/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3550307]

Hey, guys, what do you think of this extract? I wrote it a few years ago, so it's rather juvenile. Old writing extracts general?

Dad brought me to work in the evening. As he worked, I scribbled nonsense on sheets of graph paper. At five-thirty, the Dhahran mosque sang out its prayers into the navy blue night. To my ears that knew nothing of Arabic or Islam, I would always wonder what this incessant plainchant was. Words and music garbled together into meaningless noise. But, I was at peace. From my bed, I could always hear the Imam’s lullaby, but never had I been so close to the mosque at prayer time, as I was at the office. All lit up in incandescent yellow that defied the encroaching night, with that blue-striped tower that stood tall on the little concrete island, the mosque serenaded the twilight. Every evening, for ten years, the azan lingered in the humid dim. At seven o’clock, it saw me off to sleep and resurrected me at five-thirty.

[Anonymous No.3550311]

>>3550307

I like it a lot. I don't find it juvenile at all. If you want something juvenile here's something I wrote when I was about 13.
I asked you if you were afraid to die. You said no- you couldn’t wait to die because then you would have your 77 beautiful virgins. I looked at you with one eyebrow raised- wasn’t there only 17 virgins… and who said they were beautiful?

You poked your tongue out at me and I slapped your arm. Then we began to walk along the path when you asked me if I was afraid to die. I told you I wasn’t- that I was excited because I would get to go to heaven and see my grandparents.

You smiled at me and then said: do you think our heavens are the same?
But I wasn’t so sure.

[Anonymous No.3550313]

>>3550311
I like it. It's simple, pensive, although somewhat coy.

I didn't expect to have two Islamic extracts.

[Anonymous No.3550318]

>>3550313

I've always been interested in various religions and feel like they tend to make an interesting read. Thanks for the positive feedback. :)

[Anonymous No.3550321]

I wrote a poem-cycle, a while ago, about mental illness. This poem's about phalacrophobia.

For each hair that departs from its nodule,
A follicle weeps blood and pus,
Only visible through the eyes of
The host, the rust.

From the mind of the paranoid
There is a void of alloyed gloss
That will not let ‘til I go
Mad or otherwise.

And I bear my searing scalp
To all about me:
Do you see, do you see, do you see? –
How about in this

Light, or if I hold it like this,
Or that.
I cannot see the crowning pride
So I rely on

Those who will tell the
Trichologist to bury me
In the bent-double cask –
Clutching my hairline.

[Anonymous No.3550331]

I wrote this a little while ago when I was thinking about my asshole friend who my girlfriend (who I had my first time with) left me for.

It is my friendship that you seek.
But sadly that bond, it was too weak.
In these weeks the truth has come
To a head, and so I sum
Up my feelings that I've repressed
And the words I speak, I won't digress
I don't think we can go on
Living our lives like nothing's wrong.
I feel that you, have done no good
In standing where, I once stood
In the arms of my lost love
But now I see, she was no dove.
I've seen her faults, her flaws, her scars
I'm glad I got free, though not unmarred.
I hold no affection toward her now,
But what you did, I cannot allow.
My dude, my friend, my humble man
I will not forgive, I don't think that I can.

[Anonymous No.3550336]

>>3550331
Given the couplets and the colloquial tone, I don't see it as a poem that takes itself seriously. The jilted lover trope has been done to death, so I'm rather sceptical, anyway.

[Anonymous No.3550339]

>>3550336
Eh, it happened so I wrote about it. It's not like I just chose that topic out of the hat.

[Anonymous No.3550340]

>>3550339
Maybe you should take a different form with it. As opposed to a lyric, try something more confessional.

[Anonymous No.3550345]

>>3550340
I really like that idea actually. I'll look that over in the morning (need sleep) and see what I can come up with. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.3550357]

Here's a horrendously embarrassing extract from a piece I wrote; it's about a convent.

I do not wake to the Sun; instead, there is a perfect picture of a murdered Christ hovering above my bedstead. Soeur Fournier is playing the organ in the chapel – each day is marked by some prelude, fugue or dirge which greets the morning. We all can play the organ, but it is only in the shelter of these stone catacombs; they have kept the courtyard virgin. No visitor will see these sterile, blanching cavities; they are hidden from tainted eyes. Against the achromatised eyes of every wall the blackened habit dies under the blind divine.