Critique Thread: No Discernable Talent Edition

[Anonymous No.10724813]

Old Thread is dead.
As OP I'll critique the first three or four posts, but I can't do anything beyond that. My nephews Bar Mitzvah is at 5PM
Here's an excerpt from something I'm working on:
Before that door swung open, Leonard carried around with him a trench populated by all of the ghosts of the war. Leonard kept them there, dormant and inactive, docile and placid, never daring to peek inside. Leonard went to great measures to keep himself away from Verdun. He plugged his ears during thunderstorms to keep memories of artillery blasts at bay. He was careful to stay away from car exhausts, as the smell reminded him too much of mustard gas. He even had a word game to avoid recalling the names of fallen comrades. Instead of recalling Private Babineaux, Leonard recalled “Ford Motor Company” (Ford Motor Company died face down in the mud after being caught in enemy fire), in place of Corporal Allard was “Gilbey’s Scotch” (Gilbey’s Scotch died after weeks of torture in the field hospital after being exposed to Mustard Gas), and Captain Beaufort’s name was replaced by “Jiffy Biscuit Mix,” (JIffy Biscuit Mix was executed by his commandant after going against orders that meant certain death for the men he led). As painful as these ghosts were to Leonard, life without them was a life without conflict, and this was especially difficult for Leonard, because to him life was conflict. To not have a fight was to be nothing more than a ghost in the trenches of his own memory. However, when that door swung open, everything changed. He saw Vincent and everything came to him suddenly. What was once a void became a vessel. Leonard’s trench of ghosts became a river of pure malice and confrontation. It twisted and snaked through a landscape of scorched earth and human suffering. In Vincent he had found an estuary for his river, a scapegoat for his problems, an enemy for his faction. Although he found no peace in this river, it was not peace that he sought. He sought only conflict, only war, because, despite how much he could do to convince himself otherwise, he had never left Verdun, he was there always.

[Anonymous No.10725222]

I would like to write you something beautiful or, at least, acceptable. If I could, I would construct someone who would remind you of yourself. I would write someone you could read yourself into, or, at least, consider yourself alongside in a suitable narrative. This person therefore must be someone of familiar temperament: someone who is neither too reasonable nor too emotional. They will have a certain demeanor you agree with and some aspect you should like to find in yourself. However, I must remember, if I make this man excessively amorphous they will remain flat and impenetrable. Worse than that, you will forget them. The entire work will read as though they were never there and you will close the work feeling cheated, if you should remember it at all. This person who I wish to make for you could be named something innocuous as not to arouse your suspicions: they will no doubt turn out to be something other than themselves. Their name, then, is pivotal. However, I cannot not name this person Paul. For no one is named Paul anymore. Pauls will soon be among the Garys, Ronalds, Richards, and, soon enough, Georges of antiquity. This person who cannot be named Paul would strike up unintentional associations, they may feel out of time, or rather far too in time—even if you should like their affairs and exploits, something about them would never satisfy you.

[Anonymous No.10725674]

>>10725222
I like this. It's very meta, but unlike most meta pieces of fiction, the head of the writer isn't up his own ass.

[Anonymous No.10725689]

>>10724813
>Before that door swung open, Leonard carried around with him a trench populated by all of the ghosts of the war.
Stopped reading here. SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT

[Anonymous No.10725768]

I'm into writing lyrics for my songs. I get a lot of compliments on them but I am unsure if people are just being kind. It would be nice to have some anonymous opinions from people who aren't afraid to speak their minds about them. Here's my most recent.

A good horse he says neigh roughly zero times a day
A broken clock is right a few more times than that they say
and you have said a thousand times there’s nothing left for you in me

An elephant train wreck, the circus rolls into our town
Last minute told I’m the main act, thank God I’ve got it down
I curl up in a ball, begin embracing for the fall

The ringmaster exclaims I have for sure seen better days
He lights the wick, the time it ticks, the crowd counts ecstatic
I’m sent into the sky a kinder altitude up high

No one to laugh and scream in sight, no one prays my demise
But as I come back down I start to hear those bellow sounds
The tent colours arise and you are nowhere left in sight

[Anonymous No.10725797]

>>10725689
A gentile with no attention span, how stereotypical. In a few minutes I will be at my nephew's Bar Mitzvah, sipping fine champagne, while you will be sitting in your Shkutz house typing away on an internet forum.

[Anonymous No.10725836]

>>10725768
This sounded terrible to me the first read through, but then I realized these are song lyrics. Even great lyricist's lyrics look bad on the page, but great against a melody. I think these words have just a sort of verve and energy to them that would make them great as song lyrics. And no, I'm not just being nice. This sincerely reminds me of some of Joanna Newsom's better lyrics.

[Anonymous No.10725855]

>>10725836
Thank you. I suppose I should've just linked a recording of them sung. I know what you mean, lyrics look a lot sillier than real poetry. Ignore the bad vocals.

https://youtu.be/9KAYO3WhZ4M

[Anonymous No.10725925]

>>10725855
That was nice man, I really enjoyed that. I'm going to give you a sub

[Anonymous No.10726158]

>>10725925
Really kind of you. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.10726221]

The sculptor ever so sculpts
He hunches over his slab, ever so dumb
He sculpts until his hands go numb
Unable to endure the noise each tool erupts

He slaves his hands away on that marble slab
Ever locking them in endless bout
Forcing them to leave not a detail out.
For he is a master utterly mad

And as time drags by this deaf man
And wrinkles over him span
His head glistens and pours sweat
And his eyes glitter and flood blood
And with such his vision is dazzled
And now he sculpts in listless razzle

No longer is he able to see
Neither his hands to decree
Forced is he to abdicate his thrown
And now his hands work on their own

His hands carve and sculpt to the tools that bray
And though his brows wrinkle, and show
dismay
He is their slave, not allowed to walk away

They leave not a nook, nor a crannie
Carving from this marble, a thing uncanny

His hands ornament the corners
With beautiful roman laurels
Then they carve their crest in the center
Decreeing that they are precentor

And when the tools are set and the dust is settled
His supplicating eyes become finally leveled

Leveled upon this solid canvas
Hoping against all odds and chances
That his hands created something grand

Yet, upon looking at this his head sways
And his heart in agony goes ablaze

For this man who is his own hand's pensioner
Sculpted nothing more than his own sepulcher
Sorry for the lack of punctuation.

Please critique, I'm trying my best and I don't know if I'm getting anywhere.

[Anonymous No.10726225]

https://pastebin.com/QWmKBMnB

[Anonymous No.10726239]

>>10726225
>https://pastebin.com/QWmKBMnB


That was chilling...

Thank you for sharing something beautiful. Keep it up anon

[Anonymous No.10726346]

>>10726221
You definitely know how to pick a poetic subject. It's better than 99% of the alt lit:

"i peed in a tampon
smoked weed and close macbook
xanax and kale new york city"

type of petty bullshit. While I'm not a poet myself, I think it's safe to say that you should start using meter.
While your subject is good, the journey it takes is sort of a let down in a sense. It's incredibly common among aspiring writers to write a story about an artist who is just sitting and struggling to create something. The rhetoric and literary techniques lead the artist to some great breakthrough and triumph, but just because your subject has a triumph does not mean necessarily that you are a triumphant artist. First off, in order to pull this story off you need an object, an experience, or example that causes this triumph to be worthwhile to the reader.
Also that last line 'Sorry about the punctuation" should be included in the poem.

[Anonymous No.10726378]

>>10726346
>journey it takes is sort of a let down in a sense. It's incredibly common among aspiring writers to write a story about an artist who is just sitting and struggling to create something. The rhetoric and literary techniques lead the artist to some great breakthrough and triumph, but just because your subject has a triumph does not mean necessarily that you are a triumphant artist. First off, in order to pull this story off you need an object, an experience, or example that causes this triumph to be worthwhile to th

Thank you so much.

[Anonymous No.10726511]

I am writing a fake letter as an exploration of my retardation. Here's an excerpt to the last portion of it:

Two months ago, at about half past six, I woke up for probably the last time I will ever wake up on Wyanoke and Greenmount. I’d even go as far as Baltimore, but that thought would probably send me into tears, or at least wanting to cry and never actually being able.

You set two alarms: one triggered bird calls from your phone (which I am going to keep in mind of its existence) and the other, an old alarm clock that emitted green neon and a meek blare. Around noon, you were to meet your mother in the county for breakfast, and later that day a car would be sent for you to shuttle you to Washington. You decided on your blue oxford with no tie, though I suggested you bring one just in case they made you wear one.

They did not make you wear one.

On this morning, we ate nothing. We drank no cold brewed coffee with no metallic aftertaste, no peach juice and seltzer. We ate no fancy little pastries, or juicy plums, or concentrated mango juices. We instead listened to classical music, climbed into a Jeep with no contested license plates, and spoke about airports and all topics insensitive. All in all, I’d never had so many heart palpitations, and I was never so glad to have had every last one of them.

We watched half of Lynch’s Dune the night prior. I looked up Klonopin® and snooped through your bookshelves. My friend suggested I listen to Music for Airports and perform cognitive behavioral therapy on myself. Instead, I reached for a journal with no entries except one of various anti-anxiety medications.

You said you had nothing tying you to Baltimore, and maybe you’d want to leave. I doubted it. I mean, I wouldn’t.

We went for a late afternoon stroll against some neoclassic Southern manors with carriage steps intact, and I carried a terrible umbrella with an attempted embellishment of a Monet painting. I thought it to be cheeky to have at a moment like this. The atmosphere smelled like the onset of a storm.

We cut through a park probably on Highfield.

“They say the safest place to be during a thunderstorm is under a tree.” You uttered.

“Is that true?” Of course that’s not true.

“No.”

Under the concrete awning of a large mansion, a film glossed over you and me. The solution probably consisted of equal parts precipitation and perspiration. I decided the owners were Jewish by the mezuzah that graced the door frame, but a sunroom denoted otherwise: the instruments that resided in there was only possessed by a layer of dust, and nothing more. Cellos, a grand piano, a small antique table toppled over — how could this be? It was as if the storm scared them away.

You looked upon the grassy knoll and decidedly placed your hand on the small of my back. This sent a smirk across your face. Where was Mrs. Card? I missed her so. The only way to feel vulnerable again. I longed to peer into her memory.

[Anonymous No.10727075]

>>10726221
It's good but some of the rhyme seems forced and is not necessary. Maybe it also goes on a bit much and does not necessarily need to be as long as it is.

[Anonymous No.10727188]

[Anonymous No.10727256]

She didn't respond at first, thinking a few seconds, before asking:
- Approximately when were your last sexual encounters?
- It's been a little over two years
- Ah! she exclaimed with triumph, now you see! Under such conditions, how could one possibly love life?
- Would you accept if I propositioned you for sex?
She was troubled, I believe she even reddened a little. She was forty years old, she was bony and well used; but that morning she seemed to me truly charming. I have an extremely fond memory of that moment. A bit despite herself, she smiled; I honestly believed that she was going to say yes. But finally, she replied:
- That isn't my job. As a psychologist, my role is to put you back into a state where you are able to begin courting again so that you can, starting from scratch, have normal relations with young girls.
For the following sessions, she had herself replaced by a male colleague.

[Anonymous No.10727262]

Im drunk

"Hunter."
Less unsurely, perhaps than ever, I nodded. "Hmm."
And this, hardly a phrase but a noise, they seemed to take as sentence enough and, in their respective ways, stepped aside. Undeniably dramatically before the whole chamber room, at least to me to me and my heart racing but my excitement unimpeachably growing, glowing, the lid of the portal hissed, and began to rise.
Gingerly, or, as I wad quite aware, most tenderly, I layed my long arm on the time, its duals perped between us.
Another spoke, lower: "Hunter. This what we have found in" what roughly translated to "the old wound" or "our old wound." I tried to take in as much of it exposed now as I could.
I: "It is beautiful,' which isn't what I necessarily intended to convey, but almost all nodded affirmatively anyway, or bowed and did not rise. There, in the box, lowered now to rest upon the harsh floor, rest a great dark alien maw, from center which a small humen's skull peered emptily inside me.

[Anonymous No.10727643]

The clerk ended the sentence with
"properly authorized to do so."
Dovetailed to a vicious pigeonholing,
the rhubarb kowtowed to the serpent's belly.
Banish the extremists! The extremist's screamed,
while he—the armored coward—sat prone outdoors
under the pavilion made of styrofoam and gold.
"We trade here in pure-cut, raw and refined balderdash,"
the new comptroller told the champion martyr
at the peak of the podium before the fires fell—
the capital building outpoured digital bees
and the mortician felt an pang of curiosity
which he mistook for communion at church.
Apologizing whilst sodomizing,
the ghost of Tori Amos' future
scrolled a thousand wishes
in the form of javascript kisses.

The refrigerator lacks magnets:
the insides are empty.

[Anonymous No.10727659]

Ream-ridged, the waxen hand of jumentous Alfred Weineschöpfer hung, loose and spasming, hooking over his hip and fly as he swivelled about the balustrade with a navicular pop - a half-sucked shaltnot - the brittle almondy crust beneath his sole tangling amongst the coral of the carpet as he sashayed towards the peeling cedar of the doctor's office.
Sustained by the impetus from his spiralled ascent of the stairhead, Weineschöpfer severed his unatrophied hand from the holster of his pantspocket, slipped his flavour-stained sleeve with a groaned stretch, drew a breath of slathered calamine and spritzed citrus as he opened the door with a perverse turn of wrist and elbow.
A receptionist, ovine-eyed, revolved apace, past the marmalade banquette and paused, in ruminant awe, at a bouquet of polyester and its littered pollen of biscuit crumblings, patchily tracing her fitful circulations between pantry and chair.
Alfred coughed, soggily, dabbed the vermilion junction of his lips with a callused thumb - grimaced at the blunt scraping of nail on his epicene flesh - and recited:

-Iambic to see docker, rashly.

-Take a seat Mister Winoshopper, she retorted, unturning.

Displeased, he settled into the lather flecked jam of the bench and frigidly stared at the hued corpuscles of a pointillist bather: pitching a blanched and freckled rump about a patinaed tub as they stared at the floortiles; an unpainted primate relished from the doorjamb, obscured by the bulbous projection of a Hellenic column. Alfred doubled up, revealing a network of sanguine filament beneath his tomentum crown, the putty of his gut burrowing blindly. The indigestion of impressionism.

This aesthetic spasm settled itself into the nidus of Alfred's thoughts, oozing - crusting - amongst the arbour and goutweed:
Was the relationship between his frothy cramps and these paintgrains correlated quadratically or exponentially? Could the insatiable gluttony of a gaze cause bloating when subjected to stale and half-baked images? Was the slight pressure at his temple caused by a visual overindulgence and resultant fattening of the eyeballs?
These, and many other questions, singed the frowzy turf of his mind - burning underfoot, their fragrant wisps stoking the honey-hoared fleece of his forearms -shovel-sliced from the peat of a mired cognisance, crumbling as they tumbled off the scavenged gewgaw and gimcracked scree of a geriatric broodground.

Clouds of coffeepot vapour glistened in the barbs of light, varnishing the pulp of an orange segment playfully turned by the receptionist as she called Alfred forth, blinking at the desk grain. A fermented smile rose upon his chin, disrupting the ripple of his jowls. The final pucks of oneiric thought, exposed to the tannic gob of forgotten or unknown etiquette, sputtered, and sank back into the rut and furrow of Alfred's mind.

[Anonymous No.10727696]

This is the tail end of an essay I dug up today that I wrote about Cage's 4'33" a few months ago. The parts before this one explored Kristeva's notion of shattering and my argument that the concept is applicable beyond the field of linguistics too, if you're wondering why some of the language waxes pretentious.

How's muh analysis and manner of writing? Be honest. This was an assignment but I've been writing essays on my own time for fun lately

[Anonymous No.10727704]

This is my first attempt at poetry, wrote it in a bad mental state so it's probably very edgy and cliche but I'm really curious what you guys think:

Parrot Cage
---------------
Swing, parrot. Squawk in time
With the landline.

