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Supporting Characters



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Mon Jun 07, 2021 2:14 am
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Liminality says...



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Supporting Characters

A chapbook dedicated to the vibes, the thoughts and feelings, the themes of duty and friendship associated with those all-important 'secondary' characters in mainstream narratives. These will include mostly unrhymed poems with rhythm, based on an urban/ city motif. I hope to either capture a mood or a specific character portrait with each piece.


This chapbook comes with a playlist, though I'm not sure how much it will continue to fit the mood of the poems by the time I'm finished.

Table of Contents


1. [Supporting Characters Say]
2. [The Roundabout]
3. [The Worst Equation]
4. [To Be Cruel-kind]
5. [The Street Cleaner]
6. [The Moon & Traffic Lights]
7. [Standing by (Your Side)]
8. [To a Main Character]
9. [Drive over Someone]
10. [Dramatis Personae: dead fathers]
11. [Normal People]
12. [Hate Sink]
13. [The Right Thing]
14. [NPCs]
15. [Underground]
16. [Who Stayed]
17. [Café-goers]
18. [Sunflower Girl]
19. [To the shoreline]
20. [Waiting]

fin.
Last edited by Liminality on Mon Aug 16, 2021 6:17 am, edited 10 times in total.
she/her

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542 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 41664
Reviews: 542
Mon Jun 07, 2021 2:26 am
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Liminality says...



[Supporting Characters Say]

Only supporting characters say I told you so.
The wise best friend & the ones left behind,
on the bridge, thick blue night sky the backdrop.

White-knuckled grip -- loosening, they watch
as a young & enterprising woman in a red car
speeds into the tunnel, knocking over orange road cones.

"I told you so," before the murmur of the wind
bowls over & flattens the murmur of their lips,
reapplying unbranded lip balm, "but I'll wait until dawn".

As above the dead stars pulse crimson --
so below the warning signs go unheeded

(& if they didn't, there would be no story,
no living and no dead.
)
she/her

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Points: 41664
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Tue Jun 08, 2021 3:01 am
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[The Roundabout]

We go around the roundabout,
evening bleeding overhead,
some kind of horizon line between
us and the deadened air.

But you looked to me and said
no, there's more to liminal space
than between, it's a look further
and a within - see? where the clouds
blend orange with pink
and the sun highlights the high points,
and draws in
the purple shadows.

And maybe we're romanticising
the length of time we've spent
on the road, on the grey path,
without getting where we were going.

Yet maybe we can love around
our way to this place.
This lingering sense of inadequacy
is an aging, bone-deep ache
that can be lived with, in sunset-warmth.
she/her

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Tue Jun 08, 2021 3:21 am
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[The Worst Equation]

In a nighttime cafe
confronted with
a person who wants to be happy
plus a person who wants to be sad,
the worst equation to work with.

Because the smell of caffeine is so bitter-root strong,
& the sweetness of cream faints in the dark,
& any sweet smiles are privileged & wrong,
& so the person who wants to be happy is wrong.

& so the person who wants to be happy
becomes sad, with the person who wants to be sad,
& they hold hands over the walnut table
under light flowing like orange syrup.

Watching them from the window seat,
a person, afraid to upset either
the person who wants to be sad,
or the person being sad
with the person who wants to be sad,
swiveling the final drops
of dew-black, as midnight strikes, they think
how sad
in a situation like this, it seems the best solution
is to walk out the bell-dropped glass door,
to eat somewhere else instead.
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Wed Jun 09, 2021 7:47 am
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Liminality says...



[To Be Cruel-kind]

You have to know it's not all about you,
It's not your hair or who you love, it's just
the gravity of planets that far overwhelms
is sucking us in, and

even if you were someone else,
little would change.

So we find the means to suffer elegantly,
and most of us do, finding an orbit to love around,
a planet to hum to us, reverberating
that there was never a need for shouting,
never a need for anything loud and grotesque.
she/her

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Tue Jun 22, 2021 10:47 am
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[The Street Cleaner]

It seems tonight I must sleep late
after the moon has risen and dropped.
She looks on me inviting, but I cannot,
I walk out of her shadow reluctant,
sweeping up words that soil like dust,
scrubbing at aches and pains
the floorboards will never be rid of.
But I do it anyway.

It seems today I must clean up
after more boisterous burdens than usual.
Never mind that. Take in breath.
Take in the dustpan, too.
Sweep up paper waste, gunpowder, dust,
clean out the remains of yesterday,
the firework outrage I did not start,
and the one I never burned for.
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Wed Jun 23, 2021 11:47 am
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[The Moon & Traffic Lights]

In the dark, a moon & a traffic light
face each other, one glowing white,
and the other struggling to choose,
casting a chemical concoction
that spills over the reflective surfaces
of cars & of midnight joggers,

____of people, late to let go of work,
lackadaisically lacking in lifeforce
as they haunt their way across
the zebra crossing, with illumined stripes.

