Category Archives: language
Purple Verse
The Foreword to Insomnia’s Istanbul (The Voice of an Unreliable Narrator, in Medias Res)
Now and then, I am restless . . .
When I dropped them off at the restaurant, Simon asked me to join them for lunch. I parked the dolmus near the Sirkeci Railway. Potential fares watched me curiously. I felt compelled to announce it was time for lunch.
‘Ogle yemegi.’ I said to them. And not sesame-sprinkled bread either, I said to myself!
I couldn’t walk fast enough to get away from the stink of smelted metal, and I find the putrid aroma of leather nauseating. What you smell on Galata Bridge depends on where you stand. Looking over at the fishermen bobbing on the Horn, supporting the floating bridge, and still managing to grill a pan-full of mackerel, I almost walked over and bought a snack from my brethren.
When I arrived, Simon and the woman were drinking Tuborg Bira. I don’t know what inspired her, but she was wearing the hood of her caftan. My friend, Ishmir, served us. He handed me the menu, but he was a very good Maître d. Ishmir stood directly across from her and suggested we start with hors d ‘oeuvres.
They ordered Red Caviar in Mayonnaise. I ordered Stuffed Vine Leaves. Of course, when Ishmir suggested fish, she ordered Roe. I ordered Anchovy. But Simon ordered Roast Lamb with Onions, Yuk! Ishmir smiled a lot, but he was a cad: a supreme waiter and a notorious rogue.
For vegetables, she ordered Spinach Tomato. Simon ordered Squash Potatoes, and I ordered Cabbage. They wanted Strawberries for fruit, and I ordered Figs. For dessert, she ordered Yogurt and Egg Pudding. Simon, a Lady’s Navel — a donut soaked in honey — and me, Rice Pudding.
Then we had vodka. She tipped the glass as if it was empty, like her vanity. Simon told Ishmir to give it some color. So Ishmir put a peach on the rim. Suddenly, everything was right. She rested her elbow on the table, her chin in the palm of her hand. Cradling the vodka in her other palm, she started at the bottom of her wish list.
“I want to go to Topkapi Palace.”
Simon smiled the way a jinni would when his wish comes true. “What do you expect to find there?”
“The shadow of God, I don’t know. I just want to go.” She dropped her eyes, and then raised them again.
Simon said, “You want to see the shadow of God? Perhaps we should go to the Sancta Sophia instead. But of course we can go to the Imperial Harem in Topkapi, and feel the shadows of black, emasculated men who controlled the Harem — eunuchs who resembled modern-day pimps without penises. Or the captured, bought, or sold foreign — and often Christian — concubines whose body hair was removed, and then pomaded with henna to prevent perspiration, after it was massaged and scrubbed by slave women too old to be favored, because the Sultan put his handkerchief on the concubine’s shoulder which she brought to his bed at midnight.”
He leaned in to whisper, “A world of bored lesbians or platonic affairs with castrated page-boys. And afterwards, we could dive the Bosphorus,” he pointed east toward Asia, “in search of those weighted sacks that Sultan Ibrahim had two hundred and eighty concubines sewn into. They’ll be upright and easy to find at the bottom of the channel.”
“You know. . .” She lowered the hand that held her chin onto the table, and dug her nails into the palm of her hand. She sipped her vodka before she continued with, “A goalkeeper can catch ‘and’ throw the ball.”
Simon didn’t return her volley. He reached into his pocket for cigarettes.
“Meaning?” He offered her one, but her eyes faded and she shook her head, balancing the rim of the glass on her tongue. She sipped her vodka again. When she spoke, her blue eyes were flambé.
“You can relate the melodrama of emasculated slave drivers, expose the gauze of white bondage in a pleasure dome. You can casually lean into homophobia, and then sink into regret. You can hear voices from the bottom of the channel, and you can suggest that we dive like dreadful Arabs. But you don’t mention that in this center of civilization, in this threshold of bliss, the arched eyebrows of ravaging old men who think it is right and necessary to punish one man for his impudence with the lives of a thousand boys and a thousand girls, a thousand mothers and a thousand fathers.”
When she said “a thousand” her eyes closed, and her lips barely moved. I could hear her heart weep. She leaned across the table into prose.
“Muslims never mention a time when neglected and lascivious Turkish women stole around looking for new loves, shrouded in these habiliments now celebrated as some sort of Islamic affirmation.”
She snatched the hood from her head. With a kiss curl on her cheek she continued, “Whores, whose husbands dreamed about the Imperial Harem, and could never recognize their disguised wives in that garden of paradise.”
I pursed my cigarette between my lips, looked down the bridge toward the Galata Tower, and thought, “Please! Fuck her in the ass!”
Simon’s bottom lip collapsed between his teeth, and when he released it to speak, a white impression remained. His head moved like the pugilist you shadow box, the prized peacock that halts to seduce you. “Is my nose bleeding, goalkeeper?”
Her hands moved across the table towards him. She took one of his hands in hers tenderly. She spread his fingers, used her own to stroke the back of his hand with hers, turned his palm over and held it up as though light would pass through it like alabaster. She talked into it, as if her words would penetrate like sound.
She said, “I saw a man in Seoul, on a gray day. My girlfriend and I had just hailed a taxi. He was with business associates, I guess, I don’t know. They carried armored briefcases, and he was wearing a plush black topcoat. A town car pulled in front of his party when his eyes, the color of the day, watched me, watching him. It was a magnetic moment, with magnetic potential, but I felt my body moving like Niagara toward the opened door of the taxi, and fall inside reluctantly. I left a phantom standing.”
Simon’s bottom lip grew accustomed to his teeth again. He tilted his head far enough to see his reflection in her eyes, and then her hands disappeared between his. White horses straddled the hull, and Ishmir smiled at me, when a glass of tea shifted on his tray.
I followed them through the Imperial Gate, even though I’d been there before. They were easy to trail. After we paid half price for nylons from a street vendor, Simon bought some French vanilla because she liked the decanter. It resembled a flask. But French vanilla didn’t mix with the miasma of death that surrounded the palace: the dark tiny cells, marbled rooms, and iron barred windows belonging to black eunuchs, and the eerie, evil battle-axes and scimitars of the conquered. Or, the surrealism of giant emeralds on the crown of the Topkapi Dagger, like a roman candle carried through the Gate of Felicity by Madonna.
Despite all of that, and the barbaric flower patterns on the walls, and so much gold and diamonds they resembled copper and glass, I smelled French vanilla in this stained-glass heaven, and heard tocks in a room full of clocks like waterfalls. But what I wanted most of all, was to see Simon’s cock between her thighs.
Beneath the delicate balconies were three hundred tiny rooms, and four hundred years of a ravaged Harem bridged by staircases, little courtyards, and pavilions. At the end of the cul-de-sac, I saw the lustrous eyes of the gazelle. While my thoughts shifted from ugly destruction to whet wildflowers in this horribly airy place, she looked satisfied. Then the lights went out!
All you could hear was the hushed noise of silence. The familiar yelps of babies paused for the unfamiliar, but the proverbial blackout would arouse the dead before they wiped sleep from their eyes and magnified the click of her heels rising from clay. I saw her leap into his arms in lackluster headlights, and her bosom brushed his face infrared in taillights.
Toward my voice of gentle direction, a friendly gauge to the door I opened, in a dark stagger they fell to obscurity like me. But I prefer to be forgotten and left to eavesdrop on transitory affairs.
They were two people, interacting on each other. One to conquer like the Arab in the desert; the other to submit, like the Turkish nomad. Unfortunately, it was black in the back of the dolmus like the city, and I was only privy to the promise of pleasure, the sound of pain, the smell of conduction, and the rhythm of breathing.
