Poetry, "Drought"

i am a husk in the black wood

given to moaning and gnashing
of teeth

summer brings no warmth
and sunlight
no comfort

i feel thin
and the leaves twist
around me,
beckoning nymph-like creatures.

i am a satyr
dying of thirst,
a beast of perversions
and terrible nightmares-
my eyes are dead eyes

and dry-
repentance, it seems,
is distant...

for a being
needs water

in order to cry

Fiction, "Assorted Six-Worders"

I've been writing a lot of six word stories lately, as they are a great way to kill time when my astronomy professor is rambling incoherently and pointing at things with a stick. Here's a few.

His thunder stolen, Thor now impotent.

"Death... will you love me?"
"Forever."

Through tears, she burns his photograph.

Martha Stewart's secret gingersnap ingredient: arsenic.

A Calvinist chooses to wrestle God.

Apparently, Al Gore invented the internet.

"Help me!" A narcissist defines altruism.

"Repeat, Houston... not our shuttle... wait-"

Brahma: "Om." Vishnu smiles. Shiva wakes.

Three days later, an empty tomb.

Einstein to Newton: "It's all relative."

She smiles, eyes softening. "Call me?"

Lot to daughters: "It's all relative."

Ninja: "I will avenge my father!"

Fiction, "Faults and Cracks"

His reflection winks, unbidden, and he cries out in terror.

The mirror cracks itself to bits then... for one brief apocalyptic moment, he can see the fissures open up behind him. Tears in the Real, wreathed in flame. Faults and cracks along the wrathful face of God. Or.

He feels the hands behind him, reaching. And he runs.

Poetry, "Unviolet"

she opens her eyes and discovers a room

plain cold jellyfish entrails
plasma phantasms which whisper
white whisperings

she stiffens her skin
at the touch of phantom limbs

doors open from every corner of her mind-
the room an infinite polygon

stretches one side and another
and over and over
walls folded in on themselves

doors open from every corner
and welcome the beastials

she opens her eyes when they touch her
and everything is violet,
they beckon her to follow them
into the many formless rooms
from which they spawn their spawnings

colors close their wombs around her
and in her sirensong the fading fades
across the pallor of her lips her skin
her eyes her hands

there is nothing but the ghostly thing
and gasping exhale violet mist:
she laughs her laugh in the between-place

she opens her eyes and discovers a room
an infinite room
with the infinite beasts

and the outer world fades...
becoming a rumorghoul.
becoming an unviolet.

Thoughts, "On Writing Poems"

I find that my best poems are usually written in under 15 minutes. The longer it takes, the worse they get. Unless I just labor over them intensely for a few days and revise the crap out of them, in which case they get a little better but still not up to the level of those 15-minute bastards.

Actually, the best poems are the 15 minute bastards which then get labored on intensely. Yeah.

I guess poetry can't be made. It has to be brain-shat and then carefully sculpted.

Poetry, "Are Clouds Are Clouds"

taste the cruel things-
fly like clouds

unfettered beadlets
on forearm-skin-

she gasps out a gasp
in chaste-kiss exhales-

dream up the dreamers-
she writhes alone

on the surface
of cruel thing whispers-

we are clouds-
are clouds
are clouds

Thoughts, "How do you spell Squee-Jee? Squiejie? Sckwouis-Gee?"

I wrote a poem in Hebrew today. It wasn't a good poem... some lines of it in English:

"in the big morning
the sun wants much
he wants to eat the hours
wants to drink the todays"

"our heads do not live here...
we place them
in the big morning
to eat...
to eat...
to eat..."

It's all misspelled and gramatically incorrect, too. But I'm still kind of proud of myself for doing it.

Worked on the outlines for The Foolishness of Preaching and The Bible and Liberty today. Unfortunately, the one I have to turn in (and produce a rough draft of by Monday) is the least coherent. At least I have a few sources. Doesn't change the fact that Sunday is going to be mucho the painful.

Also, had an epiphany that my crazy thing which does not yet have a title would work really well as a graphic novel. Need to make friends with artistically inclined comic people. Meph.

Thoughts, "Stuff I Wish I Was Writing"

I don't have time to write stuff. If I did, this is the stuff I would be writing:

-The Foolishness of Preaching: Entertainment and Child Evangelism: Okay, so this one I actually will start writing this week. It will be my term paper for my Evanglicalism in America class, prolly being beefed up to my senior undergraduate thesis.

-Let Loose The Beastials: My crazy idea for a novel featuring world-walking gunfighters, pan-dimensional political intrigue, and Satan.

-The Bible and Liberty: An Alternative Vision For Evangelical Politics: James Dobson and Pat Robertson think Evangelicals should be Republicans. Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis think they should be Democrats. I think they should be Libertarians. This article would illustrate why... using biblical Principles.