I’m fine.

Cover your breath in between so they can’t hear
That you’re dying inside.

4/4 time.

Burst of passion, grab the flimsy wire
So thin, so frail, so easily
Broken.

It’s okay to die.

Your final words, unceremoniously spoken:

“I can’t fly.”

[Anonymous No.10727716]

>>10727704
I like lines 1, 2, 4, 11 and 12. Everything else is pretty... not good

[Anonymous No.10727727]

>>10727716
Too edgy? Or just not subtle enough? I think both are probably true.

[Anonymous No.10727768]

>>10727659
I'm kind of bugging out here, your writing style is nearly identical to mine when I write fiction. Very similar sentence structures and use of "gestural" sounding words + alliteration.

Please don't feel obligated to tell me this is at all good, but here's an excerpt so you can see if you agree

[Anonymous No.10727789]

>>10727727
Read your own work line-by-line as if you were your own employer or something. In what ways can you write about despair and hopelessness that would be really uncomfortable for a boss to read in his employee's writing? Now, in what ways could you deal with those same subjects so that your own employer could understand and appreciate what you mean, despite the strange position your relationship puts him in?

[Anonymous No.10727812]

>>10727768
Superficially, but I think we stress different elements: I am more interested in the melody and rhythm of the syllables; you seem to be more interested in the scene. Carson Chorale is a fantastic name, and so is Beatrice Lieu-Chorale.

I think you could strengthen this with techniques beyond alliteration, as it becomes predictable.

[Anonymous No.10727940]

I find it easier to say nothing
when my boils erupt in my esophagus
which of course only happens metaphorically—
but the crushing immensity of existence
transmogrifies to levity when petting a puppy
before putting it to sleep—
fast track to Sandman's lot, lilting subtle symphonies
written by a quiet band of chimps in the corner office
of my gray zone in the stratosphere of my mind.

[Anonymous No.10728033]

>>10727812
Typically rhythm, melody, and dense wordplay are my primary focuses, but that one is a re-write of a very short story I wrote in pretty standard prose, so the scene ended up taking precedent.
I agree with you on the similarity being superficial, but it was just so striking that once I read fifteen words in, I actually read ahead to make sure someone wasn't just reposting a work I'd posted earlier and forgotten about.

Possible biases aside, I really like what you posted. You've got quite the knack for instilling very visceral undertones in your scenes without explicitly describing them. It's all just prosodic suggestion and effective word choice. The kind of weird undertones you really would be experiencing during a trip to the doctor, but not enough to put words to.
As for critique, most of your sentences are very effective in their density and pretty broad focus, but try combing through it while considering a maxim I try to hold myself to: "don't write a sentence you wouldn't include if you were using standard prose." Tangential sentences can still be great in standard prose, but there's always a risk of going down a road with no real positive contribution to the rest of the paragraph. Great prose alone can't support a sentence that shouldn't be there in the first place.

I'm also sure that many people would tell us both to cool it with the adjectives, but I think they're pretty handy for filling out the ebbs and flows of sentences so I'm not giving them up that easily

[Anonymous No.10728074]

>>10728033
Ah, that explains it. Do you have anything else to show anon, I'm interested to see your other work now. Thanks for the compliments by the way.

[Anonymous No.10728383]

Give it to me.

"Though he did not think he had meant for it to splurge where it did, he felt somewhere inside that the opposite was true. There were not any eye drops in the cupboard when he rushed to look – to squint and bear the interestingly intense fire occupying mostly his right-hand eye – so water would have to suffice. Interestingly it continued to burn in his right-hand eye even when he forced his body into a degrading position under the lukewarm water of the bathroom taps. For science he exposed the left-hand one to a cooler torrent which, as its pleasant temperature worked at his injury, convinced his ocular nerves to ignore the creeping heat of the other. With a deliberate ease he brought himself out from under the taps and inspected his face in the mirror. The hot tap had scalded him slightly on the right-hand side and it has begun to steam his reflection to conceal this fact from him. But he had seen and used the glove of his shirt to squeak its arms round to off. Then he kept going. It was too late for the hot tap because it has committed to the fatal action of harm him – him! And it began to bleed its cooling blood into the basin once he had disconnected its arms and hurled them away. Soap! Where was the soap? There! The bar initially buckled then its edges were shaved off to fit inside the trunk of the tap. He staggered with heavy legs backwards in a crabwalk to maintain eye contact with his dying enemy who drained one last drop before remaining still.
His eye’s original burning had become confused with its scalding, and had seemed to have subsided when the red area on his face returned to its natural colour. He had stood there before the mirror a further two hours, examining, searching his beautiful complexion for an irregularity that could be hiding under his nose, on his eyelids, in the dark corners of his mouth. There was nothing – only the red patch which was fading into rained-on plastic. He was very impressed at himself. So impressed, in fact, that he began to feel another urge to splurge just standing there in his shirt."

[Anonymous No.10728649]

I am obsessed with Chad. I follow Chad, I worship Chad, I think about Chad constantly. Every night, I stare at Chad's pictures for hours wondering what it is that makes him Chad, and try to imitate in the mirror his sometimes cool, sometimes goofy expressions — but I can never quite match his effortless Chad. In the morning, I watch his movements with insane concentration — his movements which are neither sloppy nor graceful, but which somehow make him irresistibly attractive and instantly likeable. I stare with envy and amazement as men he's never met approach and strike up conversation with him as if they were old friends, and girls that walk past Chad blush and flutter their eyelashes, smiling nervously at him like some primal instinct they have no control over. Chad is like the golden sun that pulls the whole world in its orbit without even thinking about it, which the world is thankful for when he's there, and waits for him to return whenever he's away. And I, I am just a shadow, a shadow that will follow Chad until I die, or until I understand the mystery of Chad.

I admit, I used to hate Chad. That was when I used to think of Chad as a mere "alpha male", and myself as the "beta male", biologically determined forever to be Chad's social and sexual inferior. I resented, utterly resented that by mere accident of birth he was destined to be strong, beautiful, happy, successful, universally admired simply for being born — whereas I would have to plot, scrape, scrounge, fight for every last bit of social recognition and approval. Every woman I would ever get, I would have to sneak for like some snake trying to catch a mouse, whereas they would blindly flock to Chad like dumb sheep following their instincts . . . However, I soon realised that these bare sociological categories could never comprehend or explain the Chad I was studying every day like an ancient sage or philosopher. It’s not enough to describe Chad merely as a healthy animal in his prime (although he certainly is), no, there’s something far deeper at work, some hidden, almost godlike quality that you would never notice in him unless you studied him as intently as I have, because it comes to him so naturally and effortlessly. You begin to understand that even if Chad somehow lost his natural good looks, if he became old and frail, if he lost all that youthful energy that makes him so charming to everyone he meets — that still, somehow, he would be loveable Chad and everyone would want to be around him just the same. When I realised this, I stopped hating Chad and began to love him instead, and I am confident that I will never love another human being as much as I love Chad, though I could never explain it and Chad himself could never understand it.

[Anonymous No.10728654]

>>10728649

When I first began trying to imitate Chad, I focused on his attractiveness to women and his success with them, because at first this was what most impressed me and what I envied above all. I would tremble and sweat with a quiet rage as I saw him walk up to women and charm them instantly. He talked to women so naturally as if they were his sister, and they all looked at him as if they were his wife. Looking at him meet a woman was like looking at Adam meeting Eve in paradise, as if he were the very type of manhood that brought out every woman’s inner woman. Whenever he left them, they just seemed happier and more alive. I never really knew what a woman was until one day I saw a girl sit on Chad’s lap and in an instant transform into the pure image of womanhood, perfectly content in the arms of her man — her face was sheer nature, oblivious to anything that was not Chad. When I saw this I felt I could almost cry with anger. It was not his having this power that offended me, but his seeming to have it without any effort, like some divine electric that just flowed through Chad’s veins and not mine. Still, at this time I felt sure that I could discover his secret and become like him. This was when I was still thinking in terms of “alpha” and “beta” male, and I was lead to believe that it was his “confidence” together with his handsome appearance that made him so attractive. So I set to work buying more fashionable clothes, taking care of my diet and clearing my skin, lifting weights to give my body a more muscled and manly look. I watched instructional videos on how to approach women and how to build up “confidence” in speaking to them. It was very awkward at first (and it never entirely stopped being awkward), but eventually I was able to approach any good looking woman without embarrassing myself. It’s true that an overtly aggressive posture and gesture will unconsciously trigger a sexual response in women, who by nature play the passive and submissive role in sex.

[Anonymous No.10728657]

>>10728654

Eventually, I settled on a girlfriend who was somewhat above average in attractiveness, because I couldn’t be bothered with the effort of psychologically manipulating a more attractive woman into staying with me and not cheating on me with men who were also practicing the art of seduction. Now that I had a girlfriend, I did everything I could to get her to look at me with that same natural, content, womanly look that the girl who had sat on Chad’s lap had given him that day, that kind of look that says a woman would rather die than cheat on you. But even though she seemed more or less happy being with me, and didn’t show any sign of wanting to be with anyone else, I never saw anything like it in her. I cannot describe my frustration at this time. Nothing I did showed any sign of working. Though I saw her pleasure in some romantic or sexual thing I did for her, it was never anything like that pure pleasure that wells up out of the very core of a woman’s nature, and that only Chad can bring out of her — that pleasure which lets a woman know what it means to be a woman.

[Anonymous No.10728661]

>>10728657


Finally, filled with so much disgust that I was ready to abandon her and to devote all my time once more to studying Chad: I set her up with Chad. I used the same techniques of psychological manipulation I had learned to seduce women for myself, to plant in her mind the idea of Chad. Though she most likely would not have cheated on me otherwise, I made her feel like I was going to break up with her anyway and left her feeling confused and abandoned. So I had all the cameras and microphones set up in her room, ready for when she came in with Chad. To my surprise, Chad’s erect penis did not seem above average in length or girth. In fact, I couldn’t really tell if it was above or below average. Also to my surprise, he had sex with her only in the missionary position, and it wasn’t long until he had ejaculated inside of her, after which he remained within her for a few moments, kissed her, and then pulled himself out and laid beside her. Nevertheless, while they were having sex she was moaning so deeply it was like he was penetrating as far as her heart and lungs. Afterwards, he held her while she laid on her side, leaning on him — and she had that sweet look on her face that nothing I did could make her have. She seemed to mumble as if to say, “I love you”, but stopped herself half-embarrassed. He kissed her and said she was a “sweet girl”, then she buried her face in his neck with such genuine affection that for a moment my anger ceased and I felt happy for her. He held her as though he was in love with her, kissed her like they had just gotten married, and told her that she was a “beautiful woman” — she was a 7 at best! This was the incident that made me realise that I did not understand Chad, that I had not even begun to understand Chad. All those sexual techniques I had practiced, and I couldn’t give her half as much pleasure as Chad could making love to her like they were both virgins. I expected him to treat her like a whore and leave her lying on her bed as soon as he’d finished. But when I saw that look in her face, I knew that Chad could make this woman happier in two hours than I could in two lifetimes. I wept for hours, and hardly spoke for a week. Though she soon apologised for cheating on me, I told her that it was over between us. I left her thinking that I hated her because she had been unfaithful, but I only hated her because I could never make her as happy as Chad. Besides, I myself could never love her as much as I love Chad.

[Anonymous No.10728665]

>>10728661

What more is there to say? I still have not begun to understand Chad. Once, I saw Chad caught up in an argument between his father and mother, who, to my surprise, were divorced. He just stood there looking quite sad, and I (though quite ashamedly) felt a certain joy in seeing Chad in a vulnerable position for once. I went up to him after and asked him if he was alright. He smiled at me, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “shit happens”, but in such a carefree and sincere way that showed that the situation had barely affected him. Recently, I approached Chad and straight up asked him, “Chad, how are you so happy? Why does everything seem to go just right for you, without you putting in any effort? Why does everyone love and trust you before you’ve even said anything? Chad, how can I be like you?” He looked at me and smiled with more affection than my father has even shown me, put his hand on my shoulder like I was his best friend, and said with perfect calmness and sincerity, “just be yourself, man.” I've not been able to sleep properly since.

[Anonymous No.10728759]

Voyeurism

they're twisting. they're young enough for certain shapes. i don't want to go into detail which
his practically defeated body forms a coat of velvet over her shoulders. he's cringing in the rain. this was a certain shape that didn't help him at all, but nonetheless he feels warm. it would be an aching relief to stand up but he was merely hanging from her. it's a few moments before he would stop cease to become animated. a few more strokes down the center of his back and he was decieved into sleep - a real unceremonious object.
in the end, for those who could afford to spend so much time with him, would recieve a passage into his heart and a third, invisible orifice on his chest would become apparent. or it was totally possible that was created by her or just felt between her hand as her eyes absentmindedly clenched around it. no one could get close enough between an empty space to check what was going on.
the whole ritual teetered near an abrupt completion on a hollywood branch near the bottom of a listless ocean. there is no defense for this kind of stupidity, when it is tucked neatly away and hidden from public influence. it would be disenchanting to say the very least if one of them was to fall - but poetically they clung together . both of them would vanish from the coil, and this definitely the advent to do so. near the end of 24 hours at the start of the 24th year. the man can't be described as "clinging" however, only exhausted. it would be perverted to go into detail why. their interest was ruinous. danger never ceased its warning on their skin as they rolled around, semi-athletically.
the real question concerned how they got down there, using a branch which would have half-broken them from such an instant falling. the gravity was even especially heavy here. one of them might have been broken, in pain, in two halves. they held each other together, which expended the need for true unity in all meanings of the word. flight seemed to be the only answer - their gravity had been replaced so much by the heirless feeling of a kiss that they flew down here. but that's silly. it's never going to become clear, but turning my attention away from this blur of motion is hard.
i have looked away and they've reappeared on the top of the hill. they are a hallucination that i might be a part of. or they could be physical, perhaps they think i'm a voyeurist. i kind of want to shoot them because they're following me around everywhere i go trying to get me to write stories of them into my head. stopping this, flicking my finger at them. i almost articulated biting my thumb at them which would be a nudge in the wrong direction, considering where they come from. or i'm supposing that due to the colour of their skin. if i turn around again, it would be awkward for them to reposition themselves again so i do that.

[Anonymous No.10728770]

>>10728759
and they are not there. i walk away until i'm no longer in the range of their noises of intimacy. horrible horrible field recordings, infest my mind. they want to make me reinvest in my health i think, take the meaning out of my immunity and transmute it into those stupid transmissions of god knows what i'll endure if i keep someone near me. a personal view, and i push my own agenda inside of a diseased mind that can't shut up.
if i always coherently when unloved i might just survive for the short time longer that's needed to live forever. in a circle. and i'm a circular invention, don't you worry about that.
they're following up behind me. i hope they don't have knives, they never seemed very effective. they never seemed very hidden. i wonder how turning aorund would further pervert them, so i give it a try. to no avail. all i see are two healthy young men, of both genders - one with short white hair, one with long black hair. those details and not their eyes remind me of someone i saw earlier - like, 5 seconds ago. they probably think i'm autistic because i'm fixating my gaze upon the only things i could possibly recognize of these strangers who've interrupted my walk. i guess they're right, i guess they're in danger. i guess they're endangered. i can't salve the concerns of a clearly dead person - they are bottomless and happily dead from falling into the sea from the hollywood branch. this is a tragedy and what i'm experiencing now is necessarily the trauma from that, or atleast i hope it is. will they give me the geometry to investigate from the perspective of the past, without the blood curling up the walls of my evaporating pathways?
my mind must be a pink cloud at the moment.
perhaps they are native to my own territory - after all, i approached them. i just want no trouble
"i just want no trouble" atleast they know now of the inadequacies that occur in my mind
the man laughs.
"hi there"
i cringe. for that reason, i listen intently to go over the threshold. i can't say hello, so i say
"hi"
a reflection of what they'd said. again and again, i must remind myself not to do that. that's a long enough sentiment, maybe i should say
"again and again, i must remind myself not to do that."
"how are you" the man says to me. his expression is undeniably friendly and pretty
"hi" i repeat myself "i'm doing ok, just going out on a walk. do i know you from somewhere"
"why were you looking earlier"
"oh um that was my fault. i came out to see scenery and you surrounded the scenery i was trying to look at"
"oi" he fucking runs at me, towards the very thing that causes me to shiver. openly, like heavy strength outplayed along wiry ottermode hands. he um, goes to the gym i can see.
i leg it.

