post lit, give Crit
>>7783011
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DBFvEY263U3K9Y5ICqtGBXkHzL3W7Kfh4O5_AxM3EmY/edit?usp=sharing
Assignment for playwriting class to do 3 page scene with focus on use of time as a setting.
>>7783011
>Best Track
For Revered Green
>Worst Track
#1
>Most Overrated
Fireworks
>Most Underrated
Cuckoo Cuckoo
8/10 Overall. Feels was better
>>7783020
>best track
>not Winter Wonderland
>>7783081
Nice try buddy, but I don't believe in fantasy
>>7783018
are you actually Kolsti? I thought you left.
Occasionally funny, but post-irony doesn't real. If you present this in class someone will give you a swirly.
>>7783121
Yeah, I'm me. We did a reading in class and with different voices and good comedic timing it works really well. It ended up a bit too expository because I wanted to make something kind of grand with just five pages when I'm usually more into picarepics.
Why is it so goddamn difficult to read and write yet so easy to waste time on 4chan?
We both wanted a house of our own; I was just a bit more patient. She had grown up in a cramped apartment with her extended family her whole life, and was eager to escape that kind of environment as soon as possible. She scoured listings for days in her free time, and it was up to me to remind her of our limitations. We were barely keeping up with our rent, but thanks to some generous wedding gifts and her new job we could just afford a new place, and I mean just. I tried to convince her to wait a bit and save but she was just so desperate for change – I couldn’t say no to her.
So we moved. A small rundown house, only a few square feet more than our apartment, and right next to a train track – that damned train track.
I hate noise. It gets inside me rattles around my skull. I can’t think when there is noise. The train’s horn is absolute hell to me; my mind turns to mush, my skin crawls more with every decibel, and I, much like my house, can’t stop shaking. On top of that, we live in a pretty ghetto area with sirens always blaring back and forth. But I guess the compromise in my mental stability is worth it to see her happy. She keeps me calm when things get too loud. At least when she talks to me in a raised voice over the thundering outside I can think about her.
It was still dark when I first woke up, at least as dark as it can get with the streetlights on outside. She was still asleep next to me. I cuddled up close, nestled my ear in the baby hairs of her neck, and listened to the slow metronomic breathing of sleep. The soft sheets ruffled as she stirred, and I ran my fingers through her long curly hair. It was moments like these – quiet whispers of experiences in the dead of night, that assured me I was in love.
>>7783326
I find you wording awkward. "She had grown up" could easily be "She grew up" and "for days in her free time" is syntactically stilted. It sounds like you're trying to write like a writer instead of just trying to tell me something.
Run
Bomb blasts.
Boots sucking into the mid.
I run through a hail of lead.
I
see my friends,
cut down and burst into poppies.
I hear the rattle of Spandau,
crack of Mauser,
booom of Krupp.
Where is English business?
Where is Enfield?
Where is Vickers?
Where is Armstrong Whitworth?
Where are our fearless Generals?
who yell “Stay in formation, or be
shot!”
Run!
Run!
Run!
Torn limbs give the mud world its flora.
Boys,
Old enough to wonder at the base
in
their
voice,
Scream! Scream! Scream!
I’m in Jerry’s trench.
I run my bayonet
through
a boy.
His helmet doesn’t fit him, or those blue eyes.
A gurgle, spittle and then he falls down like his innocence.
Then my body makes purchase with Mauser.
Hopefully someone ‘kept the receipt.
>>7783521
Working on it.
>>7783313
Because to a certain extent we hate ourselves and as such gravitate toward self-destructive activities. Wasting time on 4chan is so easy precisely because we see it as completely unproductive.
>>7783326
Is this the completed work or in process? Seems interesting so far, though I feel that you can return to the train track when he tries to enjoy those small moments, make it a constant reminder on him.
He pulled up to the curb, removing his AK-47 from its crushed velvet case and checking the knife holstered to his foot. Satisfied that everything was in order, he got out of the car. There's a line you just don't cross and the man — who according to his research was currently attending his great grandchild's third birthday party here — in this house had all but riverdanced over it. The time for words was over.
He came up to the door, taking a few sidelong glances to make sure he wasn't seen. After waiting for three seconds he kicked the door down. A pregnant silence permeated the atmosphere as he walked down the hall to the dining room. Beyond the parents, children, and lit birthday cake he saw him. There he was, the CEO of the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group.
Taking the initiative, he sprayed the contents of his magazine on full auto into the partygoers as he advanced. There were some screams, running footsteps, some gurgling sounds, maybe even an agonal respiration or two but he was too fixated on his target to pay any of it much mind. Reaching his target he tossed aside the rifle. The old man, cowering on the floor, spoke to him.
"What the fuck is this?! Who are you?!"
He removed the knife from its holster and plunged it hilt-deep into the CEO's chest, saying
"Mr. Pibb sends his regards."
>>7783326
Plotwise, there's not much to say about it. Stylistically, I'd say that semicolon in the first line doesn't add anything. Same goes for your dash usage. The "compromise in my mental stability" sentence is really awkward, I'd rephrase that. I'd use a semicolon or comma instead of a dash in that last line.
I'm >>7783544 by the way.
>>7783544
Is this American Dad fanfic?
>>7783580
No. It's something I wrote for some thread here back in the summer. I think it was supposed to be an imitation of DFW's style but the only thing of his I really copied was paying attention to minute corporate details like making sure to specifically name the "Dr. Pepper Snapple Group".
>>7783593
Watch the American Dad episode about Mr. Pibb.
>>7783544
>A pregnant silence permeated the atmosphere
absolute madman
You definitely have the cheap, smutty pulp vibe down, but try to slow down a bit and use less cliches, since that one there seems almost out of a text book.
Also you have lots of action but no real tension, where are the guards for this high level CEO? Who is seeing this guy gallivanting with an AK-47? Is anyone at least going to attempt to stop him? Moreover why is he even doing this?
We don't get much aside from "this guy shot up a birthday party" and you could've gotten the exact same effect by showing the hitman interacting with the CEO after all the action is done and painting the picture through environmental details like dripping blood, popped balloons, gurgling, etc.
So if we're really supposed to see this guy working in to kill the CEO, make it worthwhile.
>>7783606
The entire thing was just a setup for a really dumb throwaway joke about the Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb rivalry. It's not really supposed to be all that good or make any sense if you think about it.
>>7783606
Mine here, the first 1/3rd of a small excercise
I continued through the field, minding the decapitated statues, the rust-collecting walls and bricks and tires that had become but flower pots. Each blade of grass was like a shining sword pointing to the sun for the victory of earth over man. Flowers and bush swept rampantly over the field, consuming the land in green might.
A red bucket poked up to me from the grass, it was clean and fresh from the mornings rain, and the sweet scent of freshly watered earth surrounded us, me and this little bucket.
I picked it up and felt the weight of the water inside, a wealthy sum, like a handful of stones. I looked around briefly for signs of human life, should that the bucket belong to anyone for the purpose of collecting rain, but there was none. No smoke, no footprints or even tags tied to trees. I looked into the bucket, minding my own mud-cacked expression, smiled and drank. I sat down and nodded my head in the shade of a nearby tree, watching the little blades continue to wave in their brazen stance, and I saw a world open up between them.
>>7783473
Not the writer but
>she had grew up
Sounds shit m8. His / her / original choice works better.Didnt read the rest of it
>>7783630
Not "she had grew up" you washcloth. "She grew up" is what I wrote.
>>7783011
Monday 7th March 2016:
You could experience a psychological version of root-canal treatment.
this could be a good thing
for you
you could see missiles pose
throughout the sky
understand intelligent design.
let me show you something
my old friend
inside here, past the velvet, is
the dirt I taste each morning to
forge the weightless ritual of the empty boy
I do this for myself.
I am empty
I am ready
this could be a good thing for you
I know you know my name
I know you have never felt the crystal
morning in the imprecise way that I sing it in these poems
I know you don't need me.
in the shaking of your head you dialed the phone that rang for me like a painted bird circling a happy rotting
garden
and as a green jewel pin fixed to
the blurry horizon
I'm a poet and a film director
for you!
for you
I'm layering each window, the one
across my room and above the blue candle, burned out now, it's midnight and I used it for homework
layering each window, the one in my hand that I type these
lines into and the one that frames the edges of my love
cycling inward,
smaller and smaller,
nervouser and nervouser,
variously scattered in the oversized and chuckling disguise
of our routine
taking the mail in, taking the garbage out
writing an essay
scratching your tickets
I pick out a nice frame
for the picture
you sent me.
THANK GOD FOR THE DAY
a story
(Part One)
David went downstairs with two blankets. he looked around for food. his girlfriend told him he was cute thru his headphones. he didn't reply. he lay down on the floor. where are you? his girlfriend asked? right here. where are you. pressing down on you. where are you, David? are you downstairs? yes. can we move upstairs now? yes. I just have to eat first . okay go eat sweetie . David brought himself closer to the fridge on one elbow. he look around inside. he listened to Nicole's breathing as he ate a pork chop with his hands. he covered its creases with hot sauce with his right hand while his left hand supported the whole operation. Nicole's breath over the phone was positive and useful, and so was the food: he finished the pork chop and rose feeling strong and heavy and pretty. he pouted and poured a glass of milk as he listened to his girlfriend breathe thru his phone. he drank it without pausing. he went upstairs. he got into bed and said her name. she was asleep. he could do anything now. he wrote a note about the day. he checked his horoscope again. today was the day he was supposed to find the box of ten dollar bills. feb. 23rd. he didn't find it, or he hadn't yet. but horoscopes are generally true, so for this reason he had to live peacefully, knowing that before the day ended a bit of wealth would be given to him, whether he liked that or not. he didn't really want to do anything. he suckled on the corner of his blanket for a while. he loves his girl. he loves her.
"for jupiter to oppose Chiron, I had to find a box of ten dollar bills."
he said to her. this is what was needed to allow the stars to align. to confirm the games his mother played, spreading tarot cards out onto the bed.
scratch off from the store, he would have won 500 dollars if he got 4 cents more
Andy: I've gotten 4 cents shy of the required 1$ amount so many times.
I'm happy with that response, I think, like, this is the response I needed from the world. I don't think I would have been happy if I'd won.
FLASH FORWARD: "...form the impression that you're thinking big and are in control..." -David's Horoscope, February 26th, 2016
cancer: home
FAST FASTFORWARD::::> Now that you feel you've got to the root of a problem, you may be anxious to move to the next phase (even if that means moving away from home for a short time). Improved relations with someone close could make it easier to come this decision. First though you might want to arrange a rendezvous that's not quite cloak-and-dagger but does have a magical/mystery ingredient.
~On February 28th, David And Andy Sat Inside The Deli And Talked About Ghaza And Putin~
At school, David frequented the water fountain. he slipped away between classes, slipping his headphones on to his ears. "I need your loving please don't slip away" said his headphones. his music said this. it was the 29th of February, within 2016, a year divisible by 4.
>>7783672
(Part Two)
He lifted weights and felt better, and also felt like he should feel even better than he did. he compared himself to the rest of the people lifting weights. he felt better than everyone else, but he didn't feel good. he got his lunch from the cafeteria. the ketchup ricocheted off of his cafeteria tray onto his red jacket. he exhaled. "I found a love that's here to stay" said his headphones. the song. the song said that. he was alone. his eyes hurt. his girlfriend hadn't texted him in 107 minutes. he got his lunch and went into a room with some of the same people who were in the weight room with him. he ate his lunch. he remembered Sunday. he had accomplished a lot on Sunday. he had watched someone smoke a hand rolled cigarette inside a plastic shed while he talked briefly and not deeply about autism. David was alone with this man for the whole evening. He left when people started smoking weed. He heard someone say "stop feeding me with bullshit stories I need rice" through a cloud of bullshit smoke from a bullshit blunt in a room of bullshitters. the boy in the bubble. he listened to The Best Of The Fleetwoods. He took an indirect route home that took him past the middle school "Binghamton West Junior High School"
said the stone relief on the side of the school
Soon he was jumping up and down with joy thinking about sex and being clean and the bright eyes that wash him every morning. soon he was jumping down the sidewalk hill to his home to the tune of crystal ship, he remembered a journal he titled "David's Wine Journal" in middle school.
he found it when he got home
"David's Wine Journal"
I am writing this because I am going to die some time and because I am on wine and it is a secret that I am on wine. my parents don't know, you didn't know until now?! and I didn't know, in the future, until I read this. I'd like to sip this wine and sit and write in this book like a small lord... I would go to jail for this experience. i would fight for it. it means the world to me. I am listening to Kendrick Lamar and it matters, that's how much this matters and how much he matters and how much I matter. I've never read the bible but that would be perfect t right now. I think I am thinking and writing to myself. drinking by myself, that's a thing people say is bad for you.."
etc. he remembered it word for word. when he grew up he wanted to be famous. he always had, still did, still would, of course. "I can explain, of course. I can explain everything. I can teach myself how to do everything" said the notebook.....
....that's all I got....
just a heads up, if you know yout story is going to be longer than a single post, just use pastebin
Anyone else writing something that presents itself as pleb-friendly at first, then becomes literary, to try to get some readers?
You take me by the hand;
A hand's all I feel right now.
It's all I am, It's all, that I am.
You think that I am a man, I beg to differ.
For I am her, as much, as I am me.
You know this moment in time, is all my life.
