The serpents laughed drily, and the stars shimmered with their mirth. Is that all? they asked. Is that all? Answer us your riddle first, and then we shall see.

I looked at them and they looked back, mouths wide and eyes cold. They tasted my fingers when I offered, but made no further reply. Someone, I said severely, must bend first.

At that, the woman smiled, and said, I believe in your soul.

Her serpents laughed again, but the stars were very, very silent as I walked away.

Two years later, I brought her the depths of the ocean and the scars of the moon. She was not home, and her servants refused to answer the door, so I left them there, wrapped in mists and the night, with a small sheet of paper that said, only, Thank you.

Then I left. On the road to my right was a man wearing only the heat of the desert, the fierce touch of its winds, and I asked him if he believed in my heart.

You are rigid knots and fears, old scars brandished, but not proudly. When your tongue stutters, you laugh, and push the knife through your heart to show that you are made of sterner stuff, but I wish you had also told that to your heart. Do your bones still ache with the rains, or is it the dark and the night that curl you forward, where no one else can see?

I still have the scars you gave me, and you still wake me in the dark with your nightmares and fear. You push, and I pull; somehow, we are both still on the bed, and someone is bleeding again. There is nothing more I can do with my life.

First of all, there’s a distinct problem when the search words “sexiest male pin-ups” turn up screen-caps of men from various TV series, none of them really ‘sexy’ by most standards… then go straight into female pin-ups. Uhm. Wait.

What?

And maybe I just haven’t been looking in the right places (probably this; I hardly know WHERE to look if Google steers me wrong), but I feel like there’s a distinct and somewhat irritating difference between the attitudes of said pinned men and women. The women range from innocent to flirtatious with high chance of naughty to downright lusty, whereas the men…

just kinda stand there.

Looking apathetic.

Possibly sparkling.

Looking like sure, it could be all right to get laid or something.

But don’t you think this shirt shows off the abs rather nicely…?

Maybe it’s just me, but… that’s not really what I want on my wall. :| Have some goddamn character, dammit! Get into it; the ladyfolks have no problem! What’s with this difference?

(I can give at least two ‘good’ reasons that can be argued moderately well for this. If anyone has their own, shoot.)

Now I’m curious though: What would happen if, perhaps, male pin-ups were undertaken in much the same manner as the better female pin-ups were? In the same vein, in the same spirit, with the same range of emotion and figures and just plain goddamn daring that seems to be that hallmark of best poster-dames?

Wouldn’t that be fantastic? Or at least, you know…

Hilarious?

(Two equally compelling reasons, in my book.)

So that’s what I’m trying. Feel free to join in, spread word, whatever. Or laugh hysterically at the silly, silly things that must surely result. At best, I have something to hang on my walls. At worst, well…

I still have something to hang on my walls.

Really, I can’t see how I can possibly lose.

Another two hundred years later, and he was smiling, laughing as he stumbled through the steps of the newest dance that had begun infecting the halls and the youth, trying to figure out if the hips did that bold, arrogant sway before or after the second step, eyes as purely gray as the day before rain. Then he stopped, laughter draining from his face, and nearly fell as three people collided with him from three different directions. As they exclaimed and shoved him away, he moved as though in a daze, the way he might have if he really had fallen and struck his head against the fine-grained stone that made the floor of the dance hall, pushing – and being pushed – through the crowd until he stopped before one young woman and asked, rather hollowly, “Don’t I know you?”

She looked at him, mouth curving automatically, blue eyes vivid and appraising. There must have been something appealing in his helpless bewilderment, for her smile grew warmer, and she turned to fully face him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe we’ve ever met.” (Let’s change that.) “Dance with me?”

Wordless, he took her hand and tried to remember the steps that someone –he couldn’t have said who – had walked him through only ten minutes before. She guided him, not even up to his shoulder, keeping him from jostling into anyone else with a careless ease that made his heart ache.

“Do you come here often?” she asked, brightly enough that he blinked and managed to smile back, gaze still touched with distraction. He dredged through his memory to try to remember how to speak, so as to reply, but she continued on blithely, smile still illuminating, “Because I’ve never seen you here before. I looked familiar?”

“Yes,” he said, speech returning to him too abruptly; he surprised himself with the word. Grimacing, he tried a more genuine grin, tone easing itself out, and began again. “Yes, very.”

She laughed and he tried to keep his dismay from his face at his fumble-tongued ineptitude. “Well, I’m sorry to say there isn’t a ghost of you in my mind, and I’d remember you! You’re so very tall, even to me!”

At that, he chuckled, remembered that there was a pivot after this third step, and inadvertently nudged against someone else’s shoulder. “Beg pardon – So people say. Many times.”

“Oh, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to give offense.”

“None taken, I assure you.” He cursed himself for his carelessness, then cursed again when he realized that they were at the point of the dance where it was customary to exchange partners, if one was had.

“No, I think I’ll keep him for a while longer,” he heard her saying, passing through the motions and circling around to take his hands again. “You’re just so very intriguing,” she said to him as their steps shifted away, back to the beginnings of the dance pattern. “Your eyes change color; I assume many people have told you that, too?”

He smiled and lied, “No, this is the first I’ve heard of it,” and she beamed delightedly back at him.

“Well, good. They were cloud-blue when I first saw you, like the pale shade when the cloud is very thin against the sky. Now they are turning green.”

He ran through the colors, cataloguing. He’d seen gray in the mirror just before setting out. Gray was the usual, when nothing affected him enough to provoke a reaction. Blue for startlement, the paler, the more surprised; he was intrigued to find that they hadn’t simply gone dead-white, or perhaps that had worn off by the time he had spoken to her. Green, now… He mused.