-Delirium: Half novel, half short story collection, half metaphysical surrealistic dreamscape. Yes, that's three halves. All dealing with the world of Delirium, the natures of sanity and creation, the construction of order from chaos. That basic shtick.

-Experimental Thing Which As Of Yet I Do Not Have A Title For: In which I plan to interview various interesting persons, (including but not limited to preachers, atheist scientists, musicians, scholars, mental patients, avid marxists, ex-cons, Buddhists, libertarian economists and maybe even an english major or two,) on various metaphysical topics. These may include dreams, the existence of God/Gods, the nature of man, etc. These interview transcriptions will then be lifted and used as dialogue in trippy/thought-provoking/ironic scenes narrated by yours truly. So yeah.

-A House Divided: The Failure of the Protestant Reformation: It's a provocative title... but basically I'd like to go through the intentions of Luther and Calvin and the rest, stack them up against the actual consequences of the Reformation, and then analyze this disparity using the Pauline letters as a model for Church life.

-A Systematic Theology in Verse: A collection of poetry on various theological topics. (The Nature of God, Nature of Man, Sin, Salvation, etc.) These poems would be organized into the standard model of a Systematic Theology. Perhaps titled as Hebrew letters, if I feel like being karaaazy.

Guess that's it. We'll see how much time I have to be productive/how much inspiration the big man gives me. More at 11.

Poetry, "Potential"

with the best of intentions,
a group of senior citizens form a book club
reading "An Inconvenient Truth,"
in order to stay informed on issues
that they have no wish to control

meanwhile, at the university scene,
the undereducated youths
protest a war they do not understand
in some broken search for meaning

a girl is praying in the back
of a trendy coffeehouse,
there she finds the voice of God
in an overpriced latte

and an overweight man at
the table across from her
pours over charts and graphs
in hopes that some obscure economic theory
will someday provide him
with financial stability

the streets tremble with exertion:
a stopped-up garden hose
and pressures of nightmare,
of unfulfilled dream-cavern achings
and things-yet-to-be

for this town is a storehouse of treasures
stuffed in a mattress,
holding it's breath
in the stale and the dust
waiting for something to happen

Thoughts, "A Dream"

Something of a dry spell. Busy with schooling. Haven't found time for updation. Until... now. *dum dum dummmmmm*

Had a particularly vivid dream the other night which may have potential for fictional expounding. Ish.

A Dream

I'm walking in scraggly beginning-of-winter/end-of-winter woodland. When I reach a particular patch of wood, I'm assaulted by some crazy amorphous demon-thing. (Think Gigeresque alien meets that drippy black Venom ooze thing from Spiderman.) It screeches at me at chases me until I back off from it's territory, then leaves me be. I repeat this experiment several times before standing my ground against it. It does not harm me. In fact, it seems to be urging me further into the woods. (What's that, Lassie? You want us to follow you?) So I follow it.

It leads me to a clearing. Before me is a black iron fence, just under chest-height. It extends maybe 100 yards in either direction, disappearing into the forest. At the center, where I stand, is a gate. It is black iron like the fence, but of the same oozing Gigerish design as the demon. And beyond it lies a graveyard.

The gravestones are old beyond reckoning, even the ones close to the fence seem to lack identifying markers. A faint mist swirls through the graveyard, not obscuring the stones from view but just thick enough to be visible. The lines of tombstones seem to extend forever, far beyond the horizon. It is not a fearful place, but one of great certainty. I know the demon wants me to enter, yet he seems fearful.

I reach for the iron door, the demon screeches in warning. I ignore it and open the gate. I take a few steps forward and the demon follows me, wailing like a banshee. Then I hear a muffled rush of air. *Phum* A spot appears on the horizon, rushing toward me with great speed. It arrives as an owl... plain and brown, if a bit on the large side. I cringe, but it passes me, gripping my unfortunate demon guide by the shoulders and taking off with it, back where it had come from. The demon wails and dissolves into the air, the further it is flown into the graveyard. And I am alone.

I take another step. *Phum Phum* Two dots, two owls, flying at me. Yet they cannot grab hold of me... apparently as a mortal man I'm not their natural prey. They circle overhead, and a laugh. Arrogant as always, I advance another 10 to 15 steps. Then I feel the sky shudder. *VHOUM* And there is a black line, thick with countless owls. My bravado gives out, I make my retreat, slamming the gate shut behind me. But curiosity gets the better of me as I glance over my shoulder and note that the swarm of owls has settled, perching on the fence. And they're watching me. Waiting.

I retreat into the wood this time, but I understand... with a sort of perverse dream-logic... that I will be back. That it is my destiny to enter. That the end of my journey lies in the center of that endless graveyard, where something unknown pulses at me from beyond the horizon.