/lit/ - Literature

>Most of
unoriginal but effective use of _in medias res_

>landed
leaden word choice, the action of the word doesn't well connect with the landing spot

>With no more than
either the consideration is crucial to note or it is not, pick one

>essence
really? cliched especially in light of the final word of the paragraph

>a fact in which he took something resembling pride
ugly phrasing, bureaucratic

>Crashing
melodramatic, ill-fitting, especially in light of the rest of the paragraph

>few
nope

>waddled, tucked
good detail

>foreskin-lacking
oddly polemic

>urinary tract, evacuated, residual
distractingly scientific, would hold more significance in the 1st or 2nd person

>ordeal
unsupported

>walked
jars against waddled, went would be sufficient otherwise the change in attitude should be better described

>warm rays
picturesque

>vapid life
clunking bathos

>>5036812
Very helpful, thanks.

>>5036812

>>5036681

There's another one over 50 posts away from bump limit. Jesus fuck.

>>5037899
I looked but didn't see it, sorry

>>5038964
it's okay, little buddy. it's okay.

As I awoke I could see that I was still in Kansas. The cornfield that I had taken refuge in during the storm in had a faint mist around itself. This was the kind of
mist that you'd wake up and see that all the trees in your yard were just silhouettes. The corn in the field was standing erect showing that they were ready for h
arvest season. I was starving so, with little regard to who's cornfield this was, I began eating the corn. The corn would usually be dry, but as I had been laying in
this field for the past night and before such I had not had much to eat. You see I was raised in a terrible orphanage. My dad died of testicular cancer when I was 5
and my mom died because of yellow fever after she went on a missionary trip to Egypt when I was 12. All of the other people on the trip got vaccinated for yellow fever,
but my mom said that the grace of God would protect her while she was on this expedition to show God's love for everyone. It was after this that I realized there was
no benevolent being that watched over all of us. I lost my way and then I found the joy of reading. It began with simpler fiction like Harry Potter and A Series of
Unfortunate Events, but it grew into classics like The Count of Monte Cristo and Pale Fire although my favorite book is actually Don Quixote. While many find it dull,
the humor that Cervantes makes never fails to amuse me. As I ate my corn I looked up to find a silhoutte far in the distance standing above all of the cornstalks.
I started panicking so I ducked down beneath the cornstalks and started to try and slink away, but everytime I moved it made a path. There was no time to worry about
this so I kept slowly moving. I soon found that I had developed a great thirst that needed to be quenched as soon as possible. I slithered for what seemed like hours
hoping to blindly stumble upon a puddle or something of the sort. My hope was not in vain though as I found a small puddle. I started drinking from it and then I dared
to stand up and see if the stranger was still near me. I could see a shadow moving ever closer to me and I went into hysterics. I then shat myself and started drinking
at an alarming rate to quench my thirst. The more I drank though, the more I shat, and the more I shat, the more parched my throat grew. Soon I was a shit covered mess
and then the man came close enough for me to make out his face. As soon as I realized who it was, John Greene said to me "You have cancer."

>>5038974
I started to scream and vomit
and then I woke to find myself in a bed in cold sweats. It turned out to all be a dream. I looked to the other side of my bed and saw my sister, who I had nicknamed
sweetie, with dry tears going down her face because of my aggresive lust the previous night. I then turned to my nightstand to look at the picture of Stirner I always
kept on it. He was who I truly molded my life around. I then got ready for my job by putting on my triple X work uniform and set out to McDonalds where I had to flip
burgers. After a few hours of that I took a lunch break and noticed one of my female co-workers reading. I inquired about what it was and she revealed it to be Stephen
King's novel, The Shining. I then divulged into laughter and told her that she should start with the Greeks and read REAL literature. She then got up and left leaving
me alone to wonder why everyone on this planet is so pleb and why I am the only true patrician.

>>5038977
>>5038974
>>5036681
horrible
please stop

>>5039410
no

I'm in contact with people constantly, consistently.
Their worries overpower me, religiously.
Each day they fawn on matters far from heart, maliciously.
So caught in jungle, drugged-up, fucked, society.
My head hangs heavy, wrongful smolder, viciously.
Why they don't endanger others' being, indecently.
Will counfound my being, soul and self increasingly.
To teach them honest, subsistence, rightfully,
Would bring upon me wrath and anger, vigorously.
I'll cling to walls and outskirts
constuct a safety around me, readily.
Like bumble bee wrings spider's strings, rigorously.
Come to me, love me, wonderfully.
Saved from world englufing, endlessly.
We'll build a fortress with peace and splendour, tragically.
And view the world as it crumbles around us, unfortunately.
Our sorrow lies with those we loved, we cannot see.
This reckless stunt that scorches good hearts, rapidly.
It repays me threefold in resounding madness, horrifically.
Nothing warm like lava lovingly,
all is cold like mount top chillingly.

This is everything I've ever felt.

>>5039528
irritatingly repetitively pointlessly objectively abjectivly abject.

>>5039549
Probably because i am an irritating, pointless, abjective peasant. Thankyou though.

I wrote this when I was drunk last night. (It's for a novel I'm working on)

Rima kissed the King. Her soft lips parting and sucking in between his. She wondered how a King so masculine and strong could suddenly become the sweet and vulnerable Queen Lindy. She's not exactly certain whom she prefers, but her hearts grows fonder with the Queen. Though I suppose it is lucky that King Lindon is only a crossdresser; because she did prefer dick. King Lindon pulls Rima into the pro-self division.
"I sure do dislike being in a division that restricts so much freedom of expression and love."
Rima kisses the blushing Queen and rubs her soft, fat arm.
" I wish I could stay in this place with you. It feels like home. It feels what life should be like... like kisses should be nice, not dangerous."

>>5039577
Did you forget to edit it once sober?

>>5039599
Ha, yeah, I haven't gotten to that part yet. I was curious of the responses my drunk writing would get.

>>5039560
just remove the last word of each line and it will be 8 times better

>>5039628
I should use this advice for everything I've written.

>>5039635
>I should use this advice for everything I've

You see how much expectation is hung upon the final. People mostly write sentences like. A dull start leading up to a significant. Sentences should have the power more evenly. I always had this problem when I was a. I ran out of space at the end of the. Had to cram in my final. Always thought paper was too. I am better.

>>5039685

Holy dicks you're more of a genius than I thought.

I learned something today /lit/.

>>5039695
Doesn't look like you.

>>5039716
But it is.
I'm working things out.

>>5036852

/r/ video

>>5039716

and now i feel.

>>5039528
>All those adverbs

Why?

>>5039730
It's the only thing I've ever written. It seemed like a formula I could follow.

>>5039730

What painting is this? I like it.

>>5036681
Hairy bush vagina.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r3nOTSUgB0

If sincerity is lowercase letters

If sincerity is lowercase letters what if I type from an iPhone
And every line gets capitalized on its own
And affectation would be to preemptively tap the shift arrow
And revert to lowercase

If sincerity is shedding meta-irony and
No footnotes and no parentheses and yes self-deprecation
What if I'm naturally meta-ironic does that mean
I'm by nature insincere or is sincerity by my nature meta-ironic

If metamodernism is why not both and
I'm neither am I ahead or behind
Or is art not a straight line fuckface
(Are profanity buzzwords tryhard Bukowski
Or is it just what I thought of first
(Is there shame in admitting I've never read him
(Is there sincerity in not using question marks
(Is there irony in using parentheses in poems))))

Last year I could put on an undershirt
And have ab outlines through the shirt this year
My undershirts have tomato sauce stains from the pizza I eat in bed
Each day the amount I have to flex
For a truly visible six pack increases when
Just a month ago I didn't have to at all
This is what decay feels like

meaning things is a conscious effort
because earnestness and honesty
arent the same thing

>>5039736
It was a bad idea. But don't be too disheartened. Try again.