[Anonymous No.10728843]

The task of hiring a nanny to take care of my kids had been more stressful than I originally thought. Interview after interview of the worst possible applicants I had ever seen. Tired old hags without the energy to keep up with my kids, overly strict taskmasters that seemed to think my home was a boot camp or absolute scatter brains without the first idea of how to care for children. My kids are still toddlers and there’s no way i’m trusting them with anyone but the absolute best. I was ready to call it a day when Michelle knocked on the door to ask about the job.

My first impression was that she was a little young, but was certainly presenting herself better than the neighborhood teens that seemed glued to their phones through the interview. She politely asked about the kids, what sort of schedule she should expect, and of course the wages we had in mind for her. She seemed genuinely thrilled to hear that she’d be working with young children and very agreeable to the amount I was offering. She even seemed sympathetic when I told her that their mothers career had her coming home late into the night and that my home office occupied too much of my time to watch both kids.

I was just bringing the interview to a close, confident I’d found the right one when I asked if she had any other questions for me. A coy little smile slipped onto her face as she mentioned I had failed to tell her what was the best way to take care of me. I barely had time to process what she had said before she slipped gently from the couch and onto her knees, those beautiful young eyes looking up to me while her fingers started working open my pants.

I… tried to stop her. Really I did. I told her I was married, that I was happy with my family and that this wasn’t at all professional. She never said a word, only smiled as she worked my swelling dick free from my pants and quickly into her mouth. By then… yeah, I knew it was wrong, but I’m only a man. No man can truly say no to a soft pair of lips, least of all when those lips are wrapped tight around his cock. It certainly didn’t help that my wife had been coming home too exhausted for any sort of play for the past few weeks. I was blowing my load faster than I had in years,

Dutifully Michelle took every last little drop, never pulling her mouth away until she had lapped the last drizzle of cum from my cock head. With that same little smile, she stood before me, leaning close enough to whisper in my ear, asking when she could start. With an all too satisfied sigh, I told her my wife would be out for an extended business trip all weekend. She could start on Friday but not to expect to leave until late Sunday. Michelle gave me the smallest peck on my cheek. I think I might have hired the woman that will ruin my marriage.

[Anonymous No.10729086]

--- After Six ---

I wake up at 7:45 am every morning, and by 8:00 I am out the front door, ready for my daily brisk walk to the local cafe. I order one egg and a cup of black coffee, and spend half an hour there reading. I'm back home by 9:00, and get to work, which continues until 2:00 pm with no breaks so that I have the rest of the day to myself. My job as a data analyst allows me to work alone at home without interruptions. I eat a nutritious lunch: fish and vegetables. The next four hours take me to 6:00 pm, and this time is used to practice the violin or learn Russian, and some reading, with yoga in between to maintain joint flexibility and ensure general health.

Then comes 6:00. I usually begin the evening by railing a fat fucking line coke or amp and downing a few shots of Johnny Walker Red. I call one of two people, Baxter, who is my retarded best friend, or Jenny, some 6/10 whore that is essentially my fuck buddy although once in a while she gets so high she tells me she loves me. Baxter always puts on shitty music which I can only tolerate because I'm fucked up. We talk shit mostly. If it's Jenny that comes around, I pop a Viagra and fuck her brains out. She also likes to put on awful music and talk shit. Oh and I should mention they both smoke meth, but they make it a full-time job, rather than restricting it to a short window like myself. Twice a week I call on neither of these people - on Wednesday and Fridays I hit a random bar in town, hoping to get into a good fist fight. In the last two months I've only suffered a black eye and a broken eye socket, which is a success considering how many fights I've started. Before bed I finish off the rest of whatever Johnny Walker is around, clean my apartment to conceal the activities that took place after 6:00 pm, and pass out.

[Anonymous No.10729296]

Heard the black robed fucker cackling about. Sitting my bed, with my legs gangrened. The bastard was looking at me funny. Looking at the little human who cannot do nothing but squirm at the hands of fate. Do you find that funny you bastard in black robes? Do you find it amusing that a little boy with nothing but tears on his eyes would look at you with fury? The bastard was waiting for me to halt my breathe. It was waiting for me to give up. It was waiting for that satisfaction of me giving up my soul. I wouldn't give the bastard that satisfaction. I stared at the bastard with all the willpower I had. Oh death, you poor bastard. Do you think that this little boy with gangrened limbs would surrender? I don't think so. I am suffering here. I am unable to stop crying but no way in hell that the light inside me will fade. So stare and laughed at me all you want you black-clad monster. This little boy won't give you satisfaction!

[Anonymous No.10730380]

shilling my TV script again, pls rate.
Be as c o n s t r u c t i v e as you like, it's only an early draft and I need motivation to continue working on it.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iVKYBasKN0pQI9k_xoNFnrpgpkBdGAhE

[Anonymous No.10730596]

>>10730380
what program did you make that with? what font is it?

[Anonymous No.10730727]

First few sentences:

Chance encounters, even the concept of them disgusted him. The ragged hole in his shoulder, torn by shrapnel, wept blood. Soaked cloth stuck to his chest as he groaned in agony. Metallic scents of iron and oil filled the air, his face and eyes and lips drying from the intensity of the flame engulfed car he had been inside of moments before. Others near him sang out in their own tunes of misery, joining to form a chorus of anguish. Over him a young woman bent. Without his glasses his vision was far too poor to make out more than rubbed brown pockmarks. Out of all the bodies she has chosen the oldest and frailest man, the last likely to survive.

“Are you all right?” asked the woman stupidly.

“No.” His voice rasped, painful to both his ears and lungs. Leaning closer she whispered in his ear.

“Good.” No chances. No avoidance. Misery does not find you by chance. It comes knocking. A painful tug of something had his frail form in its grips.

[Anonymous No.10730776]

>>10729086
>johnny walker red
>shots
disgusting. at least get the black, you fucking nihilist.

[Anonymous No.10730831]

>>10730776
Obviously it's going to be red, he wouldn't spend the extra money on Black for something that he drinks as quickly as he can just so he can get smashed. The character also isn't much of an aficionado at anything, precisely because of the fact that he leads a double life.

[Anonymous No.10731028]

The sea flows to and fro the beach,
sucking everything away like a leach.
Yet the show goes on, it must.
Even through the wind, gust after gust.
The unwinnable battle against Mother Nature endures,
As a spectacle with endless allures.
Oh how the gulls strike their poses,
on that modern day Moses.

[Anonymous No.10731177]

>>10725768
>bracing for the fall

[Anonymous No.10731684]

>>10724813
First paragraph of a short story I'm writing.
Pls no bully.
>The aging double-decker bus groaned to halt, 3 stops before the one he needed. More people shuffled lifelessly onto the already jam-packed bus, bringing him physically closer to his fellow passengers, as they begrudgingly ambled to make space for the new arrivals. Yet paradoxically, he only felt more isolated. He could see faces painted with frustration and restlessness, the prospect of having to temporarily abandon their chosen method of solipsism, which ranged from glaring into smart phones and e-book readers to staring into empty space and daydreaming, was yet another assault to their existence. At least that’s what the look on their faces suggested.

[brief scene No.10731731]

>>10731684
bugs, easy on the adverbs. . . .

[Anonymous No.10731749]

>>10731731
What's wrong with adverbs? Genuine question.

[Anonymous No.10731792]

>>10725855
I like it man, keep making art!

[Anonymous No.10732255]

>>10731749
it's like saying "fuzzy TV static." one part implies the other, so half the phrase is superfluous.
>shuffled lifelessly
>more 'people can also be excised' filed onto the jampacked 'wouldnt use this cliche' bus
'filed' here implies that shuffling, and the 'lifelessness' as you put it, all in one verb.

[Anonymous No.10732604]

I was born with wings
but have never taken flight

I was afraid of the sky
of the heights and the winds

I should have feared the ground,
dying in the worm eaten clods.

[Anonymous No.10732775]

>>10727940
Sets off my synesthesia a bit, anon, nice. Last line comes off a bit wordy (don't need stratosphere, I think), but overall it's very lyrical, and plays between moods in a way that is interesting.
>>10732604
Simplistic, but minimalism can work wonders. I might change the last line, unless you intended for the reader to gather you were buried alive (dying). I also might add another stanza to the middle expounding just a bit.

>>10731731
Totally and completely in love with the tastes of your word choice. Addictive, candy-like. A little S. Thompson-esque, but really lyrical, too. Synesthesia getting triggered all over the place. Dialogue is a bit of a whirlwind, but I think that's a stylistic choice. Maybe slightly shorter sentences of dialogue to make it more natural, unless both characters are hyper-intellectuals. Man, I can't get over your descriptions, though. Absolutely love them. That's your strength, and it's really, really strong.

This is just a bit of opening I'm playing with for a story. I know the verb tense changes; I haven't decided which to use.

Sunflowers swayed, a soft slow dance in the heat of noon, rows and rows and rows. They painted the hills butter yellow, swells like the rolling ocean made still, all the way to the horizon, upon which, a cathedral nested.

Sun baked clay brick, somewhere between blood and sand, the color of Tuscany, cobbled together and rising against the sky in an act of rebellion. Cavernous inside. Like sunflowers, empty pews: rows and rows and rows. Statues of cherubim made of dead wood, daily polished. Light streamed in great dusty beams through the windows. Stained glass arches, soft-lit altars.

In the back, behind the heavy, burgundy drape, a straight and narrow little hall the light could not quite reach, and at the end, a door, a room, a bed, a boy.

His eyes flutter open. The window lets in the gentle movements of morning; lazy silhouettes play across the sheets. Familiar birdsong, layered breezes. He sits up, taking one long, slow breath.

[Anonymous No.10732795]

>>10732775
(cont'd)

He makes his bed neatly, then sinks to the ground, pressing his forehead against the stone in silent prayer.

The room is empty but for a bookshelf and a heavy waxed-oak armoire, which sits in the corner. He traces a hand down its face before pushing the center on a worn, fingertip sized spot, and the magnetic doors swing open to reveal a flat screen television, dvd player, and single disc. Clockwork motions, muscle memory. He presses it inside and returns to his knees on the floor. Chin up, shoulders back. Unblinking, rapt attention.

There is a moment of blackness. A twitch to life.

A newscaster sobs in horror as hundreds of people drink the poison, shrieking, twisting and curling on the floor. Children wailing and clutching at their parents, old men writhing on their backs like beetles, young women pulling out fistfuls of hair. Everywhere, the screaming. Cut to elsewhere and people fall like sacks of grain from the tops of buildings, heavy and still, headfirst, limp, already dead, just catching up with themselves. Entire crowds stepping off the edge together as police try to jostle them back and are knocked over themselves, flailing, clawing the sky, trying to climb the air itself. The fear takes over. They open fire and the crowd falls from the middle, parting like the dead sea, and like the sea they bubble over the edges, and they jump to escape the bullets, spilling as a wave, in streams, in single drops. Cut again and the men with machetes are hacking, hacking, hacking, and the ones they strike do not want this now, but it is too late, and they are in pieces, wild eyed, painted red.

He stands and reaches for the ceiling in a measured stretch, counting—1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Then the burlap gown is up and over his head, and he dresses in starched black linens.

Breakfast.

Bread and water.

[Anonymous No.10733026]

>>10732795
too extraneous. specially the fourth paragraph. trim it down, your wordiness is getting over your descriptions.

[Anonymous No.10733064]

>>10724813
Alright guys, here's an excerpt from my shitty cyber dystopia novella I've been working on (from the first few pages). Pls pls no bully (but actually let me know if it's really that bad so I can finally kill myself and get it over with). There may be all kinds of errors because I'm a bad proofreader and I haven't shown it to anybody to edit. Here goes:

You see, before everybody had to do everything themselves. It’s not like people didn’t try to find a way around this. They made cars, trains and airplanes to carry people and things around, so people wouldn’t have to work as hard, and they could be more comfortable as they went from a to b. Eventually some whiz came up with drones, but those were banned 10 years ago. You probably remember.

These drones ended up causing quite the ruckus, people were strapping explosives to them and setting them off in public squares, often at the busiest times like the height of the Holiday™ shopping season. Between the shoppers and the goods the losses were just too high. Something had to be done. So drones were banned. People felt a lot safer, which is good. It’s good to feel safe. I explain these things you already know because explaining is my job or in case somebody has somehow been living under a rock for 20 years.

Dad used to say that a lot. “Have you been living under a rock?” Haha. He used to say it to Mom, especially when she didn’t know what everybody else did. The latest podcasts. The newest movies. The most recent update for the FacePad.™

That’s right, Dad was a Prime™ member, I only learnt from the best. He was one of the good Grayhairs, and he loved young people like me and my sister. He thought we were the hope of this world. He would say to us at dinner, “be thankful kids. Your mom and I didn’t have any of the great things you kids get to use when we were your age, think of all the power at your fingertips!” Haha OK dad, like that needed to be said.

You see, the Grayhairs who came before us and the generations that came before them were bigoted, they were cruel, they were dull and they definitely didn’t have FacePads™. They didn’t even have SnapFeed™. Sure they had something like it, I think it came out 30 years or so ago, but just not the same (apparently it was two different apps, they conglomerated in 2021).

1/3

[Anonymous No.10733068]

>>10733064
Dad told me as much. He chuckled as he recalled the first time he installed an app. This was back when the touchscreen was invented! Can you imagine? Having to type everything on a tiny little keyboard. How could you type on such a tiny thing when our fingers are so big? Dad said he had a Nokia, never seen one myself, and that it was a total piece of junk. All it could do was make texts and calls (not even with video!) and with poor sound quality to boot. Dad did like it though because you could throw it against the wall as many times as you want and it would still work! Try that with a FacePad™ and see what happens, you’d have your Prime membership™ stripped and be on your way to the loony bin so quickly you wouldn’t even be able to share it with SnapFeed™. I shuddered just now from saying that, haha.

Dad remembered his first touchscreen fondly, he said back then it was called a “SmartPhone.” That’s how him and mom met. It was on some antiquated version of FuckFeed,™ except the app was supposedly for “dating,” Dad said it served the same purpose as FuckFeed™ though. Mom’s profile was so dorky it was cute, he said. (“And don’t you dare tell your mother I told you this! She hated the app and only went on it because her friend dared her”). Haha, what a dweeb she was, and still is.

Well it so happened Dad swiped right on her (that’s what they used to have to do before voice commands) and she swiped right on him too! If they swiped left the other person wouldn’t get to see them (a primitive version of FuckFeed’s matching system), Dad said it was convenient because he was too impatient for what Grayhairs called “dating,” back then it was considered mind-blowing to have all the mates you could ever want right in front of you, all you had to do was pick and hope they pick you too!

Haha, Grayhairs used to get worked up over the most trivial things. Like, how could you get worked up over something so primitive, so basic? Did it project a full hologram of your body that allowed your match to make sure you didn’t have any hidden physical defects underneath that charming picture and description, like FuckFeed? No. It definitely didn’t have holo-sex, which as you probably know (unless you’re a dweeb) allows you and your match to try each other’s bodies out for size before you did the real thing. Because sometimes a he, her or xer would have a nice face, a great body, maybe even a few funny jokes in their description, but would be terrible in the sack. That really would defeat the whole point of FuckFeed, and with so much to do and see today who was time for shitty sex? Certainly not me. Better get it over with and have 10 minutes of holo-sex and see what they’re made of.

[Anonymous No.10733073]

>>10733068
As you know we don’t really get married anymore like the Grayhairs used to do, so it’s odd to hear Dad talk about it. He said back then all he wanted to do was have a family, and in those old days you had to get married to do that. To not do was so frowned upon. That was the bigotry of the old society. While a few Grayhairs realized how silly this was and rebelled against the system, practicing what they called “free love,” they still had to get married if they wanted kids, otherwise they would be outcasted and talked down to.