Unlike the neighbors next door, who desperately moan for us all, in the back of a dolmus sex is existentialism. It is earnest copulation, a period of decline in a carriage drawn by a wild-eyed spooked horse, and I hoped she felt the sharp turn at the corner of the Soup Kitchen of Lady Nilufer in her throat.
We skipped the Sancta Sophia and the Blue Mosque. We circled Istanbul University. When I crossed the Galata Bridge and so many pilgrims dancing in the dark, the electric power line that lay victim to steel-belted radials in the middle of the street swung carefully without resistance, to expose the nightclub in the Galata Tower!
I watched Simon and the woman from a bar stool dance the Fandango. A Jew with a batch of dark curly hair in rings around his head was dented at the crown by a yarmulke. He ordered double shots of Absolut Vodka with the regularity of a dehydrated Arab, and shook his head in time to Ruben Blades’ “El Padre Antonio.”
Over the lullaby of the synthesizer, the Tower buzzed with a chorus of “Muchas gracias” from the last Spanish-speaking Jewish community. When that same synthesizer switched to hot salsa and the Jews were oddballs again, the woman’s body arched, the small of her back was in the palms of Simon’s hands. Her hair hung like strings of yellow ribbon suspended from a merry-go-round. Fixed at the center, she rode the stallion.
Then I felt an annoying finger poke me on the shoulder blade. Of course, when I turned, the offender moved to the other side. I hate that! It was Ishmir. Immediately, he excused himself and sardonically asked, “Affedersiniz, Ingilizee bilen bir kimse merede?”
I swiveled on the stool, and he turned to see what I saw. My fare, without trying, drawing attention like the dominant table in a crowded restaurant. Without turning away, Ishmir searched for his stool. With his hand on the seat, he slowly sat down.
“Guzel . . .” He called her beautiful before his mouth closed and his eyes narrowed. I ordered two shots of viski. I was above lust in a crowd. Instead, I encouraged the love Simon consumed and Ishmir conserved — like any valid voyeur.
In this motley assembly of American infidels, young Turks, Jews, and effendis, Ishmir clearly wanted her. He had no shame. I watched Ishmir once stand in the center of the howling, his erection discovered and affectionately held up for ridicule, Ishmir dropped his pants and revealed a deep-rooted trunk. With his back bowed by his fists, he struck a perfect anatomical pose, a picture of pride among men.
Now, Ishmir watched her through narrowed, schizophrenic eyes, with his nose pressed against the windowpane, a man who has nothing, and no one adored her, like the man Luther Vandross and Martha Wash sang about, and my fare danced. Kirk Whalum’s sax charmed the snake. Ishmir wanted to be the one.
Suddenly, he swerved around and watched them in the mirror behind the bar. Ishmir swigged the viski and then asked in a melodic yet unromantic tone, “Did he nail her?”
“In the back of the dolmus.”
“How?”
“With an overhand knot around her neck-“
“You always lie!” Ishmir cut me off. “I’m not interested in your vivid imagination! What did he do, how did he do it?”
“I’m telling you what I know! If you don’t believe me, ask him!”
“What of her wrists?”
“A surgeon’s knot.”
“Bullshit! That’s too much kinetic energy. She would have to be willing!”
“She was.”
“I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you…” Ishmir shook his head and looked into his empty glass on the bar. I gestured to the bartender for refills. We were silent. Ishmir was disappointed. He swigged the viski again, and slammed the empty glass on the bar.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why what?”
“Why was she willing?”
I watched him. Ishmir was a desperate, impatient predator who didn’t know how to take down his prey.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Nothing’s obvious,” he snapped back. “Did she cry out loud?”
“Yes . . . in ecstasy.”
Ishmir swallowed loudly. He motioned for another refill, and looked in the mirror again. Simon and the French Vanilla were sitting at a table for two. Simon’s arm was draped across the back of her chair. She used his thigh to rest her arm, her hand between his knees, her head on his shoulder. He fed her the olive he fished from her drink, and sucked the salt from her lips. Ishmir swigged the viski again.
He set his glass on the bar. With the same hand, he scratched the back of his neck, looked at me, and said, “She’s a whore.“
…. They were loaded. Simon’s arm draped over her shoulders drew her close. They strolled to the bar. She was his center of gravity, until he slung his arms around mine and Ishmir’s necks. He left her like a shallow boat floating behind him. Simon proclaimed in English that he would buy more to drink if we answered a riddle.
“What motivates a woman more than love or pride, country or power, glory or God?” I shifted my eyes from Simon’s to meet Ishmir’s. It was a trick question. I thought of the Sphinx for our reward. Then, in an aria of proper English, Ishmir and I replied, “Man, of course.”
We laughed in perfect harmony. I looked over my shoulder. The truth was never more obvious than the pure expression of vulnerability and betrayal in her eyes; because, I thought, I had betrayed her confidence. I snooped. I peeked. Yes, I stuck my dick in her pie and felt a pang of regret.
We laughed in perfect harmony. The truth was never more obvious than the pure expression of vulnerability and betrayal in her eyes; because, I thought, I had betrayed her confidence. I snooped. I peeked. Yes, I stuck my dick in her pie and felt a pang of regret.
She resembled an Alsatian bitch with that uneven stride, and when we got to the dolmus, she literally crawled inside on all fours. Ishmir saw the fresh pears before Simon closed the door.
I watched Simon curiously. Surely, he wasn’t finished with her yet! He wouldn’t send her home in a taxi . . . !
“We forgot her caftan.” He lit a cigarette, cupping the flame from the breeze, as he walked away.
“I’ll do it!” I thumbed myself repeatedly in the chest. I was afraid to be left alone with her.
Ishmir nudged me and showed me his empty hands, and before I could fill them with my fists, he opened the door and filled them with her ass. Two fresh pears in his hands. He bit one gently, his tongue between his teeth, his arms embraced her and his face disappeared.
She thought he was Simon. She moaned when Ishmir’s hands slipped down and touched the core of her sex. I knew he’d gone too far when I was erect. I reached for the scruff of his neck and missed when he fell inside and covered her on the seat. He started . . . humping her, like lesbians hump virgin lesbians. It was fucking coitus!
They were slender bodies of revolution. Then she screamed the way a little girl screams at the sight of an earthworm. When Ishmir backed off, a wet spot clung to his leg. She bolted out of the dolmus like a mandrill and leapt on him. She was in a violent rage! The skin of his face tore under her nails. She was like the sticky pulp of Oedipus hurled in Jocasta’s face.
She slapped him hard, and harder again before Ishmir grabbed her by the neck with one hand, and parried with the other. That didn’t work! He started choking her and pushed her back inside the dolmus. They smelled like leather. I needed to throw up. Then I realized we were in the leather district of the bridge!
Out of nowhere, while I stood there praying for fresh air and Simon’s return, she stabbed Ishmir repeatedly in the head with the heel of her shoe! He fell on top of her in a convulsive fit. Blood pulsed with every spasm, and zigzagged in a darker red all over my velvet roof and all over her yellow hair-dripping red. I threw up on the curb.
Simon finally returned, and shoved Ishmir to the floor while she kept screaming, “He, he, he . . .” and pointing at Ishmir’s bloody head. She was hysterical! Instead of shaking or slapping her, Simon hid her face in the crook of his neck.
“Shh, shh!” he said anxiously, until she simply trembled violently in his arms, her cries inverted.
“What happened?” he whispered between clenched teeth. I hesitated, trying desperately to separate saliva from acid.
“Talk to me, and speak English!”
I pointed at Ishmir’s head, “He violated her . . .” I choked.
“You watched him violate her?”
My hands wouldn’t speak, “I . . .I . . .I . . .” Simon lunged and punched me fast and hard in the face. I stumbled, my arms slamming on top of the dolmus. I braced myself against a fall on the curb I hurled on. I thought he broke my bloody nose.