Every day is each day thats past; every person alive is everyone who's died.
A ship out in the distance, is here if I draw it.
Multiply time, by letting it go by.
You paint a star.
You give many years ago, new life and it appreciates it.
You know this moment in time, is all my life
Everyday is each day that's past; every person alive is everyone who's died.
It was a city of controlled fires and unrestricted passions. I'd like to think how this paradox should be is not a question, but a symbol of all its wondrous, ethereal bliss. It asks nothing of us except to be allowed the pleasure of holding our hands through the charcoal streets and rhythmic beats, protecting us even. Man and concrete take their own forms, bonded with one another, yet so separate from each another's doings in a way that should suggest the mere semblance of earthbound harmony. Cast the delusion aside, and you'll still be left with a green, blue, and white, imperfect and untamed paradise.
>>7783753
pretty teenage
1
Today, being inadequate was regarded as the public enemy. Though the times have changed, everyone was still different. Now, for the most part, they had all become equally useless. Being a productive member of society was a rarity. Standing out had become impossible. Gene found herself on the verge of giving up the task of continually reinventing herself. Like everyone else would do, in order to be different from anyone and everyone. That was how one found and established themselves, by being different. Through being different, it was possible for one to succeed. Despite her best efforts she had always been below the curve and in line with the trends.
As certain fragments of knowledge are passed down through generation to generation, some metaphors, lines of logic and reasoning happen to stick and resonate throughout the entirety of society. Today’s touted common sense were, as they usually are, snippets of knowledge and easy to digest advice taken from those who had succeed in the past. It was now common knowledge that in order to succeed a person had to be different. The presentation or tone with which it was given made no difference. It could no longer be regarded as insightful by anyone. Especially unmoved were those who knew of it but did not live by it. If anything were to be eternally true it would be the perpetual hypocrites. Throughout history, as confirmed by the few remaining (ever dwindling) rigorous scholars and the potent successful, being different was how successful people succeed. Slowly but then exponentially did the need for labor begin to follow the law of marginal utility, as if it were a confused teenager. To imitate someone else’s endeavors and efforts, especially when an original idea was not improved upon, was a failure to someone’s faculties and to the machinations of society. Work was no longer a part of the human experience.
Gene Malkovich was the type of girl who would have a cigarette tilted downward and loosely held between two slender fingers after the occasional paper kiss. After a slight sense of relief, she would return to absorbing the happenings and nuances of her immediate surroundings. It was merely a persona that would never be an actual part of her daily meanderings. She was too busy living inside her head. The thought of actually going through with such a degenerate action was one she always dismissed immediately, even though it was something her friends seemed to enjoy.
>>7783978
2
She was an overt round-the-clock self-conscious person. But it wasn't the way she presented herself that guided her thoughtful actions. It was, questionably her own, self-imposed stigma against the kind of people who partook in this now dated past time. She regarded it as a past time because, from where she sat, she couldn’t find a meaningful purpose, with what she regarded it as, an idle use of her time. Time was of the essence and the thought of it had consumed her. No more idling. It was of great concern to her what she did during her passing moment, for she wished them to no longer pass her by. To compliment this contemplation she also became concerned with why she doing what she was doing. The irony, that she was all too aware of, yet still dismissive, was how much time she had spent thinking about what she could and should be doing with her time. She was 24 years old, and like everyone else, she had nothing to show for it.
Gene was conscientious which made her spiteful towards being average. She didn’t mind finding herself in an average setting. In fact, she found an ability towards immersing herself in average surroundings. It was the idea of her, herself, embodying average. It was the crushing wave through which anxiety continually flowed through her.
She had come to accept her situation. The overall environment she was subject to was inevitable and she had no control over them, no matter how much she wished she did. What impact does one drop have on the course of a storm? She asked, as if to remind, herself constantly but left it at that, unwilling and perhaps unable to answer such a question. Alas, she found herself wishing to be the wind that could change a storm. But to be such a thing would require a fundamental change that was impossible. Fitting comfortably, into the storm, as any resistless raindrop would do, bothered her. It bothered her some much that she became afraid. Through this fear, she found motivation for her newfound course of action. This state of being, was the uncomfortable position Gene was trying to relieve herself from. Success would be the only real relief.
She had all the knowledge necessary to readjust herself into a comfortable luxury, but that was not what she wanted. What she wanted was more abstract, making her future even more uncertain, than even a relatively straightforward path in life would be. A tickling thought then dawned on her causing her to unconsciously scratch her head as she realized how imitative everyone, including herself, had been. How wrong they all were. How wrong she was.
>>7783509
Run!
Run!
Run!
Torn limbs give the mud world its flora
This annon can't hide his fedora
>>7783326
Stop starting nearly every sentence with a pronoun.
The morning brought rain like music. Tapping the tin roof like a relentless drum line, then rolling down to mix in with winters runoff and form pools in the yard. The fields still held frost and outside my windows all the colour of the world became a muted grey. The farm was numb and wet and cold.
Dad had left me breakfast on the table. He was outside with the animals, doing the chores. The world didn’t stay still for the weather. At noon Dad and I drove into town. We were both dressed in black. The rain continued to beat its rhythm on our windshield. We both tried making small talk, then formal conversation and eventually we settled into silence. Between us only the rain had a voice.
The church service was packed. The entire congregation was dressed in their best clothes; I’d seen most of these suits and dresses used on weddings and birthdays. Family I hadn’t seen since I’d left for school, and family I hadn’t seen since I was a little girl were there. My Uncle Mitch was fatter than I’d last seen him. A side effect of Aunt Tammy leaving him last year. Both of them stayed far apart from each other in the church. It all felt stale. The preacher started the service by offering up our prayers to God. I listened to the sound of the rain outside as it tapped on the windows. The rain died just as the service ended.
The luncheon downstairs was a pleasantly prepared. Caterers had provided food and coffee. Everyone ate and talked to each other. Each one of my Aunties shuffled up to me to squeeze my shoulders and hug me and tell me how beautiful I’d become. They told me I was strong. Relatives I didn’t know shook my Dad’s hand and patted my shoulders. When Dad and I left we were both exhausted.
On the ride home there were a hundred unsaid things hanging between Dad and I. Ten minutes from home the truck stalled. Dad got out of the truck, still in his funeral suit and tried to coax life back into the machine. I stood by him as he worked.
“It’ll be okay” he said, calm at first. He repeated it over and over as the truck refused to start. He started to curse it, kicking its tires and pleading with it. When it still refused to return to him he started the process over again, his voice rising frantically and breaking over and over. I felt tears sting the corners of my eyes. Eventually he gave up.
He slumped to the ground, back against the truck and buried his face deep into his rough hands. His shoulders sagged and in minutes he’d aged years. I sat down beside him. We never spoke. When he looked up I could see the exhaustion in his eyes. Together we sat there watching the prairies. Families of deer grouped together and drank from the fresh spring rain. Both of us were wrapped in memories and pain as the sky faded into black, the sun an image of fire reflected in the puddles formed by the morning rain.
>>7783753
You're not really saying anything here. Poetry doesn't mean difficult, sometimes a simple line here and there will make the entire poem better.
He noticed the embroidered alligator on the Lacoste polo worn by that young man with glasses and neatly trimmed beard who, kneeling with his fingers clasped behind his head, babbled and groaned words which tears and secretions derived from weeping made impossible to understand. He unsuccessfully tried to look away from the barrel of the rifle, mesmerized by the sight of that thin metal tube that had suddenly broken into what he had imagined as another night devoted to frivolity and which now stared at him, implacable, only a few centimeters away from his face . As he reveled in the sight of that naked and pathetic embodiment of terror, the alligator on a blue background placed on the left of that stirring and shaking chest evoked the rifleman past times.
--Damn, make your thing fast! They coming!—Hakim yelled. He was carrying a rifle just like his, searching for survivors hidden among the theater sits and joining the sound of his fast and strong footsteps to the whine of the polo guy into a mournful bitonality that broke the silence of the club.
>>7784251
Jesus dude that's one long way to say,
Pointed a gun at a guy wearing a Marco Polo sweater and he cried. I felt bad because of vauge memories. My partner rushed me along.
You're better saving the flowering prose for things that don't demand action pacing. Otherwise it feels slow and bloated.
>>7783326
MC doesnt sound believable when it come to his resignation to live on the house.
>>7783011
The first paragraph of the first draft of a STALKER rip-off I'm working on. Be honest, I'd appreciate it.
Anna's finger rested on the trigger of her ancient Mosin-Nagant as she peered with wide, frantic eyes into the forest of tall reeds that surrounded her. Adrenaline was leaking into her blood stream but she remained frozen even as every instinct in her body told her to run. Safety was not too far away and a rapid sprint could get her there in a few minutes but whatever was lurking in the reeds around her could be expecting exactly that. Anna considered her options and analysed the situation as best she could.
The wetlands were home to all kinds of creatures that ranged from the harmless and mundane to the horrific and impossible. Anna was new to this dark corner of the Earth, but she had heard stories of what wandered between the reeds when the sun got low; terrible monsters who could tear a man apart in moments or drag them away to feast on them slowly. At that moment, however, Anna was more concerned with the things she knew lived among the reeds and not the stories of drunken Zoners. She was thinking of the wolf pack that hunted this area and the loners who preyed on unsuspecting travellers. There was only one path through the wetlands and though it was travelled often, there was always news of people going missing or sudden bursts of unexplained gunfire. Anna went down onto her knee, sinking it into the shallow water that had sloshed around her ankles for the last kilometre and brought her rifle to her shoulder. The Mosin was heavy and she was yet to get used to its weight. She could barely keep the long rifle steady as she aimed into the reeds, ready to shoot. A gunshot might scare off any wolves or wild dogs, but any bandit would return it tenfold.
>>7783509
I like it. feels out of time but I like it. and by out of time I mean it should be fiction prose because poetry is a more personal thing and you couldnt possibly have been there.
>>7784464
If you cut some of those sentences up you can add a feeling of tension.
shorter sentences that say a few small details will work better for action pacing.
Ex:
She was tense. Her heart pumped at a hundred forty beats per minute. Danger was everywhere. She was trained but not for this.
>>7784251
this has been done even before american psycho was written
>>7784486
Hmm, that seems blindingly obvious to me now.
I'm always conflicted between action and world building at the start. Goes to show that sitting on the fence is probably the worst choice.
>>7784490
>this
What?
>>7784501
You've got the basics down it seems but combining to much into a single sentence bogs everything down. Your opening sentence gives us about four different pieces of information, one description and a setting. It's to much weight, the narrative suffers under it.
>>7784464
Alright. I've read worse stuff that was published, anyway. I don't know what STALKER is so I can't comment there, but this reads like the opening to a pretty standard "survival of the fittest" post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel.
Prose-wise, my main critique is that your word choice often gets in the way of the tension that you're obviously trying to build here. Be more direct; if you can remove a word without changing the meaning too much, do it.
Example: "Adrenaline was leaking into her blood stream but she remained frozen even as every instinct in her body told her to run. Safety was not too far away and a rapid sprint could get her there in a few minutes but whatever was lurking in the reeds around her could be expecting exactly that." Try instead: "Adrenaline leaked into her blood stream, but she remained frozen even as every instinct told her to run. Safety was not far away. A rapid sprint could get her there in a few minutes, but whatever lurked in the reeds could be expecting exactly that." Basically, use shorter sentences, cut out "to be" where it makes sense, remove redundant description (e.g. we already know the reeds are around her, no need to repeat that). Should make for a more brisk, exciting read, which is desirable in a scene like this.
>>7783867
cant give any crit because Im terrible at it but I really like this.
>>7784541
> I've read worse stuff that was published
That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.
Thanks for the advice. Greatly appreciated.
As for STALKER: It's Russia. It's raining. You are likely to be eaten by a mutant. Better drink some vodka.
Go read Roadside Picnic.
>>7784578
I'm laughing now because your description of STALKER was more succinct than your actual prose.
>>7784594
I learn fast.
FUCK
The End
>>7784608
Doesn't hold up to a second reading.
>>7784149
I really like your tone, but the constant simple sentences get horribly old after the second paragraph.
>>7784660
Took me a minute to get into the rhythm of your prose, but once I locked on it became strangely compelling. I'd nix most of the parentheticals, probably use fewer made-up words. Interested to know what the book is actually about.
>>7784981
That's the beginning of the second chapter, for this allegorical thing I'm working on about a Russian kid who emigrates to the US during the gold rush.
I actually don't think I used any made-up words except "bigdrinker". Everything else is just archaic.
Pic related is how the first chapter opens.
Climbing those well-worn stone stairs, Harry counted the steps, knowing he would fall into familiarity with the final one. Three steps took him up six stairs to the deep brown mahogany front door of Diane’s house. Facing this side of the door had become commonplace for him, but he had never seen it from the other side. He paused at the door, his hand hovering around the knob, fingers shaking, bitten by the freezing air blowing from behind him. His watch read 4:15pm—he was late. Diane was expecting him at four, and now he was thrown from his seat in familiarity into a pit filled with the bodies of other familiar moments. Stepping back from the door, his foot planting itself in a murky puddle which splashed his ankle with speckled brown liquid, he could smell his anxiety, its breath hot on his neck, and he heard it whisper, Just go home. It’s not worth it—you know that. He pivoted on the heel sunk in the puddle and turned to face the wind, hair blown across his forehead from right to left and back again, until right and left no longer could describe its position. As he took the first stair, the knob turned and the door creaked open, letting the cold winter air run between Diane’s legs, which were not covered by her housecoat.