>>5039786

I learnt a quick lesson. Thankyou

You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
You both like albert camus.
Stranger: hi
You: hey
You: I can tell you're sincere because you don't capitalize proper nouns
Stranger: although i cannot tell if that is sarcasm, i agree
Stranger: most anyone who does is seemingly an asshole here
Stranger: from what I've gathered
You: I can tell you're not a solipsist because you don't capitalize "I"
You: unless you put it in a contraction
Stranger: aren't you observant
You: you contract aren't and you're and I've but not cannot
You: I don't know what that means
Stranger: it means nothing
You: go to bed Nietzsche
Stranger: hahaha god
You: you typed, then deleted, then typed again only to laugh
You: did you misspell hahaha?
You: can one misspell a laugh?
Stranger: hrhrhr
Stranger: huhuhu
Stranger: jhjhjh
Stranger: ahahah
You: that last one isn't bad
You: it's the way real people laugh sometimes
Stranger: You've got me frazzled in one minute
You: NOW YOU CAPITALIZE
You: does this signify a "But seriously, folks" turning point for you?
Stranger: ahhhh what the fuck
Stranger: simultaneously laughing and shaking my fists
You: you don't self-consciously automatically do this to yourself?
Stranger: ojfhdklgjh
Stranger: why would I pay that much attention to myself
You: it's not self-centered if you do it to everyone else too
Stranger: yes it is, that's just excusing it
You: sincerity's in the intention
Stranger: Of course it's not
Stranger: oh god now I'm watching the way I type
Stranger: how in the hell is this at all sincere
You: not the regular definition
You: which is, in an aphorism I just invented for you, "the intersection of honesty and earnestness"
You: not that
You: sincerity as in the stripping away of affectation
Stranger: I don't know, it all just sounds smug to me
You: which is impossible unless you're a mute because the imprecision of language means communication is inherently affected
Stranger: Alright, sure, but is anything actually being proven
You: you can't empirically "prove" anything of this nature unless you completely deterministically map out neurochemistry
Stranger: You seem intelligent so you probably have an understanding of what most of the people who visit this site are like
You: I do
Stranger: Most of them probably lack the coherence to understand half of what you're saying
Stranger: So, why say it?
You: statistically, probs
Stranger: Utter destruction of modesty right there
Stranger: No one needs to know what you know of
You: but you listed Camus as an interest
You: so you're no doubt familiar with the problem of sincerity (as raised in The Fall)
Stranger: Yes?
You: I picked the subject because it was relevant to our interests
Stranger: Aaaaaaaah fuck, that was good I didn't acknowledge that
Stranger: Yeah, I realize that, I don't think you're lying
You: I mean the whole sincerity of internet syntax is sort of cribbed from the blind man scene in The Fall
Stranger: You're a really creepy dude.
Stranger has disconnected.

>>5039837
E-e-e-epic[1]

[1]signifies echoing

>>5039837

lawl

captcha: thoughts themstd

>>5039783
>>5039837
i enjoyed both

I open my eyes and look about. A familiar landscape surrounds me. I am standing rigid on a suburban street, yearning towards the East, which is the direction I am facing. I glance down, absorb the image of my body, and acknowledge it as familiar. I look before me and I see that a building looms, radiating menace and portentousness, and I feel anxiety surge up within me. My skin registers pressure as a female resolves into place at my left, clutching firmly with two hands my forearm. She looks up to me, unabashedly locking eyes with me, and I lose track of myself, consumed momentarily by the intensity of her presence. Contact is broken, by her will (not mine), and I am released and returned unto myself. I watch as she turns her gaze towards the building that looms before us. This building is moderately tall, a structure of several stories, one with which it seems I am all too familiar, but of which I possess no memory. A hulking brass-bound door gleams as it stands shut in the entrance, the image of breaking dawn graven in mock majesty upon its facade. This mysterious female of mine grasps my hand with a familiarity that feels right and true, and she tugs at me to go forward, which I consent to do, following her up the way, accepting for the moment the submissive role, and we come to a direct stop before the brass-bound door. Chilled, I feel that things are wrong. Something, a wave of unreality perhaps, rolls through my field of perception. Waiting, I look closely at the door which is before me. I see that it wanes and waxes, and I wonder where I am. I feel hot, humid breath upon my ear: a whisper urges me onward. A knob is positioned directly in the center of the brass-bound door. I reach out and stroke it tentatively with fleshy finger tips.

>>5039837
This is brilliant.

>>5039783
u added 2 more lines since i last saw this

i like it

>>5039959
>about
"about" isn't something you can look at. Be more clear.
>which is the direction I am facing.
It's already assumed you're facing that direction if you're yearning towards it and don't specify which direction you're facing.
>and I lose track of myself
This doesn't give a clear image to what exactly you're losing track of.
>that looms before us.
You already used that adjective, it'd sound better with a different one.
>The building is moderately tall,
You've already told this information,
>I am all to familiar
The character being familiar with everything is getting dull.
>direct stop before the brass-bound door
direct and brass-bound are not needed here.
>I feel that things are wrong.
Be clearer as to what things.
>Something, a wave of unreality perhaps,
This sounds weird.
>The door which is before me.
"the door."

I like the idea behind the story but it's not clear enough. It comes off as pretentious with all of the big, unneeded words. Try writing more clearly using more simple language to give the reader a better image of what's happening.

He takes Little Lucy by the hips and slides her out of him, amazed at how easily he’s able to manhandle this midget. She is struggling, attempts to reach for the horsehair whip to beat this plebeian back into submission but he knocks it away where it clatters against the Arcadian window. Jack lifts the writhing dominatrix over his head, considers bringing her down on his knee like in those wrestling programs, but settles with a restrained lob against the headboard where she lands on the pillows with a pomf! It takes him a sec to find the latch for his ballgag with these clumsy leather hands but off it comes. That old repertoire of insults is coming out machinegun style now, an R. Lee Ermey barrage that is targeting every part of his anatomy, oh now the ones about his poor sweet mother, and then appeals for him to remember his place as slave to her mistress, that he is disrupting the sacred arrangement of exploitation, nuanced propaganda meant to convince him that he is blood cattle to her vampiress, cute little ewe to her Big Bad Wolf, prepared to keep talking forever. “Fuck you, ya whore!” is the eloquence that cuts her off.

>>5040467
lel

Just a very short excerpts from a (much) larger piece. Mainly looking for a critique on style of writing, rather than plot.
---
A man stood up from his chair and after a moment's hesitation walked up to the desk and began reading allowed from his papers. "Mr. Dempsey" he said. The town board head nodded at this. The man began to voice his grievances. I paid no mind. I looked over and expected the newcomer to be shuffling through his papers, like the rest of the townspeople in the hall. But his papers now sat in a folder resting on his lap, and he had his head faced directly towards the man talking, his gaze intent and not showing a sign of distraction. "And as you know, the rain- when it comes down heavy- floods the whole damned street. No one can get into any of the buildings."

Flickering street lights radiating plasma, piercing the ionsphere of my head, cooing the cries of infantilized tumors scratching at my brain. Standing dead, loopy cat along forth stepped at five scouting mud, called me out: entrail scarves wrapped tight, yellow-tinted cellophane eyes spoke of liver failure (glaucoma?). Puffing water real quick, I catch a glimpse of Phoebe in my third eye: soundless waves emanating in dust sweat stained wifebeaters, real quick.

Catch. Catch.
Quick.

>>5039528
This follows a Ginsberg-like stream of consciousness but still applies pattern and rhyme. That could seem significant or interesting if it wasn't as clunky and adverb-drowned as it is right now.

Please, also, cut that last line. Why would a poet end his or her work a priori? Of course this is everything you're feeling, it is poetry after all.

>>5040497
>allowed
>aloud*
>The town board head nodded at this.
This is a loaded sentence... maybe try "The head of the town board nodded."
>man talking, his gaze
"man talking. His gaze"

It's not bad... not very interesting, but not bad at least.

>>5039577
Criticism for this please.

>>5040521
Thanks for criticizing it. I agree that it's uninteresting, but it's just a small paragraph from a larger piece (that I didn't want to post just yet).

>>5039577
>>5040532
Replace the period of the first sentence with a comma.

The narrator seems to be a character involved in this scene, however the crudeness of this narrator (parting and sucking, prefer dick, fat arm) and the information the narrator knows (she did prefer dick, only a crossdresser) negate that ability. An omniscient narrator or 1st person narrator might make more sense in this context, maybe in the view of Lindon/Lindy.

>could suddenly become the sweet and vulnerable Queen Lindy.
The syntax of this sentence makes Lindy's change from male to female, instead of rhetorical, seem situational in the past-tense (i.e. Lindy turned into a Queen just now, instead of merely possessing the ability to do so). This confuses the gender identification from the first sentence, which you could resolve, but may not want to if you'd like the confusion to continue until the reveal of the King's crossdressing 2 sentences further.

>pro-self division
This phrase being completely foreign might be the fault of how small this passage is, maybe that name or setting becomes clear later. If not, however, this "pro-self division" is unclear.

>blushing Queen
Unless that change to Queen was indeed situational (i.e. just happened right now) this gender adverb confuses more. Unless that's what you're going for.