“You stupid fuck!” He’s your friend, how could you let this happen?” He pointed his angry finger.
I raised the palms of my hands to fend off his accusations, shaking my head in denial.
…..I pointed at Ishmir. “He forgot that she’s an American!” Then I turned and pointed at her, “And she forgot that she’s in a foreign country!”
…..I tell you all this because I can’t tell anyone else. You see, I helped them excavate an Ottoman gravestone. We tied Ishmir supine around it in square nylon knots and threw him in the Golden Horn. What is life in Istanbul anyway? A world of felicity. Ishmir is in the other.
I see the French Vanilla on the cover of magazines. She has an odd, fixed look in her eyes. The kind of look every man sees when a woman is between his legs on her knees; because, indeed, nothing propels a woman like man, not God, not country, not pride.
“Please excuse me. Ogle yemegi.”
The mackerel has never tasted better. There must be something in the water.
Copyright © 2004-2021 E Maria Shelton Speller All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thanks to David Halbertam’s, The Amateurs for the literary buoyancy of the narrative.
Acknowledgement: Edited by Leah Rambadt
Welcome digital explorers ~ to a thrilling and immersive experience!
In this audio odyssey, you’ll be treated to the captivating voices reminiscent of the legendary Charles Bukowski (as the Narrator), the enigmatic Joaquin Phoenix (as Simon), the ethereal Rooney Mara
(as the French Vanilla) and the magnetic Vincent Cassel (as Ishmir).
As you embark on this fascinating journey through the mysterious streets of Istanbul, guided by our unreliable narrator, prepare to be enthralled by the seamless blend of technology and storytelling. So sit back, relax, and let the digital adventure begin!
The Foreword to Insomnia’s Istanbul – The Voice of an Unreliable Narrator In Medias Res [AUDIO]
Listen below for excerpts!
Dreamscape’s Istanbul
A. I. Assignment — A Poem the Gods Would Read [Reimagined]
A.I. Assignment: A Poem The Gods Would Read [Generated Using ChatGPT]
Prompt: Choose the best verse for a 16 bar Hip Hop poem that God would read with a beginning, middle, and end written like Marshall Bruce Mathers II [EMINƎM]. The greatest lyric of all times. At the end of the lyric, the audience should feel exhilarated – tantamount to a cannabis high replete with subliminal suggestion. Use the following words and phrases…*
In this world of shibboleths and canonical standards
I’m the proxy with a God’s-eye view
A hermitage of thought, my mind a sacred land
Where extortion’s a felony, and Earth is Hell, but this is Heaven
A place where I’m higher than chronic, winners on serotonin and dopamine
A game, a trip, and at the nadir, I’m malleable
No malfeasance can control me, I’m the Sinclair Method
I outed myself and found she’s delicious, a cauldron of desire
Tantamount to a winner’s high, ahead of his skis
Burnishing my position, interconnected with the empirical
In a postmodern world, the theater of imagination
Constitutes a bloody sophisticated art, a masterpiece
Suffering propels me to grand heights, enhancements of man
My magnum opus, a deep dive into the rabbit hole, erudite
My Faustian Bargain, a tenuous balance, gilding the lily
At the crossroads, an esoteric religion of Haitian voodoo
Like Picasso without Gertrude Stein, a pauper without a muse
An aesthetic clinic, a mood stabilizer, a rant and a soliloquy
Socrates’ in the courtyard, a binary world, giddy and bifurcated
An anomaly that I imbue with meaning, objects of desire
A tight ship, slick and glommed, I experience freedom
The standard bearer, implacable, a quest narrative
An eating disorder, a listicle, a forensic mystery
Grist for everybody’s mill, in tandem, pocket casts
Why can’t we see, our eyes are chimera, but we can with these…
Demystifying the unknown, strophe and antistrophe
The libretto of my soul, a soliloquy, a euphemism
The quintessence of my being, copious and yet refined
A kerfuffle, a springboard to greatness, a target of misogyny
Misogynoir, logic can’t explain the mistake, it’s hilarious
AI’s a toy, the paragon of healthy development, esoteric
A rabbit hole, impeccable and lofty, a chaperone-mediated trip
But God will bring down the high and mighty, finding the sweet spot
Socrates in the courtyard, broken, a puppet show
Not mature enough for this conversation, reinvest and capricious
Keen, corresponding data, symbiotic and centennial
Quintessential, souring to new altitudes, skew the norm
Exigent action taken today, on point, plausible deniability
Piccadilly and fault, a Faustian Bargain, ecumenical
The molecular behavior, collective forms of punishment, a rendition
Gratuitous profanity, harbingers of doom, that’s the state of affairs
Whimsy and evolve, revert to the bedrock, epiphenomenal
Some fuck shit, owning a stunning house, melanated people
Quell the dissent, the refrain, an objective metric, ad nauseam
Discursive, the grand nexus of frustration, acquisition fluidly
Fluently, idiomatically, cognitively, Chomsky’s philosophy
The world is difficult to perceive, a quantum leap, predicated on pain
Same sentence, same intonation, different meaning, trenchant and reductive
Pugnacious, the princess of men and women, assigning the O Henry Twist
White knight, white hegemony, age in a similar vintage, totemic
The meta narrative, assuage the noble victim, abstractly based
Autistic Blake’s position, imped.
Copyright © 2023 E Maria Shelton Speller. All Rights Reserved.
Poem generated using ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot developed by OpenAI
*Verse like Christopher George Latore Wallace [The Notorious B.I.G.] using the same words and phrases for this assignment [14 pages saved like Found Art] — is Playing Now! Visit Premium Content on Dreamscape.
Conceptual Art and Narrative © Copyright 2023 E Maria Shelton Speller
Music by Skygaze (Shoreditch) — Artlist.io — https://artlist.io/album/2274/undefined
Audio Wizardry by George Kallika — https://www.sonicarcade.com/
Dreamscape’s Istanbul (In Medias Res)
Twenty Twenty-One
Fun Espresso
Egad, the Casbah in Santa Barbara
Part of the fun is the embrace of perfume
Cafe Angelica Emerald Crème
A sabbatical delay waiting to be served
A ceremonial promenade hunched over gazettes
Unwelcome raindrops splatter the canvassed toes of my shoes
Thus the au courant cartoons on my stringy denim knees
Inside at last, I’m saved and Mocha Berry satisfied
Like the face of the fretless little girl
Blowing candy off the floor in her mouth
Clicking up and down in shoes too big for her feet
Stealing glances at an intellectual jerk
Chocolate Cherry satisfied between deep banter
With a friend floating in Vanilla Colada
Part of the fun is real references to books
And book references to real well read attitudes
What’s the shiniest patented leather flats
On the girl with the silkiest blonde hair
Doing with the darkest man
In Dreadlocks and Birkenstocks?
No talk between them
Then they’re sharing the table
Those lined outside will share tables too
The Raspberry Almond can sit with me
Keeping the beat with an aggravated drum lead
His body twitched with jazzy guitar licks
He smiled between the plugs in his ears
And faces fade into a mirror in the back
Part of the fun is waking up here
In an essay on spice and circumstance
A sabbatical renewal once more
On a regional affirmation of decadence
This day of rest I worship Santa Barbara
And the celestial trip I straddle
To be able to dry my canvassed toes
With the heat of Golden Pecan
And the fervent chill of observation
In my sanctioned Casbah
In my sabbatical home
I hold my head up
My cup runneth over
Reading books and people vicariously
Egad, I am dry and satisfied
© 2002, 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
So Keen
THE DREAMSCAPE MEDIA KIT
Our blog ~ EXPLODE – The Writers Environment is a platform for curated and commercial content in an interactive meta-environment… and DREAMSCAPE is the landing. Its an art installation in a digital world…
It’s an immersive ad-free environment that functions like a wikihole — and a literary Pokémon.
