/lit/ - Literature

>>6106607

Before
U
Might
Perish

"Chasing the recesses of the last
mottled thought trailing away like a deer
just faster than a bullet–Blitzen–
I cudgel myself with a mammoth bone
(though just the toe bone because that's all I could afford).

I realize that I'm surrounded by mobs of people
and that my frantic phalange flagellation
is not socially acceptable: Can I have my moment?

No, so I sew a few words and tell the girl I've been mentally avoiding for minutes now:
Smoke my freebased love pipe
and let me tickle your pretty pink
that I've heard so much about in classical literature:
your thornless rose, your enlivened soul,
your bomb-ass tush-kush (that I daresay shan't quit)."

Said a raspy voice lurking in the shadows of some dampened, dark alley in Chicago.

(captcha: anall)

I can't read or write, OP.

>>6106607

Pretty boring.

>quadruples
>check them

>>6106624
jesus christ
it's nothing but monologue from mainstream-quasiqart-drama movie about love that bitches on tumblr turn into shitty gifs and reblog

>>6106788

Lel it's like he just got his humanities degree and is jerking himself off with his prose .

OP, this is the kind of shit that gets published. Is it good? No. But you will get published and make dough.

Cold wet dust fills the air,
Distant door shut with unkempt unclean hair
He settles down to an unlit lamp.
Click!
Pen or knife? The pen mightier than the sword
But the pen will immortalize--
His knife may end his life.
But what of this day, this night, this exercise
A schoolchild's grotesque practice
He writes his twisted letters and numbers for an undiscerning eye
Too young still to know just why.
He repeats this process
From day to day,
A stroke here, a slice there,
While longer grows his unkempt hair.
One slip and it'll all go away.
But his trembling hand stays coolly steady,
When the colder steel touches his heart.
His only open door closed,
Still unable to tear a broken world apart.

>>6106607
>the thick waft of grandmother's steamy fudge-delights luring rogue nostrils to the soft, safe pocket below her warm embroidered bosom where mouthfuls of crumbling molten goo offered themselves magically

Trying too hard.

Here is a sonnet entitled "Cake"

O!, Divine afflatus b'low the curves
As if the clouds themselves had gone and fell
The pillowed leaps, like fleshen snowy curls
invoke in me the poet's bursting well
So fit to burst, with blood a-boil, nerves astir
A woken dream: God's true gift to Earth,
or Nature's blessing, Bower's Bliss from Her
for which we owe a debt of endless worth
I wonder not a world without our gift:
a hopeless world, a world of but despair
An arid world I wish not want to live
A world for which I will never care

O!, Divine afflatus 'bove the womb,
Should you cease, may I be killed; entombed

I hate the envoi. I'm currently editing and re editing and rewriting it. This is probably the third or fourth variation of that fucking couplet and it's still terrible

A chill radiates through my body, shaking each part in turn like a tremor, blood curdles for a brief few seconds before hot blood flowing through restores it. I feel uneasy and now I feel good just like the night which feels uneasy when the sun retreats behind the protective canopy of the horizon but is glad to be banished when the sun head pops up from its place of slumber. A note distracts me slipping through the cracks in the air to bravely find the safe haven of my ears and tell me something i do not know. i and my toes curl into bricks and hand my head to the space above me. Now i am like a bird soaring above the rest of the world. now i am a human, stuck on the ground waiting to take flight.

>>6106607
Yeah, uh...what to say about this...like tone down the analogies a lot and just be a little more forward. You don't have to turn every little thing into an overly complex and confusing analogy. It's okay to just speak like a person rather than trying way too hard to sound inventive or sophisticated and losing your audience two lines in because we've no idea what the fuck you're on about. In your case, less is more.

>>6106788
>>6106801

Really guys? I don't even subscribe to that culture in any way, shape, or form. Is it that cheesy, vapid, and/or superficial? If so, any tips?

>>6106624
It's starts off with poetry night from hell and just circles the drain to hippy sex innuendos.

>>6106607
>thick
>steamy
>rogue
>soft
>safe
>warm
>crumbling
>molten
>magically
>sweet
the first sentence

i dare you to convince me that was all intentional

Air air, the all consuming heir
Wraps me with silken ropes
Binds me in velvet chains
Kisses me on poisoned lips, coating my teeth.
Her silverwhite teeth, a broken breeze climbs
Up my chin, the spit, dribbling pooling--
I am despondent,
I am alone.
I am the unburdened, air's heir,
Light enough to fly, I am everywhere.
But your touch is cold, my kiss is lethal
Leave me lying on this bed alone!
Air, air, the swirling cyclical heir,
You take no shape
From murderer to victim.
Air, air, you are my only heir!
I look for you in the brightest day, blinded in your Sun
Without you, with them, I am alone.
Alone, I am one.

>>6106901
I don't even know what the fuck he's talking about. Does she store fudge under her tits or is this like an elaborate way of saying he eats his grandmother's shit crusted asshole out?

>>6106906
Dude, I don't even know what to say. You and like everyone else in this thread are just reaching way too far. Simplify the language, sacrifice artificial complexity for a smoother flow and something that makes sense.

>>6106945
You're gonna have to walk me through this one, because I've got no idea what you're even talking about. Your theme shouldn't be so subtle or complex that people as well read as most of us are can't find it.

>>6106607

>>6106607
How does molten goo crumble? And what about manure is sweet smelling?

>>6106607
In those days when I was dumb to wisdom
My soul was enkindled by your smile
My heart was enraptured by the wanton flame
Of love unquenchable, and you would requite
With the cinders falling from your eyes
Into my soul, yet now the days have died
Where your heart to mine was unrolled
And I sit upon the shores of the restless seas
The flood of life unforgiving has washed away
All hope, and forlorn the moon sits extinguished
With an anguished eclipse.

A short piece about mowing th lawn.

Lawn, land that I own. Down the field two-steps I walk with a faint tap tap and hands in the air waving and yelling “Beautiful!, beautiful!”.
Mais je regrette, dawn is close and I shawn once and again since je suis très fatigue and can’t mow no more. Back to bed I’ll go with my fawn that lies in my lawn (Vlad mère,his dad was a possum) to faire le con and sleep numbed by the faint of her fur.

>>6107000
Not bad, I liked it. I'm not a fan of poetry, but it was straight forward, told a story, didn't get so caught up in metaphor that it was unintelligible. Had nice symbolism with the moon and overall was sophisticated in language without have it's own head up it's ass from trying too hard. Good job.

>>6107020
Thank you.

I downed some rum and looked out at the assholes around me. My friends. Warmth from the alcohol flooded through me and toasted my brain and got me thinking. The four of us had bought some vodka, rum, four loko, and walked to the Tot Lot, our neighborhood playground. Get fucked up. That was the plan. That was always the plan.
I lit a cigarette and hated my giggling and stumbling friends. I wanted to say that I was different, that I was here for some lofty, admirable purpose that had simply been obfuscated somewhere along the way. I watched the plumes of smoke escape my own mouth, felt the alcohol accosting my own mind, and knew that this was bullshit.
We are the same. We are the same in our emptiness, in our lack of something vital, something that made it all make sense.
“Hey, can I bum one?” My blonde friend said with a stupid grin. I handed him a cigarette. He was in the middle of a story.
“And so I pissed all over his car. Got his door handles and everything.” He said with pride, before erupting in laughter. I laughed. We laughed.
I finished off a four loko, lit another cigarette, and got to my feet. I walked slowly around the playground. I had spent countless hours here as a child, playing cops and robbers with my brothers, tag, hide and seek, the works. I stopped and stared at the toy cop cars and the toy muscle cars and dreamed. Dreamed of the pure elation that used to coarse through my veins, the wonder and the guiltless joy that filled my heart, the crispness in existence I seemed to have lost.
I got in the cop car and rocked back and forth in it and smoked my cigarette. I saw my brother sitting in the muscle car ahead of me, pointed my finger-gun, pretended to shoot. The cold air and the booze whisked me back to those days, sunny days. I rocked faster and faster and laughed and laughed and shot imaginary bullets at my imaginary brother and glimpsed joy.
Ash from the cigarette flew in my face and eyes and I let go of the wheel and fell onto the sand. I gazed at the night sky, too drunk to get up, and wondered what the fuck had happened. When did we lose it? When did we lose the magic we possessed as children?
I looked around at my shitfaced friends and down at my shitfaced self and out at the moon and hated.

>>6106906
This is actually not that bad

Ignore that other anon, he obviously hasn't read much poetry if he thinks this is complex. It's obviously a poem about butts.
>allusion to Spenser
>double entendre with "but" despair
Probably more here but this is what I'm picking up on with just a skimming of this thing.
But, like you said, that envoi is p terrible. I'd scrap it entirely and just rewrite it from scratch, personally, because even I can't find anything to do with it as it stands.

Decent work. Keep writing, you have potential. More than most people on /lit/ that write poetry, anyways.

>>6106971
The subject is the fickleness of life and the constant changing nature it expresses. The binding of life is shown to be both pleasant and suffocating (velvet chains and silken ropes), but man is also the murderer of life (poisoned lips). After living, he is made despondent, unable to do something as involved as living and fighting. He is air's heir because that is the eventual end to life -- nothing. But the narrator tries to shoo away life, preferring to disappear than to die, knowing he is the author of his own life and death. In the end, the realization is made that life and death are one, his murdering and his saving are the same occurrence, so he claims to be alone.

I suppose it's a bit short to express so much, it might be more conceptual.

>>6107033
>not picking up on flatus
it's about cakefarting

A small fragment of a bigger story:


They reached the overhang by the entrance to the mansion and folded up their umbrellas. Henry took from his pocket a bundle of several keys, and used it to unlock the front door. There was nothing on the island outside the family mansion, so, in the past, the hadnt been in the habit of locking up. However, Madam had ordered that the masnion would be locked up from midnight to early morning. After that, unlocking the door in the early morning had become part of the servants morning shift. This task had been given to Henry and Kane so that Gary could begin the preparations for breakfast as soon as he woke up.

Silence had fallen in the mansion, giving the impression that the mansion itself was asleep.

"Well, let's begin the morning chores"

"Yes..."

The two of them split up and began opening the curtains throughout the mansion. If the curtains remained closed, the inside of the mansion would still be dim, as if it hadn't managed to escape the previous night, and they wouldn't be able to clean.

Kane, in a well rehearsed procedure, went around the mansion opening one window after another without having to retrace his steps once. Even with this horrible weather, by opening the curtains it began to feel just a little bit like morning. While doing that, he passed in front of the kitchen, and even though he knew that he wouldn't be able to smell it yet, his stomach started aching for some of Gary's much bragged about cooking.

"Good morning...?"

He tried to greet Gary, who he had thought would be preparing the meal inside the kitchen, but Gary was nowhere to be seen. The kitchen was darkly lit, and there was no fan for ventilation, much less curtains to be opened. Since it was still cold without a hint of a fire, it was obvious that no preparations for breakfast were taking place.

>>6107031

7/10

pretty good. more narrative, less internal commentary

>>6107116
no it really is about just arses. no farting involved but I guess I can see why one could believe farts are included. I just love asses and dedicated a sonnet to them.

>cakefarting
Just googled this and why is this a thing.
>putting your BH up to a cake and farting
>blowing the frosting off of a cake with farts

>>6107137
Thank you.

>>6106607
I know trying to give helpful advice is kind of against the board culture, but whatever

your piece is wordy but in a bad way, which is why the other anon is calling it try-hard (I think, anyway). You've missed what those shitty writing advice pics from 9gag always miss: words are a lot more than synonyms for one another. When you're going all-out like this you want to really work at the nuances of these words because so little else like moves in your paragraph. Basically you're just writing prose, trying to express something very precisely and beautifully

off the top of my head you have "lure" which usually means more of a visual attraction than generally any temptation, and which usually implies some level of deceit, which I'm not sure the fudge is a trick. Whirligigs aren't solid objects, so the earth's orbit around the sun is more of a "whirligig spin" than the earth's rotation. Then you have some partially successful alliteration going, but "fecund felicity" is forced and obviously forced, which is much worse. Stuff like "old raveled-up woman" can't stand on its own because what is this telling us about the woman? is she crazy, is she arthritic, is she stooped?

I still like things like the old woman only winning thirty bucks and the falafel being fried by the dozens instead of thousands of pieces. Overall I'd say go back, really think about each word (exepting the sos and thes and ands etc.) and maybe try reading it out loud. Nobody gets worse with practice

>>6106607
it has potential but you're trying to hard to be pretty. pare it back.

>>6106607

this is so purple it puts jesus' post-water beverages to shame

>>6107445
>implying it wasn't white

>>6106607
I'm taking in imagery, it it's not leading me anywhere. It just feels like superposition.
>>6106624
Clumsy pacing, but has potential.
>>6106855
Too literal for poetry. I think it would would work better as prose poem.
>>6106906
Not my thing, but you seem to have the right vernacular for it.
>>6106927
I think you at least know patience. Needs some more editing.
>>6107031
I don't read stories like this, but there's basically nothing wrong with it.
>>6107129
Probably the best one I read in this thread, in that it at least knows how to move itself along.

Here's mine. An edited version from last thread.

The flashes took to her, and they were the only alibi. And her fabric coiled, and the cameras shuddered--and it was just another 'statement', but fashion was the only fact to be stated there. The actual product was just recycled.
"Cannes for the true artist," they said once. And that was still the event of it. But against the backdrop of film, the festival had become a stage for its politics, a true look into the times....for that year, of course.
A photograph went by. He glanced for the pose. Roars were heard in the background.
"Oh, get over it! They do that for every film!"
Right.
A group of photographs, again past the red velvet. No one could really hear the murmurs, over there in the corner. It was agreed they were looking for the best way to say 'no'.

>>6107031
Completely intolerable narrator. Backwards-looking sad-eyed nostalgia porn, completely hollow.

>>6107129
Alright. Not quite enough for me to pass fair judgement.

"...So when she turned around she immediately noticed what exactly was creating the lopsided shadow that was cast over her for the past 3 minutes. A man a little more than twice her size was standing there, arms crossed, with the kind of look on his face that says, 'iknowidon'tknowyouandyoudon'tknowmebutjustgivemelike20secondstoexplainmyself." The man fitting the description of someone who you would casually see on maury at about 2:15 in the afternoon, stood over her in a reserved and non-threatening manner, but the sheer size of him was sure to scare the actual shit out of any person, man or woman. He began to talk for about the next minute and thirty seven seconds but every word went right over April's head. The second this large man began talking April had become distracted to by a palimpsest of familiar characters written in chalk on the ground just beneath the large man's feet. So while trying to act like she was listening to what this man had to say and simultaneously examine the ground beneath his feet, April inevitably offended the large man to a point to where he just walked away with a nice "FUCK YOU ASSHOLE" tacked on as he stormed away.
April could not be bothered by anything else but these smeared letters on the sidewalk. Upon closer examination she learned that it was her name, her birthdate, social security number, phone-number all in the unmistakeable chicken scratch of that mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch, Jon Dirte. The immediate influx of emotions caused April to sweat and hallucinate violently. The sheer hatred that filled her at even the thought of Dirte was more than enough to send her on a maniacal tantrum that could potentially ruin the rest of her week. At this very instant Dirte was smiling and taking pictures of his completed welding assignment in Columbus, Ohio."

It's a novel about how the company you keep as a youth affects your life. Inspired by my youth.

Why I still bothered to argue with my dad escaped me. Pitting a pent-up reservoir of teenage angst and hormones versus a conservative product of the Vietnam War; Apollo Creed versus Ivan Drago. Foolish. I with the false-confidence and naivete, he with the iron fist capable of ending any barrage. The verbal iron fist: "You live under my house, you live under my rules". The meatloaf of the arguing-parent lexicon. There was none one could do in the face of such an established proverbial tree-in-the-road. What were my options? Acquire a McJob, pack my various tchotchkes (with my "bitchin" lava lamp), and become an actual contributing member of society who could then impose his own rules on his rented, dilapidated, furniture-less, "cozy" abode? The image riled me up as much as fucking Britney Spears did, that is to say, excited me as much as any unattainable dream could. I conceded to my father's iron fist.

>>6107482

well then it definitely puts it to shame

I gaze straight through the atomscarred wood /
Straight through it to the battered hood. /
Of my 57 Chevy/

I gaze upon the out of prime/
And wonder how it still survives/
The greatest of man's many crimes/
My 57 Chevy/

For when God made the Animals/
He didn't know that men would al/
So try to make life of their own/
And in so doing doom all he'd sown/
And my 57 Chevy/

For in the march of progress's wake/
Man hath finally seen fit to make/
The object with which man would make/
itself scarce from the planet's make/
Leaving only Isaih's remnant /
And my 57 Chevy

"See, the sun greeted tree leaves-"

Little grammatical error. The comma is not necessary.

>>6107567
Your style does well for action. But I can't get a grasp for the characters, because is what effectively doing that has me reading the prose, instead of actually following a story.
>>6107578
I've seen the formula of this too often. Also, the vernacular detracts from the voice, here.
>>6107636
Nice going, Elvis. Brisk, at least.

Im not trying to be a dick here, but are these threads jokes? Everytime I read through thrm I feel like every piece is a parody of something I dont know about...or they're all just horrible

>>6107798
The problem is that the majority of writers on /lit/ can't stay away from cliches. All they produce is just shit versions of stuff others have already done better.

>>6107809
Well how do you have an original thought in a world of wannabe writers? I mean you can only say something a different way so many times. Like "With great power comes great responsibility" there is no other way of saying that, it's perfect, but it can still be the theme of an original story. There's just only so much you can do.

>>6107798
Yes.

>>6107809
Whats worse is that people respond to this stuff like it isnt obviously written by 17 yr olds who just arent good yet

The poetry is whatever, but the prose, its like some kind of satire on bad writing

>>6106624
>and let me tickle your pretty pink
>that I've heard so much about in classical literature
I really like those lines

>>6106945
Pls

>>6106945
The bear the bear and maiden fair? Did you jack this from Game of Thrones?

Y'all niggers need to take a respectable course on writing and read some Hemingway or Kerouac.

In all fairness I only read a few of these excerpts, but the amount of adverbs and adjectives is beyond startling. When I write, I like to take into consideration how people actually process thoughts and speak. This differs depending on the era and whether or not you're writing in a contemporary setting, but if your descriptions are so detached from grounded perception that it becomes a flaw unto the writing itself, you've got a big problem.

That old fuck by the name of Shakespeare knew a thing or two about that. "Brevity is the soul of wit," a truism any highschooler could quote for you. Part of the craft is developing your own style, not biting others' in a poor attempt at imitation and intellectuality through an onslaught of descriptors which manage to obfuscate the scene far more than they manage to sucessfully describe it. And for God's sake, don't protest about how your adjectives are overwhelming intentionally to reinforce a theme. Drop the thesaurus and pick up some tact.

>>6107887

>Hemingway
>Kerouac

stopped reading

>>6107876
What do you mean? Never watched or read GoT, so...no.

Where can i get actual real advice on being a better writer? From scratch I mean.