>like... like kisses should be nice, not dangerous.
Maybe Rima can't speak beautifully and this is part of her character. If not, though, just know that this portion is weak. I picture a young teenage girl speaking this way, not a lovestruck adult talking to a King/Queen.

Write more. Flesh this out, I like it. It reminds me of Wilde's Salome for some odd unrelated reason.

>>5040540
No problem! Also I figured. Not every single paragraph of a book is interesting.

This is only a section of the entire work. Would appreciate any criticism, thanks very much.

"Come back-ck, you dumb fuckin' black bitsh!"

Ghana sunk to the depths of surprise, pulling away from the Mortonized sway of her evening. The knuckle of her right met the cheek of his left, redding his wrinkles and making a ripple. Morton fell back, puppeteered by beer, his gutted complexion and raggedy limbs turning horizontal. Chaired was his alternate (the dream like man he saw earlier, fixing his tie, thinking of the pink blue evening), floored was his actual (the real, disgusting piggish body under his brain…under his eyes). Ghana had rid the actual of power and cause with the move of her finger collection. Klein, the server, denied intervene - this was here before in other shapes.
Cream-white gulls perched small on the log pier near the door of the Bar Escape. Ghana sped her furrowed brow and swollen knuckle out of Escape and into Arlene-land. Ghana lacked the context, but Morton felt petrified. he couldn't climb back to the fuchsia bed-sheet Ghana now ran into. With Ghana gone and his face putty now shocked into odd shape, Morton introduced soles to floor. He swiped his prints against clothes dust twice.
"Good?" Klein questioned at Morton's side. Country beat in the background, hitting Morton in the back of the head to a rhythm.
"I'm fine…Arlene" Morton gurgled in a low, growling tone before, once again, chest-bumping the dusty wooden planks of the floor. He spewed Screwdriver and White Russian through knotted liver and stomach.

>>5040585
Thank you for the critique!
What I wrote would make more sense with knowing the background of the story.
Basically, there's two divisions.. the anti-self and pro-self (I may change these names) The King is transgender and must hide it in the anti-self division, so when she pulls Rima into the pro-self, the King is able to stop pretending to be something she's not. Also that is how Rima speaks, but I didn't think of it as weak (but also not profound)... I will work on it, thanks.

>>5040615
If you like those names for both divisions you should keep them. If something suits those divisions better then by all means, but those aren't bad names, especially if you're focusing on an environment penchant on identity/self.
I thought her dialogue was weak if it didn't suit her. If that syntax suits who she is, that's fine.

No problem, it was fun.

I'm going to re-write this when I've understood how I take a shit more clearly so I can describe it with more clear cut and detailed language.

Blood mixed with shit.
I look down at the toilet paper, it's been like this for a while now.
With the blood I mean, I'm not really sure why -- I suspect a lack of fiber in my diet.
I let go of the toilet paper, it falls down and hits the water, I move my dick to the side and watch the paper slowly soak in water.
People don't talk enough about what they do when they take a shit, if there's anything that goes on my "must have"-list for my future wife it's that she must feel
comfortable with taking a shit next to me.
I don't mean this in a perverted way or anything, I just find it intimate.
We could each have a feces diary where we write down what each other's poop looked like for the day.
At the end of the week we'd both read each other's out loud and make out, it'd be perfect.
Oh fuck it. I wipe myself once again.
I can feel the coarseness of the paper against my anus, making me suspect that my arsehole is now clean.
After checking for any left over shit I confirm my suspicions and follow up with completing the typical toilet routine:
I drop the paper into the toilet bowl, stand up, flip the toilet lid and flush and finish off with pulling my underwear and pants up.

>>5036681
Lines litter the street

In worn pocket hand warms

hand (I gaze at her)

Breath's white, Light's gone

the street, I'll litter.

>>5040792
I was eating when I read this..

>>5040824
Thanks dude, made me laugh pretty hard.

>>5036681
It's in German and only one sentence: "Sie masturbierte lustlos, richtete sich auf und zündete sich eine Zigarette an."

>>5039783
really impressive anon

>>5039837
this one felt tryhard for me towards the end sorry m8

>>5040824
Oh also, it's obviously nothing substantial at all as a text, but is it really sucky or just kinda sucky?

>>5040862
I only skimmed it assuming it was a joke then was like "Gross.. I was enjoying this bagel." But I read it, and I actually like it. The writing isn't horrible, I like (and agree) with the idea about it.
Just one thing:
>making me suspect that my arsehole is now clean.
It's an unnecessary part of the sentence because obviously you're now clean and also, maybe it's just me.. but when I read the first bit I was on the same page with you but once you said arsehole I felt kind of cheated because then it just seemed like a big joke.
But I liked it... Maybe a little too much description butt if that's what you want, go for it. ;)

>>5040893
Dude, you don't check your toilet paper before hand to make sure that it's clean? Gotta make sure man! Also yeah, arsehole was mostly a joke

My soul breathes out
where the skater boys ride
down the dusty grey streets
by the tattoo parlor.

Angry muscles tearing at the breeze,
or sitting solid as a storm cloud
on the horizon,
beneath the locust trees,
sweating in the afternoon shadows.
drinking apple juice form a red cup.

I am that dark shape
beside the swingsets.
hands in pockets,
watching the bottle pass,
from lip to lip,
from hand to brown hand.
I am the silent witness,
pretending to read,
brushing the hair from his eyes,
blown by the same breeze,
that dries your wide backs,
that cools your smooth faces,
that carries your scent,
soap and sunscreen,
prespiration, to where I am,
pretending to read,
watching.
saving this moment
of your lives.

>>5041296
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

>>5041296
3.2/10

>>5041296
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

>>5041296

GAAAAAYYYYY

But could be worse

It's so hard for me to distinguish
between the thought of burnt-out tires
and the smell of the rubber-
soup-kitchened in cratered wells-the spinning rims
wrestling in some angular momentum
or what someone might call revolution.

But I parse the parsley in my salad from the leaves left
because neither guy, nor friend, nor buddy
prepped me a presentable palate to sleep on
(or in if bagged like a cat-napper)
and relish the cosmological constant of uncertainty,
principled by flashing miners in a topless pit
with guano-gushing cave dweller decorations
domiciled in the company of others.

So I catch a glimpse of mirrored genteelness,
that I mistook for the wan smile of terminal illness;
an end as live as dead in night or day
depending on the scheduled rate of construction,
or destruction for those in Detroit
(the mythicized mural of yesterday's misery, maybe)
yet, tomorrow, a new day, sits like a child on Santa's lap yesterday
waiting for happiness incarnate, carnal,
but unable to differentiate
between the man in costume
and the net surging with an ocean's worth of balanced fury and refrigeration that we call legend.

So I turn my attention along a fixated globe
and hop-scotch along the lines of a riot
in-between Hellenic contours wet with plasma
swirling with indignation sprouting clamoring clutches
that swings & sways & swindles an and
leaving but only left for the frictional, but factual,
people atop the cracks in crevasses,
littered with toxic trash and a hint of cracks,
waiting to fissure along a fault line wider than human responsibility,
forcing me to swim upstream towards the fount of fortune
that only exists in my myriad day-dreams
alluding to no things at all, yet alluring for all.

I can only see you when I see you seeing me,
because you alone are a silver-less reflection,
ineffective in exuding a beautiful smile co-staring cystic acne
that might remind a rolling stone, yellow, to be faithful till old age,
and even past, to pose in the hearts of our father's children,
not God our father, or his dead son, but a colonized casket with a picture,
leaving a sentient state unknowing,
lapsing between faltering success and triumphant loss,
so that the remembrance of your other's memory
is only the dialogue anent a soliloquy of the spirit and flesh.

Then, a face follows the sounds of some mouthless, immutable echo,
the distant contemplation of something that will've come
before the dusk and dawn, but surrounding the day,
while a nightingale sings Joyful, Joyful in sombre salute
to the precipice of sensationalization, a crippled creature behind the curtain,
thundering a voice that permits us to go home,
just by tapping our shoes together,
like a kiss between two and six in the morning.

>>5039837
This is beyond postmodernism. This is beyond metamodernism. I have no fucking clue.