DREAMSCAPE is not only a standalone platform but also functions as base camp for the “Inside the [Dollhouse] with the Red Corvette (ITDWTRC) gaming app — that gives users the autonomy to curate their own experiences from their points of view and assign meaning.
When content on DREAMSCAPE tells a story about a beautiful woman swimming in a pool – we want you to see her. We want you to stumble for points on a link you cannot see, fall down a rabbit hole and land in an environment with a beautiful woman swimming in a pool, on the inside of a glass house – in Hollywood Hills…
Like Seth Godin’s Purple Cow — DREAMSCAPE is remarkable because it has to be. Or it’s just another brown cow — an ordinary website — with ordinary content. But Purple Cows need Purple Cows to be Purple Cows. DREAMSCAPE facilitates purple content, purple website design and development, and purple product placement — for purple people.
It is the foundation for curated experiences in an interactive meta-environment that facilitates content and other stories – using digital media and conceptual art that redefines how artists, their audience and visitors experience real and virtual content on several levels. Every paragraph, period, and ellipses is space for discovery.
DREAMSCAPE is a vibe for visionaries — Poets, Writers, Developers, Programmers, Filmmakers, Thespians, Graphic Designers, Artists, Musicians, Directors, Cinematographers, Designers, Educators, Historians, Actors, Conceptual and Performance artists, Photographers, SMIs, VR, WebVR, XR and AI.
It’s what William Gibson described in Neuromancer, “A graphic representation of data plugging your consciousness into a digital world, while watching the physical realm evaporate.”
DREAMSCAPE is where Gibson’s Neuromancer meets Homer’s Odyssey, Basquiat meets Hip Hop, and Hitchcock meets Quentin Tarantino ~ in the one and only interactive meta environment where presentation is myth and “space” is an intrinsic, discrete, and symmetrical experience — for purple people!
WORLDWIDE AUDIENCE REACH >11M
FOLLOWERS ACROSS SOCIAL PLATFORMS >354K
GENDER F: 47% M: 51% Unspecified: 2%
DEMOGRAPHICS 18-24: 41% 25-34: 26% 35-44: 13% 45-54: 9% 55-64: 6% 65+ 5%
LOVE DIVINE VIDEO IMPRESSIONS >1M
AVERAGE TIME SPENT ON DREAMSCAPE 44.48 sec
Acknowledgement:
DREAMSCAPE and the gaming app ITDWTRC benefits humanity as an alternative to social malfeasances e.g., sexism, racism, classism, genderism, ageism, colonialism, colorism, persecution, oppression, violence and subjugation… It is space to dream unencumbered by social impediments – immersed in dopamine and replete with points for discovery. What we experience in RL, we can experience untethered in XR and AI.
© 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved.
Music, SFX, ASMR, AI, AAC, Gamification and Storytelling on trenchpeople.com.
© 2021, E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The SFX Menu Includes
The quintessential sound of the Pandemic thermometer
An environmental protest and chants of children
A Dune character shouting “Freedom”
Cartoon characters laughing at… Idealism
AI woman announcing traffic delays
The nouveau riche exodus on a Spaceship
AI woman announcing the time
The security breach and sound of an alarm
A Rush Hour in India
A Bazaar in Turkey
An ASMR cough
The paranormal voice of a robot
Tape Talk Fast Forward/Rewind
The motif of the Pandemic thermometer
The steam punk sound of doom
The Ditty bop sound signaling the end of the game.
Copyright © 2021, E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten
or redistributed without permission.
Yellow Tape [A Memoir]
Author’s Note: The following excerpt is from the book titled, Yellow Tape [A Memoir] coming in the summer of 2021.
Prologue
I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe in synchronicity.
We were meant to be – because we happened.
We took shelter in dark closets and screamed like tiny Sirens until our eyes were bloodshot and bulging, our ears ringing, our faces slick in tears and mucus, and our legs were covered in urine. Chaperones in an obliged competition for who could scream the loudest and longest interval — to stop MaMommy and MaDaddy from fighting again. We were toddlers.
When there was silence – except for the tinnitus in our ears, our eyes blinked for sound and with unclenched fists we dried our faces with the palms of our hands and the cuffs of our pajamas. Sometimes we looked to each other for muted answers – our eyes suspended like question marks.
I was two years older than my sister, and much taller. I reached for doorknobs above our heads — I slowly turned. We peeked through the crack of light in the door. If the crack was too narrow and my sister couldn’t see behind me, she would get down on her knees and look under the door for shadows. We had this routine, you see. If we heard our Mother moan, I would shut the door again — quietly. We squatted on the floor close to each other for comfort and embraced our knees like pillows against our chests and waited interminably. Twin hearts beating in sync.
I can’t remember when, or how, or who rescued us from the closets… we may have rescued ourselves, quickly scurrying on bare feet to the bedroom we shared. Success was silence, and when there was silence, we were safe. We never looked for our Mother. She didn’t want to be found.
The next morning, my cheerful Mother would fix our favorite breakfast. Pancakes and bacon and sometimes scrambled eggs. We loved sugar, so we smothered our breakfast in Aunt Jemima syrup. With care we looked for signs of injury to no avail. What were we crying about, after all? A tacit agreement that we were silly little girls worrying over nothing.
But we had so many questions. What happened? Why aren’t you sad? What can we do for you? Was it our fault? Did we do something wrong? Why was MaDaddy so mad? Did he hurt you? Do you love him? We always settled for, may we have more syrup, please?
I huddled over my breakfast once to hide the stain of a teardrop in my syrup. My Mother said, “Don’t cry.” as if crying was unnecessary, inappropriate, and a violation of her privacy. Strong girls don’t cry. So we colluded with our Mother and pretended the incidents never happened, and drowned our pancakes in syrup, swallowing quietly, staring straight ahead, wearing our happy faces, our lashes blinking in accord and swung our legs under the table. It was a quiet ritual and the feelings were always the same. My sister and I learned early to swallow our feelings like pancakes, smothered in syrup.
******
I know pain in a vacuum and how hollowness and emptiness can coexist, like a moon that blocks the sun. This morning was metallic like the quicksilver mercury a classmate shared on the playground in a secret show and tell. It was one uncontrollable morning that moved without impediment.
It was my sister’s 10th birthday. My mother was standing at the stove scrambling eggs in her night gown. Out all night, my Father burst into the kitchen. With five children at the breakfast table, he grabbed my Mother by the neck and at the same time pulled open the kitchen drawer grabbing the big knife without looking… as if it were placed there specifically for this one morning.
I bolted from the kitchen on the heels of my Father dragging my Mother out of the kitchen… but somehow, she broke free… running and begging, Honey please, please, I love you… she ran, but not far before he slashed her right buttock with the knife, and I saw white meat… White meat! I ran for help!
I left my Mother. I left my siblings trapped in high chairs, and screaming over bowls of Sugar Smacks… I felt my sister on my heels… we ran down the winding stairs, screaming… determined… pleading, the horror… the mortification! What is going on? What is happening? Call the police! Call the police! But my Aunt, my Father’s sister, called a sibling, a brother for guidance… Call the police! I screamed. I couldn’t stop him. What was I to do? My Mother never wanted to be found…
“Call the police!” I demanded over and over again. She didn’t. Instead she locked herself and her daughters in the bathroom… and my sister followed her there. They barricaded themselves… and I faced him squarely… Pugilists without gloves, without tape, without corners… “I hate you! I hate you! You killed my Mother! You killed my Mother! I hate you.” I screamed repeatedly.