“Where are you going, Harry?”
Turning only his neck, and even then not far enough to see Diane in full, Harry mumbled,
“I wasn’t sure I had the right house, you don’t have a number out front.”
He hoped that she couldn’t smell his fear—the wind would be blowing it towards her.
“Come in then. You want some coffee? I just put a fresh pot on.”
Seated at the table in her kitchen, Harry’s eyes were drawn to the frosty windows. He couldn’t see through them, but the crystalline shapes stuck to the panes grabbed his sight and refused any will the strength to turn away. Diane had just run out of the room to answer the phone. Her voice was a far off siren song, but the windows were nearer and singing louder. His reasons for coming here were pushed to the back of his mind by the sight of Diane in her doorway. He had never seen her outside of class, where they sat across from each other, the only two students who actually spoke. In those moments it felt as if the rest of the students, all the desks, even the floor and the ceiling were just vessels—the means by which he could be greeted by her fire-blue eyes. Those eyes kept him warm in the winter. He longed to curl up beside them and eventually fall into them, embraced by their flames.
Outside, on the fringe of the frosted windows, a cardinal flew up from below and balanced itself on a nearby branch. He could tell it was a cardinal by its hot red burning through the previously unforgiving white of the window. Harry wondered what it would be like to be one of the few birds left when the snow began to fall. Was it lonely or liberating? Could it be both at once? The cardinal flew away, and the white was restored to its former glory.
Ted cracked his dirty knuckles
towards Bob's face. "It's dirty
enough without your spreading it."
And Bob walked, his disposition static.
His boots cracked and flailed in a dirty hysteria
while clucks and gargles greeted him.
The coop was not clean
nor had it ever been.
Ted said, "I remember
the first time I came here, young,
thinking they was pets. It's different
when you're older, the chicken's the boss."
"Fragments", replied Bob, "ain't shit
and that's all you remember, all you talk about.
They'll cluck themselves to death
before you say one thing worth sayin'."
Bob opened the door to the coop,
but the hinge came loose
and out flowed the fowl
funneling into the field.
Ted laughed and
Bob watched.
He imagined that one of them flew away
and that the others followed suit.
>>7784021
Riiiight
fuck me up, family.
Tell me it’s over
the long twisted sense
of your absence today
what drives me to seek
other pathways in rain
or hot summer days
when long steps I take
to keep momentum
how levity breaks
the longer I wait
the more vivid you seem
I have my problems
can’t turn them down
can’t obfuscate them
no stranger’s embrace.
can wield the right ink
my paper life crumbles
to the mist of your face
sometimes erased
by a new bright beam
here’s the thing,
I no longer feel your skin
but your glance doesn’t falter
it’s stayed with me since
but the beam it is life
and as cross and brittle
there is no other
but the very chaos of it
fascinates me to no end
and I can’t you let you stain it
though you rend it and laugh
the beam mutes your sound
I succumb to it’s chorus
and grab it’s hair
pull back and fuck it
and while your image prevails
it is only a ghost
your happiness meaningless
compared to our tune
a bittersweet dissonance
that lasted too long
so raw and crude
it tainted our tastebuds a poisonous hue
and left our ears ringing
>>7785481
it aint finished but it's gettin there.
>>7785481
no cohesion, it's just a bunch of random images stacked on top of each other
there is potential there, but you're being too self indulgent and not having any regard for the reader and the lack of puntuation doesn't help either
Hugh dredged through countless stretches of foliage, rays of amber light shone through the crevices of the treetops, dyeing the veins of leaves the same colour. Crickets, hornets, and other insects made their way about the jungle, the faint noise of them accompanied by the odd flying parrot. It was barely half an hour until nightfall; he had to find dinner for his tribe, being the appointed hunter of his family. For hours on end, he had found nothing but odd looks from others, about his severed arm he had gotten from birth. Shades of green and lime encroached the path of Hugh, whom was coloured in various shades of disappointment, since it seemed that nothing was found trapped in a pit he had dug. He strolled around saplings and bushes, to be met by nothing but damp grass covering layers of mud.
Sundown was now approaching, the orange of the sun was losing its strength, quickly. The huntsman, his skin turning into darker shades of brown, covered by a hide top and loincloth, was deafened by a roar. After ducking in reaction, dropping his knife of copper, he observed the bracelets of trees around him, he grabbed his weapon again, the blade shining gold with the last light of the sun. He ran in the loose direction of the noise, birds of each colour in the spectrum, from the deepest indigo to crimson, fluttered opposite of where Hugh was running to. After meeting the top a fairly steep hill, he had found the culprit of this roar, it's black and orange stripes perfectly impersonated the colour of the evening, only being covered by the odd leaf or bush. It simply didn't seem to notice the panting man, being satisfied with the meal it had found, a freshly killed dog. The only fist Hugh had trembled in anxiety, as perspiration loosened his shaking grip of the copper blade.
He had only one chance to make this shot right, to aim for the throat of the tiger, of which had the build of a Sumatran. It would be an easy kill. With the closing day, it was merely minutes before Hugh would be blinded by darkness. He contemplated when to strike in the little time he had, and after a few seconds, he pounced onto the animal, only slicing a few morsels with his knife, he went for another strike with his only arm. The knife was rinsed with blood, yet the tiger had since almost galloped away from its' hunter, leaving him with only a rotting dog and a sliver of the the animals' toe. Disgusted with him having so little of a reward, Hugh chased his prey.
After a couple minutes of frantically running, the hunter had to make guesses of where to launch each step, as by now he was in the black of the night. He screamed in frustration, being only a few feet away from the nimble tiger. He stumbled over countless fallen branches, losing sight and hearing of the Sumatran. He looked around him, only seeing the vague outlines of branches and trunks, he ran to where he thought his village was.
>>7785652
After days, if not weeks of walking, sustained by what flesh insects had, he had found other people, foreign people, paler people. Knowing he was going to die of dehydration, if not the lack of food, he limped to a group of them.
____________________
I'd give critique, but I'm in no real position to as I don't really have much experience with writing, could anyone give me pointers in terms of structure for the most part?
>>7783509
Thanks, I'll be stealing this and publishing it under my name
>>7785540
I will work on it, thnx anon.
>>7783509
>starting on movement with “Run”
>hail of lead
>burst into poppies
These are clichés
The parts where you use the stuttered enjambment are really quite useless. You were probably thinking something like “If I cut a sentence into small fragments it will have the ‘rhythm’ of war”. Same with the repetition. Needless to say the purpose of these devices are quite obvious, and thus, boring. You enjamb at the ‘big impact’ words like ‘I’ ‘shot’ ‘through a boy’ but these are all melodramatic techniques.
Using names in the middle likewise is a one trick pony. More or less having only one purpose which is to say that you ‘know’ the period. The political attack at the end of that stanza is quite flaccid because “Our superiors are running away!” is a theme that has been done many times before. A simpler war poem like Randall Jarrell’s Death of the Ball Turret Gunner has a stronger political attack when it says “When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose” because it’s an understated ending that comes after startling imagery and accounts to more than just the historical period, but a cruelty that exists in all violence.
The last two lines are the only good lines, although it serves to thematically do the same thing as Randall Jarrell’s poem except with a more directed comedy. The death of the boy is so overdone it makes me want to puke.
>>7785667
If think stealing shit like this is worth something you deserve to rot in obscurity.
>>7783326
> We both wanted a house of our own; I was just a bit more patient. She’d grown up in a cramped apartment with her extended family, [and was eager to escape that kind of environment as soon as possible.]
What type of environment? This is your chance to really show, not tell. What was so bad about it? How did she suffer? The reader should be saying “wow, I would want to get the hell out of there too.” I’d also offer a parallel here of your own situation growing up unless you’re mainly focusing on her throughout the entire story.
> In her free time she scoured house listings. Meanwhile, it was up to me to [remind her of our limitations.] We were barely keeping up with our rent, but thanks to some generous wedding gifts and her new job we could just afford a new place, and I mean just. I tried to convince her to wait a bit and save but she was just so desperate for change – I couldn’t say no to her.
I would expand more on what exactly your limitations are. Just money? If so, what jobs did you both have, how much were you making—what is your overall lifestyle like? Again, you’re telling us you have limitations and then briefly mention money, but that’s not really putting us in your shoes or telling us much. I found the rest of the paragraph wishy-washy and a bit confusing. You’re barely keeping up with rent but you’re trying to upgrade? Also, if you’re living together I don’t understand why she’s in such a hurry to move if the principal reason (mentioned earlier) was being crammed with extended family.
There are some general pointers, but I think they apply to the rest of that passage as well. The jump to your personal annoyance with the noise and the train tracks was abrupt and I was left very unsatisfied with the setup. You need to clarify why exactly she wants to move so badly (since she doesn't live with extended family any more). She just wants a house?
As a character point, the narrator sounds wimpy already--the girlfriend wants to move for [unclear] reasons, yet you're not in a great place financially. So you buy a shitty house next to the train tracks KNOWING you hate noise? The narrator sounds a bit dumb as well.
>>7785481
>what drives me out to seek/pathways in the rain
>the longer I wait/the more vivid you seem
>I have my problems/can’t turn them down/can’t obfuscate them
>can wield the right ink/my paper life crumbles/to the mist of your face
>here’s the thing/I no longer feel your skin/but your glance doesn’t falter/it’s stayed with me since
>it is life… there is no other/but the very chaos of it/fascinates me to no end
>and while your image prevails/it is only a ghost
>compared to our tune/a bittersweet dissonance/that lasted too long/so raw and crude
Cliches everywhere!
The flow:
1. Starts on ‘fuck’ because why the fuck not. But all it does is to try and ‘shock’ up a very long and drawn out love poem.
2. Then comes images telling us how ‘lonely’ you are, except that all the images are shit like the hot sun and rain and it’s so banal. “to keep the momentum” is slightly new, but it’s still mediocre.
3. The “ink” modulates the image of the paper face crumbling, but its like the most obvious association anyone could come up with. Furthermore, attached to the whole notion of “I can’t find any other right person” makes it miserably melodramatic.
4. The beam motif tries to add a depth, but you explain the motif one stanza later in the most obvious “life as chaos” sentiment. In the middle of that why the fuck did you add another stanza rehashing the “she’s a ghost but she’s so real to me” theme?
5. “the beam mutes your sound” is a nice touch, but fails because you just spent the entire stanza explaining what the beam is.
6. Then it has the return of the ‘shock’ value with you trying to be all edgy and fucking the ghost. Ending on a wistful tone, but ruined after other shit about the life being a ‘dissonant’ tune
Fix:
The long twisted sense of your absence today
My paper life crumbles to the mist of your face
Sometimes erased by a bright new beam
Though you rend it and laugh, the beam mutes your sound
A bittersweet dissonance that lasted too long
It tainted our tastebuds and left our ears ringing
Tells the same shit but shorter. Still mediocre but this is the best you can get out of it.
>>7783326
By the way, I incorporated some edits into the green text in >>7785833
If anyone can look over this intro I'm writing I'd appreciate it. The chapter, overall, is about the theme of fear.
> When I was little, I would terrorize myself over Death. How could things just end? I played my parents’ deaths, my death, over and over in my head. I envied those who could fall asleep without crying deeply and bitterly. Infinitude, the abyss preceding and proceeding, horrified me. Hell seemed juvenile, but there was no denying infinitude.
> When I was thirteen years old and preparing for my bar mitzvah, I told my rabbi, my teacher, I did not believe in God. My mother shouted my name, horrified. The rabbi quieted her, asked me to close my eyes, and took my hands in his. After a moment of quiet, he asked me if I felt something. I told him I did— so that the lesson could be over with. Truthfully, I thought he was an old coot.
> That same year, a boy in my grade began to threaten me with violence. It was completely unprovoked, I’d done absolutely nothing to him, but he seemed to take great pleasure in randomly telling me he was going to hurt me. During class he would lean in and whisper horrible things about Jews—the specific words of which I do not remember. They were along the lines of ‘Jews should be exterminated’ and ‘Hitler was right.’ I didn’t think he really meant it, but I was an extremely sensitive kid; his words terrified and broke me. Other kids chuckled along and it felt like I was dying on the inside. I walked for several days, a week perhaps, in abject, unceasing terror.
>>7785840
ok ok ok. this was the first draft. thats why theres no punctuation and I usually trim the fat when it's done, but yes I agree with you. Thanks.
>>7785840
also
>fuck me up, family
thats not part of it. thats me asking anons to rip it apart, which you did.
>>7783011
By the park, a toy store opened. The owner, a large, bald man named Sven who didn’t particularly care for children nor toys, he himself unmarried and childless, bought the establishment from a dying neighbor who begged Sven to pay her next, and what would be final, month’s rent in exchange for the store.
Flora
“Twenty-seven years I’ve lived here paying rent but they won’t let me die without straddling me for every penny,” the neighbor wheezed. Sven was partly listening, but in greater part trying to rattle his apartment door open as quickly as possible. He’d the same two keys, one silver and one copper, for most of his adult life. He never took notice to which he usually tried first, bemusedly thinking it was never the right one when he needed it.
