Free-Write Wednesdays

To help ease the feeling - neck-deep in my second novel - that I'm accomplishing absolutely nothing and will witness the complete collapse of Western Civilisation before even a first draft sees the light of day - I started a little group on Facebook called 'Free-Write Wednesdays' where members post/share a free-write every Sunday. Okay, I'm joking. Every Wednesday. Check it out here if you want to get involved: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=21727182150&ref=ts From now on, I'll be sharing mine on this blog as well as facebook, but here are the last 2.

Enjoy...?

Gem xx

Freedoms and Hungers - Friday-written Free-Write Wednesday 13/08/10

by Gemma Weekes on Friday, August 13, 2010 at 1:11pm

Now let me tell you about Johnny, do you know Johnny? Me, not so much. Johnny most of his life has been a free-wheeling, shiny-shiny man with his body always sky-angled and every movement in life he takes in the pursuit of open spaces. I don't know what to write about him except there is a lot to be learned from this man about freedom, what freedom is and what freedom does. It's a slippery word, he says. If you've pinned it down, then you've lost it, if you chase it, then you're a slave to freedom. And to be a slave to freedom is an oxymoron, no? He has an interesting turn of phrase halfway between an academic and a madman. He tells me the problem with human beings. He says the problem with human beings is that all human beings want a home, and all human beings are natural runaways. Sometimes they just want a home to runaway from. Sometimes they just want to runaway so they can feel that pull and tug of home deep down in that deep down swamp of their hungry bellies. He says to be human is about hunger, and that freedom is one of those hungers that sometimes directs you away from food. There's that pull always between the man who wants love, a wife, a room, a house, an ideology, a passion, a life-work, a God, and the man who only wants the freedom of wanting nothing. But what the hell do I know, I say to himself. I'm not Johnny anymore. I'm just a pile of rags piled up in the subway of Old Street Station. I've not been Johnny in a long time.

Love - (late) Friday Wednesday Free-Write - 06/08/10

by Gemma Weekes on Friday, August 6, 2010 at 4:22pm

Your profile over there, waiting
eases my face open, smiling, eases
my chest open, loving, and the night open
with dreaming, that universal dreaming
of embraces and homecomings.
We lead each other through the dark,
blind and deaf to the noisy cityscape. All is hush.
So good to see you. Good, right, true -
affirmative. I don't have
much more to give than words
but I cooked you dinner
I like watching you eat. I would do much more.
many days of conversation have piled up.
Gestures, insights, complaints, enthusiasms
and steep drops sometimes between words
when I am just -
looking at your face. I know this face
with more than my eyes. Our kisses are
too much joy for one body. I'm meltiiiing! I joke
Gosh, didn't God knit you beautiful
I'm clever just to make you laugh
so He can hear you.
What a sweet tangle we are
the smell of your neck makes me cry secretly
i haven't cried many years just
from awe! A great love is in me, bigger
than the sound of rivers or the
depth of sky outside my window
big, and deep, and quiet
I don't know big enough things to do with it
my mind is an orchestra of silence
the quiet after goodbyes with you is
like a blanket of snow on christmas morning
all is hush and sacred, and a train platform
becomes the scene of great humility and
passion
I surrender. something has happened to
me, is happening to me, and maybe we are
happening to each other
maybe -
i want to write something clever but my my mind
is drunk, all real love is mystical
all real love is God's -
(thank You)