However, they even had a loophole for this, it was called divorce. Basically, all you had to do if you really wanted kids but didn’t want to get married was just pretend to marry someone! Well it was real, but you didn’t mean it. Then you would enjoy all the nice things about marriage: the big white cake, the car with the cans tied to the back, the house with the yard, the dog, the cat, the kids! Then when you were ready to get out of the thing (usually you waited until the kids were at least 10-13 years old) you just called up a lawyer, he typed up a piece of paper, the couple signed it and it was like they were never married. Of course some people were dummies and didn’t do a Preenup (I think that’s what dad called it), so they had to give some of their money to the other person for a long time. Still that was better than being stuck with them forever. Til’ death do us part they used to say, haha!

3/3

[Anonymous No.10733096]

>>10727659
This bad. I'm happy I'm competing with autism on the came calibre as this. Makes publishing super easy!

[Anonymous No.10733165]

>>10733096
got me, anon.

[Anonymous No.10733206]

>>10727659
>>10727768
Forgive me as this is probably an incredibly pseud thing to say but are you guys just trying to be Joyce-lite? Like it's good but who the fuck would want to read something like that.

[Anonymous No.10733232]

>>10733206
I don't understand this criticism. No, I am not trying to be Joyce but to use musicality in my writing. You read it, what did you think?

[Anonymous No.10733246]

>>10733232
Pseudo.

[Anonymous No.10733257]

>>10733246
Why?

[VDAY 2018 No.10733260]

I don't normally write poetry but I whipped this up for my gf of two years on Valentine's Day. It seems high school tier and I'm cringing that I sent it but she really appreciated it and I feel like about half of this is good anyway so I'll consider it a draft and pick at it some other day


>>10731731

I actually quite like what I read of this. Although the font was too small for me to read painlessly throughout so I gave up mid-way. It reads like an obvious DeLillo bite to me, but I like the word selection and choice of names. I feel like this has legs, but I rarely read work of this style. Next time upload in higher res.

>>10731684
Damn.

>begrudingly ambled
Come on, man

Yeah I didn't like this at all. Re-write it entirely if you want this story to have a chance of taking off. It's overwritten and wordy beyond reason. Nothing about this really says "keep reading" to me. It just seems dead.

>>10731028
I don't think this is very good. Bland style, emotionally. Nothing to 'feel' here. Bleh.

>>10730727
Asked the woman stupidly?

I didn't like this piece. But it reads like something I would have written a couple years ago. I am far better than what I was back then, so that should give you hope. Not to compare yourself to me too much, but I mean to say that there is a likely chance you'll be able to take this style, or this voice, and improve it vastly over the years if you keep refining it. Less overwriting. Stick to essentials. Stick to emotion, revelation.

[Anonymous No.10733262]

The long lasting bubble plapped, with a boop of the cat.
The cat ratted its tongue and asked without any rasp
Blow another magic bubble with your blue long bubble wand
And so the man was played by the cats paw like a untwined fiddle
This is how we found trouble come onto another bubble with acrash
Frazzed by the cats sass, it popped to
With a spish and a splash
The man ready for his next magical task
He fiddled and rasped at the bubbling wand, and drew another one
but at long last we come to a pass the mighty cat turned and ran past out to everwhen
There then was no more magical bubble blast as then there lived a fortunate forever bubble at long last

[Anonymous No.10733286]

"Noisy visitor"

Who is there
Who is there
At the little door
Is it a mouse
Is it a mouse
Arrived unannounced
Who is there
Who would care
This is mine, this lonely house.

[Anonymous No.10733323]

>>10733232
I liked both a lot anon. I'm honestly a total pleb when it comes to prose, I've always been more on the cultural theory side of things than stylistics, but if anything reading stuff like this is gonna spur me to read up more on style and authors like Joyce.

[Anonymous No.10733342]

>>10733323
Thanks anon. Have a poem:

Allegretto a piacere, cantabile.

I saw the idle daffodils,
In memories of august loam,
Reclined against the window sills.

Boiling tanneries and grain mills -
fixtures - past by whim, run and roam
I saw the idle daffodils.

Breezes shiver lace-flimsy frills
And stir pages of mam's mammy's tome
Reclined against the window sills.

Scalding sedative of stills,
Spent breath born atop crowning foam -
I saw the idle daffodils.

A long mild flame kindles the hills,
Fringed by an underslip of gloam,
Reclined against the window sills.

Before the bellchime-blown lone chills
Raked the harvest and root-ripe home,
I saw the idle daffodils
Reclined against the window sills.

[Anonymous No.10733345]

The Curious Case of the Little Man Inside the TV

Searcher was in a hotel room.

A man in a black suit with a bulky suitcase knocked on the door and then walked in.

Man in suit: You're looking for a small copper bead of antique origin. There's a legend about a God who searches for it.

He placed the suitcase on a short coffee table, opened it up and inside was a little TV monitor and speaker of sorts.

The monitor displayed a little professor and he began to speak: SEARCHER! Tell me about the bead! What is the bead? Where is the bead? Where did it come from?

Searcher: I don't know where the bead is. I'm still searching.

Man in the TV: Don't give me that nonsense! We KNOW things are never as they seem around you.

Searcher: If I could tell you what the bead is it wouldn't be that.
Searcher: If I could tell you where the bead is it wouldn't be there.
Searcher: If I could tell you where the bead came from it wouldn't have come from there.

Man in the TV: Do you think this is a game! Do you think you have a choice?

Searcher: One always has choices.

Man in the TV: Helper! Show him the gun.

Helper pulls out a pistol out of his coast and aims it at Searcher: I would listen to him.

Searcher: I can't tell you what the bead is but maybe I could show you.
Searcher: But this would be a private matter. It's no use you being inside a TV and looking at things remotely.

Man in the TV: Impossible.

Searcher: How so?

Man in the TV: I am not on this earth and I am not off it. You could not bring me to you if you tried and you could not bring yourself to me either.

Searcher: Well then we are at an impasse. My magic tricks don't work on camera.

Man in the TV: I am a man of science! A high-priest of rationality! And there should be no good reason you can't show anything on camera.

Searcher: Tell me are you really unreachable TV Man?

Man in the TV: I am in another place not inside or outside this building and not inside or outside yourself. My radiation animates this device but this radiation does not come from outside it. In a very real way I am a message from another place given flesh in this machinery.

Searcher: This machinery?

Man in the TV: It was felt this TV arrangement would be less.. disturbing.

The Helper temporarily pockets his gun and pulls open his coat suit, revealing a solid metal body with a TV monitor affixed on the body displaying the little Man in the TV.

Men in the TVs in unison: I am inside and outside but only some hear my radiation and fewer accept me.

Searcher: Metallic, heavy, too heavy to fall!

Searcher dives for the legs of the Helper and knocks it to the floor.

Searcher scrambles for the window and jumps out of it down to the alleyway below.

Helper gets up ands walks to the window.
Man in the TV: SEARCHER!
Man in the TV: Know that I only do not kill you because of your knowledge.

[Anonymous No.10733346]

>>10733232
There's little melody aside from an annoying bounciness. You're putting adverbs right next to adjectives.

It's nothing but flowery garbage, anon. Even as a prose poem it's lacking any substance.

[Anonymous No.10733350]

>>10733345

Searcher keeps running. In the streets, Searcher bumps into a mailman and a piece of mail flutters out of it but the mailman doesn't notice. Searcher grabs the letter to hand back to the mailman but pauses. The mail has his name on the front of it and the sender is "Man in the TV."

Searcher opens the letter. In green ink:

SEARCHER!
Know that I am not here or away from here.
Know that very few hear my radiations and fewer accept me but that they are everywhere.
SEARCHER!
Know that I will find you!

[Anonymous No.10733354]

>>10727659
>ruminant awe

How the fuck can someone be in awe, an emotion that floods your entire being, and be ruminating at the same time?

Goddammit, anon, the more I read this shit, the more I get angry at how fucking bad it is.

[Anonymous No.10733362]

>>10733354
Ruminant is an adjective.

[Anonymous No.10733373]

>>10733362
And?

[Anonymous No.10733379]

[Anonymous No.10733386]

>tfw no replies
>tfw your story isn't even shitty enough for someone to dump on

[VDAY 2018 No.10733408]

>>10727659

I other criticisms are correct. You do sound like Joyce-lite and this is not a compliment. Nobody wants to read literature in this style, and I mean not a single soul on this earth. If the autistic canon-bent dweebs on a Manchurian collectibles site is averse to this style, than neither mass audience nor obscure publisher would ever bother touching this.

But with the bouncy, lighthearted style comes a degree of freedom enough for you to show glimpses of an imaginative and playful mind.

>Clouds of coffeepot vapour glistened...

This is a great, fun opening segment to a paragraph. But why the fuck would you carry it on with the most drab, anachronistic word soup like "in the barbs of light", "varnishing the pulp" and "a fermented smile rose upon his smile". How do you fuck up your own momentum so bad? Serious question, how!? Just cut out the superfluous language and try something sensible like:

>Clouds of coffeepot vapour gleamed as the receptionist called on a blinking, stupefied Alfred.

[Anonymous No.10733413]

>>10733350
^
>Searcher keeps running. In the streets, Searcher bumps into a mailman and a piece of mail flutters out of it but the mailman doesn't notice. Searcher grabs the letter to hand back to the mailman but pauses. The mail has "To: Searcher" on the front of it and the sender is "Man in the TV."

[Anonymous No.10733418]

>>10724813
I'm really glad Bloom mellowed out later in life. The Western Canon was never going anywhere, in every age it was believed that the past was better than the degenerate present. People still enjoy reading and the unageing monuments stand strong.

[Anonymous No.10733426]

>>10733418
>People still enjoy reading and the unageing monuments stand strong.
nigga wut

[Anonymous No.10733430]

>>10733408
>taking this piece totally, unironically seriously

[Anonymous No.10733434]

>>10733430
>this Anon's Ego was badly hurt
>this shitty paragraph he spent a time longer than he cares to admit on was shit on
>I was just pretending to be a bad writer, guys

Alright there, poet.

[Anonymous No.10733439]

>>10733434
This, >>10733430 wasn't me
but thanks for the criticism.

[Anonymous No.10733443]

>>10727643
Unironically genius except for last four lines of second stanza

[Anonymous No.10733450]

>>10733439
I mean I liked it enough to save, anon.

[Anonymous No.10733456]

>>10733450
What do you mean save?

[Anonymous No.10733466]

>>10733260


Honestly, not as bad as you probably think. Needs to remove bits in the middle but this is a good poem.
Asscher, marquise, turquoise, opulent. Everything was ring shaped; ring this and ring that. Tibetan nu-cotton lined the one hundred and fifty percent Styro-gel air mattress. Moon roof, sun tan. Location, location. A starter home for three.

Sean Spicer was born here: Thirtieth July, twenty forty-two. His mother died the same day. Survived by: son, dog. A young Sean and his bipedal canine compadre would live out their youth among the rings and the jewels and the fortunes of their crystalline palace, above want and above all else.

An Achillean side-effect of juvenile profusion: high insulation. The young Sean was thus co-opted by a gang of egg men who had long conspired against the ring-reich neo-bourgeoise upper classmen. Spicer was sent to the messaging wing of the insurgent egg rebellion and, under duress unimaginable, tasked with managerial direction of the PowerPoint Presentaton.ppt propaganda department. The spoils of psy-op warfare: (10x) moneybags and a severance package of topaz and an assortment of freshly cut lesser gems across luminosity’s spectrum. Pending, of course, completion of one’s contractual duties. These: quantum state solid disk drive refrigerator preservation, Google Cloud annual subscription renewal, visceral disturbance of the paramilitary counter-insurgent Green Party square-men retiree falcon-9 yacht brigade. Men of incredible wealth and influence, with longstanding blood ties to the ring-reichers.
Listicles were strategically deployed. (The trenches of LCD class warfare). A young Sean, now twenty-three, set his magni-sights to power’s apex: sabotage at the height of the rebellion establishment.

[Anonymous No.10733474]

>>10731028
neat ekphrastic poem.

[Anonymous No.10733484]

>>10731028
>>10733474
addendum: fix your fucking meter pleb.

[Anonymous No.10733492]

>>10727696
Illogical. The source of the reputation for the piece is the piece itself
>>10727940
enjoyed/10
>>10731731
Your metaphors are sex. The read is killed via that same mechanism. Rather than make a specific suggestion, i'll just make an example that's clearer
Spume coated, numbered boxes, anonymous men in their early 20s, splenetic scroll bars, and submissive refresh buttons, my typing breaks the night.
Is benefited as:
The indexed anonymity was chorused to the sound of mid 20 year old's stammering along their refresh buttons and typing their last hopes to strangers they hoped they'd never meet.
You're falling for the classic American trap of trying to swallow the world in your prose in its entirety, and your way of doing it is sufficiently unique that the little feedback you get is probably strong endorsements. You're not trying to make a movie into a book. Your style has gems, don't get me wrong, but the flowers are just flowers and there are no vines -you're clearly metaphorically strong enough to get what I mean. Refocus what you tell the reader in a way that works with the architecture of the story, speaker, character, place, and overall import on the story.

[Anonymous No.10733497]

>>10731731
Holy shit are you listing things? That first paragraph is disgusting to read at.

[Anonymous No.10733499]

>>10733426
You don't agree that people still enjoy reading? Or did you not get my reference to Sailing to Byzantium?

[Anonymous No.10733509]

>>10733499
>You don't agree that people still enjoy reading?
Yes. Unless by reading you mean Rupi Kaur or Harry Potter. I don't deny there are still plenty of people enjoying the canonical works but you have to be in a bubble to think most people still do. For fuck's sake my sister is becoming a high school english teacher and she says teaching kids classics that they can't relate to is a waste of time. Things are bad man.

[Anonymous No.10733515]

>>10733509
>most people still do.
Most people never did.

[Anonymous No.10733520]

>>10731731
>515x617
I am not squinting just to read this!
>also
>Popcorn dark
what the hell are you smoking?

[Anonymous No.10733524]

>>10733286
Any one :( :(

[Anonymous No.10733531]

>>10733515
Yeah they were reading shit pulp fiction. However, that pulp fiction wasn't being shilled by the literary establishment as groundbreaking for fear of being seen as not with the times (see Kaur). And besides most people are too lazy nowadays to even read a book let alone a good book. That's why something like Kaur becomes "profound," people are exposed to so little that their tastes are shit. Yeah they might have to read Great Gatsby and C&P in high school but they'll just sparknotes it.

[Anonymous No.10733533]

>>10733456
You know in video games you save so that when you die you don't have to start from the beginning? He just doesn't want to ever have to read your piece again.

[Anonymous No.10733548]

>>10733509
If you look throughout the ages "most people' are illiterate and unwashed. The masses have always begged only for bread, games, and cheap entertainment. How is it any different today? Stop pretending it's the end of the world.

>>10733531
Olympia was considered a painting that was in very bad taste, it was universally slammed as a cheap attempt to get a reaction out of people. A painting that was only sex appeal, people thought that it would literally ruin art forever and wanted to destroy it. Today we consider it one of the priceless masterpieces. We never truly appreciate art in it's time. Even Nietzsche was not appreciated until well after his fall into insanity and death.

[Anonymous No.10733551]

>>10733548
>it's

Fuck me!

[Anonymous No.10733558]

>>10733548
hurrr things are always changing man Van Gogh wasn't even appreciated until after his death durrr

If you don't think the culture of reading is dying then you're fucking dense. The only thing worse than a doom and gloom pessimist like me is dumbfuck optimists like yourself who find a silver lining in everything, like the theorists who think post-modernity opens up all these avenues for "liberation" and "self-expression." I have no illusions that the past was better, I'm just certain that the present is worse and will continue to get worse. The most people read nowadays is on shitty websites like this one. You and I aren't even reading right now. Instead we are shitposting on a frog meme site. Let that sink in. Do you think Joe and Jane read before bed anymore? No, now they unwind with their smartphone.

