off center.
“Most-Annoying Writing Mistakes”
yeah…i’m definitely guilty of a few.
chronic punctuation abuser, for sure.
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!”
— Rudyard Kipling (via - my father)
woke up - silly and in love,
talked some,
then wished for - death from above.
the ones you can’t shake…
feelings left over from dreams.
“
Why don’t you ever want to play?
I’m tired of this piece of string.
You sleep as much as I do now, and you
don’t eat much of anything.
I don’t know who you’re talking to
I made a search through every room,
but all I found was dust that moved
in shadows of the afternoon.
And listen,
about those bitter songs you sing?
They’re not helping anything.
They won’t make you strong.
So, we should open up the house.
Invite the tabby two doors down.
You could ask your sister, if
she doesn’t bring her Basset Hound.
Ask of things you shouldn’t miss:
tape-hiss and the Modern Man,
The Cold War and Card Catalogues,
to come and join us if they can,
for girly drinks and parlor games.
We’ll pass around the easy lie
of absolutely no regrets,
and later maybe you could try
to let your losses dangle off
the sharp edge of a century,
and talk about the weather, or
how the weather used to be.
And I’ll cater
with all the birds that I can kill.
Let their tiny feathers fill
disappointment.
Lie down;
lick the sorrow from your skin.
Scratch the terror and begin
to believe you’re strong.
All you ever want to do is drink and watch TV,
and frankly that thing doesn’t really interest me.
I swear I’m going to bite you hard and taste your tinny blood
if you don’t stop the self-defeating lies you’ve been repeating
since the day you brought me home.
I know you’re strong.
priorities.
“We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamer of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties,
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
A breath of our inspiration,
Is the life of each generation.
A wondrous thing of our dreaming,
Unearthly, impossible seeming-
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.
They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising.
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man’s soul it hath broke,
A light that doth not depart
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man’s heart.
And therefore today is thrilling,
With a past day’s late fulfilling.
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of tomorrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for it’s joy or it’s sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.
But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing;
O men! It must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye.
For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry-
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God’s future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.
Great hail! we cry to the corners
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers,
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song’s new numbers,
And things that we dreamt not before;
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.”
— Ode by, Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy (1874)
codependency? infatuation? (In either case, something that feels so great…and, may not turn out that way.)
or, could it be…
Mom always said, “You’ll never win the lottery if you don’t play!”
I suppose a couple potential results of heading that advice, might make someone a compulsive gambler… or, a millionaire…
Fernando French: We are starting The Unquarterly
- I’d like to play.
…will anyone be allowed to submit?
- un·quar·ter·ly [un-kwawr-ter-lee]
- —noun
- : a journal that is published an indefinite number of times a year
We certainly did not invent the journal nor are we the first to start one. But throughout the history of words and paper and periodicals, have there been any named The Unquarterly?…
Seems we’ve traveled this path before… Melodramatic reactions to the terribly trite.
Dont mean to say I’m in a place to speak down to anyone, just trying to help with some advice.
What interest prevails in this futile exercise in comfort and callous? Adjusting the ballast to the forcasted wind…then the sail flies dead..apparently. The wind too can change and adjust. Really voicing concern the captain said his last commands, because the crew’s mutinous murmuring was taking hold…swift social change is afoot. The ports will be decided on a basis of loyalty and (pretense? (word for first dibs))… The remaining few, loyal crew, will really determine whether the captain will direct the ship again. He thinks, ‘aH…well, Twas a mighty used hull anyhow.’ he preceeds to undertake the dreaded soft spoken consensus amongst the men. As he does so, the true outcome of the voyage would surely be determined. Was the captain still the ship’s master? Or, is he to go down with the boat, it’s crew’s loyalty, or maybe the boat and the crew in it’s entirery? Tis but reliant on a carefull unravelling of a complicated short fuse, the manner in which it does, will provide the fabric of the future held for all, the captain, crew, and the boat itself. Those would be the things of physical importance. Wind has no purpose, without sails to push…and sails have no place without a boat to propell…and, a crew to unfurl them.
It’s summer-time…red blossoms are blooming from some fruiting tree…and, there is no such thing as silence. A cheerful songbird whistles a happy hyhm…there’s nothing outside not humming some sort of tune. My mind is a flatline; where elation should most likely be. If there is no silence anywhere else? At least I can clear my head.
I once worked at a movie theater…sweeping up each messy theater after every showing. The thoughts, the white noise, that damn catchy pop song, the everyday banter of the morbid morning news…can be swept away…like all those gummy bears and popcorn kernels. Nature’s abuzz and beauty abounds; surrounding me, in this placid plastic lawn chair. I am numbed as I so chose to be. After a while, I let the outside in; a singular thing at a time. First, a ray of light from the sun; I let it slightly sear my retina. For each sense, in turn, I allow a thing of beauty burn me. Next, my nose: I take in a breath of hot summer air. It’s wonderful, dry, and I relish thing sting as it rushes past the hairs on the inside of my nostril. I do this, each sense in turn, one item at a time…until it’s only pure, unfettered, summer; burning it’s way through all my neural pathways, spanning the entirety of each sense’s perception, leaving me as one embodiment of summer, and ultimately…utterly sublime.
Some days, I can’t help but feeling like I’m on the precipice of something big; as if I’m on the verge of some great revelation. Other days, I feel like i’m helpless and floating along in a void with no end.
Even though today is a day of precipice…I can’t shake the lurking doubt that the void is the more accurate of the two…because, I’ve yet to reach any substantial revelation.
I lost myself in you.
totally, completely, consumed.