Gridlocked. A secondary simulation slaps my brain in the ass whenever I wake up. First, dreams. Nothing but dreams about the dreams of the day and the nightmares of the night, about an abandoned crab cage at the bottom of the ocean that last had seen sunshine a century before, about a lost love that I haven't found yet-the holy grail inside Pandora's box in Ft. Knox. After reality insists on accompanying me into my day, I leave it a sticky note saying "be back soon" (like I deceptively left Sandra after I rawdogged her) and jump back into the lazy river called sleep, except actually return soon. My reasoning is: Why leave the theme park when they don't even have Dippin' Dots outside? So I oscillate between a mild hypnagogic state and waking misery until I will myself well enough to carry my corpse to the sink to brush my teeth where I think about a 2002 episode of Survivor where Johnny eats a centipede and pukes and I spit. The routines of the day plague my menial life as I try to fill in the gaps with glue and a little gallant humor. Shifting between my computer and myself brings a little tension relief that tights on accord of two cloaked guys that don't really exist but are blamed regularly (by me). Next thing I know, I'm dressed. I feel like the robot from the Jetsons has just gotten me ready for my day, then I realize, I have nothing to do. So I just get a bowl of cereal and watch Seinfeld till I feel like falling asleep, a bit like yesterday.

Acid falls from the tongues of men in the sky,
as it has since the great crash-even before,
and poise incarnate remains cornered
on an eschatological vertex,
preaching invisibly about how
"the end is nigh."

Ground up cicada shells ignite my vents
into wall-canoes of flooding flames.
The maintenance men floundering,
eyebrows singed off from my pet locusts' doing,
call the firetruck-men with water's grave.
The heat from the A/C: aggressively contentious,
rattles my farm eggs, cracking into grappling shards of puzzling pieces.
Owls fly down the powdery hall in red suits,
dropping children's spark poppers,
to only scare the old ladies next door to death.
My room riles contemptuously, wiggling out of the foundation,
and the walls wither into heaps of soggy sand,
that momentarily look like the walls of a castle,
crumbling towards the shoreless border of my sink's abyss.
Chandelier shreds of light illuminate the shadows up the street somehow,
and com-apartment screams like a strangled Siren.
Please, call me when you're home.
Please, call me when you're here.

She whispered to the corpse in the dark, the flickering firelight unable to pry away the shadows clinging to its face. Whispering, sobbing, quietly chanting that this can't be happening, that this isn't real, that her baby can't be gone, that the fire didn't take him, that she didn't survive and his life wasn't torn away, stripped clean from his bones by the flames.
She knelt by the wall, watching her baby smoulder gently, and she retched on the airborne embers that tasted too much like the smoky remnants of a goodnight kiss, only an hour old.

>>5039783
are you a black guy?

>>5040842
"She masturbated without pleasure, got up and lighted a cigarette"?
What.

>>5043453

Nice. But 'the smoky remnants of a goodnight kiss' is odd. Replace smoky remnants with something that makes sense

>>5039721

I don't know what the video is , but her nae is olivia jensen

Unimaginable space,
4 needles numbered o to k,
Dart by sight at fancies.
Dread cons of watch
Thrill thrives, begot
From Maslow's needy base.

>>5043504
Asian and white

>I wrote this drunk when I was 16:

Floor 1, Tel Aviv

The sound of their fucking, the gurgling reverb of their drinking, the feel of ethanol slowly caving into my throat, as if Satan had exhaled his rotten breath into my esophagus. The ever present smell of synthetic kush (Pitbull) and Camel Cigarettes, smoke floating in the empty space of existence, drowning away slowly in a sea of vodka, blood, cum and burnt papers.

I can hear them kissing: softly, tenderly, a subtle sucking sound bounces around the walls, a testament to their non-existent love, that flush of dopamine the young brain is so pragmatic at producing. The hooka smoke went into my lungs, grave mis-inhale. Learning to hold it in my mouth was harder than I thought. My lungs must be fucked up from all the smoke that’s been invading them, my chest feels tight. I never knew why.

And it keeps going. The world swirls rather lethargic on my present catharsis. It sits down and thinks of me, hugs me, kisses and caresses me, and I want to throw it in a trash can. To rip it apart and feed it to a gang of hungry grizzlies. To burn the world down and swim on the ashes, swim and scream in joy when I can hear the whispers of my lost generation, slowly flowing away in an ocean of moral urine and defecated lives. Purpose of a beating heart lost in the mist of youth.

Alright, I wrote this short play. Note that all the dialogue is under 140 characters, thank you very much.

Just posting a pastebin because it's way too long to copy+paste in 4chan posts.

>inb4 nobody reads or comments on this ;_;

http://pastebin.com/EEKTD8n4

>>5039528
And we'll stunt jungle love and mount them. Your drugged contact malicious and recklessly coarse. It would be illegal to risk such cold love.

>>5044495

not very good; sorry.

> as if Satan had exhaled his rotten breath into my esophagus

m8...

m8.

>>5044549
Like I said, I was drunk and heavily into Burroughs. That text was me trying to replicate his style.

>>5044495
>>5044571

>I posted an earlier work of an lady in the capture of a fantasy hun, /lit/ said it was too detailed and pompous so I tired to tone it down in this work. Same fantasy setting, names will definitely change.
>1/3

The sun scorched the coliseum, and the aristocracy sought shelter under the shade of parasols. Statues of ancient heroes and just gods, their color bleached by age, stared down in judgmental silence upon the actors and crowd. A murmur echoed around the arena, as bets where placed on the gods’ favor. A deacon kept a close watch on the sundial that perched above the balconies. And as its shadow reached the zenith, he bowed slightly towards the shofars bellow, who with a mighty sound called for the silence of the gathering. An elderly priest approached the podium, and bowed deeply before the Prince and the assembled judges.

“Hear the words of Anakah!” His voice rang clear and with authority, despite his speckled skin and bald head, as he recited the rules of the trial from the Articles of Law. The assembly listened with experienced patience as he listed the requirements and etiquette set forth by the goddess. In the mean time two large tables, raised high enough that one could dine from them standing, was placed next to each entrance to the battleground. Upon them, servants of respective party placed bowls of dates, plates of unleavened bread and wine jars of exquisite quality. “So says the Law!” The priest’s exclamation was answered by the crowd as he kissed the Law.

A new speaker approached the podium, and called out: “May the accuser, Lady Ecermine of House Siyak, and her champion enter the court!” The crowd rose in cheer as the Lady entered the scene, and grew even louder when the expected champion revealed himself. In militaristic determination he strode towards the table and his waiting dame, with glistering teeth he greeted the crowd and with a sweep of a mailed hand he pulled the white hair from his eyes. Commander Deiakiron knelt before his lady, and with adoring eyes kissed her hand.

>>5044586
>2/3

“Ever popular I see” she smiled.

“Their cheers are only for you, milady” The knight rose in a bow and laid her eyes upon her with a expression of dreaming fullness, and he discreetly let his fingers tough the arms of her gown. “My eyes are only here for your beauty and love.” He turned his face towards the man who had entered unannounced on the other side of the arena, and the gentle smile turned into a malicious grin. He could feel his heart pumping faster; his breath, filled with the scent of his dame, intoxicated him. Blood flowed into every muscle that trembled in animalistic thrill as his wild eyes searched for his goal, whatever hill or mountain he had to climb for his lady’s sake. His goal was easy; the man on the other side had dared sully his lady’s reputation: a weed in her beautiful garden. He would slay his champion and then, as he had done so many times before, he would slay him.

The sun continued to scorch the coliseum, and sweat collected under his mail, yet the darkness of that far-off gate remained eerily quiet.

>>5044571

>Like I said, I was drunk and heavily into Burroughs

I don't give a fuck. You thought it was good enough to be posted here / representative enough of your style for you to benefit from critiques of it.

Post something you've written recently or fuck off.

>>5044597
>3/3

***
Darkness, a total darkness obscuring distance and time, even as he opened his eyes there was nothing but this darkness. He didn’t know the date; he didn't know the place of the sun. How long had he slept? An hour? A day? Briefly, he wondered if centuries had gone by, if the great empire above had withered into ruins and monuments as he lay here in this darkness, isolated from time itself.

A ridiculous thought.

He was still in this sandstone cell. His arms where still fettered, his back still covered in bruises and scabs. Above him men of power where giving his case a brief though before deciding upon a suitable fate. But there was no question of the result, he had maimed a lord, only death where considered justice. The question was merely how.

After a while footsteps echoed in the far-off corridors, but he paid them little heed; he had no privilege amongst the other lost souls around
him as far as the judges where concerned.

Then they grew closer, and to his surprise light slipped in from beyond the door. Confusion fell over him as voices muttered outside, and fear, as they fumbled with a rusty in an even rustier lock. He noticed he had risen from the bed unconsciously, but he froze as light blinded and a voice commanded from the safety of an iron mace.
“Hand on the wall, prisoner.”

