spot, it appears that there is no ground. 

Except…. the man wear’s headphones, you know, the type of ones that cover your whole ears. From those earpieces sprout fountain’s of colour. Red. Blue. Green. Orange. Pink. Every type of colour under the rainbow and more, colours that have no names, colours that twist the eye just to look at them. Waves, hurricane’s, thunderstorm’s of colour swirl about this man’s head. He seem’s oblivious to these wondrous whirlpool’s granting light to his grayscale world. I imagine that he won’t stop to admire the insane beauty of this invisible kaleidoscope. What a shame.

- Jam

Nature’s Breath

    I stumble through this poorly lit corridor, fingertips brushing against cold gray walls, my bare feet slapping against the stone floor providing an ever-changing drumbeat. Flickering tube lights cast echoing shadows to the far away ending of my vision. At regular intervals, my hands reach into an abyss as openings open up to either side of me. As I cross these frequent crossroads, gusts of wind slam into me, forcing my unbuttoned shirt to flap back behind me. Sometimes the roar of the wind throw’s me almost into the unknown darkness on either side, other times only a slight breeze playfully flickers across my face. Each time I stubbornly press straight ahead, keeping on the same arrow-straight path before me. 

    Eventually I come across a time where I wonder, I wonder whether these paths cross with others. Are there other corridors like mine? Corridors where other wanderer’s stumble through, blindly following the road set before them. Could there be thousands upon thousands of corridors, each one cutting through every other, in a rigorously logical pattern? Could I find someone? When these rebellious thoughts occur, I make a decision to go right at the next crossroad. It’s set in my head, I think, there’s absolutely no way that I’m carrying on. This path is boring. I want to see if there are others.

    As I unsteadily make my way forwards, a hauntingly similar blackness in the wall looms to either side. I step out into the center of the crossroads - and a roaring wind howls down both corridors. I’m forced to my knees, my eyes tightly shut against the cutting wind, shirt almost ripped off my back. Thundering waterfalls and battle cry’s fill my ears. Slowly I begin to crawl off to the right, battling against the wind, every muscle in my body screaming as I try to fight off nature’s destructive breath. It feels as if the world around me is cracking as I inch my way across the barren path into the uncertain darkness, this darkness that seems so hell bent on parting the skin from my bones. I grit my teeth and force myself forward. I don’t know where this new path will lead. All I know is, if it’s fighting me this hard, then I know it’s gotta be somewhere good. 

- Jam

Words Have A Power

They can inspire us, rally us, make us believe. They can sadden us, hurt us, make us despair.

Word’s can make us happier than anything else we’ll ever know. Imagine the person you love. Now imagine them using 3 simple words, how unbelievably happy would that make you? Unfortunately, word’s can also send us deep down into the depths of despair. Imagine the same person using 3 words yet again, but with just 1 of those words changed. How much of a difference does that have?

Through reading or being read to, we can lose ourselves in impossible worlds. We can imagine ourselves as people that we would strive to be and in doing that, we can create a path to become like them. By simply changing the order that words are placed in, we can transport ourselves to the top of a mountain, envision ourselves as a great champion or travel back to the days where people really lived.

Strung together in a rythym, words become something more beautiful than the world around us. They can strike right into our hearts and make us realise things that we had never even considered. They can change our mood like the ebb and flow of the sea against the shore, like a leaf caught in the wind. I will say right now, there is nothing more beautiful than music. Words added into that only improves the beauty.

I like writing, reading and music. I guess that’s what’s inspired this post. Be careful with what words you use. They can be more powerful than any weapon. But they can also bring forth more happiness than you can ever imagine.

- Jam