“I toldst him—hey, you live to be my age and you’ve paid rent every cocksuckin’ month, every cuntlickin’ year, on time mind you—and I’m late one tim—,” she paused to make retching noises behind a smoky, wrinkled arm, turning back to Sven—now wrestling with the second key—to showcase a lovely thick splatter of emerald-green phlegm hanging from her authentically aged bottom lip—now going for roughly 17,150 secure, easy payments of $6.95 plus tax a day.
“One time. And you’re going to fine me? Hot shot college boy been workin’ here for two months and has the brass nuts to fine a Ford-tough old cougar like me? I told him ‘I’ll chew your brass nuts into a mush and mold you a nice chain you can show off to the other jungle monkeys down at the bodega!”
Sven was now standing in his open doorway, looking at the decrepit affair before him, surveying it like an archaeologist of human failure. He’d lived next to her for nine-odd years and didn’t know her name. He tried to siphon her ramblings into very brief showcases of an older, different time. A rough, disparaging time that he could close the door on. For a moment, Sven entertained voicing an opinion.
>>7785874
Knowles
Nobody ever thought Knowles Bagley didn’t look like a walrus. His signature adornment, a robust mustachio (i.e. mustache) seemed to appear out of thin air, and no living body could give account of a time it did not—which is more of a comment on the attention Knowles garnered from other people than anything else. Fun fact: the medical examiner assigned to Knowles’ post-mortem optical pat-down actually whistled “hell of a ‘stache” before giving the corpse the signature wink he’d become known for in social circles and anal-yzing him.
When Knowles Bagley declared to his parents that he was leaving for the United States, they said “alright,” Mrs. Venetia Bagley speaking on behalf of Dick Bagley, of course, who’d lost his voice at a music festival. They did not ask for an address, physical or otherwise as the Internet did not exist prior to its subsequent discovery. Facing the road, his back to the only refuge he’d ever known, Knowles Bagley pricked his thumb on the loose nail that protruded from the family fence. He stood for a moment and looked up at the sky, a single tear sliding down his cheek.
“No matter how far I wander, in matter or mind, there will always remain a droplet of Knowles right in this lot,” he announced to the empty road.
“God bless the Queen,” he added, but neither prevented the tetanus. The symptoms of lockjaw began to manifest just a week after he arrived in the United States, where, luckily, the world’s finest medical care was available. Not being rich, however, Knowles resorted to prayer and, on one occasion, acupuncture. Knowles’ acupuncturist was one of the cheapest, but still somewhat professional, ways to get Hepatitis C from dirty needles, although this was hardly advertised in print media.
Chao (Excellent) Liu (Willow Tree)
Chao Liu made a fine living in the United States practicing acupuncture, establishing several practices throughout his home city. It did not occur to Chao that selling acupuncture services while knowing nothing about medicine, much less traditional Chinese medicine, was not appropriate conduct for a medical doctor. So it was that Chao Liu lived and died a rich man for nearly a century in the United States, gallivanting about town aloft and unchecked, dishing out medical advice with the same liberty and ease that he made eye contact. Statistically, most of the people that went to see Dr. Liu reported improvement in their ailments and they were quick to attribute it to authentic Chinese medicine.
Of course, Chao Liu was stuck in a sort of perpetual ploy in which the smallest blunder would plainly reveal to any half-keen eye what was a huge facade. To limit the breadth of this obstacle, Chao Liu only associated with very dumb people whenever possible. He forbade any familial visits to the doctor, insisting on administering all medical tests himself. [in progress]
if I post an idea for a short story here should I be worried about getting it stolen?
>>7785898
ya. keep it safe up there, in your juicy meats.
>>7785234
why did you use "dispostion"? seems like "stance" or simply "walked statically" might work better.
why did you use "flailing dirty hysteria"? wasnt his disposition static?
dialogue language is good
"out flowed the fowl funneling into the field" is nice but a bit too dr Seuss.
>>7783642
>the dirt I taste
>I do this for myself/I am empty/I am ready/this could be a good thing for you/I know you know my name…I know you don’t need me
>I’m a poet and a film director/for you!/for you
Better than >>7785481
since its more imagistic and less obvious, but still shit.
Flow
1. The image of root canal is new (although toothache=pain is quite standard) but the sentiment is a same old “suffering is good”.
2. Whatever good images are killed by most of the trite moaning.
3. “a painted bird circling a happy rotting garden” is just too far. The blue candle part is too far as well. The image themselves are stark but you didn’t have to add the part about the homework etc…
4. Reading out the ‘joyfully banal routine’ is a fucking cliché. See, for example, the comic Asterios Polyp. I think the movie Her also had one part where it was like showing the guy moving couches like it was the greatest thing in the world.
5. The ending is meh
Fix:
You could experience a psychological version of root-canal treatment.
You could see missiles pose throughout the sky, and understand intelligent design
Inside here is the dirt of each morning, to forge the ritual of the empty boy
I know you have never felt the crystal morning in the imprecise way I sing
You dialed the phone that rang for me like a painted bird circling
A happy rotting garden. A green jewel fixed to the blurry horizon.
I’m layering each window. The one above the blue candle
The one in my hand as I type these that frames the edges of my love
Cycling inward, smaller and smaller, nervouser and nervouser,
Scattered in the oversized and chuckling disguise of our routine
>>7785234
Best poem in the thread so far, though not anything grand. Actually its best because its not anything grand.
4th stanza may overstate the theme.
>>7785929
"disposition static" has a beat that matches the last line.
I don't see much clash with disposition and boots since one is referring to the subject and the other is an object. But it would probably be better to put it as just "His boots cracked in a dirty hysteria".
>>7785988
Oh wait the flailing makes sense when its talking about the chickens, not the boots.
>>7783020
I agree with everything except Worst Track and the score.
Worst Track is obviously Derek and it's at least a 9/10.
SHADES OF THE CUMULONIMBUS CLOUDS
...in aging patina
It is up to these old heads to conspire
With the gleamy manicures of the gallants from Christie’s
To ply their aesthetics for a worth more than several barrels of oil
Even then
As monstrous drills pilgrimage to the plains, the price
Of them are shuttered in these hands
In their collusion, they try to avoid contact with this spinning geist
Of me in my swivel chair
Plying the enjoyment of the hour
Shadows of ambiguity stand in absent
Gazes at the forms of the presence
That these have worked and worked for years
Example: Rodin’s The Walking Man
Whose cranial vanishing is undercut by the rigor of his stilts
And the weave of his chest pulling up a force no reason can deign
So bequeaths the knowledge of one spiry connoisseur to the kiddo
Who has ten levels of gem-swapping to conquest
“Ferocious, this cut of bronze that seems
To contain within it the power of the day
And to underlie the importance it’s worth
I shall quote this, by Rilke”
“Man’s movement has become more hesitating
They have no more the athletic and the resolute…”
And the kid, comboing through the stages, opines
“lolzwtf. dats liek. juz sum randum. dude.”
And yet through this galleire my syllables flow
To wish them merry, and good God be with
As I take a ten-step backwards lead
Cleaving a space through the in-between
The two bodies shift as they see my design
While the air –
Billows five speeds of wind
Thrusting my wheels three times as fast on fast as the swivelchair runs
Putting my knee up, and hoisting up, on a standing sway at point break
I leapt as high as I could onto the headless head, joints kicking off,
Intoning a soft apologee: “Sorry Roddy old chap, it’s not you, it’s me”
And waving back at the kid staring wide eyed at the world –
To the soft pads where sits
The shades of the Cumulonimbus
Clouds with the magnitude of all sky
That beckons as neither to you, nor I
Yet something ever smaller, a motionlessness
In the air, among this density of heave and hurt
A tiny cusp, as where I could see –
Where even the dark rains sing far free
>>7785929
>>7785988
>>7785996
thanks for the feedback and kind words anons I'm glad you found it enjoyable
I know it's cliche, but right now I have a hard on for the whole "simple but elegant" idea and that's what I was going for here, the title is just "Chickens" by the way just for the sake of making it known
I'm going to post another one for the hell of it
MAILMAN
The windowsill gives way
to a chill that lingers, loosely,
before having its way with the icebox:
Cold Fusion.
A carrier pigeon adorns the interior with a soft coo
from the windowsill its wings waft like lighted scales of pearl
playing in the sunlight, twinkling through the heated eye.
From the windowsill its wings wander in the air
lighting its fall to the floor and,
inspecting a bowl of dog food
dished on a diaphanous drape,
it makes way to a split-end struggle
diagramed in grunts, tugs and heated irons.
A simple room of shocking pink that doesn't shock
and a dead fern furnishing its floorboards,
remembered only by past pollinations
since lost in the sinewy sinuses of a grandfather
or perhaps the dog.
The pigeon places its parchment
and takes leave.
http://sarahmarie-poetry.tumblr.com/post/140642091337/untitled-submission-for
>>7786118
:^)
>>7786156
Pretty clever of me to disguise the link by posting from a reblog instead of from Kolsti
>>7786197
yes and now that I think of it is this not the true poetry? this act of defiance and disguise in order to make the work known against all previous derision is noble and in the end, noteworthy
congratulations anon, 10/10
>Tfw you critique but everyone skips you
>>7783623
>>7783623
>>7786213
It's very good in my opinion anon, you have a nice eye for detail and it seems that you leave no nook unexplored, which gives the writing a nice cohesive flow. The narrator is easily seen moving from one thing to the next and so forth.
>Each blade of grass was like a shining sword pointing to the sun for the victory of earth over man.
This description feels a bit out of place, but perhaps it would make more sense in the context of the whole piece. Also it feels a bit too "wordy" in my opinion. The line "consuming the land in green might." conveys the same power, but in a much more confined way.
Also, I think you should cut the "us", because the entire line is solely about the bucket and I think it should stay that way.
18 y/o applying for my first job
do you think this cover letter is decent?
if it matters its for a close to min. wage part time job at staples
>>7786118
This is really very good. Brilliant work.
>>7783623
>>7786213
Too many "ands" in the first sentence, strike the "but" as well. Like the sword metaphor, but extending it into a new sentence doesn't work so well. "Swept rampantly" and "consuming" lend a speed and forcefulness to the process of revegetation that simply isn't there.
Strike "to me," it should be "morning's." You harp on the freshness a little much here. "Me and this little bucket" is trite, but I can see why you did it. Maybe find a better way to phrase that.
"Wealthy" is a strange word to use here. "Should that the," while grammatically correct, is a huge stumbling block in terms of the flow and lyricism of your prose. "Was" should be "were." You're not looking at your expression, you're looking at your face. Don't like the second use of minding here, much to close to the first, and it breaks the sentence up in an awkward way. The world opens up between what? The blades of grass?
Anyway, if you have the rest and found this helpful I'll do it again.
>>7786118
I'm blown away. Is there more? It's like an aggressive rap and a contemplative print poem all in one. Like Rimbaud meets Death Grips. I love it.
>>7786270
If I were the HR guy, I'd laugh, pass this around the office, but then okay you for an interview.
>>7786256
Thanks anon, glad you liked it.
On review I agree with pretty much everything you said. With the grassblade line I actually spliced it in from a revised first paragraph to see if I could still use it, but I defintely agree that the other sentence gets the same job done.
Guess I'll work more on ironing out the imagery then after I finish the whole thing. Thanks again
>>7786118
How are your teenage years treating you?
>>7786282
Its meant to be funny (to me). The whole irony about dedication and passion for a copy and print job.
I hope the HR guys either laughs with me or thinks its sincere and therefore that Im a good worker..
I could also just not submit anything since its optional.
>>7786290
Great. The teen angst stuff is ironic though. The prompt was "Schadenfreude" for fuck's sake.
>>7786277
Thanks anon, I agree the little kinks like repeating freshness and minding could be adjusted, but concerning the forcefulness of the plant imagery: its more about expressing how these flowers and bush appear in his vision, its dominant and forceful because thats all he sees, and accenuates the feeling of him being the one "out of his element" in a world where nature reigns supreme. I hesitate to use any static terms since that may take away from the overall feeling, but I suppose its worth experimenting with.
I'm not sure what instance of "to me" you're referring to
>>7786280
I'm glad you like it. If you want more I wrote >>7783018 and a couple other short plays for playwriting class, as well as a blog full of shitty poetry and a novel from which I occasionally post excerpts.
Here's another short play I did for class and here's two excerpts from the novel.
>the play
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t_GzgtDi6aDojYRFSXTufycTCD3r4NJHHcPHw-dZtCE/edit?usp=sharing
>excerpts
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7439420#p7452090
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7344201#p7344273
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S6786229#p6786620
for a mixed bag of meh poetry with a gem every now and then look no further than
http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/tagged/poetry
>>7786378
This is beautiful work. I think I'll make a tumblr just to follow you.
>>7786378
This is too good for /lit/
>>7786336
"A bucket poked up to me from the grass."
>>7786509
So, "a bucket poked up morning's from the grass."?
>>7786525
No he means "a bucket poked up from the grass"
I think the "to me" is fine personally, but I see where anon is coming from. It's just a matter of taste it isn't like you have to incorporate his criticisms.
Craning necks,
searching for specks,
in the Crystal Meth O.C.D. Home.
We count our sheep,
every other week,
in order from 3 through 8.
Prime numbers we seek,
when cleaning our sheets,
is it wool or fleece?
I can't count on you,
you can't count on me,
Who's Counting?
i don't even care.
>>7785234
It's pretty good mate.