[Anonymous No.10733559]

Its bad. Its really really bad.
Raindrop essence
Full of plant fuel substance
I watch you fall
I feel you crawl
Down My skin
Raindrop essence
Watery steep in my presence
I hear you fall
Listening senses
Dancing around me like a ball
As My feet dance beneath
I splash up to my knees
And sing about this grace
Of watery essence
That travels on this place
Windfalling presents
Mockery of my tear falling lenses
Please wash this face
With your holy grace

[Anonymous No.10733570]

>>10733558
>Do you think Joe and Jane read before bed anymore?

They have never read before bed. Reading has always been the realm of the privileged few. If you think the average Roman Citizen went to sleep with a copy of Ovid or Cicero under their pillow, you greatly mistaken.

[Anonymous No.10733583]

(This is the last one, /lit/. These are the last lines. Thanks for the input. You guys have helped me a lot.)

---

I thought, living a life is due to me by now isn’t it?

As I went, I was afraid that the streets might wink at me and say that nothing’s due to anybody. That’s the truth, but just like always I didn’t want to see it with more than half an eye. And I didn’t think I was ready to be sober.

Turning up Main, I could hear the sidewalks and the storm drains and the telephone poles all sighing to each other. They did not know I had learned their language by silent observation, another skill I had picked up that was highly situational at best. They were cracking up at how unimpressive the figure was that I cut as I carried on my way. In the years gone by, an untold many walked the path I was walking now. Who could say how many more were to come? The world seems always to have vacancies to fill for people who drink away that feeling of being sorry for yourself and someone is always willing to answer the call. So I was but one more of this number, they said. I had nothing to say in my defense. I was. Maybe I still am. I could do nothing but keep walking, eyes up at times, eyes down at others. Something like a plan was forming in my brain- was it a plan or another fantasy?

I asked the streets. I told them this story from beginning to end. It took less time to tell than it does for the branches to fidget when the afternoon wind blows. The language of the streets is very beautiful. It can express in a moment what can only be experienced in the trial of years.

I laughed when I first learned about how German has single words that mean longing in very specific situations and words that combine the feelings of many emotions at the same time which are themselves hard to explain. The streets can express to you the consolidation of lives and each of those lives’ dreams and the realization or the undoing of those dreams in less time than it takes to form a single thought, less time than it takes to form a word from an idea.

But for all their beauty and wisdom, this is why it's never of any use to speak to the streets, even when you’ve got nobody else to talk to. Especially when you’ve got nobody else to talk to. Like a treasure hunter, you may find a pyramid full of gold but you will only be able to take what you can carry and what you carry will weigh you down as you run for your life. There is no translating what you've learned to another person. In the end, you end up staring at your own navel and losing everything that could have been.

On this day, with nothing else to lose, I begged them to direct me. I still didn’t know how to get on without somebody else telling me what to do.

This is what they said:

Those who find themselves walking up a steep hill often end up turning around, heading right back down the way they came.

[Anonymous No.10733632]

>>10727659
alf jumped over the rail and walked to the doctor's office. He opened the door. He saw the receptionist was a hungry girl. Then he coughed and reported his being in the office. Sit down lad she said. Grr he thought but sat on the bench and looked around the office. He felt some tummy grumbles. Then he checked he was still a pretentious cunt. Come ere sonny the receptionist said and fingered a food. alf smiled and stopped being a pretentious cunt for a sec.

[Anonymous No.10733683]

>>10733570
no shit I'm not talking about a pre-modern society. There was a short period of time where reading became massively accessible and popular. That first began to decline with TV and now with the internet it's in free fall.

[Anonymous No.10733825]

Adagio con moto - Largo e mesto

His crush-and-crackling soles upon the sand;
the seasweep shuttered to a bluegold band
by beaten grist and beads of broken rush,
reek of ruddy rockweed amongst the gush.
Oak twig tiptapping pushpits through the shoal -
a stilted sinusoidal stumble-stroll -
absently gentrifying crab chalets;
crimped crests of chartreuse champing on gilt graze.

The trackless mire meets his heel and burps,
releasing brackish breaths of sundried scum,
as caked-on crud unfolds into the earth
beneath his furrowed tread. Stiff rhythmic slurps
toned by streamspeech and mouths of wineburnt plum;
his wife-and-mother plunged in childless birth.

[Anonymous No.10733851]

>>10733583
That was beautiful anon. I'm very impressed. I can tell that a lot of thought and effort has gone into this. It shows immensely. I have no real critiques or complaints, it is a truly nice ending to whatever you're writing, even if it does feel a bit preachy and summary-ish. My one wish, I guess, would be that the story previous to your character's self-actualization would earn him such an ending.

I would also, as a suggestion, argue that perhaps some parts could be conveyed with some more subtlety, so that we stay in the character's thoughts as opposed to being aware of the narration. That happened to me in the fifth paragraph, "I laughed when...." because the second sentence is a very direct statement while the rest has been a poetic monologue. It might be personal preference, but that's what I would suggest.

Would you care to critique mine?
https://pastebin.com/rMSVsQbS

First five or so pages of a story I'm writing. I think it could stand as its own, small piece though.

Thanks! Good luck in revision.

[Anonymous No.10733996]

>>10730596
Sorry for the late (you) but I used writerduet.
It's free.

[Anonymous No.10734015]

>>10733996
Nice, great.

[Anonymous No.10734302]

First few sentences, any and all criticism is appreciated. Thanks in advance

-----

The worst part of this city had to be the smell of burning flesh. It hung in the air like a blanket, you could almost taste it. It was a horrid stench, a stench that stuck too your clothes just as it stuck to your mind. You could never forget it. You could almost make out the charred corpses when you closed your eyes.

The city had been reduced to a fraction of the glory of its past. The great skyscrapers that once stood as a testament of mans greatness now were just reduced to towering monoliths of concrete and steel. Serving little purpose other than being glorified sniper dens. The streets were in arguably worse condition, looters had taken everything and anything that wasn't nailed down. The roads had what heeps of rusted scrap metal that you could only assume were once cars. Rebar stuck out of the piles of rubble like fallen branches that would occasionally get caught on your pants causing a tear in your all ready tatters uniform. The once bustling storefronts that once surrounded you were now completely deserted, blackened corpses lined the interiors of the shops.

[Anonymous No.10734311]

>>10733466
>his mother died the same day, or maybe the day before, I can't be sure.
had you said this it would've killed me. I like the ring-reichers, I like the passage a whole lot.

[Anonymous No.10734397]

First few sentences of something Im writing, criticisms greatly appreciated

--------

The worst part of the city had to be the smell of burning flesh. It hung in the air like a blanket, Red could almost taste it. It was a horrid stench, a stench that stuck too his clothes just as it stuck to his mind. He could never forget it. Red could almost make out the charred corpses when you closed his eyes.

The squadrons of crows flew through the crimson sky. Smoke stacks rose above the crumbling city. The sporadic of cracking gun fire echoed across the city.

The city had been reduced to a fraction of the greatness of its past. The great skyscrapers that once stood as a testament of mans greatness now were just reduced to towering monoliths of mangled concrete and steel. Now serving little purpose other than being glorified sniper dens. The streets were in arguably worse condition, looters had taken everything and anything that wasn't nailed down. The roads had heaps of rusted scrap metal that Red could only assume were once cars. Rebar stuck out of the piles of rubble like fallen branches that would occasionally get caught on Red's loose hanging pants causing a tear in his already tattered uniform. Red passed by a old toy shop he used to frequent, now all that remained was a single rusted R, and even that by just a string.

Red's eye lids hung low, and his arms were made of stone. The stock of his rifle dug into his shoulder, his cross hair going rapidly from street corner to street corner as he continued to find what he lost.

[Anonymous No.10734422]

>>10733286
I really enjoyed this. I can’t provide much critique since I’m not a poet myself.

[Anonymous No.10734714]

>>10733260

tfw you provide feedback for 4 pieces and no one does the same for yours

[Anonymous No.10734938]

>>10733260
>>10734714
>the knife with which I search myself
I like this line, I clearly pictured some horrible disembowelment. I assume an emotional metaphor
if you made a stronger connection between the 'light' and 'billowing' it would have been a terrific image. any time you can transform something like 'light' or 'dark' in an unheard of way, do it, because otherwise it's stale. i feel you did that here, though not in a totally cohesive manner.
so say the dark drunkenly barreled out

[Anonymous No.10735516]

a carpet is on his floor which listens or smiling nazcan faces, not a postmodern design although it looks like it may as well be. it's exclusive to those trained in how to shape such a thing at school. a pattern of them sewn in.
he's to take credits, end the credits, into two ailments of the fourth piece of paper prescribed not for your diet but for those to be credited. i think that's how it goes around, circulating like a washing machine and flipped like pancakes. that's what you do with tokens. they're not for consumption, they're just for preparation. obviously no one would think to eat tokens.
when no such thing finally exists in his mind he'll say "oh i can be happy now" in the rainy abyss that nothing can't afford. maybe there will be a way to heat up his hand, and manage from his own hand bursting with breath. when the strong scent of lavender furrows the brow, he'll replace the atmosphere in a tasteless grey wash - light some incense, light a flavoured candle, light at other people's choices of what to pollute their house with and snicker at them cautiously. he doesn't want to end up starting another fight over something so petty again. it drains upwards and downwards like a renaissance cloth hanging at a height which catches it up in the fish tank. it delivers however many spurts of disease as it wants. through dust of the innocent mayflies mixed with the dust of clouds. spice takes the other coats out of wearability as if slickly counting down their marginal bought time. clothes shopping was no longer going to be bi-annual. did his girlfriend and him have children? if so, no updates on how they were doing would surely be impossible. i'm, as scared as i am to say it, a brother of his. he likes to make people unwell, he's a doctor but bad at it. possibly, some of those men have been more destructive than i have. bacteria is not a crime, this is just safety net transitioning from the immune to the affected. the effective. i volunteered to be here, and it's a very plush padded room so i've deicded to stay here for life. it's absolutely brilliant.
it seems obvious what that reminds him of, a pure joy out of this barren and clinical land. if not for the media. he should go and visit her he thought carefully resting his better half on the armchair and letting the frontmost parts of his body just fall back. because there was nothing to be worried of in terms of health anymore, if he felt bloated it was just because he'd eaten 14 seconds ago. right was the way to go to get far away from something so superficial. he took his head and knelt it with his exhausted talent on the right arm. fever is a disease that does the same things when an intellectual groans. it pleased him to say where to point at the intellectual because he certainly only saw mouthbreathers and filth. filth like me, if we want to go way out of context. is it a diary or is it a state of mind journal?

[Anonymous No.10735522]

>>10735516
Ethan didn’t know the last time he had seen a neighbor. Since he could remember, Plainview street had been full of decrepit little houses which had always outnumbered the decrepit little people, occupying houses few and far between. Maybe once Plainview street, one of the nicer parts of the Plainview suburb, was inhabited, maybe it had always been like this. There wasn’t a big difference either way. There had always been something rotten in Plainview.
Plainview was a suburb of Adelaide, Adelaide a suburb of Woodridge, Woodridge a suburb of Hill Field, Hill Field a suburb of Tinleydale; turtles all the way down: infinite regress. They all stemmed from the city, but the city was a four-hour drive from Plainview and nobody went to the city anymore so the location didn’t matter much. There was only Plainview.
Ethan was always impressed by how his mom kept the house, it looked pristine, nuclear, the rot on the outside was trapped in a constant battle to spread in, but it hadn’t won yet. He hollered to his mother that it was dinner time. No response. The wallpaper was starting to peel under the stairs, right out of sight.

[Anonymous No.10735531]

>>10734397
"Smoke stacks rose above the crumbling city. The sporadic of cracking gun fire echoed across the city." this feels a little repetitive maybe find a way to not have the sentences end the same

[Anonymous No.10735767]

Trying to get back into writing, so I picked up an old fantasy series of stories I was working on. There's a few that come before this that explain who Grom is, why she has this monk slave, and her trailing band of bards, so if it's a little confusing, it's because I'm too much of a pussy to post the whole thing.

https://pastebin.com/8SFEZEHq

In return, is there anyone in the thread who hasn't been reviewed? I don't know how good of a critiquer I am, but I can give you my opinion at least.

[Anonymous No.10735938]

>>10727659
i was close to calling this b8, then ...
>perverse turn of wrist and elbow

[Anonymous No.10735963]

>>10725797

[Anonymous No.10736215]

>>10735522
i get what you mean - i am trying to restrict myself from dictating pointless exposition. here's part 2 anyway. 1000 words a day bb
>>10735516
i would have to see everywhere at once in such a small room hidden behind many walls, excluding my distance from there.
i'm stupid. i will never cease to wash myself in heavy purple colours which should be implying that i'm compensating for a lack of voice, and a capacity to breathe when my skin appears purple. i bounce off the walls. i've got boiling blood which will never cause a drought under my skin, feeding the countless microcosms of the universe displaced to inside my bowels. they're about to search for a host that they would become, rather than contributing towards. that's how under the skin realism works. it's very different to real life. it's even very different to the fictions i create. it helps me to be almost human in my demeanour. if the people just outside my room were small enough to believe that their eyes and ears weren't a cosmic miracle i would for sure tell them otherwise at any cost. i would be shouting, because a little problem can only be addressed by large words that will staple the principle back. it would take 5 or so times. a large problem, i could never hope to solve. a small problem like the matter of their self-pity i would, for sure, take note of. i'm even taking notes of things which are clearly fictions. media and me are strong enemies. the guards and me, strong acquaintances. very strongly in the middle of the spectrum of relations, something i would concern myself less with eventually i'm sure and knock myself out of the center. it would knock me out of the sentences, because i knew of the boron (yeah for sure, why not tell them about the new metal) discovered by me. in a prison cell. perhaps even just in a chamber for biohazards. i oppose a special substance which would get under your skin to make your nose issue a red colour and eventually cripple everything beneath it or above it. the nose is dissensitized - at the end of the day it is just skin. i call it the "mouthbreathing filth virus" - i must be cautious, literally only rats have so far suffered the consequences of the odd mixtures while litmus testing.
a blood red coastline. ferns and the dithering of other muted fibres tangling together in a barren heat. that's where i am. if i chose to stay: a location i would see myself in here forever in the windowpane. unsophisticated in locating the static that momentarily permeates my bedroom, lunchroom, wc and so on - i found that it would have distracting views that i admired in each room. from each window i laughed at none of the problems found in being clinically insane. because i wasn't, maybe a little eccentric perhaps.
i wondered how much of what i'd written down was simultaneously said out loud. they were lost memories, like opening and closing a door. no doors here, none with a lock anyway. they are friendly, perhaps too friendly for their own healt

[Anonymous No.10736545]

Not going to say who, but every time I pop into a lit critique thread there's never anything enjoyable to read. You assholes purposefully make the most verbose shit with your own rules of grammar and style to punish your reader. Just no good.

[Anonymous No.10736670]

>>10736545
Help me get better. I want to be better. Tell me. Show me.

[Anonymous No.10736693]

>>10736545
I purposefully dumbed the prose down in mine and didn't come up with any new rules of grammar and style. Still no replies :( Just as well.

[Anonymous No.10736703]

>>10733443
hey thanks

and which lines do you mean?

[Anonymous No.10736748]

Curtailed Coattails!
The headlines ran
down the page and past the funnies
before finishing a marathon under 3 hours.
We're talking queues of NPCs—
everyone is one but me
when I shout olly-olly-oxen-free.
"You know those drinking bird desk toys?"
A bored Buddha asks the phlebotomist Caligula.
"Yeah, the ones that bob up and down like you know who?"
Buddha bobbed his head up and down to confirm.
They laughed, and grandma forgot once again about Dre.
Our antihero—Dmitri Huang—sank in an acid bath
wearing a lead cape meant for the planet
but reserved for his own overflowing ego
that drowned so many overboard.