“What shade of green?”

“Still pale, like the glass from the seas, but it’s getting darker.” She was peering intently up at him, fascinated. “Soon, I think, it will be green like the estoril from the far east. But perhaps I am wrong.” She laughed again, swinging to the side as he followed, her satellite. “You’re new to the town, aren’t you? Do you have someplace to stay?”

It was clearly not the time to talk about rats. “It’s adequate.”

“There are vermin, aren’t there?”

“Slightly unsavory freeloaders, I would say,” he answered, one corner of his mouth crooking. “How did you know?”

“There are only two places to stay if you’re not lodging with anyone in town, and neither of them have nearly enough lodgers to keep up appearances. No one knows why they don’t just close down, but no one’s ever asked.” Shrugging, she lifted a hand to flick a dark curl back over her shoulder. “But what’s your name?” Before he could answer, she continued, gaily, “Maybe you could stay with me for a while.”

He blinked, then bent his gaze on her, scrutinizing. “You’re a very forward little thing, aren’t you?”

“Very,” she laughed back. “Oh, now they are estoril green. How lovely; I don’t think even the gems in the highest ladies’ adornments are quite that brilliant a color.”

“Truly?” He stopped short again, only avoiding another collision by her hurriedly pulling on his arm, forcibly leading him away. Coming back to himself, he shook his head, dropped her hands. “I’m very sorry, but I have to leave. It’s urgent, imperative, I can’t stay another minute.”

He kissed his first two knuckles, put his loosely clasped fist over his heart and gave her a bow before taking her hand again and passing it to the first single male who passed. “Thank you for the dance; it was an honor to be your partner. Be well, and perhaps our fates shall cross again. Good night.”

With that, he was gone, hurrying for the door and bolting as soon as was politely possible, leaving her staring after, as baffled as her new partner, although he didn’t spend long questioning his luck. The door swung open in the breeze until someone closed it, and the dance went on.
Scant minutes later, he was striding away from the town, scant belongings collected at various points on the travel harness he wore. He walked quickly, running sometimes, and when the starlight caught his eyes, it reflected gold-green, the new color running through the former like veins in a leaf. Green, he knew, too achingly well, was love. Her features, her voice, her every motion had been a precise echo of the woman he had loved before. He groaned, ground a palm against his eyelid, then raked a hand through his hair, trying to make sense of what he had just seen. The woman before was dead, had died – horrifically – on his account (wasn’t that how things usually went?). His eyes had gone purely, brilliantly gold then; he had seen their brief, scattered reflections in the puddles, the springs; their burning, haunted specter caught in other people’s eyes.

But that was a new woman, a different woman, for all the precise similarities he could find. She had a chance for a new, different life, and, anyway, he didn’t know if his heart could handle her as she was, like yet not like. Too much like, and yet not like enough. And he couldn’t, no matter how much she looked and spoke and moved like his lover, crowd her into a life not of her choosing. Not now, at least. And he did not want to test his resolve, so near to her.

He ran again, belongings jarring a bit against his form, their soft, rhythmic jostling oddly reassuring. He looked up, gaze bright to the stars, and the gold had begun mingling with the green. The loose stones in the road caught him unawares, and he fell, not even bothering to catch himself. Teeth grit, throat silent, he curled inwards upon himself, pebbles digging into his skin, and shut his eyes, promising himself that he would not cry.

After what felt like a long, long while, though when he looked up again, the moon and stars had scarcely shifted position, he got up. Chest aching, heart sick, he began again to run, and did not stop for a long, long while.

But I’m really sorry, again.

See you tonight?

in the place of a heart; sits
pumping the uncaring blood away
as they wheel farther north, still cold,
their memories, oaths, coats all too light.
Foot-sore, weary, exhausted soldiers
searching for some fragment of the past.

One ignores time as it slips past,
watching, unceasing, from where he sits,
two acquaintances resting, all no soldiers
of fortune, or fate; both look away
from the three small lost creatures, towards the light
that’s breaking like ice, and one man chafes his hands, cold.

Two men sniffle, faces harsh, succumbing to cold.
They distract, back and forth, to ignore past
events, past lives, past lovers, until they extinguish light.
Yet memory only strengthens as the stars dim, sits
heavy on their backs even as they snarl it away,
trying not to remember that they were anything but soldiers,

once neatly arranged in ranks, like wind-up soldiers
of tin, whose bodies and minds withstand cold
until they can take no more and crack, halves falling away
from the center, and then their existence is past.
The coldest one says three words from where he sits
listening and watching, for he stares up to the light

as it fades, the clouds that were once light
darkening, thickening over the three soldiers,
the pall crawling forward, until it sits
over land and soldiers, who shiver, not from the cold,
the weariest one tipping his face up to consider his past,
his left-behinds, wishing his metal heart away.

Then he shattered the light, and that’s the end for the soldiers.
Dazed, he sits, trying with his brother to recall what’s past
as the eldest stands away, waiting to turn them cold.

To his chagrin, sir Lepus finds that others know this gap
And that they do have some quiet laughs at his fool ignorance.
Now when he walks down the street, it all just seems a trap;
He does not know where to blame the smirks: on secrets or mischance.

Yet finally, on one fine day, a naturalist took him in
And endeavored to explain to him that an ‘e’ just would not do
He explained  at length to Lepus sir, took a rabbit from its pen
And tossed it to a wolfy’s lair, to prove his words were true.

And thus Tarquin Lepus was made ill when the wolf fell upon the hare
And plucked the bunny from its skin, and laid its bones quite bare.