>>6107893
There's an admirable sense of cohesiveness in Kerouac's hurried talk of jazz scenes and country imagery, as there is in Hemingway's blunted descriptions in his later works. Additionally, their works are amongst the easiest to fall into, hence the recommendation. You could reverse engineer a balance for brevity by reading Austen or Forster just as well, but I'm trying to be sincere with my recommendations.

If this is a /lit/ thing to toss away those two authors, then nevermind. You're a damned fool to discount any author on a superficial basis formed upon your own prejudices; there's worth in all literature.

>>6107933

brevity for its own sake is good? why?

>>6107920
i like lajos egri. the podcast/blog "helping writers become authors" is very informative. stephen king and ray bradbury have popular books on writing.
search irc #bookz or a torrent site for "writing" and you'll find a lot of stuff. get any/all of it because if you're a beginner then anything will help.

>>6107920
Stephen king, on writing
Seriously

>>6107893
Reading Hemingway's short stories will benefit anyone looking to write well.

>>6107948
>because it's, like, so clear
>even though you purposely make things more obscure by avoiding helpful clues because muh brevity

I will never understand.

>>6107920
Just ask me.

>>6107978
who are your favorite authors?

>>6107827
By cliches I mean more stylistic cliches, not the ideas that are being communicated. Obviously its very hard to have an original idea, but you can have an original way of communicating it.

>>6107948
No, that's not what I'm driving at overall. What I'm saying is in specific context to these few writings in the thread which sorely lack just that. Brevity is not an objective good, but to be concise and get a point across without the crutch of flowery language or drawn out speech is an asset most wanted. My first post was in reference to the many writings I'd read and believed would make any man breathless to say aloud, the second a defense for Hemingway and Kerouac. I'm not familiar with /lit/ culture so I assumed there was some trite reasoning for disliking the two.

Back to brevity, though, I'll say this. The ability to convey great meaning in little phrasing is a skill few budding writers possess, but one all writers of an (arbitrarily put) elevated mastery of the art hold dear. This is all opinion, but to have the /option/ to write articulately and mindfully in either length or brief is something often overlooked, much to the harm of the would-be writer. This harm manifests in the shape of needless adjectives and adverbs and poorly professed statements abound. This is why, in context, I insisted whomever posted should attempt to understand writings by authors whose mark on literature was in no small part a product of their notably concise style.

>>6108041
lol who the fuck even cares about prose besides plebs

>>6107978

You're being antithetical. The ideal ground is in the middle, and to be able to skillfully work around both ends of the spectrum to arrive at that middle.

That's all I'll say on that. I hope somebody saw some sense in what I'm preaching. I don't maintain these views as anything other than pure opinions, but said opinions were formulated in reading a great many books from a great many authors of varying renown. Whether there's any merit or veracity in that alone is for you to decide, but keep both a perceptive and analytical mind when learning to write. It's in going beyond mere understanding into analysis that one manages to take something (knowledge, learning, interpretation) from any sort of media. Best of luck!

bump

>>6108080
I was just mocking you because you preach brevity in a general sense and then mention Hemingway, an author who is purposely extra-concise in order to leave things out and up to the reader - that is, his brevity has a point besides mere style.

You write some very good posts with very good points, I hope /lit/ does not destroy you.

le bump

>>6107167
>O!, Divine afflatus b'low the curves
>As if the clouds themselves had gone and fell
>The pillowed leaps, like fleshen snowy curls
>invoke in me the poet's bursting well
>So fit to burst, with blood a-boil, nerves astir

i remain unconvinced

>>6109707
>divine afflatus
Poetic inspiration (ass)
>clouds
Symbolizes fluffy ass
>pillowed leaps/fleshen snowy curls
More ass
>invoke...bursting well
Double entendre. meaning they invoke poetic inspiration and also referring to my penis upon seeing an ass
>blood a-boil, nerves astir
The effects of testosterone production at seeing an ass

but hey the author's dead; if you want it to be about cakefarts then by god it's about cakefarts my man

>>6107336

Really appreciate it.

>>6107356

And you.

Hot Tuna.

1:11pm

The gentleman next to me is enjoying a generous salad. Greens with chicken and some sort of sweet sauce. the smell and sight of it makes me happy. Having finished a similar dish not ten minutes ago, I was satisfied yet still curious about this new fusion tea place that just opened up near my workplace. Food is one of my few actions I look forward around this part of town, mostly commercial and business attire ready. The seared tuna salad was one of the best dishes I had this week, and I was looking forward to recommending this tiny place to my co-workers. It was then I realized part of the whole lunch experience at work had to do with bragging about your meal to your dieting cubicle neighbors. a sick joy knowing their plain yogurt diet wasn’t enough. the slight frowning envy with every bite of their microwable supplementary slop.

Kristin let out a small sigh. It was nearly eight in the morning and all of the kids were lined up to play tether ball with Amelia except for Erin.
“You’re a BABY, Erin!” Suzy called out across the playground. The other kids laughed. Teasing Erin for her constant fear of Amelia had become a common past-time in the classroom.
Kristin had seen many children ostracized in her 17 years of teaching fourth graders but Erin’s case seemed especially harsh. The fact that Erin was an otherwise bright and friendly child made it all the harder to watch. What could she do? Disciplining Suzy and the others too little would only lead to Erin being bullied relentlessly. Still, too much disciplining and over-protection and she would never learn to deal with the obnoxious Suzy’s of the world—and a girl with a paralyzing phobia of Softs like Amelia would need thick skin.
“Why are you afraid of Amelia?” She had once asked Erin.
“I don’t know. I know she’s just a Soft and Softs never hurt people but she looks weird.”
It didn’t seem quite fair to call Amelia weird looking. Sure, the beta Softs had certainly looked a bit off—like uncoordinated mannequins that could move. Amelia looked like a real person from a distance and even had a type of latex skin that felt somewhat close to the real thing. The skin tended to always be cold on winter days though. A Soft model that could regulate its skin temperature wasn’t in the school’s budget. Most models that could maintain warm skin were, of course, erotic models anyway.
The most legitimate criticism as to why a Soft might “look weird” was the eyes. Even Kristin and the majority of people who were used to Softs couldn’t deny it. They never looked away suddenly when there was an unexpected noise and they moved in such a slow, precise way. Most disconcerting of all was the way they locked on during eye contact. Since the beta models release the newer versions were programmed to blink and look away at random time intervals. Despite the good intentions, this occasionally led to a rather terrifying error where the eyelids would flutter uncontrollably as each eye jerked in a different direction. It was a rare occurrence but a notable one—especially for Erin on the morning it was her turn to program Amelia for the day.

>>6107887
While I agree with you, I always thought it was funny that the line, "Brevity is the soul of wit," was uttered by one of the most loquacious douchebags that Shakespeare ever wrote. Kinda makes me doubt the sincerity of the idea.

>>6110318
Why write something like this?

>>6110335
Suzy's should be Suzys. Pacing is good, you reveal details in just the right amount at the right time. "Softs never hurt people," is obvious foreshadowing, maybe try to be a little more subtle. Would like to read more if you have it.

>>6107567
Tone it down. Loaded with unnecessary detail and stuff that (I would assume) is supposed to be funny but ends up falling flat. I can elaborate further (i.e. tell you what to delete) if you want.

>>6107578
As above, tone it down a bit. The verbose-yet-conversational style is at this point incredibly played-out. Your second sentence isn't a sentence; neither is the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth. Who wants to fuck Britney Spears anymore, anyway?

The seer screwed his glassy eye up toward the blood-streaked clouds massing above the plain - a crimson ocean of titanic portent. A crowd of people stood in pregnant silence as the attendants hauled the unlucky lamb to its appointed place of doom. The attendants unlaced their sandals, washed their coarse hands in a silver laver and presented the victim to the officiant. He glared imperiously behind a make-shift altar of cedar-wood as the masses looked on in anxious expectation.

The officiant drew a gold dagger from its sheath, handed it to the chief attendant, and uttered a prayer in a Semitic tongue, his phlegmy voice quivering from age:

God who made the pillars of Heaven
And the foundation-stone of Earth
And the creatures that lurk in the murky depths,
And the creeping things of the forest
Bear witness to this your sacrifice

And pressing the fatal edge to the victim’s throat, its eyes fixed with terror, the attendant sliced its neck mechanically. Feeble life-breath came gasping from its gullet, its blood pouring onto dry earth. When the heaving mass had ceased its pitiful bleating, the attendants bored a hole in the body and drew the liver, their hands sticky with gore.

The seer stepped forward, took the stinking liver into his hands and pressed it close to his failing eye. He studied its ominous contours with grave concern, searching its hidden patterns, straining to glean an otherworldly truth from this gleaming slab of fat. At last he raised his ancient head and bellowed to the crowd:

Hear, sons of Babylon!
God who wields the yoke of Fate
Has uttered his Doom
Our beloved king, Lord of the Four Corners of the World
Will perish within a fortnight

The mass broke into a convulsive clamor. Blanched with terror, grief-stricken, it uttered a wailing cry for its beloved shepherd.

>>6111403
>>6110318

to get critiqued.

>>6107129
That's from Umineko no Naku Koro ni...

>>6106906
>brevity is the soul of wit and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes

>His purse is empty already. All’s golden words are spent.

>>6106977
>>6106977
I love you

Everyday when I go outside I see the normalfags living their lovely happy lives, having sex and trudging along without a single thought to who they really or what they really do. A couple came past me right now, the chad had a good 5 inches on me and he had his arm wrapped around a pretty girl. The rage built inside of me, how dare these normalfag scum flaunt their love in front of me, how dare women let themselves get fucked by bigger cocks as I rot in isolation because i never recieved the postive affirmation I needed growing up. I snuck behind the chad and stabbed him in the neck with the small blade I carried. Blood spurted from his neck and he screamed "aaahhhhh what the fuck ahhh I'm gonna die!" which gave me a thrill, almost sexual in nature and the blood from his neck sprayed on his girlfriends face as she screamed. Luckily it was late at night and nobody could see or hear and as he bled out his and fell to the ground his disloyal whore tried to run away but I easily caught her. I pulled her pants off and stuck my cock deep inside of her, she was wet obviously because all women are disgusting creatures who get off on revolting desires and she started laughing and said "your cock is so small it doesn;t even hurt" so for this I sliced off her clit and she howled and her legs spasmed as the blood gushed out where her clitoris had been. I got up and ran home and told my mother to wash my clothes, I said I had been in a fight and then I had some chicken tendies.

For one of my classes, I made a modern retelling of John Donne's "The Flea". Please go easy on me.

Part 1
He sat with her, side by side on the cardboard shells of material dreams others no longer saw. A rolled paper, spewing toxic pride, rested on her swollen lips, momentarily removed from his broken mouth. Too poor to afford luxury, too privileged to sell their lives, they negotiated time with their health as collateral, loitering during early night in this distant alleyway while footsteps echoed through the rain outside. Beyond her, he felt little worth, a feeling exhausted in an exhaustive pursuit to bed and win and fulfill his unnecessary need. Psychological and psychosocial desires he lusted, his warm breath brimming with greed. When her fizzling ashes dropped onto wet grey ground, his eyes sparked with newfound determination.
“Remember that I smoked it first?
And your lips felt from receiving truly no worse?”
“Well yeah, of course. What are you talking about?”
“I figure that my lips had touched
What yours have brushed
And is that not the most tender embrace
Of the human race?
The kiss, the kiss, the stolen virginity
From a woman so beloved and cloaked in such divinity!”
“What are you talking about?” she said, pulling the cigarette from her red lips. The tube of carcinogenic relief had grown smaller, a slowly burning stump chewed and stained with lipstick on one end, alight on the other. Two sides in conflict; two ways to die.
“I speak not only of shared desire,
That speaks in sparks and sparks from fire
Which leaps from life in deathly air!
No, I only speak of our bond to share.”
Her brow grew dark, a shadow cast in a shadowy place. They sat there alone, in the quiet, on top of an abandoned forgotten cardboard shell. It read in block letters its contents, pieces for persons living in a world discontented. Her checkered shirt was torn and used, a secondhand article the only thing either of the two could afford—their money spiraled away in a smoky trail, a pathway from shelter through rain and up to heaven. Escape, their rescue escaped their grasp. He continued,
“For your touch, your touch
The only world I escape is the one I lust.
To be yours and you be mine
I wish for nothing more at any time
Than to be one with you and you with me
Our lives forever entwined we should be!”
He wooed her without shame, and she remained quiet. Evasion tended to be an avenue more effective than outright denial for a woman under fire. She yearned to escape, to forgo his advances, but there was no way to deter a man with his mind entitled and his lusts desired.
“I think it’s better that we just stay like this,” she replied, attempting to ward off his unreasonable tastes, “for now.” Her words, however, were chosen with haste, chosen to be painless. A painless blow which glanced off his hardened defense, absorbed in hopeful pretense.

>>6113681

Part 2
“Oh my love, my desire
Whether now or tomorrow matters little when in fire
We rest together in eternal matrimony
For the sins committed in state-sponsored alimony!
You have lived too long as an outlaw,
And my life has been spent like a sullen southpaw;
Together must we consummate our love
With purity enough to please some power above.”
His treatise was founded upon faulty theology—through sin they would cement redemption. She turned away, a futile and childish attempt to hide her face out of misplaced shame.
“Oh my love, please do not run
For you and I together make one
And I cannot live long without you
So let us cement what we have started in a way most true!”
She stood up, dropping the cigarette to the floor. It hit the cardboard noiselessly, almost without noticeable impact. But the impact was there, the thud did not create vibration in the air, but stirred vivation in his breast. Filled with anxiety and anger, a fear of loss and a loss of care, he sprang to his feet,
“Why in the world would you be so crass
To stomp on our love as if it were grass
I have given you what you have wanted
And your self to me you shamefully have flaunted!
Now I lose what I deserve
For giving only without reserve!
A life spent without care,
A world wasted without heir,
You have shattered my hopes and your salvation too!
Now the night will overtake me and the rain will soon drown you!”
His outburst proved to be the necessary concoction of anger and arrogance, of tactless aggression, to call forward her anger, her heated ire. She stepped over him, towering above his diminutive form. He staggered backwards, running into the wall, falling to the wet floor of the isolated alley. She yelled in righteous indignation, her lips spread and spittle flurries raining from clouds of cheeks,
“What right have you
Who determines that he
Is highest prince and statement true
And my body his gift should be?
You woo me with paper
Wrapped around tobacco’d lust
And in the spiraling smoke-vapor
You think I should trust,
You to be kind and virtuous and deserving
Of myself and my life
A mere commodity for reserving?
I tell you no lie in this extramarital strife.
There is nothing for you to gain
If you wish to be King
For your right does not remain
To try to make me your lowly ‘thing’!”
The rain fell harder as she stormed out the alley, her long pants a dot of blue in the horizon as his empty eyes filled with the dripping storm. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he shrugged, determining defeat to be distant still.

>>6113676
You're just strawmanning. If you want it to be compelling, you have to give the narrator reasonable-sounding arguments

Well, what is a frog-tower, after all? Nobody outside of Iceland, it seems, has ever heard of one--and even those from outside my home province are apt to have forgotten them by now. But there are some who cannot forget.

A frog-tower is a wooden cylinder, about 25 meters tall, with a richly accommodated room on the bottom floor and two less decorated rooms above it. It's name comes from the giant, cartoon frog mask that decorates the top floor and peers out into the ocean. All frog masks, having different architects, are different—yet at once, they are all deeply similar. Entering a frog-tower, one will invariably encounter a well-accommodated, comfortable kind of living room, or study. The father and mother will be sitting quietly in a corner, reading. They will doubtlessly nod absent-mindedly to your arrival. Though there is comfort on the bottom floor, the upper floors possess that which makes the frog-towers so unique to our country & region, for they are tied inseperably to the children of our land. From an early age, a child receives a frog-mask from a relative. If this is impossible, he whittles his own. Alongside the mask, there is a costume, meant to be worn exclusively within the frog-tower, that covers the skin entirely. Children are not allowed to speak in the frog-tower (this injunction is enforced by the parents below)—and, as a consequence, they commonly develop incredibly complex sets of codes and gestures to speak with one another, allowing them to communicate in ways that words could never express. In time, a culture of the towers formed, a secret society still half-remembered by all who came up in my province.

Yet, like all secret societies—like all true magic in the world—the frog-tower was doomed to be forgotten. Still very young when I first returned to my province, I assumed that the things of my youth would persist forever—that I would persist forever. Such is youth’s eternal folly.

Meeting with a childhood friend, we had enjoyed a tasty, quiet dinner, and spoken a little about our former lives. He stood up, thanked me rather awkwardly for the conversation, and bid me goodnight. It was still light out—but time in Iceland differs from the rest of time.
Sitting in silence at the table, drinking the last of the soup he had prepared for me, I noticed for the first time his younger sister, Agatha. I met her eyes and she met mine—unafraid. I looked down, but she still gazed at me.
After a few moments, she spoke. Her voice was as smooth and pleasant as a stone in a river. “Would you like to visit the frog-tower nearby?”

>>6113700
We trekked for some time across the rolling, verdant hills. The sky was grey and silent overhead, and there was only a little wind in the smooth grass. At last, we crested a hill, and the frog-tower revealed itself to us.

I shut the door behind me, and nodded to the man in the study. Agatha turned to me, her face bright. “Let’s go!” She took to the ladder, and began to climb, disappearing quickly into the darkness above.

I hesitated a moment, my hand resting on the first rung, and I gazed at the man reading. He did not look up at me. Because of my fear of heights, the frog-towers had always been rather menacing to me. Now my fear was coming back. Agatha’s progress echoed in the dark. At last I saw her shadow disappear, leaving a cool square of grey sky behind it. Her head edged over, long hair flowing down. “Come on!”

I rose higher, climbing cautiously, and at last came to the portal to the roof. Because of the age of the frog-tower, the roof had been blown off, and the walls were sparse. Seeing this, I was afraid to continue. I was stuck for a moment, between worlds, not knowing what to say, when Agatha reached out a hand to me. I took her hand, and she lifted me into the upper level.

After a few moments, she spoke. Her voice was as smooth and pleasant as a stone in a river. “Would you like to visit the frog-tower nearby?”

We trekked for some time across the rolling, verdant hills. The sky was grey and silent overhead, and there was only a little wind in the smooth grass. At last, we crested a hill, and the frog-tower revealed itself to us.

I shut the door behind me, and nodded to the man in the study. Agatha turned to me, her face bright. “Let’s go!” She took to the ladder, and began to climb, disappearing quickly into the darkness above.

I hesitated a moment, my hand resting on the first rung, and I gazed at the man reading. He did not look up at me. Because of my fear of heights, the frog-towers had always been rather menacing to me. Now my fear was coming back. Agatha’s progress echoed in the dark. At last I saw her shadow disappear, leaving a cool square of grey sky behind it. Her head edged over, long hair flowing down. “Come on!”

When I met you, the stars fell out of the sky and drowned in the ocean. One survived and washed ashore. He was raised like a human child and grew up to work at 7-11.

