Monthly Archives: November 2013

Why do poets – a poem.

Why do poets read their words like this

A sonorous monotone

That kills each word

And leaves it,

lying there, dead on the ground.

 

And yet,

and yet,

Each word is

A memory,

A key,

A lifeline

To love,

To lives,

Our sorrows,

Our sorries,

Our miseries,

Our loss.

 

Each words dissipates

On your breath

Like purple

butterfly wings

thinner than the mist at dawn.

She loved you.

You’re fired.

Come home.

Home.

 

So sing loud, children, sing clear

Each word you make

makes you live,

makes you alive

In the eyes of others,

The yes of others.

A New Day

So I found myself getting up again this morning, and writing a plot structure of 1600 words out.

A plot structure.

As in, I haven’t even gotten to the thing itself yet.

Still, it is an interesting project. But I think I might, for the moment, just write in the mornings, and try to clean this house now and again. It’s getting a bit insane around here.

Still. I’m writing! Whay!

It’s a new day, children.

Our heroine discovers time on her hands.

I hate having nothing to do. Some people cope quite well with life at a certain pace, but I do not. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the worst thing in the world for me would be to win the Lottery. Life with all the major challenges met (which, you have to admit, would happen if you suddenly had millions) would I think leave me slightly crazy.

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! Alright yes.”

I’ve just finished one project, that I enjoyed so much I happily got up early each day to do it. The fact that it’s done, though, leaves me without the mental crutch it had provided. I’ve several other plots I could be working on, but I’m not able to rush into them yet, none of them have gripped me the same way. Plus, I am tired. I feel that while one side of my brain is telling me to rush on to the next project, the other is close to just switching off and sleeping, whether I want it to or not.

So I want to work, but I’m tired, and I need to work, but I don’t. I think what I might to for a bit is read, even; read writers I haven’t had a chance to read for a while, and see what it does to my mind.

Isn’t this Heaven? From metafilter.com

Sooooo… anything you’d recommend? And that goes for Blogs, as well, I’d love to see what’s out there. Have a good weekend!

Swimmer looks around, is surprised.

Yesterday in Ireland was freezing, one of the first really cold days of the season. I felt myself very righteous as I took myself off for my swim at lunch, thinking of just how much I was sacrificing for leaving the warmth. And there’s always that bit of wet hair at the back of your neck to annoy you for the rest of the afternoon. However, being the trooper that I am, I got there and got into the water.

I do 15 laps each session, and I count down from 15 to 1 while I do. Around about lap 13 I noticed an unusual optical illusion of the swimmer next to me. For whatever reason, I couldn’t see his legs. The nature of swimming is that it is head in the water, breath, head in the water, breath, so you normally don’t get a clear look at someone. But at the turn, I gave him a glance.

And I was wrong. It wasn’t some optical illusion. The swimmer in the lane next to me, almost if not quite keeping pace in the 50 metre pool, had no legs. And I don’t mean he had the body of a dwarf or that he had shortened stubs. He wore a pair of red mens’ swimming shorts, and I could see no legs whatsoever. At all.

His method of locomotion was to lift his arms in the usual way, and twist his torso in the water so that he was moving. I noticed, though, that there was something funny about that as well, and on lap 7 I saw it. One of his arms ended smoothly around his forearm. He only had one hand. 

This was getting almost dangerously, surely? How was he able to lift his head out of the water to breathe? There was no specific concern on the lifeguards, everything was nonchalant about it.

I finished my laps at the usual time, and found myself at the end of the pool just taking a moment. The level of tenacity I’d just witnessed was more than I can remember. I called one of the lifeguards over, a person I know. She laughed at my surprise.

“Oh him! Yeah, he’s one of our regulars, he’s on the swim team for the University.”

Unbelievable. I shared a pool with the Black night yesterday. Fair play.