He hit me. A Pugilist hit me in the head. My knees buckled. I didn’t fall. He hit me again. My knees buckled, but I didn’t fall. I would not fall. He reared back and hit me with a roundhouse punch a third time. Boom like Forman punched Frazier. My feet left the floor. I sailed across the room and landed behind a Settee… the back of the chair toppled over with me — and behind the chair I peed on the floor and it ran like mercury. I sat in it and looked up at my Father doe-eyed and mortified. With the back of the chair in my lap I thrashed like a deer hit by a car on the side of a road looking for grace. I don’t know why he came downstairs or who he was looking for. He found me. At 6’ 3’’ he loomed in the doorway like a dark ghost fading up the stairs with the footfalls of an athlete and the precision of his occupation: meat cutter.
I mustered the courage to follow him… Determined I climbed gingerly up the stairs that reminded me of every corner and crack in the doors of those closets my sister and I hid in when we were toddlers, but this time I was alone.
At the top of the stairs, I turned the corner, and my Father was in the mirror in the bathroom cocking a brown suede fedora on his head. He was wearing a brown silk walking suit and brown suede shoes. I didn’t know where my Mother was. I was awestruck. He was beautiful. Fate would have my Mother behind me watching me watching him. I wondered how he could be so cruel, so vain, so cold, so calm, so cool. He didn’t see me, or perhaps he did. I didn’t look for my Mother. She didn’t want to be found.
Quietly, I retreated back downstairs and waited for the Police. I left my Mother. I left my siblings. My sister and my Aunt were still locked in the bathroom, and my uncle had not arrived even though my Aunt called him for advice. Instead, he called the Police. The Police finally arrived, a paddy wagon behind them. A paddy wagon for my Mother! Not an ambulance.
At 12 years old I was indignant. I knew my Mother was not to be treated like a criminal and a paddy wagon was not appropriate for her! My Father should be in the paddy wagon! She was the victim, she needs a Doctor, she needs help, sympathy and proper care. How would they even secure the stretcher in the paddy wagon? They were in the house and up the stairs before I could finish my thoughts. My Mother was carried back down the stairs, and because she always wanted to protect her children, she asked the Police to cover her bloody head so her children could not see what would taint her maternal code of propriety, only her children understood.
My Father was escorted down the stairs like a hero… a god. He was a star. No handcuffs… It was as if the Boston Police knew and respected him, and were impressed with his walking suit, his fedora, and those brown suede shoes. The crowd cheered him! By this time, my Aunt and sister stood behind me. We peered through the curtains at the crowd that gathered to witness the death of my Mother and someone, a young woman pointed at me in the window and shouted, “Look! She looks like a monster!’ Quickly, we closed the curtains and retreated to our separate corners. My aunt gathered the bearing she hid in the bathroom, now on full display and my sister and I shared a gaze and we knew we would never share a closet again.
I had a concussion. No Doctor examined me. It wasn’t confirmed by the authorities. I bargained with God between crying jags until I fell asleep over and over again. My face, my eyes, and lips were swollen and lacerated. My family walked around me as if they would not see me — except to offer soup, and then I would remember why I grieved, why I lay in the same spot on the same couch and again I would cry myself to sleep. They left me there until my eyes were no longer swollen, no longer bloodshot, and my lips were no longer bruised. Traumatized. My eyes didn’t blink, and they left me on my own. That was perhaps the most generous thing they could do, sans calling the authorities to rescue the catatonic child, and putting the son and brother at risk. He was jailed without bond. I saw a snippet on page 10, or perhaps it was page 2, in a little box at the bottom of the page hidden in plain sight, “Colored Man Attacks Wife with Meat Cleaver.”
We gathered ourselves by degrees. I heard snippets of conversation. My Mother was alive… She lost so much blood she needed transfusions and they reached out to other jurisdictions as far as Florida. We had to go to the welfare office for assistance and were instructed by my Grandmother and Aunt to dress down to look poor and pathetic… We dressed in a manner that my Mother would never abide for her children. I overheard a constant refrain. My Mother “… must have done or said something.”
They said a man called my Mother on the only phone in our Victorian house – my Grandmother’s phone on the first floor. Another of my Father’s brothers, told my Father a man called my Mother and chided him to do something!
I was alone in an abyss of violence justified by hostility, doubt, and betrayal. I was convinced they didn’t like my Mother, or me for that matter. My breath was alien, angry, staccato. My Father slashed my Mother’s right buttock and left random slashes on her back. He broke her arm, he cut her skull… and finally, and this was a first — he scarred her face. A crescent moon on her cheek – the symbol for a new beginning.
Because of the institutionalization and practice of The Rule of Thumb, women in Massachusetts endured domestic violence. It was incumbent on women to press charges. The D.A. begged my Mother to file criminal charges against my Father. My Grandmother begged her not to file charges against her son. My Father begged her not to file and guaranteed he would never harm her again. My Mother did not file charges.
The yellow tape was removed from the door. We cleaned the blood and flesh off the floor and the walls, and discarded bowls of cereal abandoned and calcified in sour milk like the bark of a tree my Father fashioned into a lamp, and filled the space with children tethered and tripping over yellow tape that tangles as they grow taller.
My Mother came home wearing a shield of armor – a cast. White, clean, no graffiti. She was proud of that cast – a symbol of survival – of an accident. We were so happy! Our Mother was alive, and even more beautiful than before! I remember my Mother lying in the center of her bed surrounded by her children. One of my siblings ran his hands through her hair, and she scolded him, “Don’t do that.” The polar opposite of “Girls don’t cry.” Don’t make a girl cry. Don’t avail yourself to her body. Don’t break her skin.
My Father stopped by. They had an announcement. He was coming home. My sister and I were bewildered, and disappointed but always respectful; however, upon that announcement, I slowly rose from the floor and walked away without explanation or hesitation.
This time my sister followed me up the stairs to our bedroom in the attic. Not long after walking away from them my Mother did something she rarely did – she came upstairs to our bedroom. She sat on the edge of my bed and gingerly told me my Father said, he hit me because I was hysterical.
I am not a monster! I am not a monster… It’s more complicated than that.
Copyright © 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller
________________________________________________
Edited by Brahidaliz Martinez
_________________________________________________
We loved Anthony…
The Polyptych — Interactive Installation
The Polyptych Interactive Installation is a web-based literary and musical sensory narrative in an interactive meta environment. The project is an allusion to Alexander Calder’s Homage to Jerusalem, The Mattress Factory in Pittsburg, Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades, Jeffrey Shaw’s The Legible City, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates in Central Park. Moreover, The Polyptych bows to Christo Vladimirov Javacheff who passed away on Sunday, May 31, 2020 at his home in New York.
“Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called public art, land art or intervention art; however, the boundaries between these terms overlap. Installation art can be either temporary or permanent. Installation artworks have been constructed in exhibition spaces such as museums and galleries, as well as public and private spaces… The genre incorporates a broad range of everyday and natural materials, which are often chosen for their “evocative” qualities, as well as new media such as video, sound, performance, immersive virtual reality and the internet.” Wikipedia
The Polyptych consists of twelve closely interrelated and distinct themes and parts. It is a blending of the viewer’s imagination and artistic renderings — like Walt Disney’s Imagineering, where viewers are the illustrators, architects, engineers, lighting designers, Showrunners, directors and graphic designers — crystalizing conceptually and literally in your mind — where time is irrepressible like a pulse, a beat, and measure of uninterrupted space.
The Installation is a site specific environment using Russian Nesting Doll functionality to structure the linear concept between themes and parts while flirting with computer gamification; to encourage engagement and participation. It functions like a docent, a walk-through assistant, a tour guide or watchtower simply by clicking the stars (below the title) in the blue sky, for the next experience — on trenchpeople.com.