When he gets off work, at sunset, he walks to his apartment and looks into the velvet darkness, overwhelmed by homesickness.

>>6111403
>"Softs never hurt people," is obvious foreshadowing, maybe try to be a little more subtle. Would like to read more if you have it.

I want this to be a novel eventually so I may post the first chapter sometime. The robots (Softs) won't go all Terminator or anything though. The book is about Erin being generally technophobic in a near future with self-driving cars, robots that fuck better than people, even deeper immersion into phones/internet than there is now, etc.

At one point I have a scene in mind where she gets exposure therapy from the school psychologist. He starts by showing her screws, then chips, parts of Soft, etc. Could be kind of funny.

Chasing streams to their ends in twilight forests
is not the occupation of a mammal, a monster, or a mechanism.

What are you, then?

>>6106607
here's my shit

“I can’t talk anymore” was the last thing I heard from her. If I didn’t know better I would have called back and asked why, but I did so I didn’t. It was late, too much to drink, and I just needed to get to bed. If she had something to say, she’d say it. That much I knew. It’s strange when an old friend of over 10 years tells you she “can’t talk anymore,” as if she had been out in the cold too long and her lips had frozen over. That would be thinking optimistically. The conversation had been stinted, not even room for pleasantries. An admission of honesty from me, an admission of the same from her. Earlier in my life I would have wracked my brain going over every last encounter with her to figure out why what was said was said. But time can be a time-saving mistress and I’ve long since believed that people can be so sensitive to the actions of others. In youth you think that everybody is the same while you’re the only true individual. Growing into adulthood you learn that you’re just the same as everyone else, and that everyone else is their own individual.
Yes, I should be more concerned. My long-time friend, intellectual equal, companion-for-life, part-time lover has told me she can’t talk anymore. It will be ephemeral. I’ve known her long enough to trust her, even if I don’t always understand. I’ve even said the same to her. “I can’t see you anymore.” But it didn’t take more than the strength of mutual familiarity and a little bit of time for that to change.

Sunset hits on the eve of December
When the winter came and went
Do you remember?
I felt the snow melt on your tongue
I tasted the night, it would not come
But days, the days
The everlasting light
The night, the night, you cried with such delight.
With sadistic taste you fled from me
Running alone
I run now too.
The sunset faded too, along with December
But morning could not come
From the burning of the Sun.
Remember, remember, the day you were born
With garlands and raisains and blankets to stay warm
We huddled infantile
Beneath her endless bossom, I touched you
And you me
And the morning finally came.
Remember, remember, how it felt to die?
How her hands on your neck
Warm, forced me to cry?
The morning shot fiery bolts through my room
I knew you then
When you died in her womb.

TRAINWRECK BARBIE


White trash barbie
Brought up in the sticks
Daddy scouts the bushes
Mama checks for ticks

Niggerized convertibles
Roll up in the dark
Country boys with long cocks
Prowl the trailer park

Tank tops, flip flops, cutoff denim jeans
Smoky-eyed bae, she's the woman of my dreams
Dirty church roof, bleary stars up above
My hand between her knees, she taught me how to love

Mama said we're crazy
Just another Okie fable
Used to go to church
Now she's dancing on the table

White trash barbie
Living in the sticks
Only say you love me
That's my only wish.

My brother asked me to drive him to a house party. I said yes, but didn't tell him why.

The party sucked. Kimberly wasn't even there. I went out for a smoke and some guy spilled beer on my shoes.
When I looked over and saw Zach with his guitar, it was the last straw.

"Get your coat" I said, "we're leaving."

"But John, I don't have a coat."

"Then get moving, god damn it."

I went to work the next morning. I wash dishes at a diner in Bridgeton. As I was scrubbing the faucet, I noticed
the shift manager was avoiding my eyes.

"Hey Jim" I said.

Jim coughed. "Hidy, John. Can we talk for a minute?"

We went in his office. Jim shut the door. When he spoke, his voice sounded nervous.

"Listen, John - I'm going to have to let you go."

I didn't say anything.

"We're cutting down to double shifts. This place is barely staying open as it is."

I looked down at the desk. There was a dark plash of ink pooling around the nameplate.

"I'm sorry."

I got up and went out.

>>6113744

stanzas 1, 4 and 5 are great
2 and 3 not so much

>>6113812

Thanks for your feedback. I agree that stanza 3 isn't a good fit for this poem.

I think I'll keep number two, though. It adds some of the vulgarity I want.

>>6113744
this is very very good

>>6113827
the first line for the third stanza is really good though, varies the rhythm. Using only twice sounds sort of awkward, but otherwise, good job.

As he smoothly thrust my passport back to me his arms melted at a fluid, organic pace back to their natural resting place behind the desk. He had an open and friendly smile throughout the whole exchange, but I still felt uncomfortably focused on the dark spots under his eyes which really didn’t suit his positive voice. “Are you planning to stay for long?” His eyes remained fixed on me, but unmistakably lifeless, as he posed his essentially rhetorical question. The conversation continued, kept afloat on pure manners, “Possibly… Depends if the weather is like last night.”
“Ah, so you heard about that. Well if you plan to stay long, be quick on getting a place to stay that will last awhile, Tokyo’s been busier than ever lately.”
“Thank you, keep up the good work.”

Tired as he was, he wasn’t lying. I’d never been to Tokyo before, but the secret of the economic boom was let out the moment I’d laid eyes on the landscape. Not in a whisper, but in thunderous shouts. I saw the remains of several layers of snow, a blanket that had put the city to sleep the night before I’m sure. But the ceaseless crowds had divided the snow to the sides. As the people removed their blankets in the morning the sidewalks had followed. The rush was apparent even in the manner of the buildings; newer floors clearly had been added to the much older buildings below. And even then, I wasn’t in the centre of the city here as the airport was noticeably removed from the working rush’s heart. In light of all of this, I took the opportunity to move on.

Although I was sure I’d get tediously tired of it, Tokyo is proud of its railway so I decided to use it since I had time to spare. I took in more of the rapidly moving scenery as I walked there, and after some minor mistakes with my Japanese leading to some confusion, I managed to get a pretty good understanding of the shape of Tokyo and its train network. I got on a train and headed further out from the city centre to Ichikawa. Thankfully despite its size navigation for a newcomer was pretty straightforward around the city. Unfortunately after the train I had quite a bit of walking to go. The snow had long ago stopped, but there was still a painful chill in the air. The crunching of snow under my boots got louder and louder as I moved further and further from the busy roads towards the hills. After a solid half an hour of walking, I ended up an absurd road, it was steeper than any of the hills I’d used on the way there but it wasn’t even on a straight incline. It looped around the hill rather than going straight up. I counted my blessings knowing that this walk could have been harsher. However, once that thought had escaped from my head I saw an unmistakably rare sight.

what have i come
to make of you

transparent idea
bridging unrequited space

or atoms unmoved
as to see

and confine
with volatile edge,

dispensable as
you allow it.

do you love
the feeling more than
the effect.

Wrote this in a few minutes, mostly to see if the aesthetics I like could be applied to my city. Tell me what you think about it.

High tide
And a tidal lock of fog
Clouds and
Seething light.
A pretension of transcendence encoded in the world
Like a glitchy lockpicking minigame
Or handwoven norse tapestries depicting
Asgard, Niflheim
Midgard
And all the others.
The day breaks into reflections
And bleeds in and out realities
Simulacra
And fractal theogonies.
Venice is the same
Here or on an iPad

The poet only the poet knows


He had faith in the first words he heard.
Then he changed, from faith to faith,
As if he were listening to the words.
They are about Man, he thought. And I am a man.
Therefore, they are about me.

New faith in a near certainty:
All poems are of the same vision.
All true sounds are divined from the same signs,
From the same blue fire that burns
On the dark plain of the Spirit’s inward midnight.

Yet still by the glow he dug up the plain
For evidence. Shovel-blade’s edge to the dirt,
Foot to the shovel-blade’s shoulder.
In the dirt he found
No artifacts, fossils, bones.

Dream plain, fire of an alien heart.
Shovel-blade into the dirt. Dirt from dirt lifted and poured on the pile.
A dust cloud hovered over the dark plain.
And from the poets’ words he chose a name for that blue cloud,
As if their shaped words could name such shapeless things.

>>6113744
>Tank tops, flip flops, cutoff denim jeans
good rhythm

>My hand between her knees, she taught me how to love
love this line because it makes me think of myself

overall, I like the poem. It's a lot different than a lot of the shit that's posted here

>>6107743
what formula do you speak of? Could I get an example?

and I'm writing the story in the past tense. Therefore shouldn't my vernacular mirror my current one? It also explains the Britney Spears part, because 16 year old me wanted to fuck Britney Spears

To hear and see it bubble up and pop;
A richer red- it calls the eyes to come,
To come and smell the air, to taste it well
and taste it long, the iron in your nose
Now pouring from the throat like water white,
And see the sun reflected bright and red.

This is my first attempt at poetry ever, basically. Just basic iambic pentameter.

how does /lit/ feel about poetry in "text messaging" vernacular?

>>6117192
kek

>>6116359
>free verse

ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIRST LANGUAGE:
I’ve read a story where a doctor lets his patient die by negligence (not a fan of allusions; so I’ll just leave this here). It reminded me of a friend I had (I still do). He’s a fellow intern at my college, my roommate and he has killed a patient already.
As I write this, he has just left to the ward after having his fourth of vodka. I’m not being judgmental or critical (and I beg you to be the same) but the last thing people want is a drunk guy handling their morphine.
His first resuscitation was a failure, by the way. But that’s not what I’m talking about because a patient that needs cardiopulmonary resuscitation is already dead, technically.
Anyhow. On his fourth day of Intensive Care Unit posting, he had just taken leave for the changing room at 4 am in the morning when the nurse banged at the door to inform that a patient had just went into respiratory distress. He hurried to the patient’s bedside, but on reaching, he had no idea what to do next. The sleepy old nurse had too little to offer. He picked a needle from the tray, assuming the patient had his both lungs collapsed, and stuck it in his thorax. It is still a mystery how he managed to hit the patient’s stomach instead of his lungs and needless to say the patient died shortly.
On that fateful early morning, I was grinding up some pills in my room to snort later on. That was when he entered the room exasperated, dark faced, perspiring. Then he said, “I just killed a man, where’s my vodka?”
PS: In the aforementioned story, the doctor jumps off a building after killing his patient.

>>6117281

Keep working at it, the language is still pretty shaky but with more practice you'll be good, it's clear you possess writing skills (just not acceptable prose-ready English skills)

>>6117281
this is some seriously good stuff. I'd like to see more.

>>6117380
WRITTEN UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF DXM:
The Hangman’s further glimpses into the Fractal Universe:
In my dreams, people use to switch faces between them. Like the face literally detaches from one’s head and flies graciously to another, with a hazy trail behind it. The one doesn’t have a choice but to accept his partner’s face. It isn’t the one’s or the other’s choice. It’s totally the choice of the faces.
There is an interesting observation. The more times the faces switch, the more distorted they become. After a couple of times of the switches, the faces go beyond recognition that they even lose the characteristics of a typical face. No other normal face wants to switch with such one (for it is the choice of the face solely and not that of the person). The people with such distorted faces get distorted themselves, their organized anatomy melting down, their protoplasm seeping out and one day, poof and gone.
To add the Jester’s words of wisdom: ‘No person understands how or why this happens but they accept the reality as it is.’

That's a long terrace and ther are what, four or five bushes, along the fence, glass with plastic pillars looking down, TWENTY SEVENTH FLOOR: Looking down on the hawk, watching a hawk, turning on BLUE TOOTH
UNCLE DENTIST: Uncle-chair shining twitching corner utensil, electro-fusion dental dam chair DEVICE 00!1 ORDER Cat. 45 UNCLE-CHAIR UNCLE !-02, seated waiting for capillary digging and spritizng blood spritzer pill spritzzer, INTRAVENOUS CATALOG SERIES AAA: $343,23 , Itemized, subject NEPHEW.
ALPHABET LOG AA!: Just waiting ofr Itunes to loadddd.. goiong to the teeechhnnoo parrttty!!!!!!!
ALPHABET NEPHEW: Picked upa flloursencet photo light from model shoot from ex-roommate 43 year old adriana CUT-To-FLASH OF FLOURESCENT ILLUMINATION, CUT-to-FLASH of NON=FLOURESCENT OVERHEAD ILLUMINATION, CUT=To-CATALOG of 'it's easier to just turn on overhead despite mood difference but I flipped the bed around to make it easier to plug in FLOURESNCENT'
FLOURESECNET: He came back... I love him but I'm not as excited as when he was just bisitng...
DANGLING PLUG: Turn around for your UNCLE-CHAIR-E:ELECTRIC
1..2 = = $4240..9 -- SUB. QUANT. 30 8 MG
1..34 == $656 -- THER. 2 HR.
1..342 == $985.34 -- GR. THER. 3 HR. x 3

UNCLE-A1: WHY DONT YOU PAINT YOURSELF A PICTURE USE CANVAS PAINT
UNCLE-A2/MOTHER: WHY don't you paint yourself a picture use canvas paint...arabesquess..
,,,<<<(((R%%%R)<<<AS
UNCLE BURN TUMESCENT_FUSE ELECTRO_CAPILLARY DISTRIBUTION FASCILLOMUSCULATRE IDSTRICUB DISTRIBUT REAKD... BLood cost unit: $$24 ELECTRIC HUUUMMMMER JERJERJK IT FOUR TIMES is when I know I'm sick
SCHOOLBUS: DRIVER:

>>6117434
>>6117425

lame, tryhard etc

>>6117425
Like the idea of the faces deciding writing maybe feels a little labored and could have done without the On DRIGS disclaimer though

Colt was the middle child. He came to Hollow Oak Hills a wide eyed fourteen year old, but left a broken young man. Mr. Serbo would often watch him from his adjacent home in the early mornings, staring down at him in the side yard among the howling generators. It was Colt’s routine to go there before his parents awoke, to smoke his cigarettes, or to cry, or to just stare hollow eyed at the sky. He would consistently bring home mediocre grades. When his father would give him long winding talks that would include words like: “Merit,” “Success,” and “Manhood,” he would just sit indifferent and motionless with diffused and burnt thoughts that could only be labeled daydreams. During the bright spots of the day, he would typically consider himself a success: He was popular among girls. He could make small children laugh. He had a firm handshake. His friends were many and true. He wasn’t a phony. This is what “Success,” “Merit,” and “Manhood” was to him, that you were overall true, humble, and superlatively, in the right place of people’s hearts. He was kind.
The two terrible cards that fate dealt him was his self-conscious and his addictions. Although the only thing he considered he was addicted to was his daily schedule.
It wasn’t a planned list, it was more of an internal belief in how he could get the most out of his day. At 7 AM he would wake up and dress himself. He didn’t care. Well, he did, but not as much as he perceived everyone else did. A half hour later, he would find himself in the garage crushing and dicing tablets of drugs originally prescribed to kids he had known in school, faces smiling with coats filled with whatever his own mind could shove in there. Outstretched hands that he would fill with money. They only accepted twenties. Colt always considered himself lucky, the fact that his mom made a habit out of withdrawing not 10 dollar bills, not 100 dollar bills, but crisp, Andrew Jackson twenties, was--to him--another sign that the stars were shining on him. The morning light that crept into his conscious always suited the euphoria felt from that powder in his nose. Every aspect of the morning environment suited this mental space far above the paranoia and anxieties of cannabinoid mornings.
At 8 he would cross sit on Jacob Hernandez’s porch, wondering about his girlfriends, thinking, no, dreaming about the day ahead of him. He was often dizzy with nicotine when Jacob finally stood in the dawn.

I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagles' wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man, and the mind of a man was given to it. And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth; and it was told, ‘Arise, devour much flesh.’ After this I looked, and behold, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back. And the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots. And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.

Here's some automatic writing I did:

MALAMUTE
Gruesome, like the leaves in the dawn of your home,
Vultures flowing down your veins,
And fearful eyes of the children infected by unfit parents,
Subtype on a species of nothings, of empty payments and totally alien to ourselves.

I ignore the meaning of the fire, but I know that it makes you afraid and that you need it,
Like we all need the dirt under our nails, like god needs the blue sky,
And how the blue sky doesn’t need anyone, no one, no one.
Broken clicks from the necessity to hear your voice, to see your eyes,

To know that in some form you exist still, in VHS or in small dots in the screen,
Even then you’re nothing; you’re a speaker for the broken feathers,
Of all things that are not okay and that I love because they’re not,
Everything geared inside this minuscule machine, that star in your chest,

The shadow of your lamps, drawing in the window a thousand me’s and you’s and them,
All shit, all gold, diamonds made of dandruff, salutes given in the absence of a welcoming,
The demolition of the things as I know them and of the things I do not accept,
The vipers in the grass, the trophy’s I’ll incinerate,

Together with everything else that reminds me of what I am and where I’m at,
Everything becomes soluble in the tears of existing, in the ink that I hope you’ll bring me soon,
So I can write down these false memories that are better than the real ones,
Better than reality, better than things as they are, on a quantic level, on an infinite level,

On a level in which only I know the way out.

It’s coming. I know it. I’ve talked to the others and they deny it. They think I’m crazy, but I know - I know they can hear it too. I know it’s there, I can feel it under my skin and inside my bones, in the tiny hairs on my neck, in my head and soul. I can’t think of anything else anymore. The others, they’ve forgotten.
It’s just a couple minutes away. Everyone’s asleep. They sleep because they want to forget. They sleep because dreams fill their minds with distractions. They’re the ones who’re crazy. They live their lives denying to themselves what they already know. Or they know but don’t understand. And that makes all the difference.
I look outside my apartment building and I can barely see the streets 39 floors down. But there are no cars, no lights on in any distant room. Street lamps are lonely. I put my ear against the walls and hear nothing. I’m making this journey alone.
Just 5 minutes and then the horn will sound. Sound like it always has since my birth. But it’s stronger now. It doesn’t let me sleep. All I dream of is The Calling, and when I awake in that cold, heart throbbing, sweat, I know that The Calling is coming.
I’m ready to concede myself. No more running away. No more denying it. It has gotten worse since I’ve started living alone. But that won’t be a problem soon. The midnight horn, the silent screeches, the seductive siren, and I will follow it.
Just another minute or two now. More and more am I feeling ready. I shout to the world, to the other inhabitants of the apartment and anybody willing to listen – to wake up. I shout to them that I will be free, that they should free themselves too. That they are trapped and will live their life trapped unless they seek that freedom. The word tingles on my tongue. Freedom. It tastes sweet. It means no more suffering and no more confusion.
I make my way to the windows and open it. The moist night air and cool wind breeze, I breathe it in, all of it. I look down the 39 floors and see that distant road. I jump.


Really I think it's mostly edgy abstract shit. But if you think differently i'd like to know about it.

I wrote this five minutes ago in one quick jolt. It has gone through no editing and revisions (and my style involves HEAVY editing), but yeah. Here it is. And it's short!