I'll dump my stuff.
Nothingness. Then light. There was a slight breeze and a calm sunlight. What seemed like a cool morning on the strings of the wheels was, in reality, a dank breath of heat on the pre-noon empty. The tall, winding grass of green and tan hue swayed softly over the flat plains, as always. The blue-green rover rocked gently, forward and back, through the sea of mystic weeds. The rush of the engine penetrating the rubber feet conjured a false breeze blowing horizontally on the driver's pale, bearded face. His silky chocolate head did not bulge as he'd expected it to, nor did his eyebrows twitch like shrubbery divided by invisible hands, no, it stayed still in the air. His eyes, though fixated on the imaginary road ahead, were sunken and lazy, deep in shadow and nearly-wrinkled. Though his eyes lingered in his skull, his thoughts scrambled like a storm over the Caspian. "This wind," he thought, "Is my jacket not fit?" He lamented on his silent ramblings a little longer, confounded by his insolence at the task at hand, "My brother, do I know his fate yet?"… "Is today the day he dies?" The driver shifted in his seat, a chill running down his spin like freezing water, or the cold finger of the Devil come to take him away, "This is a mistake, my mistake." The driver's sweaty grip on the smeared black wheel tightened and loosened in tangent rhythm, but alas something told him this was not an option, not a choice to keep driving forward rather than back. It was no deep reflection or forethought that conjured a sense of no going back, no wading in blood, no fate as such, since now he could see it straight ahead; His destiny.
>>7786618
damn anon this is really good
"What seemed like a cool morning on the strings of the wheels was, in reality, a dank breath of heat on the pre-noon empty."
Very nice, would read/10
>>7786118
you have a lot of rhythm, i never could get that in my writing. it always felt so forced. this makes me want to dig out an old song i wrote when I was younger. Interesting use of tumblr raging, using your rap/poem as a vehicle to express your disdain for the feminazis.
I'm gettin out of this place,
damn devil tore off my face,
he ripped the skin from my feet,
he turned my muscles to meat,
he stole all there is to steal from me.
The devil's reject,
a project to eject,
i'm rotten and now i'm gonna rot you too.
waaay too cringy after that.
something i wrote for fun around a year ago, in contrast.
I sold my soul to Satan.
Sent Tom Cruise back in time,
To save Jesus from our crimes,
turns out ol' Tom,
just so happens to have BEEN Jesus all along!
and we're the ones stuck holding the dime.
after we sent him back there,
his evidence was laid bare,
we have his beacon,
(the beacon of the deacon)
and now in a dilemma are we,
our history's no longer a tree,
and know it we do,
we sent an insurgent it's true,
he went down in time a pretty nice guy,
cannot trust those actors as the crows fly,
Those powdered alcohol pills filled with red dye,
his extensive training in the public eye,
in medicine,
in sleight,
in oration,
We created our graves,
they're shallow,
because he was the bravest of braves,
at least we'll rest easy,
the truth well defined,
he was not divine!
we're not all his slaves!
>>7786270
> breathe life
Homie, these people need you to have two brain cells to rub together; I think your cover letter should be longer, more descriptive, and less dramatic.
WHY would you say you "breathe life" into things? Expand on that because if I was reading this cover letter I would think "what the fuck is this kid talking about?"
>>7786660
Is this a rap?
>>7786718
no, just some weird poem-like trash
>>7786723
So it's a rap.
>>7786731
yeah. whatcha think of my rap?
>>7786745
Hip to hop, oh hot damn, shippity shop, did not scan.
>>7786754
th-thanks, you too!
>>7784467
Interesting, wouldn't consider making it into fiction prose. Also interesting how poetry should be a more personal thing, would that not be limiting by some factor?
>>7786378
Wow good job anon
>>7785791
Very interesting, thank you anon. Ya it does try to be great while having no real impact to it. Will have to work on it. I wonder, do you have any recommendations for war poetry collections? All I had to go off was a small chapter in a Canadian poetry book I have.
>>7786553
I like your rhymes, I guess you are going for absurd humor?
My shit lit.
The unknown entitys long shadowy like apparatus was dripping sanguine, for that is all I dared to glance, and in that object I saw myself. It had nothing I could grab onto with my eyes, nothing that wouldn't make me live an eternity in a neverending path to regain my sanity. It had a call like that of a siren, it embraced me with my name, I wish I had never had heard my name as the echo pierced my mind. Knowing that there was nothing I could do to stop it's writhing in pain, to console it somehow, to temper a flame of someones child, I know the first time I truly died now, it was then as it truly integrated me into it. I had taken on it's visceral as the echo screamed within my body. Like a single drop of rain into the infinite Oceanus, so did I descend like Orpheus into Hades
A little while later, behind Jimmy’s house, Fennius, Akiko, and the robot watched the wind create waves across the field of tall grass. Fennius decided it would be fitting for Jimmy’s ashes to be scattered on the land lived on for so many years. There were over two hundred acres of flat land that stretched as far as the eyes could see. For James Abernathy’s final send off, Akiko had taken some wrapped colorful ribbons she found in a box marked “Christmas” in his house and tied them around the frame of the robot and the urn. The JS94 stood with red and green garland around its arms, body and legs. When fennius squinted his eyes and looked upon it, the robot resembled what he imaged robots would dress like if they attended Mardi Gras. Akiko said it made things more “festive”. The best plan Fennius could manage was to give the robot orders to scatter the ashes evenly across the acreage and bury the urn when finished. It seemed like the decent thing to do for a friend.
But for the moment, the three stood together on the blustery plain, no one saying a word. What few clouds there were in the sky paid them no attention and sailed along towards destinations far away. A human, a machine, and an entity that was something in between stood fast on the spinning planet and let the October wind slip past them. His coat, her hair, and the bot’s ribbons swayed in a breeze that brought no consolation. Akiko broke the silence by saying some kind words about Mr. Abernathy as Fennius removed the lid and gave the urn to the robot. The mechanical hand reached into the urn and withdrew a pinch of white powder. The wind dissipated it in a small puff, the particles slipping away on the wind.
And then, with Fennius’ command, the bot started walking, spreading ashes like a flower girl at a wedding. As it got smaller in the distance, Akiko began to sing. And projecting from somewhere in her emitters, the sound of accompanying piano music helped her along. Fennius didn’t know the song or words, something about wanting to rule the world and that good nothing lasts forever. In this moment of weakness, it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard in his life. The two stood side by side watching the clouds. When she finished the last note, the robot was a thin, grey smudge on the horizon.
(This was the cover of the song I had in mind. Let track play and then reread what's above.)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hrnOhYG0pMQ
>>7787185
Some of your wordings--"the wind create waves," for example--are kind of boring, and you use adjectives just a little much for my tastes. Overall, it seems very restrained, tied down, lifeless. Give it some emotion, some sentimentality; don't just rush from thought to thought, idea to idea--linger--let that sappy part you try to hide come out and cry little baby tears on the page.
I'm trying to break into poetry and this is my first poem. It's really short. Be gentle pls.
Voices, noise; a thousand souls
Screaming their existence--
rain slapping stone, rustling leaves.
>>7783011
It was another boring bomb threat weekday. The kids ambled in lines, backpacks slung over shoulders. Cops lugged barricades on to roads with glazed over eyes brought on by rigorous drills. Bull horns bleated evacuation routes like airport bulletins. A girl giggled, and a boy read a book by a New York prophet. Inside, dogs pressed wet noses on sanitizer slick hallways while the crack of work shoes on tile ambled about. Shoe's voices passing idle chat of families and gossip. The tvs mounted on doors placed every twenty feet broadcasting white text on red background: PROCEED TO DESIGNATED EVACUATION POINTS.
Jim, earlier that day, as he gazed past Jenny's red hair and into the window at the playground where he had earlier sat watching starlings dance against a cloud choked sky, felt like his lip was detached, and even though his teeth could chew it, it felt like there was nothing there— a phantom limb without an amputation. Other heads sat turned against his vision as the podium's voice spat out squares and cubes. Five to the power of two is twenty-five. We get this by taking two fives and multiplying them. On the bookshelf's sagging like a proscenium arch over the window sat shiny common core textbooks, their spines uncreased and signature pads blank. Jim clenched at the sides of his desk as the sounds abraded his distraction, and his neck began to softly glide over from the window as the insistent educational purr won out over the shaking cornfield and betrayed promise of the rainslick slide.
>>7787244
Hmm, I feel this poem is getting at a sort of anxiety. But I feel the force of screaming feels, well, forced. Also, rustling leaves doesn't seem particularly strong when compared to rain slapping stones (that's a strong storm). I suffer from a lacuna in regards to poetry's more technical aspects.
>>7787306
me
>>7786378
the play and the prose are incredible, publishable, borderline masterfully good and the poems are hit and miss with mostly misses
I can't write fiction, I'm not willing to say that it's not real.
To know is in some sense to become; if I'm to take repose in thought then I can't say it's a picture on the wall for looking only.
I could, in principle, write fiction; but I'd then be a stranger and everybody who called it fiction would be wrong.
Precisely, then, -because- it's fiction, precisely because of this I would enter into it.
We spend our lives running from unreality, it hurts too much to hope in the impossible, but its impossibility must mean that it's the only thing worthy of hope.
We say that some thing is essential to another thing, denoting that without the former, the latter could not in fact be 'the latter' as it were, it would need to be considered something else.
Isn't every substance in conformance with essence?
I know what you're thinking: "For all intents and purposes the universe is completely uniform and nothing could be said to exist at all. Additionally, our delineations of where 'things' begin or end are the products of our minds only and have no significance objectively speaking."
Even if you weren't thinking this, you should have been thinking it, it is after all the ultimate statement in empiricism, and if you aren't ultimately empirical with regards to how you see reality then you are either partially empirical and ultimately stupid or you are not at all empirical and ultimately wise.
Anyway.
What does it matter to consider a universe separate from consciousness?
Of course you are going to come up with that conclusion, what did you expect?
Consciousness is, after all, the source of the universe, but consciousness is participatory.
Nothing is conscious by itself and nothing real exists divorced from consciousness.
Things are real in as much as they participate in consciousness, and analogously, consciousness achieves its eidetic quality and inner unity only in communion with an eternally uncreated simplicity.
Sometimes I pity the entire world, it's a tough job and nobody has to do it.
So why me?
Ten years ago the cataclysm happen. And in those ten years the world had been slowly dying. This led the hunter wondering, why is he trying to survive? Ignoring the obvious answer that most would reply, he was left wondering, he would do the same routine every single day for the past ten years, and nothing change at all. So why was he trying to survive. Was it because he assumed everything would get better? That wasn't it as he wasn't an idiot. Did he hoped that someone would just suddenly appear and fix this tragedy? This wasn't a fairytale, at least he hope it wasn't, it would be too depressing.
While he wonder why he even bothered to survive, he noted civilizations itself was gone, any point on trying to survive this would be a fool's errand. No, that would be an insult to them, for even a fool knew when to call it quits. The hellish carnage was putting everyone into an early graves, nature reclaiming the cities filled with corpses and skeletons of the dead, the races or what remains of them would go out with a whimper not a bang. Nothing can change that now. So why bother?
This is getting depressing. He thought, yet he can't help but point out that this was the truth. Why bother surviving when in the end, there won't be nothing worth living for? But if there was ever a time in which a person loved to kill and feed their more unsavory side, this was the time to live in. As this was now a world that favored the strong, as those who are weak die or suffer, while those are strong live unscathed.
But people killing people paled in comparison when faced with monsters, who were also partially to blame for this, as they stop any progress. These monster were called nature's wrath by most, or god's wrath by the faithful. These monsters, sole purpose is making the world devoid of any intelligent life. Making rebuilding world an impossible options, but even that didn't stop survivors from trying to kill them, although from how the world is today it was obvious they failed.
He wondered if he should take up their sword, and try to fix this world for them, before laughing at the idea. He never really cared about the world. Never particularly liked it, but didn’t hate it either. So he didn't have the initiative as to fixing what others destroyed. Which made his earlier question even more puzzling, as to why was he trying to survive? Nothing he thought off could give him a proper reason as to why he is trying to survive. He thought of weighing the positives against the negatives.
If the world is gone, he would die eventually, if not by the monsters, then it would be due to old age. If the world is rebuild, he would keep doing what his being doing for the past ten years.
>>7787596
>Ten years ago the cataclysm happen.
You fucked up.
>>7787616
TO be perfectly honest, I keep changing the opening sentence. The rest stay consistent.
>>7787616
Fuuuug lol i was thinking the exact same
Just cut that line and see what you can do
>>7787663
Try both, but whatever you do let us start with the hunter doing hunty things in a defined setting, let him be with others he can reflect and bounce his feelings off of, in other words give a tangible situation that makes these cocnerns come to life instead of being mete thoughts
When I killed my brother, I thought the world would grind to a halt. Instead, it kept turning, and it may have kept going on like that forever if I hadn't called his wife the next day to ask what had happened to him.
We had decided weeks ago that we would meet up in the old cabin our parents used to rent for us back in the days of our childhood Summers. It was his idea, and I hadn't planned to kill him then. I hadn't given it any more thought than usual until I got there, and walked by the old roads and trails we used to careen through like rogue winds and realized how easy it would be. He took an extra day to help his wife and son prepare for his absence, so I slept contently that night knowing how foolproof the plan would be the next day.