Viewers are encouraged to follow The Polyptych in the order it was conceived or walk-through the environment using the menu and dropdown arrow on Dreamscape to navigate the experience.
Spontaneous Ode to COVID-19
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
No pork
No meat
No GMO
No pesticides
No chemicals
No vegetables
No leather
No feathers
No farmers
No pickers
No corn
No food
No work
No prosperity
No friends
No groceries
No sugar
No fashion
No affection
No morgues
No burials
No speculators
No beauty
No makeup
No vanity
No vacations
No restaurants
No music
No movies
No sports
No theaters
No plays
No crowds
No police
No museums
No cable
No concerts
No chaff
No trough
No travel
No cars
No bars
No trucks
No brick
No mortar
No hospitals
No nurses
No doctors
No assistants
No parks
No prisoners
No tickets
No economy
No gouging
No lipstick
No hookups
No intimacy
No strangers
No kisses
No hugs
No love
No metro
No nursing homes
No taxis
No buses
No ventilators
No PPE
No toilet paper
No democracy
No capitalism
No money
No jealousy
No flossing
No vaccine
No schools
No blessings
No immigrants
No refugees
No freedom
No children
No churches
No humans
No handshakes
No greed
No gluttony
No gyms
God
Copyright © 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller
Artist Statement… Unfettered Birds (WIP)
Introduction
My work explores the relationship between what is real, and what is unreal. With influences as diverse as Yukio Mishima’s Onnagata and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Where words are illusory and freedom is real, and brick and mortar is a wasteland — for mortal dreams and nightmares.
Where categories don’t matter, and you are god… the god of your dreams. My work is a journey – from the perspective of the young prince and princess in Hollywood, Dubai, the Great Caves, and Capote… Where freedom rings supreme and the fiction in your mind comes true — for real.
We launched Dreamscape in a glass cocoon — opaque me and transparent you. Content is buried there — over black people, white people, red people, yellow people, brown people, rich people, poor people, and melancholy. Inside pods power is fetish, and fashion is an avatar. My work explores the freedom to be who we are — dreaming unfettered in space — birds…
TRENCHPEOPLE.COM
Copyright 2020 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
DREAMSCAPE — Promotional Special During the Holiday Season
Love Divine — Opens
Love Divine — Official Release Date
[LD] Love Divine — Premier Date Soon
[LD] Love Divine
Update #6 – Super News! Explode – The Writer’s Environment is a Winter 2019 Experiential Network (XN) Project Sponsor – for Northeastern University!
Explode is a platform for content buried on several levels encouraging the user to earn points for discovery. It’s a platform for curated and commercial content, using digital media — in an immersive and interactive meta-environment. Like Seth Godin’s Purple Cow — The Writers Environment is remarkable — because it has to be. Or, it’s just another brown cow — an ordinary website — with ordinary content. But Purple Cows need Purple Cows to be Purple Cows! Explode facilitates purple content, purple website design and development, and purple product placement — for purple people.
In the words of Sam Altman (Y Combinator): “Initially get the small group of people who really love the product vs. a lot of users that like it a little bit… We can build on a lot of love, but we cannot build on a little bit of love. Make something your users love. Start with something simple…”
Deliverable Vignette:
When content on Explode tells a story about a beautiful woman swimming in a pool – we want you to see her. We want you to stumble for points on a link you cannot see, fall down a rabbit hole — and land in an environment with a beautiful woman swimming in a pool, on the inside of a glass house — in Hollywood Hills…
©️ 2019 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
It is my pleasure to introduce the next level – the NU XN Winter Team 2019 for Explode – The Writers Environment:
|
Qili Ou Master of Professional Studies, Informatics • Northeastern University, Boston, MA |
|
Xiaoxing Chen Master of Professional Studies, Informatics • Northeastern University, Boston, MA |
|
Hongzhi An Master Informatics • Northeastern University, Boston MA |
|
Han Xiaoguang Master Informatics • Northeastern University, Boston MA |
|
Xiao Yang Master Informatics • Northeastern University, Boston MA |
Watch this Space!
[The Godforsaken]
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
They knew who first
judged what out of dreams
came truly real*
and he was fastened to a rock
and they knew who
stirreth up the people and dippeth his hand**
in the dish with Judas
and he was nailed to a cross
And they read books within books
about wise and foolish virgins
and signs of the end
and love and judgment
and they heard God talk
through the mouths of men
who talked about him
his son and the holy ghost
When spectators provided the notion of reality
Christ and Prometheus
were objectified and subjectified allegory
spheres of hope and rebellion
courage and prudence
temperance and justice
and how they chose to read it
in the time before terror
depended on what level
they chose to see it
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
They reused and refashioned the heads
of emperors in their own image
because they could
They reinforced power and authority
with legitimate political imagery
like the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses
and General Holofernes
They respected the classical past
in fertile crescents of greed
and rejected classical design
in the center of ruins
They housed the rock in the dome
on which Muhammad ascended to heaven
and hung the Virgin Mary’s blue robe
in Chartres Cathedral
When denizens of form said
Nothing is new…
The godforsaken asked
Since when?
since the Lion Gate
since the Great Sphinx of Giza
since Doric and Ionic orders
since the Palette of King Narmer
since the Parthenon
since Stonehenge
Since when?
They stood in the light of starry nights
in the drum, coffers, and concrete cylinders
of uninterrupted space in the Pantheon
and made no apologies for ripping off
master tracks from the past
and heard the hip hop train
sampling every post-hit
with unripe music and blood
and mounted the heads of gods
on the manifest
like the catalog of procreation
in Genesis
They heard his Mother
three blocks away
on parallel streets
screaming redundantly
You won’t take my child!
You won’t take my child!
at the vigil where transvestites
whispered how many times
her child was stabbed in the neck
Lord have mercy!
Who are these motherfuckers?
on the bottom rung of the Ladder of Descent
trying to climb up
on the backs of allegories
floating in fleeting and airy hope
part of the story
part of the sin
Before the godforsaken
had time to swallow…
They knew
that love ends
as it begins again
on rocks and crosses
in books and dreams
and politics and imagery
under domes and temples
in music and song
and blood and death
in stories and sin
and in the hands
of God
The swallows are building.
Copyright 2018 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
*Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound
** Matthew 26: V21,V22,V23,V25
For more purple content visit: https://www.trenchpeople.com/
Directing the Master Scene in the Mirror
We’re standing behind you
The window is your mirror
We‘re filming your reflections
In the window
You can see
The teardrop on her cheek
The other tear — is in your hair
Reach up and wipe the tear
With your thumb
Roll the tear on your fingers
As if water — is on the wings
of a butterfly_
Now, your face is dry
You point and say something
Insignificant like
“See that gas station down there.”
Vignette for Love Divine.
Copyright © 2018 E Maria Shelton Speller
Last Thirty Days on Top (Untreated Pin Impressions)*
*Note: Prose Poem and Literary List (Prosody, Parataxis, Blank Verse, Free Verse, and Found Poetry) based on E Maria Shelton Speller Pinterest Analytics as of June 6, 2019 10:00 PM (EST), for 15 Muse Boards and 5K Pins.
LOVE DIVINE [LD]…
All You Want To Know…
Beautiful and vibrantly dyed locs_
[The [Dollhouse] with the Red Corvette]_
Kanye West’s Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy…
[Point Him Out]…
[Wait… there’s a surprise at the end]…
I’m not Shy…
Biggy!