I really like dogs. Aside from the fact that they’re cute and will do anything for your love, I think the best expression of my love for dogs is this: They’re a microcosm for the human experience, and that’s what makes humans so innately in love with dogs. Dogs will do the absolute dumbest stuff in the world. Dumber than you thought was possible. They’ll eat their own poop and drink out of the toilet without a second thought. But isn’t that a human thing to do? Not eating our own poop and drinking out of the toilet, but I mean, making stupid mistakes. We’ve all taken a long drink out of the metaphorical toilet in our lifetimes, and we didn’t even know it was wrong. Dogs are just wonderful to be around. They’re innately happy creatures who only want affection, if just for a little while. Nobody can greet a person like a dog with his nose pressed up against the glass and tail looping in strums faster than any metronome you’ve ever seen. No animal I know of can express such just at magnitudes like that. I think a dog knows more about being human than we do, because when you reduce us and them down to our finest points, dogs are a brunt flush of what we take drugs to feel; Happiness, sadness, joy, stupidity. On Top of all the bullshit we sometimes forget what it’s like to run around like an idiot, or to be loud and obnoxious at inopportune times. But dogs never forget what that’s like, because they know better than we do what it means to be human. And that’s why we love dogs.

>>6106617
Before
My
Might,
Perish

stem pleb reporting in

He dropped to the grass, cold, metallic and he felt, comfortably and familiarly sterile, as the glass enclosure split open around him there was an unexpected sense of calm and thought he should breathe deeply as a symbolic gesture but didn't bother. Should he have been surprised that the air was fine? nobody had ever said it wasn't and yet nobody had said it was. The stars looked clearer than he imagined, it was akin to meeting someone again after an age of estrangement. The platform was resting a few feet above the surface, totally stationary and inaudible, and yet, the unmuffled sound of the waves couldn't help but make him feel, against all logic, like he might just by carried away with them. It was an unsettling thought, but he wanted to embrace it, to ignore himself. The night sky made everything else seem irrelevant. It was as if the conclusions he'd been trying to piece together had been negated entirely in the most unassuming fashion. He could hear the platform whirring again suddenly, he thought of course that it must be her, that she'd woken from her sleep out of concern no doubt. Probably knew about the platform, possibly used it herself, in which case wouldn't it be odd that she never mention it? Unless of course it didn't really mean that much to her, yes that was probably it, why would it after all?
As the platform slowly descended, glass shell closing up segment by segment, he saw a bird fly past overhead. He wondered what the bird was up to and wished that the smile that it put on his face would get to it somehow, as a thank you of sorts. The top of the enclosure sank below the surface of the ocean and as the clear night sky disappeared under waves of distortion, it became clear that the smile had in fact left, but then so had he.

Rewrite of some stuff I posted in a thread a few weeks ago.

A girl was crying by my locker.

I knew her name--Shanta something. She was always more or less under my radar, as were most people my age at the time. I didn't really give a shit about petty drama, not that I do now, anyway. She was cute, to say the least; I guess she was quite beautiful. She had a sort of exotic allure in her expressions, in the way she walked and talked; she was the kind of person who would smile at you even if you never said a damn word to her. I mean, I don’t think that I ever had, not before that day at least. Looking past her, I saw a hulking figure walking away; this I knew to be her boyfriend, Jon Barad, some asshat Arab. He was the exact opposite sort that I was: huge, hulking, a football player, admittedly rather attractive, the kind of guy you’d expect a popular girl like her to be dating. She would often deny her popularity but I knew that she was, and so did everyone else. She was likable and amicable and and optimistic, the opposite of the cold, cynical bastard. that I was at the time.

So there she was, quietly crying, right next to my locker. I mean, that was really the first time I'd ever gotten a good look at her. She was quite stunning, actually. Indian, but with a pale complexion, with thick lips and brilliantly white teeth. Her hair came down in perfect, bouncing curls just below her shoulders. What really caught me were her eyes. They were so deep, so filled with emotion. I didn’t think anything of her--not yet, at least--but she had intrigued me, and I was a difficult person to intrigue.

I could never pick up a bottle or a cigarette or a drug and develop a deadly habit.

I lack the commitment even for a vice.

Maybe it is the attachment to something, or God forbid, someone, that steers a chance of addiction away.

People speak of need and desperation, sucking smoke between their teeth, rubbing powder on their gums or chugging acid down their throats for some kind of escape they can’t even cling to.

And I am the weaker of those people, for I cannot so much as latch on to a routine if it means doing something over again.

Though change is a factor I fear most, scared of what little familiarity I allow in my life will slip through my fingers and I will grasp at nothing but air.

But I secretly wish I could pick a poison and let it eat at my years, to live life as fragile as it is, to wake up in pain instead of the numbness that I am accustomed to.

For I am not frightened by death, we are born to pay for our very funeral, guided to pick a piece of land and instruct someone to bury you there.

My death will be an unfortunate event that I will have no control over.

Because I could never pick up a bottle or a cigarette or a drug and develop a habit.

>>6106607
If one would be so kind. It has yet to be through a true and worthy editing machine, but I just want to see if it's good at it's core.
>inb4 fedoras
http://pastebin.com/dciqZWpe

>>6113744
Love it. You write anything else similar? I disagree with the other anon, I think stanza 3 fits very well, holds the piece together.

>>6116359
Okay, I don't really like the format or pacing, and a lot of it sounds like generic, non-specific existentialism. The use of tidal twice in the first two lines makes what are already uninteresting opening lines jarring. The only part of this that really stood out to me was the inclusion of modern electronics into the existentialism. I actually like the way you did it, and would love to see it included in a better poem. Just be careful, because I can see that easily becoming contrived and silly.

>>6117185
Very good for a first attempt. Imagery is very good. Glad to see you started learning with a structure of some kind - nothing wrong with free verse, but I think it's important to start with structure. Amateurs tend to jump into free verse thinking it will give them more freedom of expression, but most end up making really similar tryhard-profound poetry anyway.

>>6120234
Didn't read all the way in, little less than halfway, but it was funny and was written well enough. All the "um's" and "uh's" are a little much, and it would probably be more effective to try and make God sound casual and human through his diction and sentence structure. It's a solid story, at least to the part I read. A bit of obvious, heavy-handed absurdism, but I definitely wouldn't say it's bad.

Comment's too long, I'll comment on this with my own poetry.

>>6120300
>Here's mine. Not sure what it's supposed to be yet exactly. I was told in another thread it sounded like slam poetry, but I've never listened to any slam poetry. I listen to a lot of rap, so that may be why. It does seem like it would be better suited to rapping/spoken word.

Sidewalk chunk symphony
Hits hard, but it ain't mean
Auto-portrait, but it ain't me
It's you who can't believe,
Won't believe in the
Street sounds, ants swarmin
Crawlin coffee grounds
I seen your sister hangin around
Dropping piggy nickels in patchwork pockets
Like,
If you want it need it but don't got it
They say prayers do somethin
At least distract the goddamn unconscious

Redirect them ropes
Tuggin so hard at the back of your throat
Youre not chokin but your prides
Been worse than broke for a while
Functioning, for someone else
Hitting someone else's
High notes
High birth
Throw the babies out
With the baptism bath
But now you got time
And a dozen silver spoons to look at

So,
That's that
Don't bother bringin it back
With the slow reverse
And a pile of poor man's trash
Can't eat flat screens
Boiled Jordan's you can but won't
Cause that logos been there like a birthmark
And the textbooks didn't seem so smart to invest in
When your best friend got his head caved in
For that jersey you lent him
Smart kid, smoke the sorrows
Well spoken retards never know
Picking up the gun is an easier load
Than strained smiles on park benches
And baggies full of late teens fallout pension

The last way you kept
Humidity out of eyelids
Dried up the brains
And I wept
Midsummer day slept
Between dumpster and chain link,
Between the prologue and the
Brink of beginning notes
Sunrise, nope, that's high hopes
Just headlights
Breakin up the late night cockroach festivities
goddamn, this whole bloody city
Smells like a poorly written mystery
Catalogued, false recorded history
Revolutions bled to death in these streets
Curb stomped by law abiding Americans
Who said nothin when the city
Burnt it's children to a crisp
And opened fire on those who dare flee
Running, screaming, their arms held babies
But the boys in uniform shooting
Apparently ain't responsible
For doing what they were told to do
Now the flags bleed their red into the streets,
The blues are hiding in the poor families
Who salute the bleached white flag
Hanging in their doorways
Curse the rebels down the street
Cause the TV news tells them to
Meanwhile the kids are off to school
To hear chained and abused truths
About how the courage of a revolutionary few
Led you to pay taxes the same
to Kings with softer names

My heart's bleeding lemon juice on these pages
But it ain't turning up anything worthwhile I been saying
I liked it better when I was breaking bullshit with my tongue
Heavy on the ears but lighter on the heart
Than making my loved ones think I'm
Pissin on the places I come from
The fact is, whatever the fuck I'm trying to say
Is said better by emptying a pocket of its spare change.

How's my writing for a solitary 19 year old?

"Its 9’o’clock in morning, glum and windy. I’m 19 years and ten days old. Ten days ago I tore open a rather stiff envelope, procuring a ticket for a single flying lesson, shadowing a pilot in a small passenger plane for 40 minutes over the South Essex area, where I live. I stand alone at the end of the runway as a large, hulk-ish man with wild grey hair fluttering in the wind emerges out of a tiny aeroplane, as if it was much bigger on the inside. I look forward to having my face deformed against the windscreen. He waves a large frying pan hand at me, and I return the sentiment. Pulling my collar up to divert the wind blasting down my back I make a jog to meet him.
“Cameron, yes?” he says gruffly, but friendly, thrusting his hand out to me.
“Yes” I say firmly grasping his hand and trying to keep my wrist from snapping as he shakes my organs about. I do enjoy a proper handshake.
“Duncan” he nods. “You’re in this side then” he beckons into the side of the cockpit he previously emerged from.
I clamber up onto the seat and then sink slightly into it. I find a cog like wheel that adjusts the angle of the seat and inch myself forwards a little. ‘Put your belt on’ he commands as he hauls himself into the plane. The belt is more of a harness, with a big clip right in the centre. I can’t help thinking that if an object is going to have a point of failure its going to be a big clip in the centre.
As I start to relax into the rather comfortable seat I fancy I can smell whisky, especially as Duncan writhes about with the intricate harness. I’m certain the smell is emanating from his crinkled old clothes and his breath as he sighs deeply and swings his door shut."

>>6120410

Cont.

"‘We aught not to even get him a present this year’ Paul said with a mouthful of cheese and cracker. His wife, Sally, darted him a slit eyed glare. ‘I mean of course we should’ He gulped, ‘He has been a right little prick though’. Sally sighed. Cameron had been a bit of a prick the past year. He crashed the second hand Ford KA he got for his eighteenth birthday, then went to Berlin with his friends and got arrested for possession of Marijuana. He wasn’t a ‘bad kid’, he just had some funny ideas about how to behave, especially when no-one's looking. Having parents with overly conservative ideologies didn’t aid his plight either.
‘We can’t be like that, we need to teach him, not punish him. He’s becoming a man and finding it hard, Paul’
‘Well...’ Paul winced and patted his chest, then exhaled coarsely. ‘What about one of those training days where he’ll get treated like shit by some drill sergeant and have to run through hoops and crawl under barbed wire while being shot at and chased by dogs’ His voice got quicker and higher as he imagined his lazy son darting through the woods with a German Shepard barking wildly after him. ‘That’d teach him a thing or two, haha!’
‘That’s not a bad idea…’ Sally’s eyebrows became buoyant as she swivelled over to her laptop and jabbed at the keyboard. ‘No guns though’.
Paul meandered around the kitchen opening each cupboard, interrogating its contents and, disappointed in its lack of nibble-able content thwacked it shut.
‘Found anything?’
‘Bloody hell, £250 for a weekend!’
‘Surely there’s somewhere cheaper, look for somewhere cheaper, Sally’
‘Yes what do you think I’m doing’
As she tik-taked away Paul swiveled and reached over to the cupboard,above the oven, reached in and grabbed a red tube of crisps, then clawed off the lid and shoved a stack of 6 in his gob at once.
‘Can’t find anything better’ she announced
‘Are you serious?’ Paul tried to say with his mouth still full, spraying crisp shrapnel all over the table, like some sort of snack based conflict had taken place in their contrivedely quaint, ‘shabby chic’ kitchen.
‘For god sakes Paul’ she hissed, getting up and snatching the tube out of his hands, like it was a toy that belonged to another child."

Honest opinions welcomed.

>>6106607
The summer was good--no, not good like grandma's cooking, but rather more like the familiar smell of manure. You see, the sun rose with a smile that day, waving to us as a good neighbor and lifting up the darkness like the pages of the Sunday paper. Revealed in all its glory were the stories of our lives; from the lowliest infant born in ram shack hospitals to frolicking lovers preparing for a swim. Children played and elders died, sometimes even in the same room. All beneath the benevolent smile of sol. If nothing else, we had him.

>>6120530

This is great, where'd you get the idea for it?

>lol jk its me op thanks for the re-write i'm totally using it for my creative lit s/s

>>6120541
you're welcome

>>6117936

Bovine,
Understand
My
Poem.

it's an acrostic for 'bump'

"Somersaults,
acid rain,
deteriorated herniated discs,
filibustering crack-heads,
delivery men in jumpsuits,
a week-old pastrami sandwich,
Stalin's grave,
rusty pump-jacks,
crabapples,
the Bill of Rights (2nd edition),
an old Beach Boys record,
a dollop of sour cream,
Cragganmore whisky,
the sound of music,
John of Arc's tush-bush,
a particle of stardust,
an elk's poop-chute,
liquid nitrogen,
a misspelled ward,
pre-election masturbation,
a Satanic possession,
Miss Fortune,
a ball-park frank,
and a picture of the HMS Beagle
all smell like my spunk."
–Jesus

Turntables


If there was
no such word
as if, I would
become a time-
traveller and go
to the future a
second at a time.

–––––––––––

If racists could see
the inside of me,
they'd pull the trigger
calling me "nigger."

Pete's Sake

A curmudgeon called Pete
once told me never to let people walk on me,
for the sake of some nitty-gritty thingy he called dignity.

But while Pete talked with his head down,
eyes pointed at wrinkly, leathered toes,
room door ajar (like the pickles),
staleness spread over the air,
I might've thought he forgot
that I was just a door-mat,
and still might be one.

But I didn't think that,
nor am I a foot from thinking this,
for I might've been a door-mat,
and still might be one.

Once,
and I mean once,
I was killed by an axe.
It came up to my neck,
asked for permission to continue,
and met the wood below my throat.
I asked my friends if they saw it happen
and they just looked at me and laughed,
wondering why I would ask them such a thing.

So the world rotated once more,
and I, not us, not you, but I
decided to leave home for good
(or for bad),
and bury a nation
of people that life forgot about.

>>6106607
ah, the silv'ry moon, good evening to ya! you old pervert you! jacking it in the dark of night? ahh you're all right!

hum dum

crick crack

oho, snow! you old lump, you wrinkled old fool, how's it with you? haha, you mad white bastard! i'll step all over you if i like!

hum dum

now hold on there, mr. screen. just because i'm sitting here, tryna work, doesn't mean you can keep showing me porn. i'm tryna make a living here! ach! ok, just a quick one!

hum dum

>>6107973
I despise Hemingway but this guy is right. While his longer works are garbage in my opinion ( i highly dislike prose, how more less minimalistic it was aswell as all tries of character development yadda yadda), hemmo's short stories should be essential read for anyone who wants to write. As well as Dubliners and Kafka's short stories.

>>6120590
Good. I agree with this.

>>6120309
bumping for critique

>>6117556
anyone?

>>6107973
Any collection you'd recommend?

>>6106607

way, way, WAY too pretentious. Try to write like a normal person if you want to be taken seriously.

What is competing with the Summers?

I started and stopped immediately. Are you trying to troll me with you're writing, or what.

>>6120692
Sorry to barge in but... Whats so great about Dubliners? I'm reading it now and finding it hard to see it as anything other than average.

>>6121170
the other seasons i assume

Anybody mind giving me a critique of this? I have to decide if the style's worth keeping or not. I'll post critiques in the meantime.

http://pastebin.com/9mimH49f

Dog was bored. He lifted his head. Dog looked out of window and saw Cat, his neighbor. Cat was licking his paw.
Dog wagged his tail very fast before running out the doggy door.
Cat looked up at the sound of panting.
"Dog," asked Cat, "what are you doing?"
"I wanted to see you." Dog yipped.
"Why?" asked Cat, tail swishing slower.
"So I could fuck your tight little kitkat hole. I know the neighborhood cats don't do it for you, with their short pronged pricks. My dick is red hot, smooth as a pork bone, and ready to stuff you. How would you like to have a fat knot inside you, Cat?"
Cat hesitated before deciding, "Yes Dog, I think I'd rather like that."
Dog turned in a circle before focusing once more.
Cat smiled slyly before leaning over and arching his back, lifting his furry rump into the air and lifting his tail to reveal a perfectly pink and puckered hole.

>>6118013
Uh, okay. The writing feels kinda generic and stereotyped, and that's not helped by the fact that you're employing the old outcast-jock-pop girl triangle. For some reason, I'm reminded of the way people write creepypastas. And the way the guy talks about himself - sounds like Pratchett's Sam Vimes, without the cred and self-awareness. Now, it's just a description, so it might become interesting, but as of now- I recommend heavy, heavy editing. Maybe change your vocabulary up.

>>6117556
It's a weird piece. The first half is really, really generic and incapable of capturing the essence of mediocrity you're trying to convey. Everything reeks of old images. The second half on the other hand it's self-aware and humorous at times, and suitably "depressive". The two don't really add up. What're you trying to do?

My fiancé writes poetry. I found this written in her journal, and I ended up copying it down.

"Candlelight upon your skin,
bound there waiting on my whim.
I know the thoughts that torture you,
for I have knelt there often too.

Anticipation fuels your fear,
I know that you can sense I'm near.
At last my fingers brush your spine,
delicious trembling, you're mine!

Deft the touch of silk and lace,
that guide you to another place.
Crop quick marks of red form fresh,
as I mark your tender flesh.

Watching for the signs I've seen,
to lead you where I to have been.
The place where pain and pleasure merge,
where submission and desire surge.

With artful use of crop and time,
the climax mountain you will climb.
Each peak a little higher still,
as I bind you to my will.

Your body weak and mind adrift,
I treasure your most precious gift.
Submission placed within my care,
heart and soul to me you bare.

I know the Mistress I must be,
to fulfil your trust in me.
You know the journey you will take,
to become the slave I'll make."

Thoughts?

>>6121271
Not bad. Rhythm feels a little off every now and then and it may be on the cliché and trite side but for the most part a well conceived piece of poetry. She's a keeper

Arthur slept with his eyes wide open. Unable to dream he looked towards the one window in his room, situated on the second floor of his residential neighborhood located in the town of Elwood, the moonlight stretched out across his floor in an acute triangle. He’d guess to about 34 degrees, though he could’ve been wrong. His stomach swelled with acid as he began to feel short of breath. This encroaching fear of the next day or by the look of the moonlight, this morning, brought an anxiety that Arthur had not felt before. Paralyzing fear kept him awake, weakened his joints, and caused the occasional tremor in his body.

