work in progress: holly compton

alice clock: holly compton

paper dolls: holly compton

Grit: holly compton

Frost between my toes bites and I got ice in my veins.  Break and boil, water can be frozen or turn to steam but both burn the skin with such a scream.  Watching the sheep and hoping the fence.  No trespassers here but me.  When you go tipping lambs they land with a bleat.  I sewed each one a tiny pillow all embroidered with tiny bows but forgot to put in stuffing which calls little comfort to a falling head.  Took a hand to loom and made a story from the skin of you, the hunts never over when you got more prey.  I made a spear out of sticky situations but forgot not to fall upon the blade.  The only way to heal is to push it all the way through.  Lay down face to floor and cradle to grave, never kiss a rocking horse who knows your name.  The got splinters all puckered up and ready to press.  The saddles fallen sideways and I got no one else to blame.  Got all kinds of ground coming up quickly but the bottom always tastes the same.  Mud in your teeth and grit in your grin, a smile of failure when you can’t tell the difference between thick and thin.

anchors away: holly compton

Blocks: Holly Compton...first attempt at stop motion

P&T: Holly Compton

petticoat and tumbleweed

Button, A Childrens Story: Holly Compton

Once upon a time in a time not too long ago there lived a sweet and lovely girl that no one liked at all.  Her name was Button and when she could she ducked her head into any coat or longer sleeve like her namesake told her to.  She carried pockets full of bugs and had something squirmy living in her hair.  She bathed almost everyday but no one knew in what or where.  She carried an umbrella without a panel intact.  It kept out friends but never rain and that was simply that.  What this little girl was not a shred of privy to was that she was the chosen one, but what was she chosen to do?  One day that was just another day she found a key more rust then metal in her pocketbook stuck to the bottom with bubblegum glue.  Button knew not where it came from nor what door it went into, but she kept it clutched in her hand and hoped she learned its secrets soon. 

Down the block and up the hill and perhaps next store to you, there is a house like a weed that refuses to be pulled or grown anew.  It pokes between perfect lawns and painted houses whose colors were all bright and new.  This house has planks and broken boards with a garden overgrown with more then plants but with creatures too.  On Halloween no one rings the door.  On Christmas there is never a tree or piece of tinsel strewn.  The windows are always dark until there is something moving through. 

When Button looked upon her key some tickle in her belly knew that this was the only house the key could belong to.  The gate that locked in a wandering path swung open without a hitch.   If this was not the lock to turn then Button knew she must look deeper in and darker down.  The doorbell had a buzzer that forgot its tune.  She pressed and even tried to pull but no tinkle bell rang or buzzer blew.  Button’s hand grabbed the knob and gave a tug and found it locked.  Time to try the key.  Rust turned into rust and with a creepy creak the door fell open and the key felt complete.  The floor was more dust then boards under Button’s feet.  Amongst the dirt and crime and fairly dank stink of things she found the tracks of what must be tiny scampering things.  Button always did prefer to follow the tracks of smaller less human things.  A cat or bat or wounded dog they all held such interesting conversations and knew such wonderful tales.  Follow the footsteps and you are always bound to find the feet that made them.

It is common knowledge and commonly known that if you are on the hunt for creepy crawling things you must look in the attic or basement.  They are also known to hide in closets or under beds but that’s the boogie man’s domain and he takes up a lot of space. Creepy crawlies like centipedes or kittens crave small dark spaces.  Button always did have a head for these things or perhaps a head full of these things.         

 

Spideer: Holly Compton

hive: holly compton

Got too many bees in my head and their wings are starting to bother.  They make their honey but now my thoughts are all stuck.

Tom Thumb: Holly Compton

I awoke one night in the middle of a dream and found you there standing by the foot of my bed when you said, “I knew if I found you here at least you would be at rest.”

You paid the toll, two buttons and a shiny dime.  I pulled back the covers and invited you in.  With a scowl and a smirk I had to inquire, “Did you bring your heart?”

And you of course did reply, “No…no, I would never bring that dirty thing here.”

But Jack and Jill both know you lie every time you open your mouth and wink with the right eye, so I reached in your pocket and found the bloody thing right there. 

“Why’s there blood on my hand and guilt on your face?”

“That’s just a dead bird I kept for a midnight snack.”

“Well its half past midnight and your belly isn’t grumbling.”