"I can't help but laugh when I see that,"
he told his homeroom teacher fourteen years ago.
"Well, you really mustn't young man. You really mustn't."

She died the next day from a pulmonary embolism,
to be replaced by Sesame Street's very own Mr. Rogers.

"It's a living."

[Anonymous No.10736774]

"The foreman represents the fulcrum balancing the scales of justice,"
I said in jest to my professor,
tongue tearing a hole through my cheek.
"I'll have to remember that one," he replied.
No, no you won't have to. Not at all.
Tinseled tinplated bullshit, 'twas.
Can't you identify a knockoff?
Spend some times in the souk!
Buy a flea market in Baghdad.
You wouldn't be the first outcast to do so.
But please, don't listen to me.
I'm the one who brought you here.
I ask for nothing but your resentment—
may it shower me with the rain from a thousand monsoons.
Hold up, I just received a new room.

[Anonymous No.10736851]

>>10733206
I'm the second guy. As if it weren't obvious, Joyce is my biggest influence, alongside McCarthy. I seek out innovative and exciting prose more than any other quality in the books I read so I try to satisfy that same craving in my own writing. Joyce's eventual understanding of what prose could do and how to do it seems to exceed any other author's that I've read, so I turn to him for inspiration very often (more than I ought to, probably). Especially since I'm very inexperienced and still need help maintaining a reliable method of writing.

Basically I just want people to smile and think "well that was a fun sentence to read" when they read what I write, and that's pretty much it

[Anonymous No.10736880]

>>10736545
I took your criticism to heart and revised my paragraph to be more clear, concise, and active.
> Leonard convinced himself that he had escaped Verdun alive, but the ghosts of his comrades made him think otherwise. He would wake to the sounds of artillery blasts in the night. Rolling out of bed, he secured his perimeter, and began to try and ID the enemy only to see vivid streaks of lightning across the sky. When the stench of blown out car engines reached him, Leonard reached frantically for a gas mask that was not there. He was good at remembering names. This skill used to serve him, but now it was only a cause of grief. A name and rank would come to mind, and the vicious thought patterns would begin. First he thought of their girls back home, then the circumstances of their death, and finally the endless ways he could have saved them. Their hopeless faces were forever burned into Leonard’s retina, always afraid and reaching for help. Leonard prevented these thought processes by devising a word game that would lead him away from the past and towards the present. Each individual name that popped into his head would be replaced by a brand name that he was fond of. “Ford Motor Company” replaced the memory of Private Babineaux (Ford Motor Company died face down in the mud after being caught in enemy fire), “Gilbey’s Scotch” was a placeholder for the baby faced Corporal Allard (Gilbey’s Scotch’s skin was flayed by Mustard Gas, dying in the field hospital after weeks of extreme pain), and “Jiffy Biscuit Mix,” was used as a segway from the memory of Captain Beaufort’s tragic death (JIffy Biscuit Mix was executed by his commandant after going against orders that meant certain death for the men he led). This word game reliably kept the painful memories at bay for a year or so. However, the absence of these faces filled him with an unendurable emptiness and longing. Life without them was a life without conflict, and this was especially difficult for him, because in his view life was conflict. To not have a fight was to be nothing more than a ghost in the trenches of his own memory. His days were dull and domestic, but when that door swung open, everything changed. His instincts of war returned when Vincent opened that door. What was once a void of painful domesticity became a vessel for a new war. Leonard’s dormant trench of ghosts came alive as a river of conflict, of us and them. In Vincent he had found an estuary for his river, a scapegoat for his problems, an enemy for his faction. Although he found no peace in this river, it was not peace that he sought. He sought only conflict, only war, because, despite all that he could do to convince himself otherwise, he had never left Verdun, he was there always.

[Anonymous No.10736889]

>>10735767
actually made me laugh once or twice. 7/10.

[Anonymous No.10736979]

>>10736851
Don't worry anon you're on the right track. Mccarthy's story was just Faulkner/Melville fan fiction until he came into his own with Blood Meridian.

[Anonymous No.10736983]

>>1073307
Too much exposition focus on the characters

[Anonymous No.10736987]

>>10736979
>until he came into his own with Blood Meridian.
Don't I know it. I was too young to fully appreciate that book when I first read it and I was still blown away. Still has an impression on how I write to this day

[OP doing his part No.10737110]

>>10736748
I usually don't like absurdism in writing. My personal belief is that truth and not art is the foundation of the written word. However I like how this flows. It reminds me of Bob Dylan's lyrics. I'm not saying you're going to win the nobel writing this shit, or that it's even a viable path to pursue, but it's playful fun which is a breath of fresh air in threads filled with grim self serious scenes.
>>10736774
I liked your first post, but I really dislike this. The line that did it for me was "I said in jest to my professor," it just seems really trite and cliche, like you're trying to present the sickeningly ridiculous aesthetic of being a writer instead of actually being one in the most juvenile way (cardigan sweaters, tobacco pipes, leather bound journals etc.)
>>10736215
I'm sorry dude but no one is going to read something that doesn't have capitalized letters no matter what alt-lit tells you.
>>10734397
Use active voice in the first sentence. Like so: "The smell of burning flesh was the worst part of the city." It's more immediate and attention grabbing. Also the second sentence should be split into two and expanded. The metaphorical blanket, and him "almost tasting it," give us two different sensory impressions that confuses the reader.
>"...stuck too his clothes, just as it stuck to his mind."
To should be too, obviously, but this sentence could be executed much better. You could say "stuck to his clothes as well as his mind," because "just as" is misleading. The stench of a shirt you grow smell blind to, but the impression of the smell in his mind is vivid and cerebral. Again it's like the blanket and taste sentence, it offers two different sensory experiences, which is fine, but when it's in the same sentence it offers a deeply contradictory experience. There are alot of problems with your writing. I suggest you read more. You seem to inspired more by video game RPGs than literature. You'll get better and appreciate the richness of your own language if you do so.
>>10733825
I'm not a poet, so I can only offer a general impression of your poem, nothing specific or technical. I like this poem a lot. Ezra Pound comes to mind. It is musical, which is what a poet ought to aspire to. I appreciate that you made the choice to reveal the protagonist only at the absolute end, and you did it in a way that poses more questions than answers. Good job.
>>10733559
I do not like this, but I can see what you are trying to convey. It's like Singing in the Rain but deeper and slowed down to an incredibly vivid tempo. You combine words in unusual ways but your rhymes have no punch to them. They aren't strategically placed.
>>10733342
Again, I love your shit. It's like Ezra Pound but less obscure and more focused on sensations..
>>10733262
I do not like poetry about cats unless it's written by H.P Lovecraft.

[Anonymous No.10737191]

Finn shuffled roughly into the classroom a few minutes early as usual. With his faced cut in half from the plastic shell of his coat the other visible portion a raw pink from the nervousness brought along with the glances of the three/four pairs of eyes who so happened to be in the room. He noticed from shape the appearance of a few common early birds, not yet in attendance was the teacher Mr. M whose stuff had been scattered haphazardly over the master desk. The air felt cool and liquid in circulation as he made way to his unassigned but also unspeakably owned seat in the second to last row of the room’s right corner. Making note to slowly grasp the weight of his book bag with total control slinging it onto the back of the chair with the delicacy of a bird pitching together it’s nest; next, as always, was to remove the jacket. During this time of year he would normally wear a jacket of thin almost t- shirt layers covering the rest of himself more as an outfit rather than protection from the extreme brumal airs that would plague the uncharacteristically “southern” state of maryland, but today he was heavy coated man, not by decision but by strong push from his mother. The jacket, new, plump, and of overall fine quality made finn cook on the inside and he despised ever wearing something he felt was so unnecessarily thick. The jacket’s greenhouse like insulation was most apparent as he went to remove it. Once again feering the attention of theirs he made sure to unzip calmly and precisely as to one quick motion not too loud but unassuming. Else risking another firing squad of unwanted eye darts which would surely make the pink of his skin bloom into ripe rosey flesh. The action itself felt therapeutic . Now with the jacket placed purposefully and with care onto the back of his chair the pale white of his skin felt the greater warmth of the room,the tips of finger and the outside of his forearms began to defrost. Though, now he felt a greater heat rush to his face and the stick of sweat cover his heat. As he sat his mind become clouded and frantic at the thought of his awkward and purposely calculated movements being judged by the handful of others in the room “oh what would they think?” repeated sharply in his brain. Lost in this counterfactual thought, his anxieties began to drain and once again distant of his roommates, was able to enjoy these few quite minutes before a rush of faces without anymore catastrophic interactions. He scanned the room curiously and determined no one else could have possibly been watching his slow robotic movements. A job well done Finn thought to himself halfheartedly.

[Anonymous No.10737198]

>>10737191
>shuffled roughly
I refuse to read past this point

[Anonymous No.10737245]

>>10737191
>Finn
stopped here. what a shit name. think of something less derivative

[Anonymous No.10737400]

>>10737245
I've just been using that name as a place holder. It what my mom wanted to name me. so its like an alternative to my name as I put my self into my writing.


Alternatively I've been thinking of going with:
Joel , Marth, and James. still probably a bit too vanilla and creative. Any opinion on those three or should i think of something more /lit/?

[Anonymous No.10737953]

>>10735531
>>10737110

Thank you very much for your criticisms guys. I will certainly take your advice, thanks

[Anonymous No.10737992]

First paragraph of a story I'm writing. The first five pages are here if you are interested. Thanks!

https://pastebin.com/rMSVsQbS


Sydney’d spent three hours looking at her wonky image in the windows of the trains. Her reflections passed by, changing too fast to get a hold of them. It was late at night. She’d grown used to the damp wind gusts from the tunnels, the cacophony of the station, the permanent leachate smell, so that she could only see herself on the trains while all around her was muffled with her intense focus. She would exist for a second, then once the train moved along, her reflection left with it. She’d sway softly from side to side, playing catch-up with the Syd living on the small glass squares. Her doppelgänger’s choppy movements made her think of old motion pictures, with their inhumanly fast actions. It brought to mind that one short they’d seen in Film History earlier that day, Sallie Gardner at Gallop. Just a few seconds of a horse running, showing all its hooves leaving the ground. The earliest film recording ever made, titled after the horse. It was a loop, so Sallie would just keep going, going and going, until Syd lost track of the initial image. Sitting at her desk she’d though, the film is infinite but it isn’t permanent, catching onto the rhythm of the frames. What if Sallie, the original Sallie, was gone? What if this was another horse, one exactly like it, but not Sallie herself? Every horse in every frame was a different one because it had moved, it had changed. The race didn’t end, and it didn’t start either. It all got lost as soon as you pressed play. Sallie never stops. It just goes and goes until the film becomes unplayable. Sydney pictured the celluloid jamming in the machine, light burning through whatever frame it touched. A puff of smoke rising to the ceiling. But they were watching a GIF, projected on the classroom whiteboard. It could go one for however long they wanted it to. There would never be burn out. It would never end.

[Anonymous No.10738009]

>>10737400
you're kind of a mega faggot dude

[Anonymous No.10738041]

>>10737400
if you lack the judgement to avoid wasting time on useless issues like that then imagine what you'll do when writing seriously. give up.

[Anonymous No.10738114]

>>10738041
At least your honest and I appreciate that. No point in stopping if at the very least to improve marginally.

[Anonymous No.10739300]

[Anonymous No.10740229]

>>10739300
bad intro, good outro

[Anonymous No.10740558]

I've made a fucking mistake. When I say you I don't mean you and when I say "me" I don't mean "me" btw

Until the scents have finished their bloom in the orchards: I want to make an important meeting.
You have to decide whether I should be there. It's as expensive as you want to make it. The room doesn't have to be as frilled as you accuse it of being. It's the most important room I'll ever introduce you to from my perspective, if it's something you invite me into.
And with a piece of your ghost, the dead offering you gave me from your dicentrallized body, you'll want to admit that i wouldn't have to try very hard to get you to come so that you can take it back. But you best be careful in your strategies and consider it worthwhile to get only a fraction of what you had. That's all that is left of it.
I have turned it into something else as I thought about the malleability of your soul.
Forest is spread out like laces on an icy frame. The frozen cobwebs now represent in my mind the positions you unshuffled yourself, hypnagogic when you were so close to reading my thoughts - and smiling, something I wouldn't mind seeing again if you have the time.
It is yours. Within the fortress of oxygen I find the dust happily remembers my face, despite years and years of gravity. I sneeze a river of evaporating frozen water. I'd prefer for it to be stained with some color or another perhaps residing within me, as it usually does. it delays its audience with you in an artificial way. It will always delay you by being loud and obnoxious - its audience with the clouds and its audience with my voice, through which is hopefully the first place I can store things behind my ugliness when it begins. Sometimes I wonder how many several sounds have my injuries in them from when I was choking.
Irreprehensible shufflings through my labyrinth of small beating things, which hang over you like a voiceless prison does. When my hand returns to coupling yours and that makes it seem larger when it barely reaches over my palm, I repeat myself that one of these days I'll grow to like you more when you're finally shorter than me. Cynical and looking like an abundant stream, it needs no imagination to tear at the seams. This is something that is necessary for those desperately safe words that leak out before being checked.
I still fail to spirit out the number of times I've run through your blood. I'm not diverse enough to say that I'm in the blood of anyone else.
A bottomless invitation. It's necessary that I drain all of the formalities out of you at the door by punching you in the stomach. Maybe not with my fist, and I didn't specify my legs. Maybe it's more like pressing into you. It might of knocked us both backwards, down into the depths of a soundproof blindfold. That's what it must feel like to be trapped under my skin.

[Anonymous No.10740568]

>>10740558
are you writing because you enjoy the idea of being a writer

or are you writing because you have something to say

[Anonymous No.10740602]

>>10740568
probably the first one. that's a good question, though. i'm not sure if i could answer it right now because i only see it as practicing creative writing - which is an interest or entertained idea i guess.

[Anonymous No.10740615]

>not just writing to communicate life's beauty and truths

[Anonymous No.10740633]

I'm just a regular churlish pleb, so if you want to know if I'd buy your shit out of a barnes and noble, here you go.

>>10740558
I don't really know what you were going after here, personally didn't enjoy it. What's the point of all this.

>>10739300
Usually not a poem guy, but I actually liked this.

>>10737992
I gave up man. Shit's too dense. May just not be for me. So many details that didn't serve a purpose and I just lost interest

>>10737400
>Marth
Abandon ship bro.

>>10737191
It's clear you have an idea of something you want to do but god damn it seems like you're writing like you think writers write like.

>>10736880
Not the anon you're responding to, but pretty cool bro. I'd read more.

>>10736774
i don't know any other way to put it, but you sound faggoty.

>>10736748
Couldn't get into it, sorry.

>>10735767
Funny! The charm of your humor outweighs your weaknesses in the writing. I think if you brought your writing skills up to snuff, you'd really have something.

[Anonymous No.10740638]

>>10740602
it definitely comes off that way, so take that however you will

[Anonymous No.10740656]

>>10740638
alright. i think i know what to do now

[Anonymous No.10741239]

>>10740638
is it alright if i continue to write, in spite of me being shit at it for the time being? i just want to create, i feel guilty if i don't

[Anonymous No.10741273]

>>10741239
fuck man, do whatever you want, I'm just some asshole on the internet, don't have to ask me for permission for jack shit

i just mean the writing comes off as forced to me, like it isn't your style. u clearly got shit to say, thats why you wanna write, but just write like you instead of trying to be someone else or what you think you should be like bro

whole joy of reading (and life) is seeing everyone's unique perspectives bro

[Anonymous No.10741647]

Not sure if this is any good, but it was quite fun to write. Could I have some critique?

As Julia crossed over the crest of the hill she spotted a large open field. Littered about the tall grass were small rocks, bits of fence, and a smattering of knights. Of course the knights were very different from the rocks, probably on account of them walking around. Puzzled by the scene Julia went up to one of the knights, and politely asked, "Excuse me, but what are you all doing out here? While this is a field it's just a regular one".