It was the first day of school tomorrow, he had not thought of it during his summer, but as the days passed, the fear and anxiety that plagued him now were only saplings then. Times with friends would subvert these thoughts for a brief time, but it was this summer that Arthur decided not to go to summer camp with his friends and without them the fear ate away at him till he was a neurotic mess.

He sat up and walked over to the window. Breathing slowly in and out, that’s what he had learned in PE class, relaxed the heart or lungs, Arthur couldn’t remember at the moment. Opening the window and looking out the cold air bit his face, he wondered if the fall from this height was enough to end it all. Arthur wasn’t feeling at all suicidal, but it was a welcome change of pace to not sleeping. Several times he tried to read a book or write something down, but to no avail he couldn’t focus. His mind was working at warp-speed; concentration was not available at this time.

Arthur was 11 now, to most people it was an age that signified nothing, meant wholly to him. It was in those years that most children experienced a change in their lives. Childhood on set obesity would either vanish or enlarge, depending on the pituitary gland. Kids would be taller or stay short, the bones on their toe’s would grow in length. Arthur was freezing now, his teeth were grinding and now a vibration buzzed in earshot.

He opened his cellphone and saw a text from Buster; a warmth brought a smile to his face as he opened the text up.

‘Are you awake? Made it back home. Tired, don’t want to go to school tomorrow. Do you want to hang tomorrow?’

Attached was a picture of Buster standing in front of a forest of giant redwood tree’s. A sandwich was in his hands, Arthur chuckled to himself thinking that Buster had taken the pictures in between bites.

As he lay in bed thinking of his friend, he soon started to become a bit lethargic. Another text tweeted to him and this time it was from M.

>>6121231
Solid 10/10

I would like a sequel so I can further analyze the relationship between Dog and Cat.

The queasy looking sky was raining down chocolate rain upon all the living on the dead like something really gooey. "Jonathan," I exclaimed irrationally, looking at my friend Jonathan, "I am very sad about corporate America."

Jonathan stared back at me divinely, and the following words came pouring out of his mouth like Beethoven's 3rd Symphony: "Yes, well, yes, that is certainly the… that's really something. Well. Well. Well. Huh. I've never thought about that. Very deep. Oh. Hah. I heard you write poetry?"

"Yes, Jonathan," I agreed seriously, "I write poetry. Would you like to read it, my dear companion?"

"As the Spanish say, si."

I bizarrely tugged out of my left pants pocket a scroll whereon was written poetry as if I was pulling my dog's tail. My dog's name is Scruffy and I love him. Arf. "I shall read it out loud to you, Jonathan:

Oh lord the velvety chocolate mousse banner
Destroys my very reddy bloody heart
Like a spoon inside a mop inside DJ Tanner
Inside a mouse inside a Jew's fart
Like Virginia (named after the state) Woolf's
Water-filled cunt after she drowned herself
Moo goes the cow, the boy who cried wolf,
Now I will end this poem with a pelf."

My amigo Jonathan glared blazingly into my eyes like the sun.

"Did you like it Jonathan?" I inquired surreptitiously.

"Yes, I enjoyed it massively."

"It is a sort of medley, a salad, you may say, a sort of delicious cake with many different flavors and toppings, no, a musical medley, like a remix, no, more like … ah, how do I explain? A pastiche. What was I saying? I trip my own self up on my own eloquence, har-har! It is sort of a mixture of Thomas Pynchon, Homer (the Greek poet, have you ever heard of him?), Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Marcel Proust. But my biggest influence, I will say, it absolutely just has to be Shakespeare. In fact, if you use literary deconstruction on it, I think you will find it is better or at least as good as all of his sonnets combined."

My pal Jonathan brilliantly suggested, "You should post it on a /lit/ critique thread. It will fit in perfectly."

OMG SAD STORRIII TIEM
boy: happey vielsentines dai babeyey! (hands her chocilets)
girl: yum (eats cholecelets)
boy: do u like thim?
girl: ye but u asm illergick to chocledoletes
boy: y didt u tell miiiiiii???!!!!!111
girl: cos i wantid u 2 fiel gud cbout givin me a gift
boy: r u gonanbe ok?
girl: nop (is ded)
teh ehnd

>>6106607

Two and Two made Four, and the Fifth made shelter for he, the sixth. The Two and Two formed from four Ones vultured from palette pile behind Walgreens, the Fifth salvaged from an absent asshole down the lane. The asshole wouldn’t miss his old roof, the tarp scorned suggestion of return to the rancid asshole. The Fifth had a new liege, a fresh asshole. Pristine asshole Jacob; melanin-rich, money-nin poor Monarch of the Northwest St. of Annapolis in the demesne of emperor Harry Logan of Maryland: who was likely an fain white shiteating grin’d asshole.

His finest, goldenest, Polyethylene Terephthalate goblet (his most goblet-est) hopped from grape-juiced pocket to his man-juiced hand. Tithe season. Today’s rake from the white subjects would rebalance the kingdom’s Gender Studies deficit. It’d better. A dollar short and the king would urge to Study his Gender, forfeit his hired harem, on Northwest St. of Annapolis, again. And see Harry Logan’s political prison for fourty days and fourty nights, again. And the king would urge to Study his Gender in Harry Logan’s political prison for fourty days and fourty nights, again.

The king’s sceptre lacked endurance for fourty days and fourty nights, again.

Ambient is gone, replaced by effluence of simple melodic. Nature shut out, world absent.
He lies. Back to the earth, eyes in the air.
Communication isn’t quiet.

Today, they went.
Loud; boisterous and blathersome, strenuous stochasticity, it’s all too much too busy too big need not.

There's less here. The absence of obstruction.

It's curious; why not listen? Is noise so unpleasant a way to drown thought?
There was no answer, they didn’t know the question.

Not quite anger, nor anything so outright obtruse. It may seethe instead, quiet vexes under breaths.

Lips move. Seeming to sing, a beautifully sycophantic chorus.

The instrumental.

Cities are light below. Skies as well, there’s no end to the reach of pink haze.

He wonders; What did he hear? To give significance to dissonance?
She mulls; Even cacophony could be beautiful if you will it to be.

>>6122022
pedantic prose that obfuscates and alienates

>>6107031
I liked it. It's brutally honest and I found myself sympathizing with your protagonist.

>>6106607

This reads like something Orson Welles would speak over shots of a big thing of peas.

>>6121271

That's gorgeous. Also, you're a very lucky man.

As the ship swayed, the rocking lobbed David's head against the port-side of the room. Bolting up from bed, pain and disorientation painted his disposition. He looks around in confusion, but as the situation sets in, David quickly remembers where he is. Overcast morning light barely illuminate the darkness that engulfs his room, turning on the led lamp, a cold tint shines some illuminance to the cabin.

A series of knocks clank upon the door of the cabin. David answers.

"Phone call for you sir, SAFEWAY Education."

David answers with a hoarseness, "Alright."

In a moment of pure splendor-
including, but not limited to, angelic choirs,
golden light-
the chosen one draws the sword
from the stone pedestal,
leaves it on the couch by the bag of Doritos.
Meanwhile, a minor character glides from
location to location without thinking much
about victories or defeats.
The hero of legend dreams nightly of
throwing himself in the path of a truck
at the pine-lined turnpike,
if he only could take off the gold armor
that binds him immobile to his glory,
built some years ago by a nameless extra
who sleeps soundly every night next door.
The prodigal son has forgotten
how to farm during his self-willed exile.
He sits in the shade of a gently curved palm,
dreaming of huge tankards of wine
while the fattened calf dies
of old age and weak legs.
The conqueror, she thinks herself a fraud, a faker,
on a stage in a costume on a planet
of rotten fruit, flung
from a once-cheering now-jeering crowd.
The throng exists without narrative,
walks across streets, drinks drinks
in the sunshine, considers their daily routines.
The protagonist persistently provides
a pointless story out of spite for the omnipotent,
lying in bed until the sun is setting
with great narrative purpose.
The champion buys a PS4
because she wants to feel happy like a child again.
The minor character dies without glory,
but with a smile upon their face.
The rock star’s first album was much better,
and by god don’t they all feel like
it’s been downhill for everyone
since day one.


would love a critique on this, I know what I'm trying to say but what do you think of the tone/structure?

>>6122082
In a moment of pure splendor-
including, but not limited to, angelic choirs,
golden light-
the chosen one draws the sword
from the stone pedestal,
leaves it on the couch by the bag of Doritos.

Meanwhile, a minor character glides from
location to location without thinking much
about victories or defeats.

The hero of legend dreams nightly of
throwing himself in the path of a truck
at the pine-lined turnpike,
if he only could take off the gold armor
that binds him immobile to his glory,

built some years ago by a nameless extra
who sleeps soundly every night next door.

The prodigal son has forgotten
how to farm during his self-willed exile.
He sits in the shade of a gently curved palm,
dreaming of huge tankards of wine
while the fattened calf dies
of old age and weak legs.
The conqueror, she thinks herself a fraud, a faker,
on a stage in a costume on a planet
of rotten fruit, flung
from a once-cheering now-jeering crowd.

The throng exists without narrative,
walks across streets, drinks drinks
in the sunshine, considers their daily routines.

The protagonist persistently provides
a pointless story out of spite for the omnipotent,
lying in bed until the sun is setting
with great narrative purpose.
The champion buys a PS4
because she wants to feel happy like a child again.

The minor character dies without glory,
but with a smile upon their face.

The rock star’s first album was much better,
and by god don’t they all feel like
it’s been downhill for everyone
since day one.

4chan messed up my indents and stanza breaks ugh

>>6121231
kek

>>6122030
obfuscate is an unnecessary word, it obfuscates its own meaning ;)

I wrote this while listening to Trout Mask Replica

"My shadow shrinks more than yesterday,"
He remarks with a mouth full of crumbs.
They fall and fill his cheeks.

His chest, naked and painted and young,
On which together we play chess,
Heaves with life.
I strategically roll over his preferences, his boundaries,
Sweat, sweet sweet, he kisses me,
His delicate lips full of sweat.

But I do not return the gesture; my approach undetermined yet.

Spontaneous meetings today at the morning table.
Outbursts of mourning at the mesa.
"Los jovenes está comprados,"
You spill, your mouth full of words.
Your body empty in worlds.

You eyes sparkle
Green and blue and white.
The morning was gone without so much as another misplaced fight.

Walking with you today on the way to class,
I dreamt that you and I alone were
Built of glass.
I turn to relay my vision to you
But you're dressed as Faustus, eyes on her,
Traded our love to live anew.

My eye rolls back tonight in its socket
While you hold my hand cold in your pocket.
The death of us is just a memory in your locket.

>>6121268
Thanks for the feedback. I expand later on each character, mostly the narrator and the girl, but the jock later gets fleshed out somewhat too (we learn that he's really repressed, sort of exploring masculinity and how in its perverted form it can cause undue repression of emotion, which comes to a boil during a confrontation with another character introduced later). Here's a little bit more.

They weren’t my usual sort--I mean, I was sort of a loser, at the time, anyway. I mean, I sort of still am. Not really, but still. Especially back then, I was. I wasn’t athletic, I wasn’t particularly attractive, and I didn’t have many friends. For a while, I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, and I found myself sort of hating them even after I had. These friends of mine were different. They were wild, lived fast. They were the type of people that were going to die young and go out in a blaze of debaucherous glory. One of them, a guy named Will Montgomery, was once drunk for a week straight once he reached college. When I say a week straight, I don’t mean that he was simply drunk every night for a week. I mean that, for twenty-four hours a day for seven days, he was drunk off his ass, refusing to stop downing an incredibly dangerous amount of alcohol on an hourly basis. One of the group’s most legendary accomplishments was our victory in a brawl outside of a Taco Bell at around three in the morning. I was high as a kite, though, so I guess I didn’t really do that much fighting, but my friends really fucked them up. I guess the best summary of it all is that I stumbled into their friendship entirely by accident and it was through that happy accident that I formed some of the most lasting, strongest friendships that I would ever have over my lifetime.

>>6107031
what happens next?

Uncle Jack

The dirt snowbanks were stained with exhaust; hard garbage and detached tires littered the sides of the parking lot. A wasteland of empty cups, takeout bags stained with ketchup, soggy fries and cigarette butts – a true postcard snapshot of an idyllic Maine parking lot.

I lifted the hood of the dumpster, and swung the bag of the trash up into it’s dark belly. It hit another other bag with a dull thump. The wind howled and blew little shards of ice. I shivered through the light fabric of my KFC uniform.

“I hate this job,” I muttered.

In three hours I’d be off. I had a half empty handle of Uncle Jack hidden in the glove box, and I couldn't wait to say hello.


The shift was finally over. The fryers were scraped down, the floor was scrubbed. I threw my plastic gloves in the trash and ripped off my plastic apron, covered in flour and chicken juice. Said goodbye to the manager, walked to my truck, and said hello to Uncle Jack.

Uncle Jack is a fun guy. He burns a bit, but he makes everything pleasant.

I hit a stoplight, accidentally lurched forward a little.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

I glanced at Uncle Jack. He laughed it off, I laughed with him. I laughed a bit too much.

The light turned green, and I took the corner. I swerved took it a bit hard, but I straightened myself out. Uncle Jack laughed.

I laughed with him. Pushed the pedal down. Hit 65.

Uncle Jack kept laughing.

Headlights illuminated a curve in front of me.

Didn’t have time to make the turn.

Uncle Jack laughed as I wrapped myself around a tree.

Trying to write a series of shared world cyberpunk short stories set in Ireland in the year 2065. Characters in one story will show up in another, some stories will have only very tenuous links to other stories. In this story >>6121353 it's implied that the main character is the father of one of the characters in a story that I've linked to to at the end of the aforementioned thread.

Do I look birdly to you? Lofty, etc? I am a slave, signore, I am a slave! A derivate of the upper classes, a oppressor of the lower. What am I? I cannot even prounounce their pseudo-native tongue. Dread&sorrow, long lost linages and broken spines, my friend, I was never born to deserve this time. Who, and what, should be put put for justice?" said Josef Ratzinger. He was still chipping teal. His nails were coated in teal. It made me sad. Josef was a friend of mine. I put down my taco on my plate & grabbed the salt & salted the taco.
"Ta-co. You got it right there; just one more time. Ta-co. You're putting to much pretention in those lips. Ta-co, just like that. Ta-co." said Johann Papadukolusbergsson. Ta-co. It's a pretty word. It's like TA-KE (bamboo in Japanese). Josef always told me that my obsession with Japan is unhealthy. It's not fair, he says, because this is an age of no passions. I don't really get what he says when he says that, because he says a lot of things & I don't say very much. Maybe it's because I'm shy, but Josef says it's because I have aristocratic sensibilities. It makes me happy, I think, because it's a compliment. But I think it's because I have a sensible stomach. "Not to mention the flight trips, oh my god, the prices of flight trips, the prices of the one-way ticket to confession and ridding oneself of a muddy past. 1000€ isn't a ticket, God, I mean GOD, what kind of confession is one under burden? Should I not get away cheaper than that? Where is the Heaven(TM) discount coupons? Maybe I should, on my own, enter the coupon before checkout-- but where, Oh Jove, YHHV, Yggdrassil del Ygg'thor, meine Gott, where should I enter the coupon? You see; this perverse mind of mine is always in discount, it was discounted to begin with-- refurbished-- Oh my God! my God sure cut some god damned corners," said Josef. Maybe God doesn't listen very much to Josef because he says so much. Maybe if he said less, maybe a bit less style and more substance in his saying. I wonder what Harold Bloom thinks of God? Personally I think God is a hack. I mean, "a charlatan!". All those fancy words, you see, but no substance. I wish there was a God of the Analytic Tradition that could tell me what I feel because sometimes I feel nothing at all but most of the time I just feel a little. Like a twang of feel. Maybe if I felt wholly in symbolic logic I could know what I feel.
"Oh! So close, one more time. Say it one more time: Ta-co. Repeat after me, one-two, one-two, Ta-co. Ta-co. Ta-co."

bumping for more critiques, these still need some. pro-tip: people who have given critiques are more likely to comment on your own work if you give them a critique

>>6123291
>>6122589
>>6122195
>>6122082
>>6121334
>>6121286
>>6120612
>>6120622
>>6120309

>>6124208
I'm >>6121222 and I gave these critiques >>6121268 could anybody say something on my piece? Thanks

Bare feet tread through broken ballroom. Long since abandoned, now given new life. Lips form prayers, as and to the prey. Determined. This is what it all comes down to. The dreamy madness and dreadful truth, together suspending this single moment. Others gather, spawning just out of view, moving only in the peripherals. Not alone. Never. Shallow shades follow the framework, drudgedly dragging their way through, true and thorough. But never so much as touch upon her solitary soul. Never knowing, only needing. Not alone. Never.

On a scale from trash to salvageable, how's my prose?

She said she wanted to be just friends. That was the message I read on my phone when she texted me right before I went to bed. It’s the kind of thing that keeps you awake all night. I immediately texted her back asking why? I could only count the seconds before my phone vibrated again and read what she sent back.
The screen read, “I just feel that why, I’m sorry.”
At a time like this I would’ve rolled over like a dog, but I decided to press my luck this time and go for the big gamble. That’s what I’d like to thing when I think back to it.
I wrote back to her with venom and vitriol that I could muster. Telling her that she wasn’t sorry and that I didn’t want to be friends. It was only later that night that she sent back the last message I would receive from her.
“I’m sorry, that’s just how I feel.”
I couldn’t say any more, no word or feeling could really talk her out of it. She was the type of girl that when she set her mind on something she would do it. I should have known better than getting involved with her, but at that time, I went against my better judgment.
******************
I’d never tried online dating at all, I found the whole idea of it to be awkward and impersonal. Could I really judge a person at all by just reading a page of information? Can I trust what this person is saying about themselves to be true? My friend from Portland spurred me to the idea. He’d recently got together with a girl on the site, she lived about 30 minutes away from me and 1000 miles separating the two. In the time in between their online relationship, he’d come down with the frequent flyer miles he’d collect and visit her on the important days. Usually I’d be the one to pick him up from the airport, but like always, something always good happened when we went down to his girlfriend’s house.
“You’ve got to try it man, even a socially awkward spazz like you has a chance.”
I wasn’t like other people, I knew that, but I always asked myself who wasn’t? I questioned why we had to act the way we did, the manners and conduct we had to compose when we met someone. I had never been a rebel, but it always crossed my mind when I met a new person. Faking myself into a relationship, whether it be friendship or intimate, they had to go through some bull till they got to the real me.


>>6124569
You need to work on it. Avoid vague language, like "shallow shades follow the framework," which isn't at all clear to a reader; there is nothing to imagine in that phrase. And how are shades "shallow"?

I would also recommend staying away from obvious puns like pray/prey, especially in a serious piece (it was intended right? if not, it still needs changing), and alliterations like through/true/thorough don't do much for a reader; you should only use techniques to enhance meaning, and since the meaning isn't very clear I'm afraid that there isn't much to enhance.

