The Handbook I

Elliot Arrowsmith

SCENE
Love expressed as an abstract concept through {You }

to be read only when listening to liszts ballade #2

when I see You I, hear only Liszt and you it is beautiful.

I do not love You.

are fraying dull shades on tattered drapery, are scattered talc settling on the darker threads, are burnt corners and broken imagery. , sporting protruding cheekbones tearing through the cotton, , like damp cloth and white spirit, are the fading alcoholic and the anguished opium addict. *we

SCENE Et Toutes Ces Choses - Rouge Rouge Two gaunt gures of indifferent emotion in a black room, dust in the air, slit of light through heavy burgundy curtains, across a table between them

Staring down/in a well. {jealous of its depth }

II

Thread of text messages ive ignored You for days Juxtapse

You whisper that i am Your favourite;

Silence {You leave, door closes, handle twists} #

i sigh feel You pause outside the window... End message.

{extase/ecstasy}

my camera is older than You and its 35mm film is bigger than yours and I love it more than I love You. my digital compact is ancient and despite me changing the settings it insisted on reverting to auto; {
Like you}

//and i am still single.

you say, you wont speak: The answer to a question I have never asked. a reponse I dont care about.

you seek, A Shakespearian Romance burning in the frozen sun and enter my life without cause, you repeat that I am special, and life will be odd without me: I sit dumfounded, no longer a participant

{Internal Dialogue}

let us leave this place, leave this madness. you need me, but I need nobody, nul personne, non plus.

avec Toi Lounge!, on the wall of a nightclub smoking area (You) Silk cut, (I) vodka and coke {I would prefer wine but You say it is not customary as You drink tacky american shooters in a student bar

}stare at the smoke filled air!, and stars,

Urban Paradise Listening to Rachmaninov, home, alone Staring across the street, why am I here? I would ask that You say You love Me, [but I hear enough of ] your lies [in the night time]...

between the sheets! you arent the god you claim to be what ever happened to us! we drank wine in plastic cups; speak/leave/dance/cry/fight/hit/k i s s encore.

icy eyed perfection, you dance in the peripheral of my imagination /broken bed slats, clammy bed sheets //sore bodies, bruised emotions... spring romance

,,all is but an illusion in our

fight/flight# i scream, you stare into my eyes [as] i soar downwards {from the peaks of the world downwards, my own work} ,at the end of everything i question?

and (perhaps) feel so free and (!) dont care anymore when we are at the beginning of everything

so what if i was!, trying too hard to impress/to live a Romantic ending/ or an end to decadent ways

we fight for liberation, but what entangles us ? against what do we have to fight now, when tumbling towards the earth

like Romantic heroes of the fims I watched so /many times

society,,, the sex and lies and deceit, as if! we are living some sort of reality tv show... en tant que personnages see past it as if!; the flowers grow wild here and the world is quiet

bound by our own guilt,...

WE ARE FREE

you breathe deep on the cusp of My rib cage, heureux, plus satisfait, eyes empty, head tilted slightly to the right you smell of opium and wine - however this is not a complaint!!, you declare I am beautiful {but you say this over dinner to your partner also, He too, said once the same thing to me!
why is He hotter than me?

I, respond but!, this is just a lie and We are just les feuilles morts on the forest floor of your life We share dinner, drink wine, kiss, fuck, you leave. you claim, however it is a lie I have heard many times before,. ,To see the man you love.

a nice guy, your face says. your Partner tells me We should speak more, We would get along great.
/Mon lit est vide/

I am a good person! i say over lunch, or maybe wine in the garden {perhaps bed?} He waits to see this, during late spring, as the blossom falls(!)

over the University i believe, or maybe somewhere else {with a different person} and we are unsure as to who one another is as We struggle for identity in the 21st century perhaps we are a dissertation subject if we study English {in the uttermost irony}!, over coffee in the daydreaming sunlight?

Hello.

i ask; you do not respond but I know the answer from the look you give, When the sun of your eyes sets into dusk and you smile.

I would like to live as you do but somehow different to you in a different place. as if, you were to look; like I imagine Tchaikovskys 1st piano concerto looks if music were to be seen and I wish you sounded like how I want the Mona Lisa to sound if she spoke

but you do not. And your skin is still abrasive like sandpaper when we kiss and your words are still abrasive like sandpaper when you whisper something like hello. in my ear.

I want you to struggle with something so that you know what it is to live like the rest of us; not in your way of blas perfection not in the way you usually compose yourself in a way in which we are different and to feel real to me, because you are nothing but an illusion

, if I am to be objective. If we all lived as a multitude of impossibilities then we would be you; then you would not be implausible, and then I would not want to be with you because you would not be different

and maybe I am selfish.

Sit in the drawing room [sound vibrating synchronous to the atoms in your chest]

III

( la manire de Gustav Holst)

et daprs moi I miss the nights that blended in to day; feeling the earth spin beneath my feet, while You slept on sans vigueur Echoing and Indiscriminate twilight Oh(!), how I would sleep in your depths and hope to drown in slumber the tide washes in over...under sans rigueur You would wash over me too, fill my eyes with inky visions of the moon, the stars, and him to breathe is only one half, to forget is the rest

la Vnus

Tristan and Isolde - Prelude

( la manire de Richard Wagner)
et daprs moi The night surrounds us: dying stars, the eternally shifting orbs and You. Falling from the fanciful whims of those who surround us, they speak in a dead language, dancing in a blizzard of decadence and envy: I want to be with You when it happens. Lace covered arms relax, hands untied, whispering breathless nothings to the canopy of leaves: Neptune crashes over Her, foaming at the jaws the candles flame smothered in the wake of the deluge. Oph e l i a,

Daphnis et Chlo
( la manire de Maurice Ravel)
et daprs moi
You are the sea and I am the cliff into which you are crashing: syrup like concoction of hypnotics and emotions melting into your depths. ivory white bones of creatures felled by your magnificence: turned to dust in the drawer of my desk, resting with a 20 note. You are Poseidon and I am the adventurer: come, lets tango upon the calm of the ocean, draw your body close to mine, close to me, Me sinking, gasping, surrendering Summertime frost, miasma, the pulse, You: my body atop the vast expanse of oceans and seas, glass surface atop the chaotic underpass: You are the sea on which I rest, your breaths wash out and back in, I dive in to the sapphire seas of Neptune. and You sinking, gasping, surrendering, rest

Lever du Jour

ELLIOT ARROWSMITH ~ 2014