Surprised the knight spun around, and looked sternly at the air just above her head. As his gazed went down to meet hers, his expression softened, "We heard news of an absence of rabbits in the area, so the king ordered us out here to look for some. We've been trying for several hours now and still haven't managed to find any, but I think he'll be rather pleased that we *did* find that the rabbits are indeed absent!" he explained, gesturing towards the field behind him.

[Anonymous No.10742357]

>>10737992
Sis she an hero under the train? Was that the point?

[Anonymous No.10742421]

>>10741647
It's clunky, appearing as reminiscent of a Lewis Carroll-style surrealism interspersed with idiomatic British syntax, yet poorly executed. The idea itself is there, but the sentence structure is dull and unwieldy. Too many sentences broken up with commas in the middle. No flow.

[Anonymous No.10742427]

>>10725674
>replying to your own post

i shigeru

[Anonymous No.10742450]

I breathe the alphabet soup and eat ass like spagetti-O's,
my tounge twisters give bitches nine inch outie buttholes
and when I need cheese I smack cheeks like ravioli
and when I'm finished I don't even say viola, just "ravioli"

[Anonymous No.10742452]

>>10742421
How do I improve the sentence structure and flow then? Is it just a case of writing and rewriting until I get something that sounds good?

[Anonymous No.10742571]

I've been through the thread. Pending an answer from this guy >>10737992 on his motives, which are confused by some syntax, I am replying generally to everyone else.

For fiction, the unit is the sentence. Every sentence should advance the story. Advance it. Not bog it down. Every sentence should work as a self-contained mechanism that contributes something new to the story. Work at the level of the sentence. Edit them and proof read them and then reconsider them again. When you have a paragraph worth, think about whether and how the paragraph steps through itself to get to what you wanted it to say. Sentence by sentence. Are they in the sequence in which things happen? "After the rain stopped, Char went back to what he was doing before." "The rain stopped so Char went outside again." One knots the chronological sequence, the other follows it. Things like that matter. Concresence and abstraction don't like each other and have to be match-made with care. "Char held a foible in his hand." Really? My reader's dream just blue screened. I see a lot of first and last sentences that were planned out and worked on, with a lot of first draft niggling in between. Work each sentence as if it were the big note closer.

For poetry- it's the word. Every single word is selected. The line is made out of words chosen individually. Each word comes before the line. Then the line's considerations second. Then the stanza third. Every level has a reason to be there, word first. "That word is there because I want to _________." You should be able to say that about each one. Every one. "That line is shaped that way because I want it to _________." "That stanza is that shape and length because I want it to _____________." And finally "This poem is about _________." should be in your head before the last draft. You can play coy with the reviewers when you are famous, for now, have the answer before you think you are done. You can also do this with famous poems. "Fern Hill is about lost youth." "Skunk Hour is about existential dread." "The word 'apple' is in there because it has Edenic reference." "The word 'green' is in there because it denotes youth and tenderness, like a sapling or sprout." "'Peach' or 'pear' would not evoke the Edenic Fall." "'Blue' or 'yellow' would not evoke plant like freshness." "It had to be 'sour' cream because 'sour' is also the mood. 'Sweet cream' would not echo the emotional intention."

And so on. It's work.

[Please critque, my easy read No.10742588]

You have brought the crisp air out of end
From call of waters drop to earthen bed
You bring us heat out of cold winter den
To green given leaves for our prancing friend
In their museful ways of melodic blend
We watch the dance of Spring foot Spren

[Please critque, my easy read No.10742592]

>>10742588
Woops I missed the top line

Changing colors of the spring time Spren
You have brought the crisp air out of end
From call of waters drop to earthen bed
You bring us heat out of cold winter den
To green given leaves for our prancing friend
In their museful ways of melodic blend
We watch the dance of Spring foot Spren

[Anonymous No.10742671]

Seems like everything on here is fiction or poetry. I'm kinda breaking that with some random thoughts I was having that I decided to record to no particular end. But I'd like to see if I can create a work out of such thoughts
https://pastebin.com/2Rwi9tqu

[Anonymous No.10742681]

>>10742671
>authoritative tone

No thank you

[Please critique, my easy read No.10742815]

>>10742592
Okay Im back, and I changed it a bit
Changing colors of the spring time Spren
You have brought the chill to its very end
With the fallen waters drop to earthen bed
You bring us heat out of cold winter den
To green given leaves for our prancing friend
In their museful ways of melodic blend
We watch the dance of Spring foot Spren

[Anonymous No.10743038]

Wormwood

a burning angel on high,
X / X / X /
fell into sea from sky
X / X / X /
a dragon so much hungry
X / X / X / X
he would eat the earth
X / X / X

we called this dragon Wormwood
X / X / X / X
whose lamps did spoil the world,
X / X / X /
boiled the oceans round him
X / X / X / X
and filled the seas with death
X / X / X /

so hungry was the dragon
X / X / X / X
he bit the ground itself
X / X / X /
tunneled out the earth
X / X / X
and flew to outer space
X / X / X /

but on his deadly orbit
X / X / X / X
he would return again
X / X / X /
a thousand years or more
X / X / X /
to bring about the end
X / X / X /

we built the ship, King David
X / X / X / X
and filled it with our dross
X / X / X /
crewing it with this pilot
X / X / X / X
and flung it at his heart
X / X / X /

by dint of mass and speed
X / X / X /
we rammed the star off course
X / X / X /
and caught me in his mouth
X / X / X /
struggling forever in his fangs
X / X / X / X /

[Anonymous No.10743075]

The shrunken homunculi spent every waking hour of every day tending the peas which grew fresh constantly due to an overabundance of richness of compost. Their heads were connected to the umbilical cord by some kind of stock or leek that accommodated their plant-like appearance. Never did they complain, never did they wail and never did they express discomfort because they existed connected to an unlimited source of energy. In fact, each strange pod was itself linked to its respective abhorrent creature. Their life was the soy that they grew, and they were autotrophic in that regard.

[Anonymous No.10743160]

>>10742357
I have modified the draft since posting so the story makes sense. I thought I had written an introduction when in fact I wrote an ending. I need to advance the story to a point where my post makes sense as a conclusion to the emotional arc, as opposed to seeming loose abstraction.

Thanks for the comment anon. I read your other post too, and it helped greatly.

[Anonymous No.10743232]

>Cheryl leaned against the raindim window and watched the gravel driveway, the glass cold against her cheek. The clock on the fireplace mantel struck five pm a minute ago. Three hours back, her mother dropped her off at her grandmother’s: her mother worked until 8 and her sister worked until 12. When Cheryl’s mind drifted from the driveway she stared at her own eyes and fell into a fugue, the shut of the kitchen door brought her back, it was her grandmother. She kept her eyes on the window and followed her grandmother via glass reflection. Cinderblocks supported the couch that her grandmother sat on to watch TV, but instead of watching their favorite program, her grandmother began to talk.

[Anonymous No.10743287]

A woman knocks on a door and walks into a hotel room she.

The Thief: There's something horrible. I don't know what to do. But I heard you could help?

Searcher: I don't do charity.

The Thief: Wait! I heard you're searching for something, a bead of some sort? I' m good at finding things.

Searcher: I don't really see what you could do for me...

The Thief: If you must know you are speaking to a diamond thief.

Searcher: Go on then...

* The Thief's Narration

I had one last job. I'd get rich and then retire to the countryside. And I did.

But then I met a man who I thought was very special. And I thought he thought I was special too.

We met at a gala, a little meet and greet among the independently wealthy. I knew my way around fine culture, I stole much of it in the past.

His name was Angus. He was a poet and an artist. I thought he was perhaps Scottish. He had red hair and liked wearing green clothing. Unlike much of the others he was sitting down instead of dancing. He claimed he had an injury recently and was in no condition to go moving about like that.

The older me, the thief me, had a lot of one night stands. A long-term relationship was difficult to handle in the lonelyq travelling life of a professional thief.

But this time was different. I could go slow with Angus and enjoy things. And besides Angus was afraid to get intimate with his injuries.

In time I moved in with Angus but still he was afraid to be intimate with me.

I started to get a little frustrated when a local museum exhibition came up. So, I felt why not steal a little trinket to keep in practise? It wasn't that valuable but just a little clay amulet.

It was after I stole the amulet and returned home at midnight that I noticed Angus was in the bathroom with the waters running. I was still in a mischievous mood so I decided to sneak a look to see what was under all of his bandages. I opened the door slightly and then couldn't help but let out a scream.

Angus did have an injury, many ones. His heart, his genitals, his body was a whole mass of bleeding holes and mutilation.

Angus put on a green bathrobe and then started to step towards me.

I ran and he chased after me leaking awful streams of blood all the way.

It was when I got out into the woods around the property that I pulled out the little girl's pistol hidden in my ankle holster but the gory shots of blood spray flung up as the bullets hammered Angus didn't even cause him to flinch.

And then in a horrible hissing voice full of gargling blood and bubbles Angus said one word: Hausosss...

Angus fell upon me and we fell into a ditch. He tore at my clothing with his hands and he found purchase on the amulet I had stolen.

It burned his hand and he fell over stunned.

I ran away, far away and then I eventually found you.

* Conclusion

Searcher: I'm on the case.

[Anonymous No.10743512]

I have this ambiguity in a story I am writing, where machine and human are conflated. I use machine lingo to describe human shit, like anxiety mostly. The people who have read my story have really liked it, have "got it", but there's this question which they all seem to initially consider and that I worry is distracting. A lot of the people basically ask "is this person a robot??!" and I don't know if this is a product of ambiguity that I like, or seems to cannibalize some of the very human stuff in my story.

I wonder if it's just my readers not considering what else these metaphors could be driving at, like the idea that it's not literal just seems less appealing to consider. I like the multiplicity that people seem to see in it, but I've just got this response a few times and it really turns me off.

[Anonymous No.10743544]

>>10743287
trash end yourself

[Anonymous No.10743862]

>>10743512
post some of it
also, go a little further down each road to see better which you prefer. like write a development where it turns out he is a robot, or write one where it explicitly states he isn't (maybe something you can stick earlier on to avoid confusion?). the only way you'll decide is if you explore the options at hand.

[Anonymous No.10743880]

>>10743862
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll consider approaching the situation with some of what you said.

I believe the issue stems from the first paragraph, where this conflation happens in the largest extreme. I may have made things too ambiguous for the hope of manipulating the reader to do a double-take, which always seems to happen. Maybe that's a cheap affect and is now getting in the way. Here it is:

>The hulking machine, exhales its toxic breath and hums to the sluggish pounding of its internal pistons, grips the steering wheel within his coarse automaton's grip and wills himself against crushing it. The steering wheel is necessary, it is how he controls the machine, his car, and how he will guide it along the drive-through up to the window to order his drink and pay, but more importantly it will guide him to where she is—he won't break the thing, as much as he feels like he needs to.

[Anonymous No.10743884]

>>10739300
easy-to-read flow, i liked that a lot. gonna read it again later to try and understand what it's about better.
you got stuff online?

[Anonymous No.10743896]

>>10743880
nice.
yeah that paragraph could go either way, if you choose to make it known he's human, you could say "it is how he controls the /actual/ (/literal/, more perfect) machine, his car", something like that

[Anonymous No.10743957]

>>10743884
thanks anon
this was just practice in what William Carlos Williams would call "loose verse" while trying to imitate Sidney Lanier. I don't have any other stuff but if you liked it I would definitely recommend everything by Sidney Lanier. especially his poem "Marshes of Glynn", which is the poem mine cops heavily from

Lanier is a master of internal, basic rhymes, along with hyper-musical verse. I'm trying to learn all I can from him

[Anonymous No.10744002]

>>10743957
thanks for the rec, i'll check him out.
and keep going on your work, would love to read more

here's some of my stuff for the sake of the thread

maybe dark and down and out
poking around for scraps
poking makes me shout for
an end to this roundabout
method of life,
livid me happens to miss out
on life, literally having this out
every other night
arguing life - is it a given?
sure for some who’ve been out living
once forgiven of their sins by themselves they can’t be quitting the game
once you’re born you make a promise to play
even if you sit it out today
you’d better be here tomorrow ball in your hand
don’t take a word from the girl off the street
threw her curls at a neat right angle just to see you fight angels for a second
out of her day that’s like a second away from the last second given
to all those who would listen to a message enough to take life into their own hands
given all the other outstanding beings could have lifted it
takes another kind to kindle it
and start the fire of life out of nothing but their insides
burning like a cauldron had some bubbles often
tried to write a song but collected too much bottom text
memes as a defense against the darkness, rise against your friends?
hell no. rise against the part of you that tells you to.

[Anonymous No.10744011]

Here I lay
Staring into my electronic abyss
Sipping my whiskey
Watching people achieve their dreams
and only wonder
what if
I...did

[Anonymous No.10744041]

>>10744011
made me laugh but true af

[Anonymous No.10744047]

Sometimes I wonder
If my guardian angel
looks down on me
and says
the potential is there
but
the drive seems damaged
the spirit maimed
If only he were in greener pastures
If only

[Anonymous No.10744057]

>>10744041
Thanks, drinking and watching the Olympics so I were inspired

[Anonymous No.10744068]

>>10744047
i feel this hard!
we need to dig deeper for drive and replenish the spirit

[Anonymous No.10744075]

>>10744002
I'm not too good with critiques but I will say that the images are nice and concrete and some lines are pretty musical, some more than others

it hurts to see the word "memes" in a poem tho

[Anonymous No.10744088]

>>10744075
thank you. glad to hear some of it comes off as musical. and lol memes are a part of my life why not include em

[Anonymous No.10744096]

>>10744002
I like your depiction of the dichotomy of the mind

Yes, I would like to go and rage tonight while I'm young with the time
But I wish to be alone
But if my wish of being alone is given too much time
I won't have any left for life

[Anonymous No.10744195]

>>10744096
thank you.
i like how the perspective shifts from feeling game for fun, to feeling asocial, to feeling the passage of time, all within only a few words. you got more stuff?

[Anonymous No.10744234]

>>10744195
I only really write when I'm drinking and alone and if something strikes me
So I really don't have much but I did write
>>10744011
>>10744047
I've got 2 more that I bothered to even write out

[Anonymous No.10744242]

>>10744234
oh nice. i thought the voice sounded similar in those. i like it a lot, has guts and feeling while simple in delivery. good qualities.

[Anonymous No.10744243]

>>10744096
This is good

[Anonymous No.10744261]

>>10744242
>>10744243
Thanks.
Weird thing is, I never liked writing through school. Now I do, but it's got to mean something to me to make it known

[Anonymous No.10744342]

Poetry shouldn't be hard to understand
Everyone knows emotion
Complexity does not equate knowledge
Like a damp cloth wipes away dirt
Simplicity uncovers the hidden truth

[Anonymous No.10744354]

>>10744342
>implying

[Anonymous No.10744365]

https://pastebin.com/je7csQsm

[Anonymous No.10744385]

>>10744096
you’re a fucking faggot this is awful, shallow and unbelievably gay

[Anonymous No.10744412]

>>10744385
I didn't want to be the one to say it, but yeah. Find the path to your creativity, of course. Express yourself confidently but with humility, yeah. But don't be so trite, and leave your dumb preconceptions about art behind.

[Anonymous No.10744437]

The boy was just tugging his cock
that was almost as hard as a rock
he came on his tummy
when in peaked his mummy
through the door that he didn't lock

[Anonymous No.10745124]

>>10744412
Different strokes for different folks

[Anonymous No.10745298]

I felt it come. I don’t know how long it’ll stay this time. But it’s here again. I just kind of blathered this out, just now.

...

Black, black, black. All is lost. The deepest despair has taken hold, and here I am at its mercy.

I can feel it all, swelling, rising, breathing like the waves of an ocean. The bottomless blue carrying all the darkness and misery within, swelling, rising, breathing. It’s all I can see, can feel. Black, black, black dog despair. Rises up for one big wave, then crashes over me in a wailing, chaotic crescendo.

I cannot hear anything but the water giving in. Blunt as a blow, yet quick as a cut. All the water rushes, pours unto me, overwhelming my few vestiges of feeling. And then there is only black, black, black. I sink, I feel myself sink down, away. But I only feel that way. And no one will know.