My initial thought was that I'd kill him in the afternoon, but when he arrived I realized that he'd likely try to persuade me to switch rooms, since I had settled into the one at the top of the stairs he had always claimed as a child and wouldn't want to settle into mine on the first floor. So instead I coaxed him into walking the trails with me. After some prodding, he agreed, and we walked over more of the old trails I had re-blazed the day before, reminiscing about young imaginations and memories and discussing our lives back home until after about twenty minutes we came to a cliffside overlooking the park basin. I told him to take a picture for his son, and as he did so I shoved him from behind and watched him fall down into rocks below. The hour was early and there was no other sign of visitors, so a flock of birds were the only company I had to share the sound of his scream and the crunch of bone against rock with. They scattered upwards into the sky; I looked down into the basin for about half a minute before turning around and walking back to the cabin.
The rest of the morning went smoothly. He had packed light, so I took his sole duffel bag back to where he was and threw it over the edge with him. His contents spilled out and were quickly soaked in the blood that was just starting to dry up in the hot morning sun. I went back and enjoyed the rest day in silence. I napped at one point, read the paper at another, and kept busy when I could inbetween. That night I slept deeply and dreamlessly in the bed he had called his own so many years ago.
The next day I called his wife and asked him why he had not arrived. I feigned the same confusion as she did as we investigated. A park ranger brought the discovery of his death before the sun had set. They told me it had been grisly, and eventually that though he was impaled, it may have taken him over an hour to have actually succumbed from his wounds. I kept both these facts from his widow, who cried into my chest after I had flown back home with his body and sat beside me at the funeral services. During his burial, I poured some of the soil from the basin in with the dirt, though I told no one else where it came from.
(1/2)
>>7787787
Tonight, I sit back in my apartment. Sleep is elusive, so I look out the window at the moon to lull myself into a slumber. It's slim and curved now, like a sickle; weeks before, as I waited for my brother to arrive, it had been full, and shined in through the window in his room almost like a midnight sun. Now there's just enough light to illuminate the contours of my bedroom. On the far wall, there's a picture of the two of us. Though it's covered in shadows, I know it show my brother and I, arms around one another's shoulders, smiles on our faces, laughter in our eyes. I look try to look at it from my bed, but I can't make out any of the details in my memories in the dark. Eventually, I give up, and turn over in my bed to fall into dreams full of groaning in the dry sun.
(2/2)
>>7787682
>let him be with others he can reflect and bounce his feelings off of, in other words give a tangible situation that makes these concerns come to life instead of being mete thoughts
Nay. I really don't want to spoil anything but the reason why the hunter is alone is a twist
>>7783020
Unsolved Mysteries is obviously the best.
>>7787616
>the Cataclysm
What is this, Dragonlance fanfiction?
1/10
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataclysm_(Dragonlance)
>>7786097
bumpin
Chapter One -- Happiness Lost
=Sad music tinkles in background= I am Theopold. =Slowed down clip of a white horse galloping outside; violin crescendo= I am immortal.
Siddhattha Gotamma. Lao Tsu. Democritus. =A ship, not the Titanic, sinks slowly= I knew them all. The solemn library of Alexandria, and her grander now-forgotten predecessors. =A man guarding an unknown soldier's tomb briefly rubs the bridge of his nose=
=Bugs Bunny slowly dives into a pool of water=
Today, I will be reviewing a Denny's in Houston.
>>7788267
(cont.)
The pancake is as ancient as grief. =The house theme from The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages plays slowly as the cold colours of the city give way to the warm ones of the restaurant= "Yes, hello. I would like to buy here."
I am alone. How many years has it been? =Echo= How many years has it been since I had a friend? =Brief, instrumental Bob Dylan=
139. It is 2003 now. 2003 - 139 = 1864. The American Civil War. =Clip of Hitler talking, not making a speech= Will blood be spilled forever? "No, no syrup, thank you."
Above my heart I keep an imperfect photo. It was the first photo I ever took worth taking and it cost me nothing but time. It’s a happy or sad story, depending on where you decide to enter it. The photo is of a girl I was dating back when I was fourteen. She had short black hair and green eyes and that’s about all anyone will remember of her. In the photo she’s sitting on a hill and looking out at all the world below her. That’s the moment when I knew I had to become a photographer. I had captured the light of poetry, just a glimpse really, and I needed more. The time the photo cost me however, was one missed bus ride. I arrived at the hospital fifteen minutes after my grandmother passed away. A good photo can capture a life, but it can’t capture the living that goes into it. It’s like poetry.
>>7788297
(cont.)
=A rabbit (grayscale) slowly flees an unseen assailant. A sped up gunshot sound effect plays, sounding like the crack of a whip. Cut to black=
This is a good pancake. I have had many in my life. Many thousands. =Sound of page turning= ... Yes. I recall my laughing pledge to Socrates, over two thousand years ago - that I would someday travel the world to taste the pancakes of all nations, just to prove none were better than his. =A gull reluctantly takes flight; close-up of frothing waves= And I have proved it.
Delicious. Mmm. =Canon in D, on a music box, slowly plays as a dark figure leaves the Denny's. Snow is beginning to fall= Nights are oh so long. Eternal questions remain unanswered. However...
=Darth Vader slowly, breathily says "No. I am your father" over the music= I can tell you that Denny's is three stars out of five.
>>7788349
This isn't even absurdist it's just fucking trash. You piss me off.
>>7788354
Ow =( Do you have any CONSTRUCTIVE criticisms, you big jerk? I thought it was decently tragic, and plays well with format expectations.
>>7788371
not that anon, but maybe ditch the equal signs, considering how broken up all of the images are already they only serve to be redundant
>>7788371
Fine, I'll give constructive criticism.
Your prose style carries no weight. By trying to be clever your actually hurting any semblance of a story your trying to tell. You should focus more on content rather than trying to get cheap likes with a style that is "new". Every blogger on the internet writes in a hyper style punctuated by anecdotes that are meaningless. If you want to tell a story about an immortal that's fine, I love good fiction as much as anyone, but tell it in a way that doesn't immdiately confuse or alienate the reader. Ease them into the alien mind of an immortal. In three posts you have zero real content and that's why I'm so pissed off with you.
>>7788652
It's not total trash, but the stuff about the world turning is a bit cliché. The rest of 1/2 seems a bit... you're trying to show rather than tell but it's still quite brief. I think the sentence structure needs some work too. I do like the line about details of memories in the dark, although it could have been executed better. If you keep writing you have potential but that piece on its own seems little more than an early writing exercise.
"Excalibur"
I froze your tears and made a dagger,
and stabbed it in my cock forever.
It stays there like Excalibur,
Are you my Arthur?
Say you are.
Take this cool dark steeled blade,
Steal it, sheath it, in your lake.
I’d drown with you to be together.
Must you breathe? Cos I need Heaven.
>>7788859
I'm sure I've read this before.
>>7788032
so underrated
>>7788349
>>7788346
>>7788297
sorry but i didn't like this. if you want to make a experimental film, make an experimental film, but the constant interruptions add little to the narrative (a litany of references aren't a substitute for evoking real emotion) and they disrupt the flow of the story. it's like ADHD in text form. i wouldn't read a chapter of this, much less a book.
consider it a failed experiment. get back to basics. learn how to construct a compelling narrative instead of relying on a gimmick.
First thing I ever actually wanted to write.
Her
I stepped out of the car unto the wet stone floor feeling uneasy but trying not to show it. I had shaved, cut my hair, bought a nice dark suit and red tie along with some black shiny shoes in order to make my best appearance. Everyone was here tonight. Something needed to happen, I could feel it in my skin and bones.
I sat with my family and some of my friends to have the four course pseudo-fancy dinner that was planned for the night. It was pure garbage that I would end up throwing up anyway. As I tried to swallow the undercooked grainy meat all I could think about was her. She was just meters away from my table, laughing with her family and friends about god knows what. I was laughing too, trying not to show whatever was inside me.
As I saw her laughing and smiling I tried recalling another time when her happiness didn’t make me sick. Just four months ago I felt in heaven with her. She was the most important thing in my life. Her smile, her long brown hair, her way of speaking, walking, breathing, everything she had and did made me crazy inside. Now it just disgusts me.
I gulped another piece of grainy undercooked meat as I chatted with my table. After an hour or so, dinner was over and it was finally time for the party. The lights went off and the music started booming loudly. Colored rays of light shined from the center of the dance floor. Everyone got up to try and talk over the noise with their friends as most parents went back to their homes. I went to my group and tried talking to them, screaming whatever was in my mind just to make conversation. She was still in my mind as my friends poured a shot of tequila. I’m not a heavy drinker since I hate hard liquor, but since it was a special night I gave in much more easily.
1/?
>>7788904
“I’m gonna miss you guys so much” yelled one of my friends as we swallowed tequila. Everything was nonsense to me, the music, the dancing, the people I hadn’t even said one word to during all high school, the alcohol, the drugs, even what my friends were trying to say. “I’m really fucking scared of college”, screamed another friend, one that always got straight A’s since kindergarten. My eyes caught her dancing near us, she was in a white one-piece dress with too much make-up on her face. We poured another shot and drank it together. “I spoke to her man, she says she wants to talk to you, to try and make things right.” I let those words drown in the music, convincing myself that I didn’t care. I grabbed a drink and went to the dance floor.
As the alcohol sank inside me, I remembered us. I remembered the clear blue sky above when we sat in parks, the warmth of her skin, the days spent together watching movies and talking about nothing. I tried to feel that warm, comforting sensation that I felt so clearly just four months ago. I couldn’t. It was replaced by an anger that revolted in my stomach, so then I recalled again. I recalled my jealousy, the insults, our mistreatment and disrespect, our toxicity. I grabbed whatever drink was near me and swallowed it whole. And then I remembered my birthday, a month ago, when she told me she had kissed some other guy at a party. Just a kiss she said, but it was more than enough to get to me.
I could feel the grainy undercooked meat digesting along with the tequila and whatever else inside of me. Everything was blurry and I stopped knowing if I was sitting down or standing up. The music boomed and boomed piercing inside my head, and the colored lights blinded my eyes. She was there, in front of me, with another guy’s face all over hers.
It was real, all this time I had only imagined it, but now it was in front of me, and I couldn’t handle it. I pushed the blurred out people to make my way outside of the dance floor crashing into some chairs and tumbling some tables. I stumbled outside and blacked out.
My friends saved me. They took care of me and took me home. I woke up with deep regret and vomit all over my nice dark suit, missing my red tie. There were bruises in my arms and toes, presumably form kicking and tumbling stuff. It was the worst night of my life mainly because I was stupid enough to let it affect me. I felt a deep hatred for her but over time managed to get over it completely, after all I was the one who couldn’t let go. I don’t talk to her and she doesn’t talk to me, but it’s better off that way. I’ll always have the good memories to rejoice and the bad ones to prevent them from happening again. I hope she does too.
(I know the ending is very off but I needed to hand it in.)
>>7788904
>>7788906
I found it very entertaining. Nice work
>>7788859
dank meme
>>7787787
Just as edgy as mine, I liked it
Mother died at the age of nine when sister came to replace her. Father came and left so I took his bottle and ignored sister who had a strange compulsion to pick up every vermin she could, holding on even as they bite her. My first wife had very shiny hair, an acceptable prescription drug addiction, and an unacceptable gym addiction. My second wife loved to read and was kind to our children. One day I woke up and realized she resembled sister and the bottle returned. My third wife liked to watch the sunset and tell me there is no God which gave me comfort. Daughter is now older than Mother ever was but she’s just as dead.
>>7784464
I think it's a bad idea to try to mix the intense adrenaline rush with dry exposition. Either give the exposition first and then throw us into her pov or the other way round but this mix is just ineffective. Also maybe read roadside picnic and that Jeff vandermeer annihilation book to get some "inspiration"
>>7786830
of course, but it comes off as fraudulent.
>>7786118
simply disgusting
http://pastebin.com/wKAkAWwh
first time writing anything seriously, be as harsh as you'd like (or don't)
>>7787306
Do I have anything here?
Sinful woman
Boss of a hitman
A corrupt judge
This is really the end
Let's finally end it all
This story of evil
Good-bye
Good-bye
Loved one,
Hated one
Now, repent
>>7786118
I like the rhythms here.
Here's one of my latest poems: That Rat
No need to critique already know I'm a pro poet.
Have you ever released
A rat into your rectum
Let it ravage it to ruins
And jerk yer cock
Til that rat cums out yourethra
>>7787596
>Ten years ago the cataclysm happen.
Shock your readers, and make them laugh.
>Ten years ago, things went to shit.
I want to get my story published but I was weak and posted some of it here instead. A simple google could easily trace it back here.
I'm fucked, aren't I?
On a rainy April night in the Unsleeping City, a newborn girl was left in Macdougal Alley to expose and be forgotten. In a storm such as fierce as this, no human would dare set foot outside to save a crying infant, but fortune smiled upon her, and she was found by something else.
The cats of the village alleys had lived among the humans for generations and found them to be a gentle, if perplexing species. Page was one of them; a white bobtail with bat-like ears and hind legs so stumpy he could only run upon them by leaping. When he found the girl soaked to the bone and near frozen he knew he was her only chance of survival. The cat rested gently upon her to protect her from the rain and warm her through with his fur.