>>5044530
Not bad, but it seems like it starts off with realistic but still bland dialogue, just pointless back and forth. Not pointless I guess, just hard to find interesting.

>A story i've been trying to write

The sights that stir up memories are those of Andy’s black Volvo and junkies, cough syrup bottles emptied by other-worldly sinners, in parking garages emptied of stop-and-go fiscal achievers. The trash cans were lying in the street, and all the ash trays were filled to the brim with cigarettes smoked down to their filters. The twin lit parking lights scattered throughout the cement landscape made up for the lack of an open sky above. It was their second week on DXM, and maybe I was a little out of tune. They were feeling the benefit of their trashy lifestyle, and I was too. I’d been offered a cigarette or two and weed already, but I declined. Sobriety was more of a high than they could have ever imagined. I held out my open hand to the world, and I was rewarded with the pleasure of seeing their decadence through a clear lens.

What did it matter if it was Saturday or Wednesday; the working week meant nothing to any of us. All that Marxist bullshit, all the borders that bound the proletariat were expunged. Andy swept by on his skateboard and Collin was getting a call from some girl. I could tell it was a girl because he answered his phone with, “hey babe,” but it didn’t specify who it was, cause he said that to all the girls. I wished I was like that. I was jealous of the distance he put between his lovers and himself. They told me not to worry. Collin hung up on her and said to me, “you gotta mix interest with disinterest.” My mind was never claimed by drugs, but my heart was always being held by some sweetheart. I must have slipped it in her knapsack when she wasn’t looking, because she would have a grasp on my soul for months at a time without ever knowing it

>>5044633

Yeah - I was striving more for realistic dialogue than exciting dialogue. It serves mostly to establish that this is their second or third date. It's hard to write deliberately bland characters.

>>5044619

Fix your typos you fucking stooge. They're so bad to the point that it's distracting.

>>5044586
>>5044619
>>5044597

gotta be honest - it's pretty terrible.

You're writing genre fiction. Choose - do you want to excite and thrill us with the events of the story, or do you want us to be charmed with your mastery of the language? From what I can see, you're not a strong enough writer for the latter. Hemingway that shit up. Also your dialogue is fucking abysmal.

>>5044664
Writing like Hemingway is hard. Implication is a lot harder than explication.

>>5044676

Don't LITERALLY figuratively hemingway it.

Just eliminate unnecessary shit. Next time you want to put down a string of adjectives, ask yourself if there's a better way you can convey that, IF it really matters at all.

> laid her eyes upon her with a expression of dreaming fullness

come on son.

>>5044688
Oh, hey I'm not the guy who wrote it, I was just commenting that The Sun Also Rises isn't less sophisticated writing than, say, Heart of Darkness.

>>5044530

Oh wow, I'm a baka. The thing I posted isn't even the full play.

Let's try that again:

http://pastebin.com/sqKSG05i

Alright, I wrote this short play. Note that all the dialogue is under 140 characters, thank you very much.

Just posting a pastebin because it's way too long to copy+paste in 4chan posts.

>inb4 nobody reads or comments on this ;_;

>>5044530
good, kinda reminded me of Brecht.
But it's too stiff and doesn't give the viewer enough interesting parts especially since actors should have the freedom to be excessive.
I don't know much so don't let my opinion effect you.

>>5044720
>>5044633


I posted the wrong link; here's the complete (short) play: >>5044713

>>5044774
>http://pastebin.com/sqKSG05i

Is this supposed to be satiric of the government's intrusion of American's rights? It seems like most people would be too dumb to understand that and they'd think "yeah people could be making bombs in their garages, thank the NSA".

> More of mine >>5044633

We were off to 7/11 for some free drinks. Brent worked there, and he always offered. We walked uphill and left our skateboards at the door. Nobody would steal a bunch of dirty boards. I didn’t even consider the thought. The doors opened and I saw Brent walking out of the freezer with a clipboard, an under-armor jacket, and tan khakis. We were all in T-shirts and severely ripped jeans, and I couldn’t tell whether we were under dressed, or he was overdressed.

“You guys can go grab some coffee. I gotta take inventory n’ shit.”

We walked over to the coffee counter and I grabbed a clear-plastic cup and filled it with Iced-Coffee. It wasn’t hot outside, even earlier when the sun was out. I liked Iced-Coffee because I always had my coffee black. It made me feel like a trucker or a cowboy transposed into a different generation. If I got it iced, I could feel like an outsider; drinking an iced-beverage in the cold; and it just tasted better. Collin and Andy got hot coffee and we three stood by the counter until Brent came out. He put the clipboard on the counter and stared at my cup. The cups for hot coffee were frail and Styrofoam, but the iced-coffee cups were plastic, and larger.

“It’s cool this time Mark, but my boss’ll give me shit if you all get Iced-Coffee. That shit’s expensive.”

I took a sip and stared at the shelf behind him, holding what seemed like a lifetime’s supply of cigarettes. We were the reason stores guarded cigarettes behind locked, sliding glass cases; why houses stopped using the same kinds of locks; why curfew was at 11:00, and why gas stations like 7/11 gave out free donuts to cops in return for midnight security.

“It’s free,” Andy said.

>>5044713
A bit preachy IMO, but p good nonetheless. I just personally disagree with your Message & Etc, but the play gets the message across well nonetheless. I really liked the monologue, especially the "everyone has at least one poem or something in them" line.
Reminds me of that YA book Feed (not an insult, it's one of the better YA books and has a similar theme/message to your play)

>>5044843

Thanks. Yeah, I felt a bit polemical writing it, but God DAMN all I want to do is hang out with people without them checking their phones every time there's a lull in the conversation. And all the fucking slacktivist Buzzfeed/Upworthy shit just makes me want to puke. Seriously, did we learn NOTHING from KONY2012?

>>5044828

Eh, it was more about distractions and bread and circus and people becoming more boring as time goes on. But then again, author's intent doesn't matter. What matters is what you drew from it.

>>5044633
>>5044828

I like it.

Have you heard the album "Marquee Moon" by Television?

Listen to the title track. I'm picking up similar vibes.

>>5044887
I love that album actually, appreciated.
>>5044871
Actually, I was intending on it starting off like the characters were boring. The plot is that a drug dealer basically runs the teenage population of a city, and the protagonist befriends him and sees the destruction of the city and the morality of the drug dealer degrade over time as the protagonist's friends become entrenched in the crutches society offers, (smartphones, television, anti-government crimes that actually detract from an anti-government message).

By the way, what do you mean by distractions?

Check out my book, Ethix!

http://www.humanactionnetwork.com/ethix-.html

inb4 shilling-- it's yours, free of charge.

"This is my partner, Curtis."
"Oh, you're gay?"
"No, I'm a cop."
"Oh so there are no gay cops?"
"My police partner."
"Okay, buddy," I chuckled.
The ubiquity of heteronormativism is problematic.

>>5045004

I was talking about my play, sorry :)

>>5045683
I'm so glad you took my advice and changed it to 'problematic'. 10/10.

Change is constantly changing.
One day becomes two and two becomes eleven,
Romans rule, rule out rules and lure loss.
(I don't even know what a Twinkie™ costs?)
When I was a kid, sunny-side up,
now I'm over-easy, overwhelmed with no helmet.
I've met the bull in the arena and smoked his breath,
vacuuming cheers and spit between his own two teeth.
I've seen pigs fly and sunder under the sun,
bleeding a bloody shower of bacon bits
onto homeless men and women aside roofs,
Oops! The blame settles at the bottom of the container,
a dressing of oil and vinegar, the whiff of a spoiled wig-
Grandma is too old to remember her past, yesterday
I visited her and she lifted her eyes to drop sounds
into my hands that gesticulated: Exponents aren't kind to multi-variables
or hordes of ill children and their birthplaces.
I turn off the TV; I open a book: TV guide; I turn on the TV.
My yogurt congeals on my mashed potatoes like a foreign sport in New York City
-I watch it alone.