“I got full on the feathers and forgot my stove in my other pants.”

So I did the only sensible thing and squished that heart dressed up like a bird with a broken wing and when it died I think I heard it chirp.

Like little boy Horner with his thumb sticky as pie, you laid down beside me and winked that right eye. 

I called you scoundrel and you fell fast asleep.

Red: Holly Compton

She wears sex like a long coat with the collar turned up.  The sent of lovers lapped on her skin musky and warm.  She takes face to wrist again and again always tasting them deeper in.  The exertion of love affairs soaked sweet and salty with pours into pores.  Now the perfume is dry that marks her as his but the melody is still thick in the air.  The deepest drum pounded hard into another man's sheets and stung light across this man's lips.  He wears her name on his tongue while she walks away.

Simply Terrible : Holly Compton

Let me be the muse, a troublesome itch that makes you scratch till you bleed.  I am the breath on your neck that makes the hairs stand up and your pen dance.

Isabelle by: Holly Compton

Waiting For The Moon: Holly Compton

Posies by: Holly Compton

Anne III: Holly Compton

Somewhere in the distance the desert fell into a forest and all the trees were on fire.  The flames sang like a rising boy’s choir.  Each foot step played a melody of woman’s cry of pleasure mixed with young boys praise to god.  As Anne walked forward the flames died down with smoke that stank of burnt flesh.  Like cheap Halloween costumes discarded before use, sheets were strewn cast aways' on every branch.  They sizzled and caught back into flames.  Each time they burnt anew a young boys voice called out to angels.  But  in this place they cannot tread. 

“Dreamer often lie but do dreams ever tell the truth?” Anne asked

Her voice answered.

“Dreamers are the only truth.”

Anne’s bare feet felt the change from warm desert to wet ash.  Her feet stepping cautious cat’s paws over the bones of another animal’s kill.

Crack.

A downy boy screams a gospel.

“Do you remember that game when you throw sticks then pounce to pick them off the ground?”

Her echoed replied, “Is London Bridge still falling then?”

“I remember paying the toll but I don’t think I got my stamp.”

Her echo called out again, “Oh, your mark is deeper then that.”

A drizzle of rain spat down putting all the little boys songs to bed.  Smoke rose grasping at notes that wouldn’t be reached. Anne tried to shoo them away but these burnt souls and their dirty fingers poked and stuck in her eyes.  Her body covered in their ashes.  She could taste their hands in her mouth and when she swallowed they reached down her throat.  Although breathing in a dream may be an illusion, the lack of air burst stars in her eyes.

“I can’t breathe”

Her voice coyly answered, “You are dreams and all dreams can die.”

The smoke that found its way to smothering turned solid.  Anne lay on a large overstuffed bed covered in a drowning of pillows.  Gauze drapes fell from every post finding their way into her hair and holding onto wrists as she tried to brush them away.  Gauze shrank itself into doves with dirty wings and bloody beaks.  The caws covered the canopy.  No coos came from their stained mouths, only backwards whispers.  Anne tried to form sentences out of their nonsense.  Dreams have their own logic.  Foot steps began but their beginnings and ends could not be untied.  She felt him but could not see him through the cacophony of wings.  Decaying powder and the blush of a dead man’s pallor was the sweet scent in the air.  She heard him lower his hat and give it one tap, dusting off the collection of many years stillness.  The birds all flew in tangled circles then toward him.  Anne raised her face to see his face.  Caught somewhere in this murder of white crows, he was gone.  She felt his smile like a shiver on the skin.  Goosebumps rose and screamed her body from this sleep.

ANNE II: Holly Compton

In front of her towered a stone wall with a creeping relief of the creatures heads that sent her here.  Mud dried under her feet and she walked forward to meet her fate.

The two heads stood over ten feet tall.  Placed in the one face where a door would stare like a closed eye, here there was a real door.  The knob a shiny brass bobble shedding rust and begging to be turned.  She froze when she stared into the window in the face adjacent.  Someone stood behind the glass, a shadow beneath years of uncleaning.  He tipped his hat in her direction.  Anne could not see his face and considered herself lucky for it, but she could feel him smiling.