I should also say that everything's salvageable, but don't focus too much on "prose," let the ideas and stories form first, before you start fussing about how it's to be expressed.

Remember: clear language!

>>6124887
Thanks. This is really helpful. I'm intentionally unclear on a lot of points though, because pomo.
Was the pun really that bad?

>>6124963
Well there's being intentionally unclear, and then there's being too unclear while trying to be intentionally unclear. And yes the pun is no good I'm afraid.

Have you heard about this book?

https://english119.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/john-gardner-the-art-of-fiction.pdf

It takes up all the basics of writing, like the things I mentioned before, and another thing I didn't mention, namely rhythm. Pay attention to the stressed/unstressed syllables of the sentences, you don't want the tongue to trip or stall. This requires developing an ear for rhythm, and takes time, but is well worth it. For that I would recommend reading lots of poetry.

I keep rewriting and deleting my advice because I don't want to be too harsh or condescending, I hope this has been helpful.

>>6124569
>drudgedly dragging their way through, true and thorough.
Would sound better as thorough, true and through. I like your aliterations. You have some nice imagery and rythm. I'd say you're ok but I'm sure lit will tell you you're gimmicky/purple/whatever buzzword used to describe everything that's not purely sterile minimalism.

>>6106624
Did you just learn about thesaurus.com or something?

Late into the night, the snow fell and fell. Burning with Iridium the cataclysmic storm blanketed the countryside. Red paint flaked, revealing the underlying rotten timbers of the old barn. The walls, splintered and cracked, remembered the days before the breach opened. Years had passed since the sky shattered. The barn spent its time by gazing upward, searching space for an answer. It observed, studied the crack in space and time. As its core slowly rotted away it learned about astrophysics and quantum mechanics. Professor Barn held a PhD in forgotten lives. Thousands of people had passed through its territory on their exodus southward, where they thought they would be safe. They were all wrong. The radiation had salted this earth long before humans died out, driven to extinction by the breach. So many souls, so many untold histories, remained solely in the cut down family tree. The barn’s genealogies were vast, and covered scores of families, races, and even species. All would be erased soon, as Earth careened out of orbit from its dying Sun.

>>6124985
You really needn't worry about your advice as it is some of the most helpful I've ever gotten. Thanks, Anon!

>>6124999
Noted. And I'm glad you liked it. Nice trips.

>>6124985
I'm >>6124333
Can you give me a critique? Harsh as you please, I really really need someone who knows his shit (as you appear to, here, take this free captatio benevolentiae) to tell me what they think, and so far people have more or less ignored me. That piece, or this http://pastebin.com/dRJwCLXw I have posted before, but I'm always eager to learn what people think about it.

>>6125003
What the fuck? I was going to tell you criticise the order of your images (night, paint on wall, whole barn, then the wall again) but then the story careened off a cliff. What is this?

>Professor Barn held a PhD in forgotten lives
Is this supposed to be funny?

>>6125020
I'll try to review them tomorrow morning.

>>6125003

Look, bud:

"The snow fell late into the night."

Clean up your sentences.

Clear your mind of the image you've imagined and look on the page to see if the image is there when you read. If it's not there on the page, the reader can't see/feel it. You have good, powerful images here - more precision and some cleaning up will go a long way.

>>6121981

updated since no crit:

Two and Two made Four, and the Fifth made shelter for he, the sixth. The Two and Two formed from four Ones vultured from palette piles behind Walgreens, the Fifth salvaged from the absent asshole down the lane. The asshole wouldn’t miss his old abode -- and the tarp scorned sheltering the rancid asshole. The Fifth embraced a new liege, a fruity-fresh asshole. Pristine asshole Jacob; melanin-rich, money-nin poor Monarch of the Northwest St. of Annapolis in the demesne of emperor Harry Logan of Maryland: whom painted the imperial democratic cardstock of Northwest St. with his fain white shiteating grin’d asshole face and the deceased baby new-year, rest in peace.

His finest, goldenest, Polyethylene Terephthalate goblet (his most goblet-est) craic’d from grape-juiced pocket to his man-juiced hand. Tithes. The day’s rake from the white subjects would rebalance the kingdom’s Gender Studies deficit. Necessary. A dollar short and the king would urge to Study his Gender, forfeit harem or dilapidated mistress, on Northwest St. of Annapolis, again. And remain Harry Logan’s political prisoner for fourty days and fourty nights, again. And the king would urge to Study his Gender in Harry Logan’s political prison for fourty days and fourty nights, again. The king lacked endurance of fourty days and fourty nights, again.

Yahweh bids thee blessings from the palace of Five he had said. I’m sorry, I only have enough money left for the subway they said. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and the holiest Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of Yahweh, and you yourselves thrust out, he says. Leave me alone, they will say. Gnashed teeth were their reward, and a tall man was his.

Jacob and the mildewy Five feared not Yahweh. Burning Bush was deficit-spending activity and political dream, John the Baptist was the fat black fuck plastered with immutable Franklins and Grants (and maybe one day Bushes -- Burning Bushes?) in uncountable buttoned pockets on his fat black fuck K-mart clergy shirt and a golgothan math operator adorning the jugular, Jesus was the spic owner emeritus of the Fifth from down the lane, and Jacob was Solomon the wisest. Vending uncharred Bush was quantitative easing.

John the Baptist had an especially obese tall man whom tagged along down Northwest St. of Annapolis on daily basis. The tall man was very kind and said hello to Jacob on its hajj to the place of Five every day. Jacob’s Gender was similarly kind and returned the greeting every day.

>>6125023
This is what I (>>6125038) am talking about.
The writing is unclean!

>>6125034
Thanks mate

>>6125047
>>6125023
>>6125038

Is this better?


The snow fell late into the night. Burning with Iridium, the cataclysmic storm blanketed the countryside. The battered barn spent its time gazing skyward, searching the milky way for an answer. It studied the crack in space and time. As its core slowly rotted away it learned about astrophysics and quantum mechanics. Forgotten lives were burned into its beams. Hundreds of people had passed through on their exodus south. They thought they would be safe there, but they were all wrong. The radiation had salted this earth long before humans were driven to extinction. So many souls and untold histories remained in the cut down family tree. The barn’s genealogies were vast, and covered scores of families, races, and even species. The once vivid red paint had since flaked, revealing the underlying rotten timbers. The walls were splintered and cracked, recalling the days before the breach opened. Years had passed since the sky shattered, and all would be erased as Earth careened out of orbit from its dying Sun.

So I showed this to a friend and he called it
"Minimalist literature" so I'll call it that I guess, but it's just me being lazy.
There are 7 invisible characters, the only way to tell them apart is by the font type which you can't show on 4chan.
Keep in mind that this is just a small paragraph and not the whole story obviously.
Also, the characters are all kids.

Yes just lay the blanket like that.
yeah, and you guys should go and get some food.
Just get some of the leftover meat if we have any.
Well, if we don’t just get some of the mortadella in the fridge, or some of the sausages.
Or just any type of meat you can find.
Should we wash him before we put him on the blanket?
Yeah, we probably should.
GET SOME SHAMPOOS WITH YOU AS WELL!
OH AND SOME WATER!
What type of dog is this?
it’s called ‘German Shepherd’ in English.
So it’s German?
Yes, it’s German
Why does it have black hair if it’s German?
Yes, even the police have black-haired German shepherds.
The police mix they’re dogs with African dogs to make them faster, that’s why they have black hair.
Yes, because Africans are very fast, like in the olympics.
Yes, my father said it was because Africans live in the savannah where they’re chased by lions everyday so they learn to run fast.
So we must give it a German name then.
Yes, like Michael Ballack the Bayern Munich midfielder.
Or Adolf Hitler from World War II.
Ballack sounds like black in English, and Adolf sounds like wolf so Adolf is better.
Yes, let’s name him Adolf.
We brought food
There was no leftover meat
We did find mortadelas and french fries
Look it can smell the mortadelas
Don’t just throw it on the ground idiot, dogs can’t eat sand. feed him by hand.
Why is it so cold.
It was in the fridge.
You didn’t bother heating it? You can’t give him cold meat because it will hurt his teeth.
Yes, dogs don’t brush their teeth so cold food will hurt their teeth.
Give it fries then.
Come here Adolf.
Do you talk to dogs in English or Arabic?
Or German and some African.
In movies they always talk to dogs in English, so I think we talk to it in English.
Come here Adolf.
Why is it not eating fries?
Dogs don’t eat vegetables
Potatoes are not vegetables.
Yes they are.
No, because they have juice in them, and only fruits have juice.
But potatoes grow underground, like vegetables.
Fruits can grow underground too, like watermelons.
Watermelons grow on trees, idiot.
No they don’t, I’ve seen pictures.
I’ve seen a REAL watermelon tree.
GUYS THE DOG IS SLEEPING AGAIN!

>>6125084
>The battered barn spent its time gazing skyward, searching the milky way for an answer

Ultimately yes. However,
what is the function of this anthropomorphization? You don't need this device to describe the barn or enter into philosophical discourse. You have the beginning of something with legs, but in my opinion you're forcing the use of anthro. when you really don't need it at all. In fact, I would argue that sentences like the following are distracting:

>As its core slowly rotted away it learned about astrophysics and quantum mechanics.

The structure is ugly and unclear, and the anthro. is outright confusing.

As an exercise, I would try rewriting the whole thing a few times. You might surprise yourself.

He closed his eyes and dreamt of bulldozers
and cranes, and construction cones all floating down from the sky
at the beginning of everything

a genesis full of steam-rollers
and cement

He woke and tried to remember his dream, but it was gone
he dressed, showered, ate, and walked to class
passing on the way a church
and a park
and a man with a cardboard sign
and only one eye
and two dogs
and also a road crew rebuilding a road
and maybe himself

I emerged from the prison with hope. Five years had frittered away in a monotonous routine of rank dehumanization. None of that mattered now, as I grabbed my personal belongings, lovingly tossed in trash bags, and headed to the gates. Small sense I had in expecting a future which glowed like a golden horizon. Soon I found myself peering into the eyes of employers who firmly averred they were loathe to hire felon. Fresh out the gates and I found myself on Facebook, a hundred and fifty-five fewer friends. The "land of freedom" was certainly no land of forgiveness, or second-chances. I recognized swiftly from the breath of the unincarcerated air, after my release, the rest would be a struggle.

>>6125191
I like the topic you're going for, but I'd definitely expand upon the idea of him losing his dream and the dream itself. Also, add some punctuation. It reads really strangely as it is.

>>6125239
>five years had frittered away
That sounds really fruity, which is okay if you're going for that, but it lacks any sense of grit you'd expect in a convict. Was he wrongly imprisoned?

>Small sense I had in expecting a future which glowed like a golden horizon.
What?

In general, it reads way too easily, way too cleanly. It sounds as if he's an ex-con who has neither been in prison, nor has a firm grasp on how he views the world. I enjoy the theme of alienation in incarceration, but it's not written well enough to rely on that narrative. Definitely rewrite; try to put yourself in his perspective.

>>6122195
My poem if anyone wants to critique.

>>6106977
Kek'd

>>6125191
Looks like you made it up as you went. Required no real skill nor time to make.

Everon's Key

recall the frail thrills of a done day, now dead
morrowhat like then, again, a planck's pace
your carryon head over her heels with misery
whistling the tune of the black tar coil

"the ward of everon holds the key!", it hissly sings
lifetimes overdue, the ear you lent to serpentine tongues
naught but dustmeal interpretation of dreamwakery
from the tome-filled tomb of abstractions

already unfathomable fathoms in dante's depths
from decepticore through fictimantle you must climb

your perfection is immanent? yes and for all
there is none much work to be done yet, and you
are a finished product, ever-finishingly
fishing for thrills, ever-fishing with false bait

o fake-bait frail-thrill seeker
give up this post-mortem journey
there is but one thing to do, you see
and not a single riddleknot
to untangle in sight
see in, everon's ward
the key

Rough dogs, barking, splashed into the river chasing sticks. Coats and ties had been hung in the trees and men were hurling stones at soda bottles or skimming pieces of slate and loudly counting the skips. He picked out squealing children and the laughter of the women. If there hadn’t been a wall he would have seen them scuffling on the edge of the water. The land fell and the trees parted so that seated where he was the Ohio might have made his eyes blink, but the wall was eight feet high and wound in its vines like a bottle of claret. The bench was damp and cold, shadowed all morning by the elms, and he slid his Bible under him. It was a poor garden, given over to ground ivy and plants that preferred deep shade, for the sun reached it only at the top of the day when it found an opening between the crowns of the trees and the head and body of the church. Absently, he felt the pores of the cement. The shadows of the elm leaves passed gently over the vines and grasses. In winter one could see quite easily through the gate at the end of the garden to the river lying placidly in its ice – leaden, grave, immortal. He had never learned when the key had been lost but the lock was rusted now and the double gates were bound. By spring, when the ivy leafed and thickly curtained the pickets, his blindfold was complete. Nevertheless he could see the sand rising in little puffs and the brilliant water striking the shore. It wasn’t true, but Jethro Furber felt he had spent his life here. Certainly he had brought to the garden what little order it had, laying the walk with his own hands and clearing the graves of weeds and creepers, carefully scrubbing the markers. The rough cold bench was as familiar to him as his skin, and the garden, with it secret design and its holy significance, was like himself. He smiles as he considered it (he had considered it often), for the body of any symbol was absurd, as ridiculous as Christ’s body was, so lank and ribby. And those crudely fashioned timbers thrust clumsily in the earth were foolish. The crucifixion was so far from love. How far was he from what he meant?...

>>6121222
i didn't like the opening sentence. is one part of the room bright and the other dim? because the room can not be both.
your lack of punctuation for speech, especially with your sentence constructions, is confusing and needs to be fixed.
the characters are fairly generic.

B izarre
U mpire
M isses
P lay

>>6125047
>>6125020
As a start, I'll recommend this book:
https://english119.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/john-gardner-the-art-of-fiction.pdf

Now then:

>The sky is cold and Japanese outside my window this evening and the roofs and houses too and that’s a lie ‘cause I’ve never even seen Tokyo or Okinawa or wherever I just read a shitton of manga.

What does a Japanese sky look like? “And the roofs and houses too and that’s a lie” is very awkward. “Shitton” doesn’t contrast well with the opening and subsequent attempts at poetry. Before you tell me it’s intentional, I’m going to tell you that easy juxtapositions only please the dilettante because to him they’re novel.

>Says Marco skimming /b/ looking for threads to bomb and I answer snapping back from loudspoken solipsism.

The neologism is unwarranted and “solipsism” is misused. Don’t use complicated words for simple words or phrases. Your character thought aloud. Don’t think the reader won’t notice this. Respect your audience!

>The sky’s gone and burned into night meanwhile, the sun crumbled red beyond the mountain range and light pollution creeping towards the stars, nomadic, like neon skyrot.

“Neon skyrot” is good. But watch the tone, consistency is more important than particular details; sometimes striking out the best part is necessary to keep the tone consistent (which of course means you can still use it elsewhere).

>I get up and change the music, we need something to get pumped up for the incoming party and Joy Division isn’t really cutting it, maybe if we were Luca clones it’d put us in the right mind-frame to withstand parties’ bombardment –like social interaction but us being more of the not-antisocial kind I think we’d be better off with some smooth electronics.
A quick scan of my combined iTunes, Spotify and Bandcamp libraries later I settle for a random IDM playlist with a fancy cover image. Marco is back drinking one of my Franziskaners.

Cataloguing inanities. Rule: If you’re going to be depressive/pessimistic, you have to be funny or poetic. If one part is going to be boring, something else must compensate. If all is boring, well then congrats, you have a bored reader. Not by any means a grand achievement.

>The kitchen is cool and biting,

The AIR in the kitchen is cool and biting.

>>6127082
>the windows half open in the clingy summerward way of a couple teenagers wishing it was still August instead of November, inflicting themselves a kind of cognitive dissonance to keep the dream alive.

I don’t understand this attitude. Maybe it’s because I’m from a cold place and one can’t ignore winter when it’s here. Explain further or drop it.

“Cognitive dissonance”Don’t drop fancy terms, don’t upset the diction level. “Diction level” is the established language of a character/narrator, think of the incongruity of a British elder dropping urban LA slang; this extends to scientific jargon, and if your text isn’t leaning toward the technical you should stay away from them. Simple words are almost always preferable. Remember: every time you use an unusual technique or phrase, the effect of it needs to be weighed against the audience’s (unpleasant) surprise at having a piece of prose disturbed.

>I open the fridge and freeze with unanticipated choice, while bathing in the pseudo-random blinking halogen light of the fridge, looking at rows of different beers that seem to imply a choice based not only on taste or ABV, but also in the mood every brew seemed to project upon the world while in someone’s hands.

Big sentences for small ideas. You do have something here, a kernel of something, but only by proper tending can it grow to what it needs to be. If a word can be struck out, strike it out.

>Two minutes later and still I haven’t found a consensus on whichever one I want – or should – drink.

Consensus refers to the agreement of several persons.

>The fridge is beeping and the cold is seeping out in slow-moving chemical processes, when Marco calls me back to my room.

Chemical processes are not poetical. Why mention it? I know it’s the “pomo” way, whatever that means, but it’s not how we imagine or perceive, and seems to only be here as an excuse for pseudo-poetic waffling. Either let it affect a character or story or leave it out entirely. For instance:

“The cold of the fridge still lapped against my leg when Marco called.”

I’m also noticing an overuse of “and,” which is used when you have too many ideas but no clue as to how you are to connect them. This should get you thinking about whether they need connecting, rather than being struck out or placed in their own sentences, wherein they are reinforced with poetry.

>I get back picking up the closest can I manage to grab, opening it up immediately. The first sip makes it clear it’s one of the Belgian beers I bought for Marco. Its aura is one of aloft-ness, elite snickering and, in this particular moment, understated revanchism. It could have been worse.

I’m starting to get impatient now. Your douche character’s passive aggressive beer war isn’t interesting. Get to the party—or is this the point?

>-France and Luce sent us messages on Messenger.

Are they gay?

>>6127084
>-You mean, on my Messenger?

My god. The endless brands, the endless phones, the row of faces lit by little spotlights—it’s a times like this that “Hollow Men” echo in my head.

>-And spend like twenty euros per gram? No thanks. Look, France already has the stuff, we owe him like ten euros each and we get ten grams between the four of us. We can’t find a better deal anywhere, it’s just a fifteen minute drive. Come on.

You don’t get points for realism if the content is dull. Snip snip!

>-Me too man, I threw up like three times, but he says he’s found a new dealer and he’s trustworthy and stuff.

Why? Why?! Your make me want to kill myself—and not in a good way.

>His stare is still fixed to the screen, but the clicking and writing slow down, just for a second, allowing for a lackluster answer.

Answers don’t lack lustre. This is btw one of the acknowledged problems of the first person, that it makes your narrator look obsessive. In this one e.g. he even pays close attention to his “friend’s” typing speed.