Here, life’s soil is dug
through by the wind
and weather, A devil
and scourge of life,
The earth cannot live
though it does not
wish to, it is in the
path of the scourge and
the devil, and must face
what it has before, death
When a seed is planted
it brings new hope to
those who are losing it,
Yet it soon approaches
it’s Oblivion, as it must,
as they all do now and again,
It’s euthanasia brings
a mutual motivation to
save the future, it is a
shame that death is a
motivator for safety,
should these precautions
not be resolved ere
such an atrocity is suffered
If Earth joined with sky,
where would the bane of the
land be? Whenever peace
comes and life is in harmony,
Where must death be? There
must lye a curse, hidden away,
waiting for it’s kill, and when it
returns, none alive can defend
against it’s blind fury
In perfection, there is
a shield nor a sword,
life nor death,
For there are none that can
batter others souls without
first harming their own
None must be forced
to raise their defense,
against an enemy where
there is none, there will be
no affliction, and death will
not be invited in as a
normal way of life,
for they are polar
opposites, When this is
achieved, the wind comes,
a whip thrashing spirit,
it digs the seed from it’s
home, and carries hope
to it’s oblivion

>>5044688
>>5044676
>>5044664
>>5044648
Ok, thanks.

After rereading it in the morning I agree it's pretty terrible, wine+dyslexia+no spellcheck is a terrible idea.

That said, could you recommend me some good novels for improving dialogue? I'm still really fucking pleb, so I plan on picking up the Brothers Karamazov next, anything I should add to that?

>>5046862

See, I started reading that, but the comma thing is really fuck-off annoying.

>>5046952
How about this.

Ropes and Gems

There is no space left for me,
And as this ship sails off on
Those crashing waves, I stare
Into the eyes of a young maiden,
As the current drags her from
My slowly weakening arms

My muscles slacken and my arms
Weigh down my torso, my eyes
However, those wandering spirits
Cling to the white of hers
They stare through the windows to her soul,
as if holding her gaze would keep her

It was a false hope, but my arms
Were too weak and my eyes held
Her with a stronger grasp than
A thousand, they try to drag her in,
But the strength of even ten thousand
Could not wrench such beauty from Neptune’s grip

For Neptune, with his seafoam beard,
Has taken my shining light,
Without her, the sea has grown dark,
Without her, the trail home has been washed away,
I sit back and stare into the night,
looking for those glistening gems, something to grasp

And Jupiter is not kind, he thrashes me instead,
he pounds me with endless waves of longing,
and he crushes me under his ocean in the sky,
and the ocean below is just as relentless,
each attempt for sweet air is stopped

The thought of her, that bitter sweet
sensation, that hollow longing, poisoned me
it screams in my ears, it deafens me, allowing all sound
My guard drops as my weak arms fall from my side to my face,
my fingers trace the ropes that failed to pull

I do not cry, the sea has dried up
All of my tears, I do not scream,
my ears hear not my thoughts let alone my words,
the world has yielded to
The sea, but my poisoned mind sees
Less of armistice and more of appeasement

Neptune and Jupiter, the sea and the sky,
work to foil my happiness, for what basic rights had I in days of old?
My ancient thoughts scorn the very name of those deities,
and the names of those gods work in harmony with those used as insult

Those gems that had driven me
Cannot be found, swallowed by the sea, and I am blinded by the sky,
Brothers punish me for nothing,
Thrash me for committing no crime,
Drown me for my overabundance
Of air

When my vision clears, her
Boat is sinking, there is no sign of any rope,
the brightness of her eyes
Has faded, she had heard my thoughts, and she scorns me as well,
There is a release in weight, I am out from underneath the sky

He was a kind-hearted desperado without much to lose. Living on the fringes of life, he felt as if existence was only contained in how close you could approach death. So he ran from that sheltered 401(k) and those nuptial agreements his girlfriend tried forcing on him day in and day out and eloped with the prairie. It wasn't that he wanted to die, he just wanted to finally live.

>>5046974
>without much to lose.
I know it's a cliche, but with nothing to lose just has a better flow.

>>5046961

The theme is cliche, it's too long for what it is, you're pretending this is the late 19th century for some reason, the imagery is very stock, and some of it is downright clumsy, like you're trying to bluff me into thinking parts are more meaningful than they are.

However, it wasn't offensive, nor was it particularly bad. It peaked towards the middle, you were on a bit of a roll for a few lines. You're quite clearly in your early days, I reckon if you keep at it you'll be decent in a few years.

Full-stops are decisive and confident. Use them. Avoiding them entirely makes you seem limp-wristed, and the poetry affected.

>>5046978

Seconded.

This is the definition of overwritten

Noise, Telephone, shit, work. The order of my thoughts, as disorganized as they maybe during the course of the day, follow a routine pattern every morning of the workweek. My phone alerts me out of dreamstate (usually in the form of a rapid jump cut from a lovely evening as the president's chief, water gun toting, body guard on a mission to protect him from a league of anti-turkey, pro-chicken, farmers who failed to filibuster the turkey subsidy bill). Then responding to the noise, my hand flails around my room, hitting the six pound, coin filled, snowman adorned tin, that my grandmother gave
me for cleaning out her bathroom– no easy task, old people are second only to shit-standing-up kids from second grade, in bathroom etiquette. With quickness that cats reserve for leaping from water, my hand recoils in pain. A soft hiss, barely understandable as fuckcockshit escapes my mouth into the humid morning air.

That very air is lending to this morning's aura of discontent. Aural assaults rupturing forth from my LG phone's tinny speakers, in a tone that a Korean programmer describes as “vintage telephone”, are loud enough to provide an inverse reaction towards the pain in my knuckles. The deactivation sequence for my phone borders on nuclear security: 1. press center button 2.press left bumper, but nor the one on the side, no the button just to upper left of the left arrow on the center button 3.press down 4. press center button, silencing the alarm 5. confirm that you wish to disable the alarm. After completing this daily set, I take a visual survey of the room. My cat's spoor is all over the room– books flat on their faces, the cardboard sleeves of vinyl records lightly chewed threw their Mylar wrappers, and their, the princess herself, asleep on-top of the plastic dust cover of my Music Hall USB-1 turntable.

>>5046974
He was a kind-hearted desperado with nothing to lose. Living on the fringes of life, he felt as if existence was only contained in how close you could approach death. So he ran from that sheltered 401(k), those nuptial agreements his girlfriend tried forcing on him day in and day out and eloped with the prairie. It wasn't that he wanted to meet death, it just that he wanted to glimpse life.

I wasn't being too analytical with this edit, just a few changes of word choices.

>>5047029
Welp, that's the first and last time I ask /lit/ for writing advice.

"He can rip a fucking bong."
"Yep."
"It's sad that he won't work."
"I know I know like he clearly tried to pick up the garage."
Suddenly the acrid smell of burning beans distracted them.
She went and took care of the beans. They had to leave the pot outside the sliding glass door to soak. She squatted and sprayed the last of the dish soap into the pot, and she found a stick and stirred it, and scraped at the charred beans. He watched while she threw the bottle into the trash.
"Guess we need some more soap," he said.
She walked up and put her hands in front of his face. "A-duh!" Then she turned and found her cigarettes, and lit one from the stove. She started mumbling hateful things under her breath, about how the car didn't work, and how her knee hurt. He started to use the internet on his phone, and said something about beer. They were quiet for a moment, and then they started the routine in which he went to buy alcohol.
While she walked out with him and they rounded the corner, she glanced over at the burned pot she had left on the porch. "Ah hah! Fuck it!", she said, and he smiled at her.

Infection

Respiring radius captured with flames
Incite a white army
Unfavourable outcome is aim
Weasel out bubbles in raspy
Red fire. Apathetic endurance,
A longing to retire.
GP trip's easy before peak,
speak to he who
Wraps up a taxed box of pack-a-punch.
And
With rapturous lap dogs,
Zap the ordeal in a clash with blister packs
Unveiled victor camouflaged in peers
For you can't hear one with a clean lung.

Mind cart surfaces;
No quarry. An empty shaft.
I begin to strip mine.

>>5047843
erotic

http://pastebin.com/88YKLva0

Inspired by a certain poster in these threads.

>>5042075
>>5042118

These two are really interesting. They break up a bit at times, but overall I thoroughly enjoyed the odd imagery and thematic elements. Good stuff.

How do gum-ball machines avoid gentrification?
Or their mechanized ponytailed friends?
They hide in the corners of not-so-supermarkets
keeping the children busy, donating motherly time.
In a world of cacophonous banter and schemes,
no one is impervious to corruption or bullets
even with chain-mail or a phone-tree funding
the park that was supposed to be built last April,
a month crueler than its predecessors, and the Mayor
was too busy commissioning the reparations
of the slumping neighborhood he lives in,
on the greener side of the train-tracks, homeless-less.
A quarter is eaten, some sugar is chewed,
a child smiles, a child subdued. The cart
squeaks on its wheel around a globular globe
and the first-lady's lips flap down together
to tell the forehead's ears' mouth they kiss
to spit out the gum and forget about the world,
because if not, a cavity will form than can't be filled.