____Then the traffic lights issue their orders:
one to stop & one to go,
one to know & one to forget.

____The moon above watches over, silent,
as the clouds go past the ink-drenched sky.
Paleness remains when the whip of dawn comes.

A moon & a traffic light face each other,
one trembling & one constant.
she/her

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Wed Jun 23, 2021 11:52 am
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[Standing by (Your Side)]

Every thing he fancies and feels is out of frame.
They lie in indigo fuzziness between the dawn and the morning.
The lick of lavender daylight, where lovers meet
and friends make haste to leave, to go on journeying.

He thumbs the edges of a locket and the photograph within.
It sits cold-warm on the fingerprint indelible, maybe meaning nothing.
The decay of white sun as it rises, to claim the shadows thin,
while memories begin fading, the shapes of hands dissipating.

But what is all this when winds migrate, changing at their core?
When telephone wires sway, expand in the warmth, then shrink away?
For flowers that close fast will surely bloom once more.
If these can wait a season, he can wait another day.
she/her

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Fri Jul 16, 2021 4:07 am
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[To a Main Character]

People crush
sunflowers too
large to fit
inside a jean
pocket.

It's no
hidden
subtext,
petals are just
oversimplified
clippings from
some plant.

Yellow
ochre dye
compressed &
heavy
in my
chest.

Fire hydrant,
street crossing
and I.
I stand back and I assure you,
it's no big deal.

You reach into
my skull with those
mantis-like
fingers, implanting
the seeds
of doubt.

Say I
don't know
where the road goes.

Vines grow
connecting the
wrong dots, forcing
me to
think in
broken stems
& lost roots.
she/her

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Wed Jul 28, 2021 2:56 pm
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Liminality says...



warning: images vaguely reminiscent of a road accident (though that's not what actually happens)


[Drive over Someone]

I'll be a chunk of tar road
for your shiny new coat
of rain water,
all grey like sleep,
and together we could be
a light-reflecting dream.

I don't think I know
when we'll wake up
but isn't that all
part of the fun?

I guess we all want to
drive over someone,
and make it look pretty
and make it feel right.
she/her

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Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:04 pm
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Liminality says...



[Dramatis Personae: dead fathers]

The play is captivity,
and the red seats are
a hostage situation.

Whether you are this,
or you are that,
death is in the audience,
crunching loudly on popcorn.

I am a ghost, and maybe
the unartistic villain of the piece,
as loud voices seek answers to throw rocks at.

Do you remember
when to shed real tears
and when to write a review and forget?

I am a plot device
do not weep for me.

We are not walking simply because
the script told us to.
she/her

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Sat Aug 14, 2021 2:54 pm
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Liminality says...



[Normal People]

I am a buzzing outline
floating down the streets,
edited in later to look like
a person with a face,
brunette - blonde - black,
tacked on with a tool.
I am cloud-matter
synthesised by the plastic
of the mind.
I am spots in the edge
of vision when
you're running from something
you can't quite put a word to.

I am society, the featureless crowds,
which laugh and cry as suits
the storyboard's narrative.
I am hatred and fear, but whose
sweat? and whose rolling tears?
Questions that shiver like sunlight,
and fearing duct-tape-tight censorship
the director neglects to suggest answers.

The thing is,
normal people fear
what they do not understand
and dear child,
so do you.
she/her

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Sat Aug 14, 2021 2:56 pm
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Liminality says...



[Hate Sink]

"Hey, listen!
I worked very hard
like a lorry carrying rubbish
to be as unlikeable as possible
and drown out all the main character's
accidental flaws
with my stench."
she/her

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Reviews: 542
Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:19 pm
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Liminality says...



[The Right Thing]

They say that modern city living
puts too much of a burden of proof
upon its victims, so
it's up to people like us
to rubbish-heap handle it.

Roll-shell, slithering this way and that,
us strange insects, with the back
of carapace and the neutrality
of no known emotions.

We permeate the air with
a sharp smell of rotting organics,
to make people forget their troubles
and curse whoever
unlocked us from our cage.
We are the clean-up crew,
we unbrew trouble by eating it.

With guts like meat grinders,
a black hole tornado of destruction
makes the perfect vacuum cleaner
to suck up problems
and make them disappear
for you.
she/her

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542 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 41664
Reviews: 542
Sat Aug 14, 2021 3:19 pm
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Liminality says...



[NPCs]

A large shadow-death implodes on itself
hovering like a tarp above the city night,
horizon line of bright electric red surrounds
circling the thing that says -- DANGER

He clutches a briefcase to his chest, a paper
from this afternoon's client slips free and
is lost to the trampling feet around him,
feet which make eddies on the street --
small as lives.
she/her

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