When the storm finally ended the girl was still alive, but only barely so. Page knew he could not care for a sick human, not as weak as he was, so he took her to someone strong. Cheshinger, the lord of the three colors and the god of the Court Sith was a strong and clever ruler. If anyone would know how to rescue her it would be him.
Page took the girl in his mouth and carried her through the many unseen mazes known only to the alley cats, but by the time he found his master the girl was lost. The god’s three tails swept back and forth in frustration as he listened to Page’s pleas. He could save her, that he knew, but for every act there existed an equal and opposite cost. For the god of color to create life, its antithesis must also be born. Cheshinger would never take a life from a member of his court, but then he realized that there was another way, and thus he offered Page a choice.
If the cat wished it, a new life would be created for the girl, and Page would be given the right to raise her as his own, but in exchange a death would be created for the girl, and upon the day that her life finally ended, her death would be twofold. From her body would be born a revenant, and it would be Page’s duty to see to it that the thing would be unmade.
Page agreed readily and with his claws Cheshinger pulled the void apart to create to orbs of light and pitch. The light became one with the child and she began to cry, and the darkness set upon her and formed two fuzzy umber ears.
>>7783020
None of them are as good as Animal Collective's older recordings, so it doesn't matter anyway.
>>7789940
10/10
>>7783011
so I'm an English major and for my senior project I have to write an introduction for my portfolio. Here's my opening paragraph:
"When people ask me when and why I wanted to be a writer, this what I tell them: One day I was twelve and I was in detention for some reason. Instead of the tedious essay on why I was such a bad boy that I had to write for my principal, I wrote a fictional short story about a twelve year old boy in detention, coincidentally named “Nick,” who thought it was weird that his principal always called him to the office and made him drink this funny-tasting apple juice that put him to sleep and made his heiny itch painfully for hours after. I must have done a good job, because when I showed the finished product to my principal during detention, I got out scott-free and I never had detention again, no matter what I did. It was then that I found my true calling."
>>7790510
you might want to reconsider your English degree
Phillip drowned
Jonah drowned
Leviathan tongue
Did Jonah drown
Of icy grave
Did Phillip drown
And so it was
As Jonah saved
Did Phillip climb
And Phillip saved
Phillip, Jonah
Know the story
It always happens
Again to you
>>7790518
care to say why?
>>7790510
What uni do you go to? You managed to go through 3.75 years of an English degree and still write like shit?
>>7790501
only wrote the thing in the paste bin, college freshman (not that that's any better).
any particular hangups about it you have, or are you just trying to decry the apparent edginess?
self harm in any form I can achieve. i try to be a normal person but then edginess just draws me back in
library is ordering me hunger by knut hamsun
>>7790570
whoops didn't mean to post that here
I posted a thing in another thread earlier today and a kind anon gave a thorough critique just before the thread was deleted. I've edited it accordingly and added the rest of the passage it was taken from. Hopefully one of you /lit/ lights will give some more of your words to me.
http://pastebin.com/VCCz1cA3
>>7790561
You started off listing the character's exact height and appearance and then stated that he's considering suicide. That's way too much information at once. Try to be a little more subtle and concise. Your reader has no reason to care about your character's appearance if they don't even know why he's in your story.
>>7787185
Moar?
>>7790559
I'm not saying, but I did learn that when big boys don't like something they say why and give helpful critique instead of saying it's shit and not explaining.
Three old men sat whistlin’ dixie ‘bout the sight of poor old Jack, Jack being the young boy bright and fresh down from mama’s teat, on account of the way the boy’s teeth just happened to go this way and that, juttin’ out curved and crooked like the three old men, hootin’ and hollerin’ and strokin’. He ain’t even look like a gopher, the first old man said, he looks like a rabbit got his teeth knocked in real hard, he told the second old man as he kept polishin’ away on that stubborn johnson, them clackers look like my lizard, he kept on, all tiny and white and curved, but ain’t no purple head on them pearly whites. The third old man was yellin’ somethin’ fierce, ain’t speakin’ in English but yellin’ in tongues, a language no one but himself could truly discern, yabba, wub wub shibon he was sayin, which meant somethin’ along the lines of teeth, crooked crooked clackers, yellin’ it straight between the second man’s ass cheeks, blowin' the words at his puckered brown lips, keepin’ his hands clasped at his own chest, thinkin’ in his head dear lord I have sinned, dear lord what a sin I’ve committed, dear lord I have feasted, dear lord oh lord oh lord. Meanwhile poor old Jack was neither poor nor old on account of daddy dearest ownin’ a plantation or two, keepin’ some negros in bondage, only lettin’ ‘em work the fields under guise of night. Jack saw these three old men strokin’ and hootin’ and hollerin’ and he didn’t pay it no mind, he knew he was destined for somethin’ them old coots never could know, never would know, but all the while knowin’ he’d never know the feelin’ of an old man’s sharp gray whiskers ticklin’ his little supine cheeks.
Dialogue 1
[Enter TYCHE, wandering in Elysium]
TYCHE
O Father,
O Son of Kronos
Why do you desert me thus?
You let the fertile country of my heart lie fallow,
You let my youthful eyes turn to ash in their sockets,
You let my spring pass for mild summer.
I was not made to be one of the mortals!
[Enter ZEPHYROS, dancing, adorned with a wreath of hyacinth]
ZEPHYROS
O Tyche
O goddess of the white arms,
Weep not,
For you no longer have eyes with which to weep.
Is this not true?
Take my hand,
And rise with me,
And taste the airy vault of heaven.
TYCHE
O lovely Western child,
You were dear to me in my worldly mornings,
But your words now are mere rain
Against the granite cliffs of my resolve.
Go now,
Yes, go now,
O you who may still be restored!
ZEPHYROS
Words?
Your fear deludes you,
O mistress of all men’s days.
I speak not,
For I have no tongue with which to speak.
Is this not true?
[Exit ZEPHYROS, TYCHE watches as he leaves]
TYCHE
O Zeus,
O my Father,
Why do you tantalize me so?
The fine bracelets you once gave me
Now begin to tarnish.
I must fortify my heart against all things.
It is a good thing to give way to the night-time.
https://docs.google.com/a/nvusd.org/document/d/1hWCDq475fir7hULFlXqMcyG--xqyxbO6adjHTBOO6kY/edit?usp=sharing
>>7783509
Having the lines be so short makes it hard to find a rhythm to your poem. Words like "flora" are poetically meaningless. "falls down like his innocence" sounds like you reached for a message that the rest of the album wasn't aiming to communicate.
Wow, celtx does not copy paste well.
I don't know what to call this
While running barefoot, at night
My toe had Crashed into
A hidden block
Of lonely two-by-four
And left me flat
On concrete.
The piece was purple,
Bruised with red veins
And bright spots.
My whole leg filled
With black sand,
I stood up.
I looked at it.
I put one shoe on
My better foot
And rubbed the heel edge
Against the damage,
until it got brighter,
And the vibrations
Thicker. Deeper.
The deepest red,
The darkest purple,
Electric veins, I admired
My work,
For some moments.
It felt good,
Until I cracked.
>>7789068
I don't think there's anything of substance here, nothing meaningful. Nobody's able to get anything out of that.
>>7784021
OHHHHHHHH
>>7783011
>I'm writing a play
An Atheist's Trillema, A most Philosophic satire in 3 acts
The future, maybe twenty years or so from now.
An extraordinary meeting of the Council of Atheists. In 2026 the Council became the supreme ruling body of the entire human species, ushering in a glorious era of science and rationality. A Spacious hall decorated with portraits of famous atheists and rare science memorabilia.
THE RATIONAL ATHEIST: Senior member of the council. a grizzled veteran atheist who still remembers the Dark Ages
THE LOGICAL ATHEIST: an expert in the arts of logic, this atheist can defeat even the most contrived of fallacies
THE SKEPTICAL ATHEIST: a born-contrarian, this atheist isn't afraid of asking though questions
DR ZOUNDS, PHD: famous african american scientist.
>>7790910
please continue it sounds brilliant
>>7783011
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-opz2kxPqFGR2tVclSxH07Mm0qHfwdBDCQ3f5_HON58/edit?usp=sharing
Here's a short 10 minute play I wrote for my acting class. Nobody really said anything about it except one dude who said he liked the quips/dry humor and said it reminded him of British Humor.
Professor said it was intelligently written, but she is overly kind to everyone so.
Loosely based on real events.
>>7790910
Do they all wear fedoras
The wind she blows and where she goes
She knows the paths to lead us home
But in her haste to break away,
We fell behind in dark, and froze.
In the absence of the day
Our hope and joy did freeze and fray
We tried in vain to find our way
And instead we found an unmarked grave.
That night was long and its chill we fought
We burned our dead, their fate was hot
We found new love in our despair
The moon was grey and full of rot.
We dreamt that night of golden hair,
The sun's warm breeze and graceful glare
We knew this end our sins had wrought,
With fear of flame my mind was fraught
And all the world seemed black and bare
When sweet death found us sleeping there.
>>7790910
They better talk in fedora dialect.
First draft of a short exercise I gotta put in tomorrow.
A Hole by the Bridge
As a teenager, he would run his fingers over the walls of the concrete terrace after the bridge on his way home, but only once. The concrete was set in square panels as tall as he was, raised out like goose bumps without any of the elasticity or warmth of skin. What was curious, though, was the second panel, which looked as raised as the rest until his tracing fingers fell through, only to be caught on the edge of the third panel.
The realisation of this physical error played like icicles on his spine, a cold electrical warning of the present unnatural. The terribleness of the revelation caught in his brow, which scrunched up and held tight a thought like a child would hold a stuffed animal against the darkness; ‘Are there such things as concrete ghosts?’
It was ridiculous. He couldn’t help but smile, before running his fingers through it again. Nothing for a few centimetres, maybe an inch. Do ghosts go by imperial or metric these days? Completely absurd, with more smiling.
There was a wall behind this wall, certainly, and it felt like a rougher layer of concrete. How lame, he thought, no hidden doors or portals to anywhere more interesting. Just the ghost of a panel set between two solid ones.
He knew better than to play around with this potentially world-shattering upset in the natural universe just a few blocks away from his house. His first experiment involved sticking a coin he wouldn’t miss into the space behind the ghost. It stayed there, until he picked it back up for his second experiment. He threw it at the panel, and bounced back, fast enough to do away with any suspense that it might have broken through to other, more impossible layers.
>>7791394
He couldn’t think of anything else, really. He wasn’t an exceptionally gifted student, and wasn’t particularly creative. He had his good points, which played out for the rest of the afternoon. Anything to do with ghosts or measurements (Well…) left his mind when a girl from his class who he fancied met with him just after the bridge and by the panels. They smiled and talked, and nothing ever came of the concrete ghost until many years later, after they had married.
Now much older and hardly any wiser, he came upon that set of panels in the concrete terrace after the bridge on the way to his old home, and under the influence of half a memory ran his fingers over the second panel. The tips came back wet, with some newly placed concrete hidden quite meticulously under the phantom panel. There was that old smile again.
With the rest of the memory and heavier touch he pressed his fingers deep into the wet concrete, and began tracing out his and her initials. He even managed most of a heart to contain them until his fingers ran into something like paper. He tugged at it almost instantly. They seriously put a sticky note here?
I’ll finish filling this in tomorrow, but please check your code for errors like this next time.
- J
>>7790838
Call it Lego.
Very Godot, I like it.
>>7790910
If you don't call it Theodoros you're doing yourself a disservice.
>>7791257
>It was a bright cold day
While it's the antithesis of a 'dark and story night', it's still a terrible cliche.
I feel like you're overdoing the whole Nihon thing, but I know that's purely a personal thing. I'm sure someone might dig it.
>>7791394
>>7791397
I really wanted to end this differently, but constraints.
>>7791418
>While it's the antithesis of a 'dark and story night', it's still a terrible cliche.
Yeah, I agree. Really though, I just put it in as a tribute to 1984, as it's probably the book that got me into serious reading when I was a teenager, so it's got some sentimental value.
It was inside a forest of snow. It was a quiet place. Nothing could be heard other than the sound of the occasional icy snow crunched under hunting boots. The wind was not blowing either, a great sign since that meant no tracks of potential quarry would be buried from the snow. Every now and then, snow would still fall from the sky that was visible from the small gaps in the branches. In such a place, there would always be a wild Snowshoe hare. Its fur was pure white except for the brown tips of its ears.
The Snowshoe hare advanced a little, leaving shallow footprints on the snow. It only stopped to eat fallen twigs on the forest floor, and buds from nearby flowers shrubs. And then it leaped forward again. The Snowshoe hare would repeated this process for a while, then stopped. The crack of a single, distant rifle bullet flew past the trees. The sound could be heard all over the forest like a buzzard, then in an instant was gone.
The Snowshoe hare trembled for a moment, and soon fell down and stopped moving. The blood from its head slightly stained its white-snowed fur, and the snow underneath it melted a little as steam began to appear. Inside the same forest was a human 450 meters away from the hare location. This person was clad in a hooded cover up jacket and cover up pants that extend all the way to the tip of his boots.
A face warmer extended from the neck up, covering his face and protecting him from the harsh weathers. The hunter pulled the bolt back fast. The smoking casing made no sound when it landed on the snow covered ground.