She rushed like a rag doll falling into the arms of the door.  It opened not with a squeak but with a growl.  Walking through the eye that was a door, the entry way bled into a large room where she could now see the other side of the windows gaze.  The shadow of the gentleman was gone.  The tilted room led down in a hesitant slope breaking into a sandy shore.  The waves of a great lake broke without a sound.  What seemed an eternity to the water was only one resistant step.  As waits at the shore of any dream waters, a ferry man beckoned.  S/he did not lift its head but simply reached out an open palm.  Anne reached in her pockets finding them empty of change but did find a safety pin.  She placed it in the boatman’s hand.  He closed it and stood in a moment of pause.  Hand still extended, he stood sizing up her, her payment, her destination, or all of these things.  His hand dropped without a word and Anne stepped on the boat.  The silent waves made tiny sighs as they hit the side of the boat.  Like a family of small children crying in the water.  With his payment and his passenger, the boatman pushed off.  A single blink of the eye and they sailed into the center of a lake hidden in an ocean’s elbow.  Anne looked up only now realizing it was night in her dream and that the sky was in fact beautiful. 

“I am dreaming” she thought.

Her own voice answered back, “You are the dreaming”. 

They gentle rocking of the boat made the waves coo and Anne felt herself growing ever sleepier in her own dream.

“Where do we go when we fall asleep in a dream?”

Again her own voice answered with a tickle in her mind, “You are always here.”

“But where is here?”

“You are the dreaming”

Her eyes closed and the world went dark.  She sang herself a lullaby in a little girl’s voice.  A little girl watched her toes as she ran from the waves.  The edge of a sundress painted with waves and sand that ran too fast during their game of tag and won.  A giggle like shells falling over shells.  A man’s voice whispered in a scream from behind her and the toes turned and ran toward shore.  Anne awoke back in her dream.  The boatman was gone along with the ocean that held them.  She sat in the boat somewhere in the middle of a desert she did not know.  The earth cracked around her as she watched tarring dirt skin, each time loosening a woman’s moan of ecstasy into the air.  Anne stared down at her feet still bare and covered in mud from the other shore.  When she stepped out into the sand the ground was warm.  All the mud from her feet ran into the desert floor with a sigh.  Here the moon was brighter then a June sun.  Anne shielded her eyes from the shine on night.

ANNE I: Holly Compton

You should never answer every knock that comes to your door.  Some doors when opened can never be closed again.  Evening shade was turning to evening dark.  Anne sat melting into her faded velvet couch watching a movie she had already seen many times.  A knock came to the door that was insistent but did pound with conviction.  She did not get visitors.  She melted back out of the couch and without thinking or consideration of consequence.  Anne opened the door.  The porch light was off but the streets back lit her surprise visitor.  He was not a man.  He was a couple but to call him twins would be to fit him in a category he refused to fit but there were two heads sharing the same body and staring back at Anne.  Each mouth held a mouth like a bleeding gash.  One face had two darkened windows where there should be eyes.  The head tilted slightly in a constant moment of pondering.  The darkness of the windows broken by shadows passing slowly behind those dirty panes of glass.  His mouth was sewn shut and the wound stood fresh and infected.  The other face stared at her with only a door in his forehead.  The old wood shuttered against something aching to get out.  For just a moment she saw an eye staring out the keyhole.  When he spoke it sounded like creaking floor boards.  Anne stood still, too still and stunned to move.  One thought played over and over in her mind, “hide.” 

But she still stood silent and staring and soon to listen.  Like an old house unsettled his words started to shift from his lips, “We are the messenger.  We are the message.  Dark is coming.  Dreams are met.  Closer coming, never running but always chasing slowly step by step.  We bare an invitation in our words.  We speak for the dark king.”  Then his open wound that was a mouth spread into a wide smile which quickly fell into a tiny smirk holding a whisper.

“The time of Dream has come again.”  The last word shot into her mind like a spell.

Anne woke up into a dream like dear Alice falling down a rabbit’s hole, all she knew was she was falling and rather quickly.

How does it falling feel in space?

Where is up and when is down?

All around her a sky too endless to feel stare in, it only consumed.  No air to catch your breath.  No light to see your way.  Does one really need to breathe in a dream or see in the dark?  Lungs are just pillows filled with moans not yet birthed.

All that falling but the landing was soft.  Bare feet found the sick of mud underneath.  Any minute she knew that white rabbit would run past but in this place he would have such large teeth.  She sucked her feet out of the mud with a tug and placed them back down again with a slop.   

The moment she realized the silence of this world, someone screamed in her mind.  It was her scream.