New critique thread

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I posted this in the last thread but I'll post it here too I guess. Some shitty semi-stream of consciousness that I wrote to try to overcome my severe writer's block. I'll critique whoever posts after me.

I have a few poems I'd like feedback on.
1/3

The loft is course with threads of dust
but I often sleep there.
Under the skylight,
bathed in midnight,
sits a wooden chair.

On my command it sails above
grey edifices streaked with age, above
sullen cows and sleeping lakes,
above wavecrests iced with moonlight.

I sing over time’s parade, its clamour,
over the infinite, fading as I climb,
over the waterfall drowning my mind,
under the stars that replace it.

Briefly I resent the chair
when it sets me down,
bathed in midnight,
under the skylight.

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>>8282011
page 2

>>8282012
I quite like this poem. It has really nice flow and striking imagery. I'm interested in reading the other ones you've written.

>>8282012
Is it supposed to be "coarse" in the first line? I don't catch the meaning if not.

>>8282011
I was going to pick at "overwheming amalgamation" but it occurred to me that it was pretty apt.

I don't like "some unfathomable reason".. adding "unfathomable" to "some reason" doesn't alter the meaning of the sentence.

"Anyway" seems a bit informal compared to the tone previously. The second sentence in that paragraph is a bit long.

>it's worthless life
m8 pls

Hmm. I think there is too much description of feelings, which isn't particularly convincing for me.

I do like your subject matter, and I think you know what you are trying to show, so keep with it. At the moment your writing leaves me less moved than I feel I should be. Probably a result of the long sentences.

>>8282027
Cheers!
>>8282034
Yep lol. Thanks.

2/3

Sunday languor on a Monday morning,
senses dull to all but caffeine,
blind to mysteries eclipsed by daylight.
The weekend beckons through the mist
of chores and repetition; a snow globe
in constant turmoil forgets its walls.
Morning daze swept aside by shower,
orders are now clear: get by.

3/3

I rushed to you from the platform,
so sure of you, a stranger that
I should by rights have never
met. That was the second time
I saw you – halfway until I
saw you last. We started there
a young star, burning fast,
powder burning nostrils,
enraptured by the chaos.
You were older, I assumed
wiser - could you teach me how
to love and live and love myself?
Could you teach me how to
see the future in the past,
to find hope in despair?
To avoid your own mistakes?
You are older, yes – an old star,
a brown dwarf, dead in all
but name, no splendour. You
stopped looking for answers,
no more questions. An old star,
incapable of love
or smile or wisdom.
You made a fool of me; how
naive – I believed my short-lived
passion. It haunts me from the verse
on my wall; its curse will not
be forgotten.

Posting a poem that I wrote.
Page 1

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>>8282054
Forgot attachment

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>>8282057
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>>8282062
Page 3

post solipsistic-panic-attack dreary metaphysical hum-drum
possibly drug induced

now talk about sunshine and rainbows for two pages

>>8282040
Thanks, man. I greatly appreciate the constructive criticism, and I agree that I describe feelings too much. Also, I have a strange affinity for run-on sentences and I like the erratic and manic feeling they convey, especially when they jump around from subject to subject. They're useful in making clear the disturbed mental state of the narrator.

By the way, I really dig your poems.They just flow so well. Keep it up.

I dont read poems desu

Arthur
“Who's there?” This was the question posed by Arthur, Lord of Eboracum. But it was not aimed at any strange visitor knocking on his; nor was it fired at a creature skulking in the shadows. Arthur stood in front of a mirror while asking this; also deliberating whether the bottle of wine or bible required his attention most urgently. Slumping back into his chair and pouring another glass, he went over his plan of action for the night once again. “First to arrive shall be Arland, followed by Bran and Drew. Arland is to be greeted as lord? No no! He’s a knight dammit, Bran is the Lord, and Drew is a cardinal.” If all went well this evening, Arthur will finally have a firm grasp over Eboracum; though if all went well for Arthur this party wouldn’t be needed. Arthur got back to his feet; pacing the room while taking sips from his wine.

Though he had never been a man of great rhetoric, or even one whom fancied it, Arthur was unwilling to let his guests leave without their support. Walking back and forth, his eye caught the window, specifically the graveyard where the men of yesteryear were hurried. How many men had died for his cause, only to have their cause torn down by the Germanic hordes of tomorrow. His eyes now moved to the mural which adorned his wall; that of Constantine the Almighty. He looked into the eyes of Constantine and saw that which he vowed to protect: law, order, justice, all values which the Saxons wish to trample and rape. He approached the mural with a feeling of shame, and placed his hand on the shield of Constantine. “O Constantine, I ask; no beg for your help tonight, for God could not mend this wound.” Constantine finished off his glass and hurried to the meeting room to check whether the arrangements were in order.