A delivery denied is a distance granted:
the loose & lithe hand of a telegrapher
-stop-
beeps a gut-wrenching apology
to only be thrown off course miles
back past the Cape of Good Hope,
across the Trench, and into a house
draped in maroon drapes and wet paint,
one window shining bright.

Yes, the spread has been widened,
and the stipend stretched beyond its limit,
but no depth is too deep
for the boats afloat the surface.

No spider owns the web on my sill,
only the drafts that pull at its strings.
Dust gropes on the titanium gossamers
while arteries drip more blood into me.
St. Guadalupe emanates a fluttering light,
splashing the cob with a soft expression
that placates my home's caged beasts.
And when the rosy wax is depleted to the drop
and the flicker flies past the sticky spindles,
a black-red critter creeps from the shadows
and nestles nastily in the center of a house
that I thought to be unoccupied and in ruins.

In a world where heads always seemed pointed towards a planned end or goal, Jared was lost in what he saw as a torturous funhouse. Every person he met looked like a warped mirror reflecting some disingenuous version of himself that he refused to accept as real. The other day, Jared walked past an Asian man huffing down a box of whipped-cream chargers filled with nitrous oxide while leaning up against a building. The dude just sat there, completely unabashed, and went through cartridge after cartridge of mind-body-numbing gassy goodness. In this man, Jared saw the desire to get high. Across the street, he saw a curiosity in family life; on TV, he felt the passion to become a Broadway star or Hollywood sell-out. Jared just didn't know how to calibrate his internal GPS system without leading himself towards a dead-end, or worse, traffic. He wanted to be original and unique, but his capacity to take chances bordered on being cowardice. The boldest thing Jared could recall doing was telling his father to "fuck himself" in response to being told to do a wide-variety of conflicting and unclear things about his life and its problems that had completely slipped his mind at this point. Jared never really felt proud of his father, the barber, because he worked and worked and worked himself to the ground without ever really getting a decent day's pay. Jared saw nothing but futility in his dad, which distorted his own reflection into thinking that pride never even rested on his own shoulders. All these thoughts navigated in Jared's neuro-circuitry as he itchily walked to buy a tube of Lotrimin Ultra for his athlete's foot that he probably got from being barefoot in his local YMCA's locker-room after a game of squash: a sport he considered to be above his pay-grade as a waiter.

When apples still grow in November
When Blossoms still bloom from each tree
When leaves are still green in December
It's then that our land will be free
I wander her hills and her valleys
And still through my sorrow I see
A land that has never known freedom
And only her rivers run free

I drink to the death of her manhood
Those men who'd rather have died
Than to live in the cold chains of bondage
To bring back their rights were denied
Oh where are you now when we need you
What burns where the flame used to be
Are ye gone like the snows of last winter
And will only our rivers run free?

How sweet is life but we're crying
How mellow the wine but it's dry
How fragrant the rose but it's dying
How gentle the breeze but it sighs
What good is in youth when it's aging
What joy is in eyes that can't see
When there's sorrow in sunshine and flowers
And still only our rivers run free

I'm impartial to my own thoughts even as I stare at them on the screen, and watch them stare back at me in quiet indignation. Writing by punching a few keys on a board feels like a professional procedure rather than a form of artistic expression as once dictated by the feather or pen or pencil or even dirt in the caves of humans' past. Time is nothing but surfeiting. It pulls a string of some silly candy in front of the eye's of adult children and tugs away until nothing but an empty plastic spindle is left lying motionless in the center of a table that was once engorged with guests. The hostess of the house can do nothing now but wring out old towels and iron her day blouses at night and night dresses by day, waiting for her 1950's husband to waltz through the door half-hatless, grinning in response to the waft of vegetable stew and, above-all, pot roast. This is the life that I remember, a life I haven't lived but vicariously embraced through the media of my space and time, not necessarily the air or electromagnetic aether that some crack-pot scientists might contend exists (Tesla included), but the fountains of brain-dulling television and internet countries inhabited by persistently idiotic people who believe their beliefs are anything but. Now, I'm not trying to bring to light some profound truth about the world or its universe, but I am trying to make my fingers move so I can create a string of syllables that hopefully resonates with the person reading in such a way that they say to themselves with my voice: "I know what you're saying." Whether a master of culinary cuisine or a chef of literature, food gets made (the latter being food-for-thought of course). And as with all food, seahorses in exception, it is up to the dish's spectator and possible destination to actually eat and digest the comestible creation. Now, if you're a termite, then you can eat food-for-thought as you would any other food; but people aren't termites (at least in the traditional sense). People are much more like ants or, at the risk of being a tad cliché, sheep (and rings the hordes of humants and sheeple). You can be a shepherd, or dog or Queen, but the decision to be so is as much up to you as your skin color. Sure, you can go to the tanning bed and up your orange tone to a crimson brown, but you can never fully adopt the epidermal coat of a native black, or colonial white, or pragmatic Asian. The interference between genetics and environment creates fissures in individuals that radiate a frequency capable of razing entire civilizations with only a few loudspeakers and protests. And even if these points of friction remain to themselves, happiness is lost and anguish is irredeemably found burrowing in the skin. It is in this struggle, and countless others, that reminds minds on a daily basis, to constantly beg the question: why do I remain alive?

>>5043700
r u tao

>>5049501
No but the Tao Lin stylistic influence is pretty strong.

Hey guys, which one of these versions do you think is the best? Do you think any of them is good?

ver1.

Blood mixed with shit.
I look down at the toilet paper, it's been like this for a while now.
With the blood I mean, I'm not really sure why -- I suspect a lack of fiber in my diet. Too lazy to confirm my speculation.
I let go of the toilet paper, I move my dick to the side and watch the paper slowly soak in water.
If there's anything that goes on my "must have"-list for my future wife it's that she must feel
comfortable with taking a shit next to me.
I don't mean this in a perverted way or anything, I just find it intimate.
We could each have a feces diary where we write down what each other's poop looked like for the day.
At the end of the week we'd both read each other's out loud and then make out, it'd be perfect.
I wipe myself once again.
I can feel the coarseness of the paper against my anus, warranting me to make sure that the piece of paper is clean.
After checking for any left over shit I confirm that I am indeed clean and follow up with completing the typical toilet routine:
I drop the paper into the toilet bowl
stand up
flip the toilet lid and flush
and finish off with pulling my underwear and pants up.
I decide not to write a note of the toilet visit for my future girlfriend.

ver2.

Blood mixed with shit.
I give the toilet paper a long look, it's been like this for a while now.
With the blood I mean; I don't know why, a lack of fiber perhaps?
The toilet paper falls to the bottom of the porcelain seat, I move my dick to the side and see it soak.
When I get a wife -- and I will -- she and I will share our sessions to one another.
This isn't perverted or strange, it is only intimate to me.
We'll both see how we are, like all lovers want to do.
I wipe myself once again.
The paper is coarse against my anus, letting me know that I am clean.
I check and make sure. You can't trust one sense only, you must use two.
The routine is finished and I am dressed.
No note is written for my future girlfriend.

A black-curtained stage before a mortal audience
jitters with a dismembered cast of celestial bodies,
voices reverberating throughout an epochal theatre
like a choir of atmospheric opera singers under Michelangelo.
The headless actors dance to handless choreography
and sing to the metronomic meter of a comatosed orchestrator.
Directed by physical embrace, the stars can only twinkle
in the eyes of cinematic passer-by's bound straplessly
to rows of felted arms and the reclining backs of fleshy cushions.
The acts pool together like differentially dense liquids
blended into a oily suspension of beads, comic & tragic,
that drowns the slit, catapulted hearts of our viewers.
An initial frame forms the trajectory of the binary system,
love-sick citizens of the unfolding empyrean legend,
(the meat of the sandwich is now plopped between our crusty bread,
wooing us to eat the rest of the delectable drama)
and a pulsar of light shutters over 12 o'clock shadows,
signaling the denouement of a collapsed dream. Two ears,
stacked in marble columns, supporting the Parthenon,
reveal the end to be no more than a suffocated whimper,
bursting with disappointment and the taste of fiction.