Arlo Called it Fubu, sez it’s Cardib Indian for the these types of mushrooms that grow in the jungles, said the Shamans would take them before an auspicious night and could call down magic storms of lightning with their minds. Sammy don’t know what its called, sure aint acid though. Sez it feels like getting punched in the Cerebellum. Fubu aint fer everyone.
When The Pope returned, he called it Fu’ ibar, and said it comes from an herb the Berbers picked from the hills. He told of the great discovery of the Fu’ibar, brought to the land of Mohammed. pbuh, by the nomads, and how in the desert The prophet consumed the sacred herb and the true glory of God was revealed. The pope told of the glistening palaces of heaven and of the great 31 pointed encircled wheels laid out on the divine manifold before the Buddha on the great hills of Arrakis, beneath the baobab tree, when he too, tasted the Sacred Herb.The Pope spoke of its chemical structure, woven in intricacies where in the higher planes the sigma and pi bonds traced out sacred geometries, the pentagram, the houses of the Sephiroth, the Tesseract.
Me and Wilson heard about it at the fucking gazeb
>>7791743
>this entire post.
I can't even follow it. Is he talking to others?
Jesus went into the dark tomb of Lazarus and raised him from the dead. The man from Bethany had died in spirit after a crisis of faith and a heavy mind not uncommon even in that time. The same way body can die alive in spirit, it can also lifelessly live in darkness. What a terrible destiny is to know spirit and then lose it. Let the dead bury their dead!, teacher once said observing the dead in spirit who saw with their eyes the world of rock and ground, but perceived not that animated by the living god. Do not mourn for the dead, they all live in spirit – do not worship their dead bodies with the pompous rituals, that is worship of the matter and who sees god in the material world, can never walk with the spirit. Jesus said he will visit Lazarus who has fallen aslseep to wake him up and when he did, Lazarus felt alive once again. Jesus had the power beyond our current understanding because he was the one with the spirit of life and we are not. Yet! For all of the mankind, there should be no doubt that what animated Jesus still lives. Not in the memory, not in the faith or through his teachings. It lives as you and I live now, as you and I breathe and as our hearts beat, its beats also. This story will attempt to explore the presence of the living god in the modern world.
>>7783020
i agree on most underrated but everything else is contrarianism
>>7783011
It was early morning when the fleet arrived. Carried by ripped sails clutching a gentle breeze, the ships limped rather then glided into the shallow waters of the bay, hidden within a blanket of fog. The people of the town were only beginning to stir when the same breeze that carried the ships to the harbour brought the smell of death to their town.
The opening lines to a short story I've just started about a town arguing among itself about what to do a fleet of plague ships that dock in their harbour.
>>7783811
But how does she listen to music when she jogs along the tracks if her running tights don't have pockets, anon?
>>7790662
I dig this. I'm not sure about it being written in dialect but I can see it maybe working. Some of it might be a little cliche: whistlin' dixie, somethin' fierce. Of course if this is the voice of your narrator I can see a reason for that but it is a little off-putting. Also the apostrophes are kinda distracting. Definitely digging the setting and imagery though.
Name First M.I. Last D.O.B. Address City ZIP Email &c. &c.
Travis P. Arlus Ernmeyer. He usually put P. for the M.I. but it did not serve as an initial or did it? P. being his actual second name: the letter itself, the grapheme, with the punctuation mark, “P.” He knew of a fella, whom he had interacted with on a field trip as a young boy, with the middle name “Cue,” which sounds like a M.I., but of course is not an initialism at all, being only homophonic with the letter Q and not homomorphic. P is homophonic with “pee,” and for this reason Ernmeyer was generally unwilling to reveal his second name, opting instead for the marginally preferable “Arlus,” a name conferred on behalf of his maternal grandfather, who was not named Arlus, but Carl, who wished he had been named Arlus, and in a characteristic temper of egoism, had forced the name onto his then-as-yet-unborn grandson.
Now that he thought about it, putting down P. might arouse suspicion if any of the vast numbers to whom he had given as his middle name the mildly deep-fried antebellum syllabification of “Arlus” happened to come across one of these official type documents and find a big old hunchback “P.” staring them in the face.
A is a much more refined letter. The elegant sloping sides propped up against each other, classically architectural, supporting a regal pediment, the tympanum of which is reminiscent of course of trigonometry, Euclidean geometry, and higher and more ancient thought in general. P, in contrast, conjures up images firstly of micturition, secondly of lechery. This second is reinforced in the visual quality of it, humped, rheumatic, old and rePulsive. Not the upstanding ancient awe of A, but the putrid senescence of palsied, leering p.
Will post more upon request.
dumping some stuff in italian:
La Tebaide
Non ci sono regole,
conta la passione, che cosa ci metti
cani, persone, il mondo ne è matto
un forte su una collina
un santo con incorniciata
la testolina.
Chi combatte i leoni
troverà molto facile
vivere come padroni
tra i gatti delle magioni.
jam of a lifetime
A friend and I wrote this
http://alliemoop.tumblr.com/post/140760789183/herding-sheep-a-short-story
I'd like to hear what you guys think, we're kind of new at this and we really only spent an hour on it. Mainly just looking to practice and get some criticism on the way
>inb4 tumblr fag
I just use it as a medium to post my writing. I don't even follow anyone.
The iridescent sky gave way to a funnel cloud as my mother rushed me downstairs where I was to contemplate suicide for the first time. As the sirens tore, we rushed from the beige carpet of the family room, away from the bleats and blabs of the Zenith, down the powder blue stairs, and into the gray and barren concrete womb.
My eyes became plasticine pools. I mumbled something about the cat in an effort to distract my mother.
“Tommy, are you all right?”
“F-f-ffine.”
“Don't worry it will be okay.”
I hadn't heard of the term platitude, but something in me– GAD, mortality, primal urges– knew this was inane, but my mother persisted. She began to tap into the family history.
“You know, my dad used to collect the sorta things your Aunt Merle sends you.” She had begun to walk over to the plastic crates nestled against the crawlspace ledge.
“Come over here, look at this,” she opened the nearest, and removed a an old club. It was serrated on one side, and a faded feather hung from a hole at the top. The bottom thinned into a small grooved handle, meant for a child. At this my pools broke into rivers.
My mother embraced me. In between her warm, yet alarming arms– our family was more Married With Children than Cosby– I kept my eyes on the serrated edge, and thought of my twelve year old head leaking crimson history upon the floor. This was when my eyes were opened to indifference of nature, the cruel joke of geography.
>>7791877
>Christian
ayy lmao
>>7793028
lose the fedora
>>7793028
Lose the dramatics. And quite possibly the purple prose. And go for a beige prose type of deal.
>>7793253
What are you writing anon?
>>7793267
I honestly don't even know anymore. I would usually try to find boring pictures and give them a story to liven them up a bit, but in doing so it made tell better stories for well done art. I would think of entire scenarios just to get to that point of the picture and make it all come together. I thought it be better to tell it in the form of a narrator or just as a conscience character.
Between hermaneutics and poetics
Lost thoughts
Pinched into emptiness
Far from nothingness
Infinite finiteness
Clenching abstractness
Words forming concreteness
Extracted
Dispersed
Gone
Kind of shittier than I intended because I originally ended up just writing "Between What I See and What I Say" by Octavio Paz, but eh.
>Tfw Prose-Patricians will always be outnumbered on /lit/ by Poetry-Plebs
Mobile Not Mobile
He felt the gravity of worlds resting on flightless wings
She felt his thoughts conflate with hers
Two that never meant to be
And from the outer atmospheres a pilot heaved a sigh upon them
They the passengers of stagnancy
>>7783509
This entire poem has about as much depth as maybe half a line of actually good poetry. Maybe.
>>7793215
tl;dr what exactly makes it purple prose?
Hey, I'm stepping in.
I'll follow up on the thread but towards the end, and then post my shit after I critiqued some.
I'm also not that good of a writer so don't think much of what I say.
>>7793028
As someone who writes fast and picks up the pace, and has the attention span of a mouse, this was way too long in my opinion for someone in a grass field next to a tree and fox. You got a way with words as a bunch of people here can floor me. I feel though that's how a book should be written, so I can definitely see myself stretching out like you do. After all, I just started writing. I did pick up some new words reading, so that's good.
>>7791576
What's up with all the forest noise though?
I'm starting to feel bad about whatever I'm going to share with you guys though. I can really admire the detail you put in. That goes for everyone.
I'm bad at critiquing. Know that for someone who doesn't like to read, and trying to write (I draw generally) and doesn't have a library of words at his disposal. I do read your stuff (Mainly whatever is at the end when I visit the critique thread)
It's been a week, and I plan on being more active. Through you, I can up my game.
>>7790987
seems kind of flat t.b.h.
that same eerie atmosphere of solipsism that infests all plays I ever see
>>7791257
This is cool, I can almost feel the shine of the universal genius beginning to glow from it...
but don't overextend yourself.
>>7791257
Don't use words like shimmering. Actually instead of substituting it with something just as useless, cut it entirely.
Do this throughout.
>>7793672
Here goes a piece of the first chapter I am working on.
Death is death.
It doesn’t matter how you come to pass, it will happen, and you will not be able to avoid when it happens.
There might be on slight problem, and that’s the fact that once you stop pumping blood through your veins, your mind dulls, and all of your organs fail you. One will ultimately remain active. Your mind, wait, I meant to say your brain actually. Your mind isn’t exactly an organ, I think we can agree on that, but your brain is. Wait, hold on a second, really sorry for the inconvenience, I meant mind and brain. Isn’t that the same thing in the end? Wrong, brotendo. It’s not. Your brain is what holds you mind. Is it hard to read this right now, ‘cause it’s almost as hard for me. Thing is, it’s less difficult for me to process this because it’s stemming from my mind. The ideas are already formulated and long ready to ship out before it even comes out of my mouth, or written down on paper. What was it again? 4 styles of communication? Written, spoken, and two others. Reading.
Oh, and listening. I really need to stress how sorry I am right now. I’m never so apologetic, because I feel it makes me less of a man. I can’t help it at this exact moment because in reality, I’m a mess. That may be true partially to the fact I just got half my skull blown open by a Mossberg 500 pump action shotgun during a really sweet stakeout. You wouldn’t believe the action going on, it’s just like in the movies. I can’t think straight with half my hemisphere hanging out the perfect V-shaped fissure the bullets so neatly crafted into my skull though. Picture a bunch of dudes waltzing in so elegantly in slow motion into a bank, since I work in one, and you’re scared shitless but it looks pretty cool when everything goes slow since your heart is pounding and you know this could be the end for you, which in this case I was the first to go.
Who am I kidding anyways, I’m a liar, always have been, and I am quite ashamed with what I have become during my short lifespan of 28 years on this Gord forsaken blue marble. God and Lord put together for the reason that I was quite religious before these turn of events.
Bluntly, I didn’t meet his ass.
//I got about 8 pages almost done.
>>7793499
not that anon but
>wont perhaps unbeknownst degenerate dying abyss visage calamity indentation
&c
>>7787306
Great first line and some nice imagery. Solid, but not good enough to warrant anything but ignorance.
Every day we are sitting embryos
Curled in the same patterns
Growing and laughing
Lamenting
Two things I wanted
Love and respect
But who respects the embryo?
Who loves the miser?
Three ways loved
The embryo has grown
Respect is no object
I lament no more
>>7787306
>The kids ambled in lines, backpacks slung over shoulders. Cops lugged barricades on to roads with glazed over eyes brought on by rigorous drills. Bull horns bleated evacuation routes like airport bulletins. A girl giggled, and a boy read a book by a New York prophet.
Jesus christ. Would you really want to read this?
I agree the first line was nice.
poetry don’t work on me
it hath no temblor in my heart
and indeed, so often does it herz
and grind on me that, for my part
I think my life not none the worse
nor would my record blotted calumny
were it cut out; yea, cut apart
from all my life—
go it may be
thin boots such as those
enclose, as a rule,
delicate feminine feet
too sweet
to tread
the cool concrete
>>7793759
What bothers you anon?
>>7793704
I don't understand how those words are bad. When Zizek says something is stupid and pointless, would he not considers people that embody such hatred with degenerates?
I see threads multiple times a week where people quote staring into the abyss and when I reference it everyone says it's bad? The fuck is this?
Are you people just sad contrarians that only value the old or are honestly indecisive?
>>7793763
Too sweet to tread should be one line.
Poem I wrote a few seconds ago to be part of the thread.
Kinda sounds like a pretentious bit about not having a dad but I really just pulled an early memory out of my ass.
I was two,
standing next to my mother
on the front porch.
We were waiting
for my father
to get home.
Nothing deep about this poem,
just a memory
I wanted to share.
I tried to write how I feel righr now, but I couldn't put it into words. Consider me a more dramatic Ivan Karamazov: I love this world, but I can't accept some parts of it
What I feel is something between dispair, sadness and passion. I love this world, this life, an existance that can only be described as this: absurd.
I sadden myself with delusions, and the loss of beauty in this fantasy.
I dispair me with wanderings where i'm wrong about everything I ever thought to understand. About how this world is controlled by a third being, who controls the flow of the river.
The love I feel is a confused love, because I feel as if I'm eluding myself, as the widow who continues mourning years after the death of the loved one. And the despairing day where this illusion is broken and the ugly, dark truth is shown, I don't live to see another dawn.
Oft in marrow, oft in bone
Kith's remembrance, copper-tone
Lith of flesh, lith of bone
Soft, spoiling, oft alone