On his way, he narrowly caught his bishop, Farrell, who was not so inconspicuously attempting to avoid Arthur. “A man who deals with God is afraid to speak with me? Should I be honored or afraid?” Farrell bowed his head in respect and fear “no sir, I was merely trying to have everything prepared for our guests.” Arthur placed his hand under the chin of Farrell and forced him to look eye to eye “Prepare to be hanging off the castle walls should you not succeed, I haven’t time for failure.” Though the bishop was no small man himself, Arthur frequently used his own large stature for intimidation, something which could be useful tonight. The bishop scampered away to the kitchen to see how the food was, while Arthur continued to his round table. Once there, he was shocked to see that Arland had already been let through the gates and was pouring himself a glass of wine

I was going to post mine, but it already occurred to me that I posted it in three different critique threads: none with responses. I'm going to guess nobody liked it.

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>>8282048
This poem in particular reaches me. I haven't been in these threads much but this seems to look inward at a personal struggle but with aim or purpose a lot of other self-affirming writing here doesnt. The same goes for your other poems, I think there is craft and intent that shines most brightly.

I liked the line about a snow globe in turmoil forgetting it's walls.

>>8282054
I enjoyed it. There are a few typos though; be careful. Have you any thoughts on mine?

>>8282080
I think the problem is less to do with run-on sentences than how you execute them. If you keep at it, you'll find a way.

Thanks a lot. I've been trying to nail the flow so I'm glad to see it's working.

>>8282103
I get what you're trying to do with the question but it leaves the real scene until too late. The semicolon in the secend sentence should be a comma and the "also" is a bit clunky. You have a few too many words.

>>8282111
It's a shitty feel but at this point it's probably best to see for yourself how to improve, write new stuff, and see how that is received. I beleive in you!
Quite often I beleive stuff is skimmed over out of pure laziness..

>>8282149
>beleive
crikey. *believe

>>8282149
>you have a few too many words
I expect the book to be a lot longer senpai

I've learned to love my chains
Chaining me to myself.
And I've learned to hate my captor
My Stockholm syndromed self.

But the caged bird sings at night
When animals scream 'come fuck me'
And the eyed walls and eared hills
Recede, blinded by the light.

The distribution of the letter I
Imaginarily spread by bones
Throughout generations of meat
Is called us but thus incomplete—

Shitty shitty bang bang
I like to repeat the same thang
Shitty shitty bang bang
Now here comes a boomerang
Shitty shitty bang bang
I like to repeat the same thang
Shitty shitty bang bang

Call us thus but incomplete
Through generations out of meat
Spread by bones imaginarily
To distribute letters of me

Blinded by the receding light
With walled eyes and hilled ears
Animals scream coming and fucking
And of the caged night the bird sings.

My sin stocked home and selfish drone
Has learned to love his captor
Chained to himself
Loving his chains on the tip top shelf.

Dissonant—

Public Service Announcement:

The Queen isdead!
Long live minimum wage
and the racial palpitations
hailed by the word "negro."
Sometimes I drink Imodium.

>>8282188
You know what I mean.

>>8282147
Thanks. Yeah, this stuff is very personal; the second one is perhaps more generally applicable than the others.

I quite like the meditative, circularity of your piece. The first sentence strikes me as grammatically incorrect though; the "and tell myself" doesn't seem to link well with the first part. I suggest "so I can tell myself".

>>8282192
This really doesn't work for me.

>>8282258
Actually no I don't, what the all does too many words mean?

Dusk—
Dawn:
spinning,
spiraling,
a fondue vortex
of nip-tickling spent tragedies
complacently, delusionally called love or life
patiently consumes from the inside till the only thing that matters is left: Nothing.
(Rule 34 suggests this last tangent directly refer to fan-made porn containing the puppets from the kid's movie The Dark Crystal.)

>>8282258
>This really doesn't work for me.

Could you point to anything specific? Trying to understand to what degree the piece is objectively subpar—not to say subjective opinion doesn't matter to me.

>>8282268
Seems you've corresponded syllables per line to the Fibonacci sequence: cool beans.

>>8282262
Some of the words you use are unnecessary; you could alter the order of words and/or sentences to reduce the count, without removing any information.

>>8282270
I'll point out a few things. The repetition of "chains" then "chaining" jars me. I dislike "Stockholm syndromed" and "imaginarily". The middle verse doesn't make sense to me. I don't like "tip top".

>>8282281
Fair enough compadre—after a reread, I'm not actually too crazy about it myself. That being said, did you like the baseline concept? How the last three stanzas mirror the first three, causing the piece to read a bit like a poetic boomerang

>>8282103
I don't really feel emotionally connected enough with Arthur to get anything out of this, maybe because the inner dialogue in the first paragraph is just a little too campy and doesn't really add anything particularly important. The style and writing is fine, besides. It's a little confusing here or there, but readable.

>Though he had never been a man of great rhetoric, or even one whom fancied it, Arthur was unwilling to let his guests leave without their support
Is this line supposed to not make sense? I don't understand what you mean by "their support", and it seems like there might be a couple more lines which also slightly don't make sense. Also, this would be "who" not "whom."