>-Don’t know, movie? We could watch Attack the Block again.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

>-Yeah, probably have enough for a joint and a half lying around, but if we’re gonna smoke might as well do something else, like, let’s go through Metal Slug again.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

>We laugh, and ten minutes later we’re playing all cramped on the keyboard, player one using the leftmost side, the letters, player two using the numpad, passing around the joint everytime the other gets a continue, the curses and elbows and lithany of powerups summoning an afternoon buried among our memories, of cinema and popcorn and early-teenage ruthless coin-op playing.

We’ve all had moments like this, but the tone is still weird. You go from realistic dialogue, to detailed poetic images, to “fresh hip contemporary challenging the traditions” kind of prose style, before ending on a nostalgic note. What was it that you wanted with this piece? It feels like a drawn out portion of a smaller excerpt, but then this last paragraph seems to be wrapping it up. If this is what you want, just this, then it needs to be cut down.

Maybe I’m older than you, but if I’d write about my decadent, early college drug sessions, I’d be doing a scathing self-critique. These indistinct remembrances of intoxication and of images replacing real events are horrifying to me now.

bump

>>6125000

nah i'm just a bad writer

>>6113744

>country boys with long cocks

Aped this off Child of God. Probably not wise to steal shit from McCarthy.

>>6106607

yelpsfromtheunderground . tumblr

it's existential yelp reviews i've written. would love some feedback.

>>6129351
How are you not totally embarrassed to have written this stuff and called it yours?

As far as just humor goes, this schtick is as fresh as a vaudeville routine.

>>6129366

which review did you read?

Beads of sweat acclimate on my chest, sticking to my shirt. The air’s changed since we landed in Taipei; I envy the cold altitude we left on our twelve-hour trip. Right as the plane touched the ground and before we were given the all clear many of the passageners en route to China had gotten up from their seats, the plane still rolling down the tarmac to the terminal. Bags had shifted and a couple of them tumbled out as some of the Chinese started to fight with the stewardesses. Calm and collected they seemed when I first entered the plane, the usual courteous smile that you saw on ads. From the way that they were yelling at them, this wasn’t the first time that this happened. I guess that’s what you would call an occupational hazard, if that was the right instance in which to use the term for.

The humidity in the terminal was much worse than inside the plane. People came rushing out running to the next flight that probably already left. I was an realistic optimist, knowing full well that sometimes there are delays, the failures of technology was expected, no matter how technologically advance we’d become. Transients seemed to hover around the pockets of cold air blasting from the vents. Outlets of various newsstands, duty-free, and American chains populated every corner of the airport.

When I finally got to my gate the flight to Osaka was already delayed. Trouble on the tarmac I suppose, a crowd of people gathered around, it smelled like a mixture of human musk and frustration. People complaining in all manner of tongues, shouting and spitting on the flight crew manning the gate.

Several hours later coupled with more delays they had finally let us on the plane, it was about 30 minutes to midnight, people grumbled still, but with the advent of finally leaving the airport that seemed to subside. Then there was waiting and waiting, I looked out my window to see a couple of workers arguing with a man in a pinstriped jacket. Our attention turned over to the pilot, his bloodshot eyes and five o’clock shadow painted an impression of his current disposition.

“Ladies and Gentlemen I know all of you have waited long for your flight.” He said this and then looked at his watch, staring at it for a good long minute.

“But at this time, we are now overclocked and unfortunately we won’t be able to fly. You are all welcome to fly with us again in a couple of hours or you may fly with another airline. On your way out please pick up a voucher for a free room and breakfast, thank you again and we’re sorry.”

As the pilot walked out of the plane, jeers in every language were directed towards the entire crew. Standing in the gate now, waiting in line to get one of the vouchers, I could feel myself slipping away. I’d been awake for too long, I knew so as I began to seem delusional. American families in front of me were beginning to cry and complain to the stewardess, they were well fed from the size of their waistline.

>>6129395

You've made a non interesting event sound a bit more interesting.

nice description and stuff but i felt like i was waiting for something to happen the whole time.

i think you could condense this to half its length and be able to get started on with the story that much sooner.

>>6129395
>>6129426
Here's more:

Many of them were crying, biting my cheeks I tried to hold back my laughter. It didn’t help that a man with a heavy Indian accent was in front of me complaining like all the others.

“I just don’t understand why you kept us here for so long with one delay after another, I mean in all this time we were waiting I could’ve swam to Osaka.”

It was in the way he said it that made me laugh, take me to the funny farm, I felt as if my grip on reality was slipping. I had to get some sleep.

Finally after getting through customs and immigration I finally got to my hotel. A sort of mini Hilton located a few blocks from the airport. It was 3:00 a.m, after taking a shower and washing my clothes in the sink I knew I only had a few hours before the next flight. The room had smelled of mothballs and the sheets felt like plastic warp, keeping my body sterile, but providing no kind of warmth.

Three hours later I was awake, the room was still dark and I fumbled around for the lamp. Rummaging through the mini-fridge I took a couple of jack Daniels and a candy bar. It was my kind of revenge, even if it was fairly petty.

Back in the airport and past the security gate I finally made it to the terminal. Only a few people were waiting for the flight. Only a couple of us remained, everyone else seemed to find service with another airline, as the hours went by people started to fill the airport. A stewardess opened the gate and with a grim look on her face started to talk over the intercom.

something I scrawled while depressed:

For months i've been entangled, arm and leg, in a prison of mossy mangroves, partially submerged in a swamp of deceptively stagnant water that creeps slowly upon the nape of my white neck, waiting to spill into my mouth and ears like rumors circulating through some local grapevine, rumors of decimated peoples and betrothed lovers and national births; but nothing circulates here now, amidst the forest of hypnotic legs jutting out from pools of black glass that reflect, somehow through the dense unmoving canopy, an even blacker sky, nothing except the rare beat of a cold heart.

I made a room description. Is the dildo too monolithic?

The light, emanating from a paper lantern hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the room, flickers ever so slightly. Clothes and books chaotically cover the floor along with a handful plastic mugs, a pile of pop-sci magazines, and a single monolithic dildo standing erect in on corner. The bed is unmade. Pale light pushes through the blinds, clashing with the fluttering glow of this system’s frail sun. TV’s on. Static. The trash can is brimming with wrappers and scrapped ideas. To its right we find an immaculate desk wired up to a state of the art computer rig. In an equally impressive chair sits she, diligently working her way through gates and guards and god-knows-what. From a set of headphones the muffled wubs and dubs of electronic music dissipate into the static.

Am I the only one who thinks that writing which includes words you would never use in ordinary life sounds completely pretentious? I can't read any of this stuff.

>>6130068
>he doesn't use all the words at his disposal

>>6130087
>The ocean called...

>>6130087
I find validity in you repartee, his stance vis-á- vis his most pernicious lack and frightful dearth of words is harrowing.

>>6106906
Instead of 'entombed' you could put 'consumed' then it'd be like the epic moment of death and just munching cake at the same time haha lol

>>6130112
What'd it say?

>>6130115
You're a funny guy.

>>6130025

>ever so slightly

get rid of this, it's too vague

>>6130218
Will do, thanks. Anything else?

>>6130025

> The light, emanating from a paper lantern hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the room, flickers ever so slightly.

> emanating

> flickers

so cliche

The paper lantern on the ceiling drunkenly pissed golden light all over the walls, all over the Clothes, the Books, the floor, a handful of plastic mugs, a pile of pop-sci magazines, and the handsome, single (appetizing and erect!) dildo in the corner. It wets the unmade bed with flickers.

Have some fucking fun with it goddamn, if you're going to talk about something sexual like a dildo, at least make the sentence sexualized

>>6130289
Piss-play is a bit over the top, I think. But I get your point. Thanks.

What can I do to become more fun?

>>6130355

Embrace the nuances of language rather than going for what sounds acceptable? Learn the grammar rules to break them. Learn the vocabulary so you can makeup new words that make sense in context, and sound silly without. Break the fourth wall and give your personal comments about the scene, if you want that to be your style. Play with symbolism and metaphors. Double/Triple entendres are your friends, as are puns.

Play around with it; anyone can write in a rigid style. Just tease the word until they work.

Nonsense at Dinner:

I belong entirely to myself
and everyone else too:
particles sneezed onto a peony
by an imprudent traveler with a cold,
I am. Propelled towards the horizontal home
of whatever comes tomorrow, I et al are.
Anyway, any-way, any way:
'I' is a letter, and I received a letter
from a pen-pal named K'bim
whose gender I can't identify,
but whose words I drink as water
(with a healthy amount of added sugar and lemon juice).

"What is the meaning of all this?"
demands the head of the table, suddenly,
as I smear smushed peas onto my face.

"Nothing," (pre)supposes everyone
as they set their silverware at 4 o'clock.
"Nothing" is and isn't (butt-fuck metaphysics).

Then I fall:

A. Asleep
B. Out of my chair
C. Into a coma
D. Unto death
E. All of the above (in that order)

>>6130387
Thanks, Anon. I will sacrifice some chocolate milk in your honour.

>>6130068
the occasional fancy word for great emphasis is ok but yes most of the people here are trying far too hard.

Whoa, didn't know this thread was still alive. Anybody feel like giving me a critique? >>6120309

I helped out a few anons, and if you post yours I'll tell you what I think of it.

>>6120309

What do you want to hear?

Some lines work, some don't. The one's that do say something interesting. Anything familiar sucks.

It sounds like its meant the entertain the ears, and not the brain. If it ain't deep, don't force it, and let the sounds have their day, and focusing on improving that.

>>6130581
Honestly just clicked on this thinking it was a good photograph. But now that I see the strokes in it, I can't help but feel like I'm standing under the canopy as rain water patters on the fabric above my head and dribbles down. Amazing.

>>6129544

So what kind of critique do you want? Is this just a travelogue? What is your intention?

>>6130025

You could stand to get rid of any description about light.

>>6130676
Care to elaborate? I find that lighting helps the ambience.

>>6130695

Several reasons.

The fact that the items in the room are being described means that the room is lit well enough for the reader to "see" it. So describing the light is usually redundant. It makes me want to just get to the important stuff.

If the lighting of the room is important enough to be mentioned, the naming of the light source is usually enough for the reader to envision the quality of the light.

The physical nature of light makes it basically indescribable...unless it is filtered through dust or water or something like that, so treating it like a physical *thing* usually doesn't make sense.

Usually a description of a lack of light or shadows is more effective. Or the light's effect on things in the room.

I read a lot of amateur writing and a lot of it contains redundant and/or ineffective descriptions of light. so it might just be a pet peeve.

This goes without saying but if you feel that it's necessary, keep it. If not, get rid of it.

>>6130668
My intention was to take an experience that I heard offhand and try to adapt it.

It was something that I wrote as a way to practice my writing. I guess I'm trying to understand how to tell a story.

I've tried several times to write a book, I know the ending and the beginning, but the middle parts of it seem to escape me.

A friend of mine recommended that I just write short stories for practice and try to submit them to journals. Also to write in several different voices, ala Hemmingway, etc. See why they wrote the way they did and what that did to a particular paragraph.

Profiles in the Pane

Like a phantom the train barreled down the tracks. Unassuming and self-reflective, David Rocklin stared into the pane of the train, staring and saying to himself things that shouldn’t be heard. The upper carriage was devoid of any at all passengers except for David. Sporting an untrimmed beard and a papaya green polo shirt, David began to think about what he would do and say when he got to the party. As a writer, his skills in creating possible scenarios in his head were but a pastime, although in the case of real human contact, he had the social skills of a exiled Slavic Siberian bound political prisoner. Knowing full well that social gatherings were a thing that he liked only from a safe viewing distance, to help broaden his palate and horizons David had decided to go beyond his comfort zone. Taking his glasses off he eyed through near-sighted vision the imprints left by the pads of his eyeglasses. He could only rub his nose in frustration, another thing for him to mully over.

To fully commit to this state of discomfort David had decided to forgo driving a car at all to the city and instead take the Metro-train. A European concept, most people, it seemed to David, didn’t bother with train travel, with the occasional crashes and stops every ten minutes. Though why there would be anything like livestock or abandoned couches left on the tracks was anyone’s guess. He also thought it would do him some good observing real people in a real environment, people must use this train to get to work, but after pondering over that it made more sense for him to come to Los Angeles in the morning where people took the train to work. He saw that for a fact when the outbound train passed them by at one of the next stops.

Even if it was for his brother’s going away party, he couldn’t find any excuse to come and see Leon off. Modern technology today allowed the two of them to keep in moderate contact, though David wouldn’t categorize them having any sort of relationship beyond the blood ties and familial bonds that they shared due to their mutual father and mother. They were both writers, though David had his books published, Leon on the other hand translated them for a living, his talents went beyond grammar, punctuation, and the flowery prose that they both possessed. What set Leon apart from David was the myriad amount of tongues in his possession. Leon’s mind was built like a super-computer for various languages, computing grammar and sentence structure, as a party trick to friends he would like out 212 Chinese characters from memory, which also included every use for them. This is what afforded him the affection that was rewarded to him on a daily basis from their parents, while David nevertheless struggled with his share of languages, his brain wired like an Alan Turing computer, one word took several hours for him to memorize.

>>6130919
Though he was jealous of his brother sometimes he remembered his own successes no matter how short lived they were. They were the only safeguards he had to reassure his sensitive mind of the doubts that allotted inside him sometimes.

Their father being an engineer only valued the result, whatever process one took didn’t matter as long as the result was the same, a success. There was only room for rational thought and the actual, so when David voiced his desires to become a writer, his father immediately disapproved, retaining the fact that it wasn’t a stable job. Even after becoming a published author with a reputation, David’s father still had it in his head that David had to find a real job or he might end up on the streets with the rest of the hopefuls. One of his biggest pet peeves was when he kept comparing him to Leon, reminding him of the fact that while Leon is a writer he is supporting himself through a means that is in a constant demand. David found that any form of rebuttal was a moot point, as time had shown that anyone who is willing to be right all of the time and wrong never at all, will always dominate the conversation. That probably was the only instance that irrationality played in David’s father life.

David reminisced about all these things as the train neared the entrance to the city, he breathed onto the pane again, no fog allocated on the cold glass.

>>6130911

i think it's a good start. you shouldn't give up.

make your character want something. give them a goal or something.

keep the ball rolling rather than getting stuck on description. no matter how good your powers of description are, the reader would rather know what happens next.

Opening paragraph.

An alarm clock rang. It reported the time to be seven o’clock in the morning. A hand then came down on the snooze button, and all was quiet, until the alarm clock rang out again, reporting the time to be nine minutes later than the time it had reported before. It had done this, every weekday, for many years. Not, of course, that the clock would have any notion of such a thing. At most, the clock only possessed a day’s memory, and for the clock, every ringing of itself was a fresh new experience, something to be cherished and enjoyed. No, the only one who might be able to realize the pattern in the clock’s behaviour was its’ owner, James K. Harris, for it was he who the clock awakened every weekday at seven. Deep down, he knew this, and secretly disliked the fact, though he told no one, because keeping things to yourself is easier than telling others. But most of the day his mind would be concerned with other tasks that did not afford him time to think of such things, and he probably would prefer it that way, given time to think on it.

>>6131007

fucking dropped

don't open your story with waking up, it's actually the worst

>>6130933


verbose and not grandoise

your prose isn't fooling anyone

no-one's going to think "the social skills of a (sic) exiled Slavic Siberian bound political prisoner" is clever or funny

at least you seem to have a varied vocabulary (assuming you're not just hitting the thesaurus), so maybe there's hope

>>6131024

Some days I am an elevator
filled with blood
and when anybody wants to use me
I bleed right in to them
as they run away screaming
and I close my doors for the last fucking time
I swear it, the last fucking time
until somebody else presses my buttons.

Some days I am the mirror
watching you pick away at yourself
staring until you look like a mosaic
made of tiles of self loathing and disgust
and I want to reach out and tell you
you're beautiful
forgetting I am the one doing this to you.

Some days I am an unwashed duvet
intimately protecting someone for a night
when they don't care that I am disheveled
until they wake up in the morning
with a cinder-block for a head
and a laboratory of corrosive chemicals for a stomach
and they never need me again

Some days I am the crack of sunshine coming through the blinds
making the day worth getting up for
a beam of warmth within myself
the subconscious part of me telling myself to wake up
make it through today, I will keep you warm.
I will drive you to work and feed you
and I will comfort you whenever you need it.
So please wake up.

>>6130025

pointless why waste your own and our time with this

>>6129953
the first metaphor is quite good, but far too long

you should just stop it at: "For months i've been entangled, arm and leg, in a prison of mossy mangroves"

then you start to add waaaay too many metaphors and it all gets mixed and it's bad

>"but nothing circulates here now, amidst the forest of hypnotic legs jutting out from pools of black glass that reflect, somehow through the dense unmoving canopy, an even blacker sky, nothing except the rare beat of a cold heart."

ehhhhh it's actually not bad

altho the fact that you wrote this when you were depressed made me dislike it slightly more

I feel like I would continue reading this, but only if there was an actual point and it wasn't just navel-gazing

>>6129395
zzz your prose bores me to death

this isn't very literary writing, it's more like... a poorly written gonzo journalist piece


>>6126456
use paragraphs fuck you're not cormac mccarthy you can't get away with a huge chunk of prose it's not even remotely that beautiful

like, if you split that into a few paragraphs, it would probably be nice and compelling (I honestly wouldn't know I stopped reading halfway cause you weren't using paragraphs) in a slow, deliberate kind of way


and then when you actually want to use this maximalist run-on style for something that really is a) beautiful in prose or b) shocking in plot then it'll have a much better impact

>>6125084
eh intriguing enough I would continue reading

the barn as a metaphor is very interesting; I'm curious whether it is actually a metaphor or if you have a sentient barn of some kind (or, most likely, the barn plays a large role in the story?)

>>6124569
pretty bad unless you're purposely imitating virginia woolf or some shit

if that is a sincere original attempt then you should read much more and try to emulate authors you like; that prose is not good

>>6131051

>and I close my doors for the last fucking time

dropped

what's the point of having a poem with lots of nice and unusual metaphors and imagery and then you just go ahead and have a blanket statement with a swearword in the first stanza

it's just so.... /childish/

I've said this a bunch on this board but so many amateur/bad poets try to do this because they're so convinced that the reader will feel whatever they're trying to convey that they don't stop and think that you have to really set up the slow, deliberate, calculating groundwork first

>>6131080
how would you recommend changing it?

>>6131082

that's definitely the wrong question to be asking lmao

>>6131083
I just appreciate any input, that's all. You seem to know what you're talking about. I know I have a long way to go.

>>6131074
>>6131080

damn i haven't even posted anything and i feel insecure

>>6131088
don't be afraid, I'm fairly new at this sort of thing but I'd be happy to help as much as I can.

>>6131033
>verbose
So what should do to improve myself?

>>6131087

read some actual poetry

have actual influences

I feel like I wouldn't be going out on a limb here if I said that you haven't even read the work of a dozen poets

if you're serious about poetry/actually want to get good, the first step is to really learn about and understand poetry


>>6131095
uhhhhh this is quite difficult, because the problem is really entrenched in your prose

your metaphors are bad/almost non-existent. most people attempt at some kind of beauty (particularly in openings), but it just doesn't seem present at all here
yeah I think the problem is actually quite structural....