Smile, give them their handshakes and hellos. If you still remember how it all works. Do you even remember? Can you even think? I hope you’ve practiced your smile. You might not even need the lines anymore. Just remember. Remember the handshakes and hellos. Don’t think of the black. Black, black, black. Oh but just smile, grin. Ha-hah. “Hello. How are you? I’m so-and-so. Ha-hah.” Remember, remember, remember it all. Don’t think of the swells, the rises, or the breathing. Forget the bottomless blue, forget the black, forget it, forget-it, forgettit. I am here. I’m fine. I am alive.

[Anonymous No.10745651]

>>10724813
>Before that door swung open, Leonard carried around with him a trench populated by all of the ghosts of the war. Leonard kept them there, dormant and inactive, docile and placid, never daring to peek inside.
>that door
>carried around with him
>populated
>dormant and inactive, docile and placid
>never daring to peek
Stick to reading, please.

[Anonymous No.10747138]

>>10743160
"and flung herself onto the incoming train."

This is still messing me up. Did she get on board (onto) as a passenger or did she throw herself under it "flung herself...incoming" and thereby commit suicide? Because if she's dead, then the preceding graphs are her last thoughts, and then we have something to work towards. If she merely gets on board as a passenger then I'm at a loss because the detailed tour through the inside of her head doesn't really give me much in the way of why we are here or what she is doing, beyond the production of many, many ways of portraying portrayal.

The confusion needs to be remedied in the syntax and word choice - "she flung herself onto the tracks in front of the oncoming train" or "she flung herself up the steps onto the train." Or something.

[Anonymous No.10747154]

>>10743880
"automaton" to me says robot. It could be just that one word.

The hulking machine, exhales its toxic breath and hums to the sluggish pounding of its internal pistons, grips the steering wheel within his coarse grip and wills himself against crushing it. The steering wheel is necessary, it is how he controls the machine, his car, and how he will guide it along the drive-through up to the window to order his drink and pay, but more importantly it will guide him to where she is—he won't break the thing, as much as he feels like he needs to.

[Anonymous No.10747182]

>>10743880
>>10747154
But then we have the [verb]grip...[noun]grip awkwardness, but I bet you can deal with that.

[Anonymous No.10747339]

>>10733492
>The source of the reputation for the piece is the piece itself
I think there's good reason to debate that. What percentage of the people who reference and talk about 4'33" have actually either attended a performance or sat down and listened to a recording all the way through? My assumption is that they're in the minority. I didn't even sit down and listen a full recording until years after I learned about the composition. Want to know what actually experiencing the piece added to my appreciation and understanding of it? Absolutely nothing. You know everything you need to dissect and analyze 4'33" by merely having it described to you. You don't even need to see the sheet music. The piece's reputation lies in its existence as a concept and cultural phenomenon, not the actual composition.

[Anonymous No.10748108]

You know Jacqueline - there comes a time in men's lives when you cannot afford to wear masks anymore. The true time of friends, the time when hands are put on the table, when the dim light of the game of cards is overcome by stronger ones, in that time, I tell you, there are no appearances and the eyes acquire a nakedness delicate and brutal - that is when you see a man - and his soul.

[Anonymous No.10748157]

>>10748108
this nice. it has a distinct and strong tone, good images, and you get the feel that the person speaking is an interesting, developed character

[Anonymous No.10748368]

1/3

[Anonymous No.10748373]

>>10748368
2/3

[Anonymous No.10748381]

>>10748373
3/3

[Anonymous No.10748386]

>>10748108
0/10 tryhard trash if serious
7/10 if unreliable narrator

[Anonymous No.10749117]

>>10748368
>>10748373
>>10748381

DIALOGUEE!!!

[Anonymous No.10749123]

>>10747154
Thank you, I think that word does contribute a lot to the robot idea. And the double grip thing was definitely unintended, but that whole paragraph needs to be restructured imo so it's gonna be fixed for sure. Thanks again!

[Anonymous No.10749228]

>tfw want to be a musician but suck terribly at it

How's my writing though? Any feedback?

https://pastebin.com/9Cju3Nab

[Anonymous No.10749299]

>>10749228
I hate your work for the overuse of 'it'.

[Anonymous No.10749309]

>>10727659
Jesus CHRIST stop.

You self inserted your writing already in the "post works you saved" thread here currently.
You're embarrassing and I actually feel 2nd hand embarrassment for you.
Don't write again.

[Anonymous No.10749319]

>>10749299
thanks for the feedback

[Anonymous No.10749356]

>>10747182
>>10743896
How's this for a change:
>The hulking machine exhales toxic breath and hums to the sluggish pounding of internal pistons. He has the steering wheel within his coarse hands, and wills himself not to crush it. He needs control, the wheel is necessary. With control in his hands he will be able to navigate himself and his car through the drive-through up to the window where he can order his drink and pay. More importantly, however, with control in his hands he'll find himself up at the head of the line and be able to see her one more time.

[Anonymous No.10749395]

>>10749228
based buckley poster

[Anonymous No.10749419]

what's the best way to practice your description writing skills?

[Anonymous No.10749429]

>>10749419
observing things in your head and figuring out how to describe them. translate your vision into words

[Anonymous No.10749436]

>>10749419
write description

[Anonymous No.10749442]

>>10749436
and maybe get into the appreciation of some visual art

[Anonymous No.10749503]

>>10744365
>https://pastebin.com/je7csQsm
Please? It's very short

[Anonymous No.10749522]

>>10749503
It's very much like a millennial's idea of deep. You could probably sell. You probably wish you were deeper though. You probably want bitches to know you've read Calvino and not notice you still flick your scarf at the mention of his name.

Revise the first sentence fragment though. Not because it's a fragment: those sounds are hard for English speakers to use together, and it's followed by a sentence which is hard for Arabic speakers, and neither of those things sell in the audience you'll best get known in.

[Anonymous No.10749555]

>>10749419
stare at anything then describe it to an imaginary friend. Rinse and repeat until you become very good at it. It helps if you know description words

[Anonymous No.10749627]

>>10749117
You didn't like the dialogue?

[Anonymous No.10749667]

>>10749627
Not him, but there are many pauses that it kinda is awkward to follow after reading a description on what she was doing. That's like having an advertisement on a soap opera. Each line gets halted for an infodump of some shitty beach resort kind of feeling. Trim it down and make it less extraneous.

[Anonymous No.10750884]

>>10739300
Pretty good.but the poem walks around too much and the opening sucks. Maybe condense those first 10 or so lines into 2 or 3 good ones.

>>10733286
Nice neat lil poem but the lack of rhyme in the first three lines is a bit clunky. A half rhyme would be nice.

[Anonymous No.10751347]

It’s like this, and it is no dream: First off, a plastic palomino and its stiff-armed rider float above a toybox. The rider is a dyed Custer, and everything’s red. I mean boots and kerchief and holster and eyebrows even. He is one ruined and reduced cavalryman, he was poured and solidified with horribly bowed legs, simply because his only reason for existence is to straddle the palomino. Denied Comanches. But the horse and rider float and revolve anyway, on the lookout for marauders. They rotate at about a revolution a minute, as per specs. Also: a velour basketball, half the size of a real basketball, hangs mid-aired over a crib. In the closet, the arms of tiny jackets and sweaters wave and salute wildly. The threads of the carpet flatten out like grass under a helicopter, and then circular waves run outward from the middle of the room. When the waves die down, it’s just a regular carpet again. The whole cycle takes three and a half minutes. An empty rocking chair rocks faster than any mortal granny could.
Out the wide window across the room, it’s a crescent moon in bough-crook kind of thing; caramel lights through sectioned panes in houses of white wood, trees blown and slanting like smoke. Windows and doors of the houses wide open with Trust. Children breathe pillow air. Hills roll away behind the row of houses in a fairly pastoral manner. It is a kind of smooth blue Ireland. And the blue is in the room too. It is the blue of night scenes in animation. The cloak of night and all that. It is very much like the nights when little kids point at the moon and say odd things. There is the smell of very clean carpet. There is no sound of bugs and no sound of rocking chair or wind or of anything scraping the windowpane. But you can hear the air conditioning. I rub my window clean and enjoy a soft drink.

[Anonymous No.10751557]

They speak of myth
Seldom thought or understood
Now in this
Brutal time
And it will take the end of such an age
For them to be reached again

Oh Stars! Why such contempt
To make me spend my days
Wretchedly
In mediocrity!
Cruel greatness!
I would spread my arms
And swim
Across the ocean of blackness
To feel enlightened
And to bask
In your universal gaze

But do the drippings of you we see
In our water, food, and air
Sustain us
And allow us to move freely?
Or are we constrained still
By your haughty brilliance
We will sail beyond you
Or will we be trapped
In your eternal
Stare

[Anonymous No.10751583]

>>10751557
Forgot the first part

The stars are unreachable
Cold
And Empty
Natural beacons glaring
Above the perverted light we birth
Cold eyes
Disapproving
At our paltry efforts to create feeble radiance
True, we can barely illuminate ourselves
Our own actions, faults and quality

[Anonymous No.10752751]

>>10725222
Veery similar to Dichtung and Warheit.

[Anonymous No.10752788]

What's the point in writing when you have no talent?

[Anonymous No.10752797]

>>10752788
Hey, you were the one to hit Post. Ask yourself that, bucko.

[Anonymous No.10752822]

>>10731028
Maybe avoid making your rhymes so obvious, and like another anon said, work on your meter.
>the sea flows to and fro the beach
I like this line, it's actually pretty nice, but the next line
>Sucking everything away like a leech
The only device used is rhyme, a predictable and bland rhyme at that. Also the term "sucking everything" is very weak. "Everything" is such a vague word, it's just wasted space. The line doesn't flow like the previous one, it needs different syllabic emphasis.
If you want to maintain the couplet that rhyme scheme you already have:
>The sea flows to and fro the beach
>Leeching sand and shells and dying weeds
But I would consider switching up the rhymes so they alternate somehow, and don't feel so forced. (This is just an example, you could probably do better with more time, having your theme in mind.)

[Anonymous No.10752846]

>>10733286
yes
YES

[Anonymous No.10752873]

>>10739300
The first four lines are really shitty, but the rest of the poem is so much better. Just trim the first few lines and tighten up the meter, and you'll have a very well done poem.

[Anonymous No.10752888]

>>10740615
Yeah, the reason most of the people itt feel like shit writers is because they are so goddamn uninspired and probably inexperienced. Take some time to find the Logos you fucking morons

[Anonymous No.10752919]

How do I stop the feeling of wanting to kill myself after rereading something I wrote a few weeks/months down the line? Looking at anything I write after some time passes makes me physically cringe.

[Anonymous No.10752951]

>>10752919
Just going to happen, but maybe don't let it make you feel like you want to kys yourself... that's a bit harsh.

[Anonymous No.10752959]

>>10752919
I wish I could tell you, little man. The upside is that when you find something old and don't want to poison yourself when you read it, it's safe to assume you've written something worthwhile

[Anonymous No.10753417]

>>10751347
Critique me, fuckers

[Anonymous No.10753470]

>>10752919
Same. It's gotten better though. I was literally unable to reread some of my work when I just started writing.Now I can at least make the changes I want

[Anonymous No.10753801]

>>10749667
Thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.10753807]

From the flash fiction thread, although this is part of a larger story I've been sitting on for years:

Thomas comes to, tucked to the chin in a half-sized bed placed at the center of a small, dimly lit room. Over his chest and between his upturned feet, a long corridor stretches yonward before him, breaking the maritimed darkwood walls of the chamber. Fully dressed all at once, beard clean and flowing grey by his chest, he leaves the bed and makes his way down the gaping hallway, right shoulder leading him in caution. All dark turns the hall as he proceeds, until it ends with a mahogany door framed by a sepian light that sounds from its edges. It swings by its hinge and Thomas brings his hands to his aching eyes as he emerges into a great goldenbright grassfield. Wincing, he waits to bear the light, and as he does, a heaving melodic hum comes to him from all around. He sees: a great choral ring at least two hundred men strong closes off his place in the field. Men, women, and children alike, they stand wallstraight and proud in lovely white dress burned gold by the warm light of the day. A great array of diverse instruments wait in their palms and at their feet, taught and brassparts gleaming: harps, trombones, hurgy-gurdies, celestes, banjos, harmonicas, cellos, flutes. Smiling at Thomas, they continue their melodic seethe in careful harmony. He proceeds forward, eyes finally adjusted, and there standing in front of him, they are. His father, looking no further than thirty years, in a pinstriped suit like a barbershop quartet, and his mother, all dressed up in an exquisite display of feathers and color, just like the Rio girls in Carnival used to be, fruited headdress towering high and brown skin glistening in the day, stand side by side before him, just as handsome and proud as Thomas remembers. He begins to totter towards them, mouth parted, and breaks into a desperate run, hands wildly reaching out. The choir's tune builds and stirs, and closer he stumbles, eyes welling up, mumbling and whimpering, and here now he's thirty feet, now twenty feet, now ten feet, and the singers all mount their instruments and the song explodes in a great bursting chorale of holy unity and play, strings shimmering and reeds revving and cymbals crashing and voices belting, and he falls in agony at his parents' feet, unable to meet their eyes, sobbing and snotting and shaking, screaming at the ground and screaming for forgiveness.

[Anonymous No.10754282]

>>10751347
Someone please touch me

[Anonymous No.10754353]

>>10751347
Very fun read. Feels a bit like a diluted Captain Beefheart rant, and not in a bad way. This style definitely couldn't sustain more than a short piece, but it'd be a damn good short piece, for the most part. Some lines get a bit obvious, like "faster than any mortal granny could" which sounded a bit too much like standard Cracked.com "random" fodder to me, but the bad lines are in the small minority. Good work, anon

[Anonymous No.10754777]

.BMP

[Anonymous No.10755027]

Gone are the calls of the fishermen at the docks. Gone are the patter of feet on the cobbles and the rumble of engines and the laughter of the children who jump from bridges into rolling waves on sweltering summer days when the winds are still. The city is quiet. Long has its wealthy gone to desert mountain retreats or government bunkers with soldiers patrolling rooftops watching the sky.
But the city is not empty.
Huddled masses fill the public transit systems that coil beneath the waves. And in the upstairs window of an apartment complex on the ugly fringes of the city, far from the water where the working poor are kept, a little girl fogs the window with her breath. The night sky sparks. Flashing and flaring, spurts of light like the fireworks her brother sometimes bought at the corner shop. She's been told there is a bttle between big fleets up there. She has never seen a starship. Her mother lies sick in the bedroom, unable to travel. Her father sits at the little plastic dinner table with his sons, knowing he cannot protect them. The TV washes them in pale light. Government news tells them to seek shelter. In her pocket the girl unfolds a piece of paper with a little red symbol drawn on it. She's seen it before on TV. Her teachers at the government school says it brings chaos. War. It is the reason of the battle being fought above. But now she secretly draws the symbol in the fog of her breath on the window, and she feels brave.
Then the bombs begin to fall.

[Anonymous No.10755311]

>>10755027
You took this from Iron Gold

[Anonymous No.10755325]

>>10755311
Come on, I want to see how bad /lit/ thinks it is. I'm sure you're curious too, shouldn't have given it away.

[Anonymous No.10755349]

>>10755325
It's genre fiction. It's not bad for what it is.

[Anonymous No.10756917]

cmon guys
bump

[Anonymous No.10757505]

Flying o'r new york
In a jumbo-jet plane
O'er the square we go
Screaming all the way
They punch the cabin door
Not sensing their demise
Oh it’s fun to fly and praise
Allah's might tonight


Kosher bells, kosher bells
Ringing all the way
Oh! what fun it is to rig
The struts with TNT
Kosher bells, kosher bells
Ringing all the way
Oh! what fun it is to blame
The whole thing on Bin Laden

Faking evidence
Working day and night
Telling jewish lies
and getting oil cash
meanwhile! Hey!

Bait I wrote for /pol/