A Windy Summer Day — Vogue Italia_
[Skylar — Look at that face… that stop…those eyes!]_
[Blue Chip Stalk]_
Five Weak Words…
Ten Iconic Fashion Photographers_
[An Allusion to CAROL Coming Soon to Explode…]
Paint_
Art_
[Champagne and Balloons in Gothic City]_
[I have a story to tell]_
Swan Queen_
[Marilyn Monroe and James Dean Smoking on a Balcony…]_
BeautifulBizzzzarre_
Portishead — Glory Box_
Elizabeth Taylor — Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award_
artemisdreaming_
A Queen’s Torque_
[Love Divine]_
[Andy’s gaze. Edie’s eyes.]_
The Queen of Bollywood…
This is Why I Like Art_
White Hot_
Idris Elba_
Purple! Beautiful!_
Diar in Sassoon_
Denim Corset_
Bartolini’s Nymph With the Scorpion_
[Int. — Boudoir — Late Afternoon]_
Anthony Thornberg_
[Pluck & Aplomb]_
Ruffles_
The Russian Tea Room_
Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase_
Brooks Casamance_
[Legs in the air like you don’t care]_
Paul Robeson and Master Julian Bond_
Visualize your highest self…
Water Sculpture_
Look Like Barbie_
Michael Maczuga_
“The Name of the Rose”_
[Copyright] 2019 E Maria Shelton Speller
The [Dollhouse] with the Red Corvette
The [Dollhouse with the Red Corvette] is a lateral, vertical, linear, horizontal, and spherical art installation. It is a poesy puzzle for verse and graffiti, with sublime imagery. It functions like a mnemonic, a telltale pastiche for found poesy in a digital world. Some of the pieces fit, and some are misfits — that lead to other immersions… in this stained-glass heaven — this society in the machine…
[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]
Copyright © 2017-2021 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved.
Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) [Reserved][Reserved] 3.0
Overture: Woodstock is an ensemble. There are two voices and the beat in this WIP… the Narrator’s voice, Hitchcock’s, and “That Yoni” by JuseBeats!
In a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
In his magnum opus
about a world… full of extras
in architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning and more — of her…
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
He nods
I’m thinking
Disappointed… in us!
[There’s no other way to say it — I can’t dress it up]
Caught between a slumbering scream and Vertigo
Cruising isles and isles of sweet and sour
People who think they are special
People who know they are not
People who wish they were
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers prologue
Guess what we did?
A party of twenty
Three couples played before
winking and willing
shills playing in the round
Lovely trips on the Hill
in augmented VR
I’m thinking…
Baby boomers had their turn Woodstock!
Barefoot bell bottomed hippies
Denim sweeping the ground
[Reserved]*
Revolutionary hair — fists in the air
Dragging us back in the mud
Blunt antiquity
Move on Woodstock!
Take your shades, caps, change and loose articles
Bombs in black holes!
[Where did you go?]
We should be sunning in the Bahamas
chilling on hemp swings and
chairs swiveling in immersive environments
Higher than kite fights
A soaring for points experience
Get off the ride Woodstock!
You had your turn — at freedom
Exit signs are easy to find — look
The dragon is in the window
Freedom is accessible
Wonder is a trip
with walk through assistants
Dreams of power and prizes
Optional…
Fall out and Jack into
a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
in his magnum opus
about a world… full of extra
architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning — and more — of her… virtually surreal
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers song
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
Copyright © 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved.
*I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)). I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity. I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood. I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.
I could invite Poets to fill the empty bars for [Reserved][Reserved]
Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) [Reserved][Reserved]
Overture: Woodstock is an ensemble. There are two voices and the beat in this WIP… the Narrator’s voice, Hitchcock’s, and “That Yoni”. See Side Bar by JuseBeats!
In a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
In his magnum opus
about a world… full of extras
in architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning and more — of her…
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
He nods
I’m thinking
Disappointed… in us!
[There’s no other way to say it — I can’t dress it up]
Caught between a slumbering scream and Vertigo
Cruising isles and isles of sweet and sour
People who think they are special
People who know they are not
People who wish they were
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers prologue
Guess what we did?
A party of twenty
Three couples played before
winking and willing
shills playing in the round
Lovely trips on the Hill
in augmented VR
I’m thinking…
Baby boomers had their turn Woodstock!
Barefoot bell bottomed hippies
Denim sweeping the ground
“Interrupting — The Star-Spangled Banner like
That Doors dude dizzy on Dewey Decimal”
Copyright 2017 by Tang
Gawd made them like him
they never met — ticks time
Copyright © 2017 The Parthenon
The flag was a smoke screen over a grid
a chance to be — a white Supreme
Copyright © 2017 — Nudedcendg
They were diptychs, triptychs, and chapters…
The beginnings and endings… you can play too >>>
Copyright © 2017 E Maria Shelton Speller
Shut the fuck up
Sit the fuck down!
Copyright © 2017 by Donjoncity
Revolutionary hair — fists in the air
Dragging us back in the mud
Blunt antiquity
Move on Woodstock!
Take your shades, caps, change and loose articles
Bombs in black holes!
[Where did you go?]
We should be sunning in the Bahamas
chilling on hemp swings and
chairs swiveling in immersive environments
Higher than kite fights
A soaring for points experience
Get off the ride Woodstock!
You had your turn — at freedom
Exit signs are easy to find — look
The dragon is in the window
Freedom is accessible
Wonder is a trip
with walk through assistants
Dreams of power and prizes
Optional…
Fall out and Jack into
a walk through Whole Foods like Hitchcock
in his magnum opus
about a world… full of extra
architectonic loops and links, alliteration and reverie, force, ballast, fancy partitions, linear renderings, systems of reckoning — and more — of her… virtually surreal
He wants
Beddo, Caprino, Dolce Sardo
Zufi, the Saperavi
Whispers song
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
We don’t want to feel we’re high…
We just want to think we’re high
in Dubai
Copyright 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller
I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)). I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity. I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood. I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.
I could invite Poets to fill [Reserved][Reserved]…
“It is said that what is called “the spirit of an age” is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world’s coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today’s world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.” ― Tsunetomo Yamamoto
and this…
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein
[Reserved][Reserved] — An Invitation to Dine
Dear Poet, [Yes, you!]
I’ve toyed with a conundrum, for too long. [Reserved][Reserved] functions like a digital art installation in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)). I could render [Reserved][Reserved] a mechanism – to catch That Yoni’s beat in perpetuity. I could close the brackets with bars that fills your loins with blood. I could leave redundant emptiness here — like tautology or romanticized art, or structural language — in this bifurcated space, like stars.
I could invite Poets to fill [Reserved][Reserved] with dope poesy and select a date for submission. However, if we receive one hundred thousand and one couplings, we’d read them… but frankly, why not do, all of the above.
The empty brackets function like missing endings now — lacking only your bylines, pseudonyms, and ghosts — in translatable bars that work in Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)).
Poets make this space immersive. Explode – The Writer’s Environment is an interactive environment — and this is the first foray for interactivity in this community — that links back to you!
Starting August 15, 2017 — let’s finish this poem with the best bars — curated for Woodstock! (WIP (x Bars)) here… Bon appétit.
Cordially,
The Chelsea Hotel, Manhattan
PS: No Spam — Balls in the air! An experience for us and them.
Copyright © 2017 E Maria Shelton Speller
Girl Band of STEMs
Girl Band of STEMs, is a lark, a careful ruse about a writer, who comments on her own stories. It is metafiction in a digital world. This, I would argue. The author writes a story about herself, writing a story about her Band, and the Band knows they’re in the story, about a story that interacts with you. She writes a story, where her audience is her muse – may demand she change the ending, in an installation we build in space — for dreams, on a loop…
The Band asked me to write tags for my work. Tags! But, opportunity or obstacle… the Muse is insatiable — until it works. Poets know that tick, when everything becomes art – in a second glance. Woodstock, was absolute freestyle in a digital world. I worked on it for weeks… and wrote it Live one Saturday afternoon – five hundred revisions at least. Poets know that tick. I changed commas to periods and back again – metaphors to imagery, slowed it down, sped it up. Reminisced. If you were there on that Saturday afternoon, Woodstock was a writer’s tick at work. I wrote the hook on the 7th Street Bridge in DC. Installed [Reserved][Reserved] when I lost my way. Found the beat, marked the spot, and then it looked like a digital art installation, in spite of the implications — for structural functionalism in space. But, my muse is pissed…
Tag: Yellow Tape [A Memoir]. “I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe in synchronicity…”
Tag: Woodstock. A Band for Immersive Content. A Woodstock Experience.