I would suggest you read much more before you attempt any serious writing

>>6131088

don't be a pussy, if you suck at least you'll find out and can improve yourself. You'll never improve if you don't

>>6131118
Thank you, I appreciate that. I love and read a few well known poets. Dorothy Parker is my favorite. But you're right, my knowledge on poetry is not very extensive. I am doing a University course at the moment and have been learning a lot more so hopefully I will grow with that. Thank you very much for the open, honest answer.

>>6131088

yes post your work so I can shred it apart

such odd, lonely days

how many exotic places
sights of varying shape, color, intensity
elaborations of sound
will it take
to be bored no more?
to see life as worthwhile?

during the drive home
I saw a pretty sky, with a pretty shade of blue
and those divine-looking sun rays, like a postcard from god
the red brake lights ahead of me was a great contrast
i didn't know the brake lights of a car could add to a scene
although genuine, it wasn't much
and the appreciation dwindled quickly

mild enjoyment, "the sky is pretty sometimes"
and that is all it ever is
nature, supposedly so beautiful
is just mildly so to me
am I looking at it now, the beauty of life?
I really can't tell

how much longer must I be blind?
dear god or whatever appropriate synonym
I want to see what the fuss is about
because right now is a nightmare
with the most fleeting glimpses of pretty sights
almost as if to mock how dismal it all is

the stark reality of the dollar store parking lot
and the deer dead on the side of the road
and the memorial for the dunk teenager
and the lost dog sign, "reward 1000 dollars" (they miss their beloved pet)
and the blue and red lights signalling someone's unlucky day

the roads teem with misery
I hope mc5 is right, and that "motorcity is burning"
I would like to see this whole parade burn away
It can't be making anyone genuinely happy, can it?

if I am to be in hell, put me in hell
what a wishy-washy god to tease me with
morsels of beauty between
or perhaps that is a more perfect hell
a masterful bdsm-priestess is the lord

I have hope, and I'm growing sick of it too
beyond hope, is there something more real?
more real than this bitterly held hope
So tired, truly
My usual compass of life
to decide what to do, moment to moment
now spins spastically, useless
I cannot think of a single thing that feels "right"

"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake"
Daily I do odd things, to try to surprise myself
into awakening from this terrible dream
such odd, lonely days

>>6106607


I once met a guy
who had good taste in books
he made up for in brains
what he was lacking in looks

he was good with his tongue
he was good with his hands
he laughs at bad jokes
and pretends he understands

I ask if he wants me
he says that he might
I lift up my shirt
"you can look if you like"

and when he looked up
I lifted my shirt
I opened my ribs
and showed him my hurt

I told him its cruel
that he could be so nice
because instead of a heart
I've a block of ice

I showed him my pain
and I asked if he felt it
I gave him my heart
and told him to melt it

my rib cage is empty
my thoughts uncontrolled
he told me he can't
because he too is cold

I wanted him badly
I wanted him mine
I was the kids tongue
he was the frozen stop sign

But I back away slowly
watching my breath
and I ran away
before I freeze to death.

>>6131174

*run

just spotted that now

>>6131139
>I saw a pretty sky, with a pretty shade of blue

too trite

>and those divine-looking sun rays, like a postcard from god

better

>the red brake lights ahead of me was a great contrast

back to being hackneyed

>i

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume that's a typo


and then the vapidity is just too much for me and I start skimming

and ya I'm seeing a whole bunch of typos now and come on why the fuck would you have this number of typos stop wasting EVERYONE'S TIME


just because I'm nice I'll give you one comment of many that you should really hear which is that your style is /all/ over the place, alternatively trying to be deep, or quirky, or serious etc. etc., but never with any substance and never in any meaningful combination and that's bad

>>6131174


ya did you do any scansion at all????

like yes, it's great that you're using a nice and recognizable ABCB structure, but the syllables of the lines are all over the place

I mean, I'm a big fan of structured poetry, but it's just painfully obvious when an amateur has to use all these non-compatible syntax and sentence structures to get the rhyme off

this is particularly a problem because most of your B rhymes are monosyllabic and very simple, which makes the uneven lines even more obvious

>>6131215
I think Titus Andronicus had something like that

>>6122195
Noooooo one?

>>6131200
Wasn't trying to do anything, just conveying my present feelings in one go

>>6131118
alright, brb going to go kill myself.

>>6131246
I think it was very emotive, aside from the structure being a bit off. I think it was very honest and lined with a persons thought pattern very well.

>>6131257
I think these things you can learn if you apply yourself. The fact you put yourself out there and take the time to practice means you will be okay.

>>6131224
I was uncertain as to what was happening for half of it, and where did the rhyming come from?

>>6131267
I find that whenever i carefully write anything and think it through it always comes across as stilted so i go more for stream of consciousness which sounds more true but lacks in style obviously

>>6131174
s' not bad. Not a fan of rhyme myself but it built a decent image of the guy in question, which is a good start

>>6131282
I think the stream of consciousness comes across very well. It is very rarely structured. But I think you have all the creativity and ability to express emotions down. You just need to work on structuring your work more and getting things to flow better. We all have things to work on, don't give up!

>>6131278
The rhyming increased gradually, but it's not really relevant unless you want to make it. Was the confusion too much?

The Exam

"What is the meaning of all this?"
demands the head of the table, suddenly,
as I smear smushed peas onto my face.

"Nothing," (pre)supposes everyone
as they set their silverware to 4 o'clock.
"Nothing" is and isn't (butt-fuck metaphysics).

Then I fall:

A. Asleep
B. Out of my chair
C. Into a coma
D. Unto death
E. All of the above (in that order)

*X and Y are taking a stroll in the park*
X: I finally checked out some of M.C. Escher's work in a gallery the other day and I fully appreciate the beauty and ingenuity with which he made one single theme mesh with itself going both backwards and forwards. But I am afraid I will always feel Godel is superior.
Y: I don't know, but what is certain is that I don't worry about arguments of taste.
X: Tell me, what's it like to be your age? Is it true that one has no worries at all?
Y: To be precise, one has no frets.
X: Oh, well it's all the same to me.
Y: Fiddle. It makes a big difference you know.
X: Say, don't you play guitar?
Y: That's my good friend. He often plays. Personally I wouldn't touch a guitar with a 10 foot pole.
*Suddenly Z wanders out from nowhere, nursing a prominent black eye*
Z: Hello hello! Do you see this bump, this lump? Given to me by a grump? I was loafing around the park when I came upon a bear of a man playing the lute, so I told him, "Pardon me sir but you are pole-luting our park with your mazurka," and he smacked me right in the eye! Were it my nature I would have smacked him back, but I backed off. After all, forwards is backwards and backwards is forwards. I'm always turning things around. Anyways, so long for now!
*Z disappears as quickly as he appeared*
X: That's my good friend. He often plays. Personally I wouldn't touch a 10 foot pole with a guitar.
Y: Say, don't you play guitar?
X: Fiddle. It makes a big difference you know.
Y: Oh, well it's all the same to me.
X: To be precise, one had no frets.
Y: Tell me, what's it like to be your age? Is it true that one has no worries at all?
X: I don't know, but what is certain is that I don't worry about arguments of taste.

>>6131335
For me, yes. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that I wasn't reading it right because I've had no sleep though.

>>6131337
I liked this, it was quirky but you pulled it off in my opinion.

>>6131374

Easy, you're no Hofstadter. Pick your own style.

Great work is a beautiful sponge soaked in blissful booze,
maybe a dash of sweat from yodeling on the ranch.
While supple flesh turnt to cowhide under a sweltering sun
makes me wish for a pot of champagne fondue,
I praise the gas soaked rag around my neck that keeps the skeeters away,
because they're just so damn persistent this time of year.

And I thank so kindly the lasso that pulled me towards where you live,
a land caked with naked cacti and lullaby buzzards,
'cause now I can swing in a hammock and watch the breeze blow by before saddling Slopes,
all while you brew a sweating pitcher of lemonade on the porch,
with a golden smile gleaming over the swaying fields
and a hand on the dog.

I am all of Dorothy's friends:
brainless, heartless, and scared for the end
of yellow-bellied homunculi set in history's stone
supporting a canopy of mindless minds that condone
the foreshortened lack of foresight in trends.
I am all of Dorothy's friends.

http://pastebin.com/aqM0Btwa
posted this in the past but after reading it over just recently it feels really fucking corny

>>6134366
Cut every useless word. Got maybe a third of the way in, but I can tell that not much is going to change stylistically. Basically, it seems like you use whatever adjectives and adverbs you can come up with just for the fuck of it, regardless of context or even meaning in some cases. Crepuscular, for instance, means "pertaining to twilight." This is directly at odds with bright, piercing, white light of the first sentence. Clean your damn act up. Also is it necessary for your characters to be (presumably, based on the names) Japanese and Chinese? So far it's had no bearing on them or anything else - they're stock characters. Frantic, ill young woman, and the stoic young man who supports her. Yawn.

starts therapeutic
then you overuse it
now what am I doing
computer saving
frantic erasing

medication and
caffeination and
anticipation and
there's always
a girl to think about
that's what
it's always about

i need some sleep
that's all I ever need
I'm addicted to likcing the taste of the void off the tip of my pen and what rhymes with pen OH I remember when I started feeling fucked in the head again and picked up a pen pretty sure it's part of the disease to think and think and the thinking's easy at first until you want it to stop then it hurts and I don't want to scare you away I really really want you to stay but this this right here is why it won't happen I'm as narcissistic as I am obsessive I won't be throwing out a single thought they're all fucking golden

>>6131074
Can I ask what books/writers you enjoy reading?

>>6134438
Well thanks, I do appreciate your insight, it will help me to refine things quite a bit.
you're right about the names it just helps me to come up with them first as opposed to using stock names

>>6106607
You're trying too hard. I could tell as soon as "like the thick waft" that's so abrupt and clearly thrown in there to write "a certain way."

>>6134689
>Can I ask what books/writers you enjoy reading?

I read and enjoy most genres except maybe YA and romance

>>6132574
>>6132581

Can I get some crit on these, pretty please?

A sound body, a sound mind.
For equity, stocks, shares delight
I paint the sun, the sea, the skies.
The moon will watch for me tonight
But for a flash, just let me be!
Compose the childhood symphony
Without the bass, Augmented fourth
Six, nine. Unrequite on Murphy's course,
Mens Sana in Corpore Sano.
Oh! Somnabulis the cosmic shadow,
Ma Mater mends what begins and ends
The futility of creative thought.

It's shit please be harsh. need 2 get better.

He woke up in a cold sweat. Where was he? It took a few seconds to realize that he was in his bedroom where he had fallen asleep - he glanced at the clock- about two hours ago. What was wrong? He had been somewhere just a few moments ago, somewhere else, not his bedroom. He strained his mind, desperately searching for a glimpse of what he had just experienced. There was a flicker of light in his mind; an image drifted in hazily from the far reaches of his conscious. There was a snowy driveway with a surface of red worn brick; it was familiar but still muddy. What else was there to remember; he knew there was more. Again, he searched, grasping at any vague memories that were rapidly slipping away. Nothing. Where did the dreams go? Were they thrown away a trash bin in some dark corner of his mind, or were they hidden away from his conscious, watched over greedily by his miser of a subconscious.

"I thought we were supposed to be on the same side." He said aloud to his rebellious brain.

While he was distracted by his subconscious' betrayal. another image came floating by, and he quickly latched on to it. He knew where he was. The plaid carpet of St Marks high school was inexorably ingrained in his memory from all the lonely study halls and lunch periods he had spent tucked away at the desks in the back corner. However, there was more to the dream fragment than hideous carpets. As his mind followed the carpet toward the two parallel rows of computers, he saw what had made him so upset a few moments earlier. Her.

He wasn't sure if he wanted to remember anymore. He felt the sickly feeling of regret crawl up from his stomach, through his chest, and into his heart. He reached into his pocket for his smart phone, the easiest and most accessible way to escape bad feelings. He grabbed a handful of air, and realized he was still in his boxers. Maybe he should face it, maybe something good had happened? If his dream self couldn't make amends then where did that leave him? He closed his eyes again, trying to restrain a wave of despondence that he knew all too well. He thought back to the first image. How were they connected; he had an inescapable feeling that they were. It all came flashing back to him, torching his brain with painful remembrance.
"even in my dreams..." He shook his head.

He remembered it all, a bizarre and cruel juxtaposition of his early childhood home and his first heart break. It was much less poetic than it sounds. True to the real thing; his dream heart break were on account of his own inaction, a pathetic, pitiless mistake. How was he supposed to feel sorry for himself it was all his fault. He shook his head, and rested his scouring face in an open palm.

"I'm going to get better, If I can't win in real life, I'll at least win in my dreams." he thought, accompanying it with a determined nod.

>>6135260
>He woke up in a cold sweat.

dropped are you REALLY going to start a story with waking up seriously shit man come on

>>6135316
Yeah shit shouldn't have started with such a cliche, I was kind of directionless when I started so I was just trying to get words on the page so I could get going.

Is that all you read? I'd ideally like the hear what else is shit about it.

I know it's about to reach the bump limit and that this is really lengthy, but I would honestly appreciate some objective feedback. Here's 1/2:

I've been told that skipping stones across a pond can alleviate chronic feelings of insignificance and boredom. I gather from the guy who told me, a homeless man named Mo, that it had something to do with clapping in the forest to talk to the unfallen trees, whose leaves––the stomata––can sense even the most minute changes in air pressure and so, in an arguably imperceptible manner, can hear––some unconsciously Confucian/confusing explanation like that; he had band-aid on his tongue. But ('tub' is but backwards, but butts back backwards into tubs), I think mo' or less I'm like my temporary friend Mo: I have no idea what I want to orate to my monkey scribe or do, say, be, etc. I can't seem to embrace my natural instincts to perform as not only a fully functional human being (which let's be honest is hardly a definable term), but as a relevant, useful, contributing person, member of society as they (members of society) say and are. No, my inexcusable modern soul rejects carnality, with all its beauteous nakedness, raw compulsions & vulnerabilities, succumbing to that undefinable, misplaced, misnamed-identified-trusted sensation of the body: my un-societally sound brain-parts: me: I (that guy) guess (because what else can we ever really do?) Me, yes I'm still talking to you about myself, and no I won't apologize for any lack of quality or uncouth rudeness or delirious pacing or bombastic rhetoric, you dirty thought voyeur––my mind is caught in a draught, the spigots spew dust and the vultures have begun drinking their own blood. Hell, you might as well call it a ghost town if we're going to superfluously do what we (now he's plural? (now I'm referring to myself in the third person like a lunatic?)) always do and unnecessarily step back and behold humanity as a whole, in both its vastness and brevity––but mostly its vastness. Zoom, with a mark of exclamation. From a single sweet, nectarine note in a hummingbird-tone chord sung by the world's tiniest violin to direct eye contact with a stranger (on the subway if anyone asks), a wobbling star in the firmly dim firmament; filaments in the skin, tingling nerves popping with excitement/excrement, palm sweat (a symptom of cooties):–(note the double frowny emoticon to the left, and also) the stuff of summers back when time was as dilated as the irises of the kid staring at me in the mirror, desperately wanting to dive into that blue Fall water past his idle toes and swim without fear that gluttonous sharks will sniff his sweat, shadows behind Hamlet's curtains.

I know the thread is about to reach its bump limit and that this is really long, but I'd honestly appreciate some feedback on this. 1/2:

I've been told that skipping stones across a pond can alleviate chronic feelings of insignificance and boredom. I gather from the guy who told me, a homeless man named Mo, that it had something to do with clapping in the forest to talk to the unfallen trees, whose leaves––the stomata––can sense even the most minute changes in air pressure and so, in an arguably imperceptible manner, can hear––or some unconsciously Confucian/confusing explanation like that; he had band-aid on his tongue. But ('tub' is but backwards, but butts back backwards into tubs: I'm a Level 69 Palindrome), I think mo' or less I'm like my temporary friend Mo: I have no idea what I want to orate to my monkey scribe Minky or do, say, be, etc. I can't seem to embrace my natural instincts to perform as not only a fully functional human being (which let's be honest is hardly a definable term), but as a relevant, useful, contributing person, member of society as they (members of society) say and sometimes are. No, my inexcusable modern self rejects carnality, with all its beauteous nakedness, raw compulsions & vulnerabilities, to ultimately succumb to that undefinable, misplaced, misnamed-identified-trusted sensation of the body: my un-societally sound brain-parts: me: I (that guy) guess (because what else can we ever really do?) Me, yes I'm still talking to you about my-blankety-blank-self, and no I won't apologize for any shittiness or uncouth rudeness or delirious pacing or bombastic rhetoric or lists, you dirty voyeur of….

>>6136268

My mind is caught in a draught, the spigots spew dust and the vulture has begun drinking its own blood. Hell, you might as well call it a ghost town if we're going to superfluously do what we (now he's plural? (now I'm referring to myself in the third person like Dali or The Rock or a fucking Marine?)) always do and unnecessarily step back to behold humanity as a whole, in its paradoxical vastness and brevity––but mostly its vastness. Zoom, with a mark of exclamation. From a single sweet, nectarine note in a hummingbird-tone chord sung by the world's tiniest violin to direct eye contact with a stranger (on the subway if anyone asks), a wobbling star in the firmly dim firmament, filaments in the skin, tingling nerves popping with excitement/excrement, palm sweat (a symptom of cooties):–(note the double frowny emoticon to the left, and also) the stuff of summers back when time was as dilated as the irises of the kid staring at me in the mirror, desperately wanting to dive into that blue Fall water past his idle toes and swim fearlessly, unworried that gluttonous sharks sniff his sweat, shadows behind Hamlet's curtains. Whatever, that stuff isn't matter anyway. Matching two sentences. The cigarettes burnout faster these days––these days––like a sprinter in a marathon, or an Irishman in a pub during St. Anybody's day, or the humorousnessless metaphors we use to describe the way we make each other feel. You know, genuinely magical: special like bubbles blown by Bubbles the frown-less clown with Downs, and like Spam, and especially like––to adhere to today's (11/11/11, make a wish!) stringent Scientific standards––X times infinity squared plus one (ad infinitum). But I've just woken up, so as usual, my fingertips pretended to mouth-fart and in doing so peed acrid gold all over my loyal wife QWERTY (who's just my write-type).

>>6136268
>>6136270
you show potential but these are a mess. cut the tangents, the self referencials, etc. these are exhausting to read. reset and pare back.

>>6136270

your prose in cliche and your diction is fukt

>>6106855

dust can not be wet and fill the air except for outrageous circumstances, which clearly not happening in this shit heap.

When dust gets wet it gets heavy and it falls to the ground. Also it gets sticky and stays on the ground.

>>6107031
Good. But remove
>When did we lose the magic we possessed as children?
No need to state the obvious. Other than that, 7/10, idea could be more original but nice prose and the honesty is...refreshing.