Time can be a disaster

Robbed by a friend
Robbed for many weeks
I paid it no mind
Was rosily cheek'd
Happy as Larry
in Peter Combe's speak
But good as new's not all that it seems
'Cus newly created means knowledge decreased
And it's of that kind of knowledge that robbing was done
By hand of consistency
One movement per one

A crooked hand-wrapped barrel craves
supersonic explosions and seismic waves.
Rumble, tumble, fumble the wits of the wistful,
so let go of that steel-alloy, cylindrical fistful.
Forget the untied laces of light-year long feet,
and pick up that bit of rubbish after you weep.
Let not despair coerce you to do its deeds,
wading through a swamp strewn with limp reeds.
Re-member-serve yourself for a clothed-table full
of grateful guests who'll drippily canvass your skull.
Erase the vacuum between thought and voice,
every-one-thing reacts and enacts only a choice.
Heed my word, the protege of stagnant powder-
guns and water mixed together'll turn to chowder.
Rusted spoon-like sloops shed canon-fodder ashore,
as a soup-kitchen line knocks on heaven's door.
And a restless mob asks "who the hellish fire's for?"
standing on some stairs, knocking on heaven's door.

Tiny Tim tip-tapped along Tong Street
forking a heap of clayish grayish goop.
Rudder twirling atop his skull, Tim beat
the days till the winter blue haze with loop-
ing-inglorious taxi driving, scuttle guzzling
mother-fucking women, n'ah mean? Gloop-
pingpong plopping gurgling gut wrenched-
a seething stew of liquid-desperation-soup,
a jarred escapee, hunched over drenched.
Tim, tiny, heartless and tin, nostrils a-droop,
take your single-cask filled flask, cherry oak,
cut by Abe on February twelfth, one swoop,
so sewing a vermillion-fiber glistening cloak
can candidly coax wormy hoaxes while snoop-
ing-"March icebergs mandate caution still,"
they tell me, while I (Tim's ticker) group
the fact bundles into firewood for the mill,
and decide-a-doodle-to rise and visit the coup.

Almost all letters are written by hand,
Before an attentive candle-light.
Creases increase in naughty numbers,
Denying the paper a clean slate.
Eventually, a point is tipped astride,
Forcing a mighty momentum through the gut.
Greed of time tugs on me now,
Holding my hand like the Grim Reaper-
I keep curating a gallery of sensations:
Jolly, a tender heart murmuring into sleep.
Kill constantly, I hear
Love incessantly, I say,
Move with the music, and
Never let the graphite snap suddenly,
Only when you expect it.
Pretend not to be standing in a chair.
Queue the commands, follow the circuit,
Remember the first lines, cheer and sob,
Siphon gas out from your belly button, and
Tell yourself and other to swim thoughtlessly,
Under the pressure: do not drown, for
Vicariously lived lives leave no room for
Words to manifest in any medium:
Xenon, inert and heavy in my stomach,
Your echoes terminate at my finger tips,
Zealous and gushing, a prolonged infatuation.

A bunch of purple I wrote today for fun. Perhaps it amuses you, perhaps you might want to criticise it after you're done.

http://pastebin.com/5Bv1RqQ8

>>5036852

m-muh dick

How's this as a sentence?

With the reconquest of the Nile delta the supply of Egyptian grain to the Empire's cities has finally resumed.

Do I need a comma before "supply"?

beautiful life starting to fall through
the gaps in mortality that lives in you
gravity and time and your unique design
coming face to face with mortal decline
yet the spirit of your soul with eyes so wide
will see you soar into the next realm of light
so never be afraid when your pushed into the abyss
for the beauty of love creating everything is part of all of it

And a pic to bump the Thread

>>5054690
Is someone saying this or is it like a narrator
because if the latter, it should probably be 'had'

has would work for speech but only if its like some guys going over the recent economic shifts for the nation. otherwise i don't know why anyone would talk like that

and yeah comma

and capitol d

it's still an awkward sentence overall
i think its an issue of passive voice or whatever the fuck they call it

the empire has finally regained its import of egyptian grain with the recapturing of the nile delta; with the reconquest of the nile delta the empire finally regained its import of egyptian grain

A harsh wind blew over the bustling square, the leaves rattled and the discarded remnants of life’s unwanteds roamed the streets, the only thing separating us, a glass pane. I was adorned in gold and silver wealth, fine silks and polished leather shoes, material wares to make up for my plastic heart. I looked out of my crystal palace to where the fleshlings roamed, disgusting I silently screamed. I looked across the square and into “The Pub”, stale smoke filled the building, but one scene was painfully clear. Bells ring and cheers echo through the square as the jackpot of the pokie machine is collected, a tiring old women sweeps the pennies into her bottomless pockets from the ashtray of broken dreams. The fleshlings roared with praise as she slivered to the left and threw another coin into the void. Hours passed and “Last call” boomed, the woman shuffled out into the harsh night in defeat, she counted her “winnings” as gloom conquered her face, she swept her cents into her purse and stepped out into the dark. The night trudged on, rugged men clutched their newspaper duvets tighter as bears dressed in blue roared and nudged them along. A green man flashed in the corner of my eye, it was time for the annual fleshling crossing. Huge metallic lions roared at their heels and hurried them along, a tiny voice squealed in terror as she plummeted to the ground, “Hema!” she exclaimed, the green man fled from the light but was swiftly recovered and beaten to a bloody red, the lions roared in anticipation of the fresh meat, but a hand reached out from the abyss and the girl pulled herself up and out of the way as the metal lions seeked their next victim. The two fleshlings tenderly embraced and for the first time, my plastic heart began to beat.

“We killed our gods.” Wheezed the gaunt figure slumped against his corroded metal throne. “We gouged them from the earth and we fell upon them like starving animals, our teeth iron and steel as we devoured. They stood as behemoths, waiting to be torn from the earth to fuel our insatiable hunger.” He continued as he stared through the clouded lenses of his aged eyes, deep into the dirty petroleum night fire that burned on the rusted sands in front of him. The old mans face seemed to be a myriad of mottled, pallid colours in the glimmer of the orange light. “The fuel for our greed was life, theirs…and ours.” The dark plumes of smoke were wafting high above them as they sat around the fire, reflecting on his words. His demeanour had shifted from the crescendo of anger to a calmer sorrow. A rasping fit of coughing exploded from him, interrupting his struggled inhalations with the staccato bursts as bony hands shakily moved the hexagonal mouthpiece of a dented chrome rebreather module into position. A younger pair of hands was illuminated by the flames as they fastened supporting straps of tattered black leather behind the ancient neck. The coughing abated, but was replaced with the alternating rhythm of deep inhalations followed by a serpentine hiss as spent respiration fluids geysered out from either side of the chrome. Slowly he slid the mouthpiece down to hang loosely around his throat. “Their ashes blow in the wind, remnants of their primordial vastness now indistinguishable from the dust and the sands.”.

>>5036681
Hehe it's like my writing when I was fifteen :-) :-) :-)

>>5056278
I'm the anon who wrote the post after you, so how about a little quid pro quo?

First of all, I liked it and want to read more. At first I thought it was some automaton overlord looking down at his subjects, but then again I can sort of see that being his perspective too. Nice lions and green men, but I do think that the same sort of elaborate abstract views should be given for the pub.

Good luck with it bro, is it a short story or novel?

bump

Near the tumult of the construction yard
There is a golden retriever,
Leashed and whimpering and pacing,
Held onto by a swart young man,
And the man is scolding him
And tugging at him
For crying so loud
So near the construction.

>>5039783
Wonderful. Love the style and the humor

III. The Cross
The young man is shortening his life at the bar. He is four scotches deep. His words slur, his eyes wander. He thinks that Geraldine, the bitch, should have paid for it herself. Destroying his future like that. Abortion was a nonentity in his life, an intangible made real by circumstance. This angered him.
The scotch smoked his mouth.
To be forced into reality. This was his anger. She had done this, she had spread her legs and forced his eyes to the light. The first sin was to see. He had cried.
The bar was wet and dark. A single light came from the propped door.
He poured another. The epidural was not enough.
His eyes turned upward. The lamp flickered. He winced. The bartender talked.
“Lose her?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry.” turning away as he spoke.
It was the word of a man who knew, but did not care.
He thought of her cunt, cunningly velvet around his needle. The betrayal, the wake up. He stood up, and drawled.
“Fuck her, and fuck you, you fucking hanging from a cross martyr dipshit.”
The bar began to crowd him, hands first, pulsating, and pushing.
“You died for the sins of us shits, sold us this goddamned reality, told us to walk as you did.”
The pink hands took hold.
“Why this our cross to bear, why does this happen,” pointing at the door.
The pink hands lifted him headfirst. They began to push him out, out into the cruel light.
He cried.