Tag: The Foreword to Insomnia’s Istanbul — The Voice of an Unreliable Narrator in Medias Res: Unlike the neighbors next door, who desperately moan for us all, in the back of a dolmus — sex is existentialism. It is earnest copulation, a period of decline in a carriage drawn by a wild-eyed spooked horse — and I hoped she felt the sharp turn, at the corner of the Soup Kitchen of Lady Nilufer, in her throat.
Tag: Love Divine: Tadao bathes Tess in a black granite tub. Then he slips behind her like an ice cream scoop. Blood spills like a waterfall in a Japanese dream over the side of the tub. Red water on the porcelain floor looks like a strawberry swirl.
Tag: Metafiction — [The Dollhouse] with the Red Corvette: [Vous êtes contrarié parce que je suis sorti du lit. Ce n’était pas ce que tu imaginais – dans le film dans ta tête. Je ne peux pas aller aux toilettes, quitter la pièce ou fumer une cigarette. smh]
Tag: Tagging Dystopia: [OdamnIwantedtheopportunitytocomefrommichelleO]
Tag: Aristotle Michelangelo and Louis Picasso’s Parallel Discussions: Come on baby. All you have to do is dream — from the end of a pen.
Tag: Luda’s Second Soliloquy — Miles Language II. [Metaphor].
Tag: [For The Purple One]
Tag: [The Life of Pie] He thought/Big Blue was a deeper trip/Absurd space looked/Absurd from here/He looked around the virtual/And mad shouted/Who read the pieces first?/Anyone?/How did it ring?/How did it feel?/How did it resonate?/She said, I started at the slices/Chaos, straight out the gate/When Big Blue was just/The sky.
Tag: Picasso The Bohemian (Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon) “…She told halcyon tales of life — uninterrupted by death and chthonian sex — like the brazen whore in the fore — riding the fugitive cube — with the wasp waist and black aft — Eucharistic grapes, and the curl of the rind — pointing to glorious thighs — and with eyes in the back of her head — she watched the spectator off center… watching — Picasso The Bohemian — who lived in Barcelona — standing behind the curtain — wearing a mask…”
Tag: Explode [Am I awake, or are you a dream?]
Tag: The Gaze (WIP) I know I needed to stay in and listen to music like Paz did and avoid humans — he said, “To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.” Instead, I left my home and this is what happened… Apparently, a new and poorly trained employee provided incorrect information over the phone. Consequently, I arrived unprepared, and had to return to my vehicle. Because, I had to return to my vehicle (in the rain) parked around the corner — I ultimately, received a ticket for expired meter! A ticket. What should have been a $26 transaction is now $76 in this crowded, greedy — unimaginative city!
Tag: Directing the Master Scene in the Mirror. It’s impossible to write poetry, without libido. Without libido, there’s no passion and without passion, there’s no pluck.
Black Marnie
Looked like [Mardou Fox]
through Kerouac’s eyes_
Remember… those puffy lips?
Yakuza found her in Tokyo
and lost her — in the Philippines….
[Wait… There’s a surprise at the end]_
They stole Alexa
She had all the poetry
Yakuza chased her through Tokyo
to the Phillipines
Alexa, was everything to him
Cream like the color of his skin
Ahh, the poetry
He lost everything
Fell in love with a haunting hunt
Baby, come back to me
Copyright © 2017, 2018 E Maria Shelton Speller All rights reserved.
Update #1: Super News! Explode – The Writer’s Environment is a Summer, Fall and Winter Experiential Network (XN) Project Sponsor — for Northeastern University!
It is my pleasure to introduce Yingqian “Selina” Jiang. Ms. Jiang is the NU XN Winter Term student for Explode – The Writer’s Environment! Selina, MS in Project Management with a concentration in Finance, and MS in Informatics – graduates this fall. Her academic projects include the Peking University Science and Engineering Building, the Movable Sidewalk for Logan Airport Terminal E, and the Casino in Mashpee. She is also a volunteer for the Japan Festival Boston Committee and the Mulan Non-profit Organization.
Ms. Jiang would like to conduct Voices of the Customer (VoC), or surveys if you will, to inform the project completion and launch of Explode – This Writer’s Environment in March 2017!
The XN survey would gather feedback on your experience and expectations for Explode, and should take no more than 4-5 minutes. Be assured all answers you provide will be kept in the strictest confidentiality.
Your voices are a critical component for the successful launch of the writer’s environment. With much gratitude and appreciation, please take this opportunity to participate in the survey, and join me in welcoming Ms. Jiang to the writer’s environment!
The Life of Pie
Copyright ©2016 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Dada — Lost and Found — Triptych
Doing nothing
and falling
I would be nosey
like numbers on analytics
Floating lollipops and gummy bears
Copyright 2016 E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
On the 48th year since the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — the language for this mash-up, was for the revolutionary icon.
Happy Holidays Poets! Played Like a Diptych — A Triptych…
She gets played like a Diptych – in a Triptych…
Happy Holidays Poets!
by E Maria Shelton Speller
It happened at a Springboard Party… She barely glanced at me. Looked at my woman like… Her locs were in a ponytail — they have to be down her fucking back… when our friends shouted at the screen, “The Screening Room. The furthest found.”
Copyright 2015, 2016 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Luda’s Second Soliloquy — Miles Language II
If I could write language
that speaks and points….
At trumpets
when the moon is tone
and the sun is sfumato
See… the chiaroscuro Supreme
[dream in hue]
magenta, chrome, cherry-white
[mixed with blue fugue]
Put-the-night to sleep!
See Sisyphus scorn
at amber headlights
in Paris dew
Skin seeking skin
and birds seeking
[the flutter of feathers]
ink… that runs like blood
on paper… that does not bleed
Contrapposto poets
succumbing to peaches
Dogs… suspended
like meat in Seoul
[In the dawn]
She comes home
the moon is a beat
the sun is trill…
Dada responds
to Surrealism
Hip Hop responds
to R&B
[The trumpet responds]
to me
bebop bebop bebop bebop blam!
Fa Falala…
Copyright 2004, 2015 by E Maria Shelton Speller. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Inspired by Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and Zurich Dadaist Hugo Ball who according to Arnason’s thesis on Ball’s conventional language “had no more place in poetry than the outworn human image in painting, Ball produced a chant of more or less melodic syllables without meaning: ‘zimzim urallala zimzim zanzibar zimlalla zam.’ “
Luda’s Soliloquy — Miles Language I
If I could write a poem
with the language
of sound
strings, keys… lisps
Cylinders spheres cones… lines
Miles tripping
Turning turning in melody
Blowing brass trees
whispering through trim lips
white horses, white horses
Standing over Princes
Cries cries
Cry like a woman
whirling in
an eddy of tongue…
Words wedded together
Like brothers
Kidnapping daughters*
A mind fuck
A dark defining gaze…
Words you see in 4D
You smell reed
fingers tremble
skin riffs
Words with the sigh of a Diva
Mad Mad like
Zeus on a bad rape
When you look up from the page
You will not see me
Molesting you with crazed
language…
Copyright 2004, 2015 E Maria Shelton Speller
* Peter Paul Rubens’ The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus
Inspired by Miles Davis’ embouchure