>>8282147
I find the first sentence confusing and too long. Overall, the piece is just a little too meandering to have any sort of impact, even if the content is interesting. I'll point out a couple of specific things:

>I have never been good at reading lines
I've never heard conversation compared to reading lines, before. Is this a common thing? If not, you could definitely expand on what you mean by it. It's not necessary to expand on it, but it would be interesting to do so.

>round with fluff or fat or slender
This caught me for a moment. Like, I read it as "the cat would be round with fluff or maybe it would be round with fat or maybe it would be round with slender" when you mean to say "the cat would be round with fluff or it would be fat or it would be slender."

>>8282001
>>8282289
Thank you both for the excellent feedback on my cat story!

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>>8282017
Your stream of consciousnesses style reminds me of King Crimson, is the narrator an abstract of yourself?
>>8282147
This writing gave me a Murakami or Japan vibe, I liked it. Is the heart of it that the narrator in a state of despair knows something he truly likes but cannot act on it?

>>8282258
Oops, my above post was for you not the OP. I'd write more but I'm banned and can only post on my phone~

Thanks again.

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I'm gonna keep reposting this and you can't stop ne

I wrote this for the Mommy Cinematic Universe >>>/hr/2688246

prologue

>Annie Clark - Auntie Antje's friend, and guitar teacher mommy is paying to give you lessons for your growing musical skills— prefers to teach you in her studio apartment alone. She loves to teach you by being hands on and putting her hands on yours.

gentle femdom annie 1/?


>After a hard day at school, you come crawling to Annie's studio apartment for your guitar lessons. As you enter her sizable yet modest apartment and make your way to her kitchen where she's preparing a salad with her head and curly hair down facing the counter, she perks up and immediately lose her faint smile as she sees how exhausted you are.

>"Ohh, are you okay, sweety? you look absolutely spent" she cooed as she crossed the kitchen island to get to you, wiping her hands on the flare of her almost sheer summer dress. Her warm and emphatic solemn expression changing to a tender affectionate smile as she makes her way to you. "oh, come here, sweety" she says reaching out to your head bringing it gingerly to her chest hugging you close.

>With the thin silk fabric of her dress cooling your skin, she takes your head with her hands to look at you in the face. With her delicate yet somewhat calloused fingers, she brings her thumb to the ridge of your brow brushing it, finally placing both of her hands to your cheeks. With her dainty hands encapsulating your face, she looks at you in the eyes with the stark hazel of hers relinquishing their ground for her broadening pupils.

>She hugs you close to her chest again, placing her right hand in the small of your back and her other hand to the back of your head. "I've got some cookies cooling by the window waiting for you." she whispers in your ear "Everything'll be fine, hun. I'm right here with you" she takes your head back again, kissing you in the forehead this time— stroking your hair as the contact between her lips and your skin part.

>>8282556
Oh jesus, I love this fucking lime story. I'm still laughing as I write this. But then it's not just funny, it also has a sort of emotion to it and really develops the narrator. I don't even have anything negative to say.

>>8282678
What sort of critique are you looking for? It doesn't seem like the general sort of stuff people want critiqued in these threads, but I'll give it the treatment anyway. I will say, it's amateurish with respect to certain grammatical issues (like, nobody would complain if you used punctuation correctly at the end of quotes), but it's a good start. Keep on reading and writing and you'll refine many of these issues. Work on being more descriptive. Here's a scattering of specific thoughts:

>preparing a salad with her head
This makes it sound like her head is being used to prepare the salad. Use some punctuation maybe

>she perks up and immediately lose her faint smile
This should be a new sentence, and you missed a letter (loses).

>almost sheer summer dress
It's "almost" sheer? This doesn't evoke a real clear image, isn't there a more descriptive way to describe it?

>she looks at you in the eyes with the stark hazel of hers relinquishing their ground for her broadening pupils.
Really awkward sentence. The stark hazel is the subject, so its singular, so it wouldn't be "their" ground, and anyway "relinquishing the ground" isn't a very delicate way of saying that her pupils are widening. When I think of somebody relinquishing ground, I think of a battle, and it clashes with the tone you have set.

>stroking your hair as the contact between her lips and your skin part
The contact is parting? Contact doesn't part, it either is or it isn't. Her lips and your skin part, but the contact just ceases to be.

>>8282833
For real? this isn't a critique thread hazing thing is it, I haven't written ever outside of high school and I'm 25. Your post has me purring like a cat, thanks.

>>8282011
The big latinate words seem unnecessary.
Also,
>"Anyway, several thousand..."
>"Anyway,"
I realize it's first person but this conversational prose is garbage.

>>8282556
>my friend gave me a lemon and said I might like it

oh man this killed me. hilarious. The ending sentence was brilliant too. Only advice I could give is to cut back on the cliches - maybe. maybe not! - they do sort of strengthen the narrative vibe you're going for, I think. I loved this.

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>>8283101
forgot my piece

>>8283105
My biggest issue with this is that I don't get any personality from the main character in the first paragraph, so the personality I get in the second paragraph feels forced. I think it's because those descriptions of the work and his strength make him seem uncaring. He isn't digging in an angry way, but more in a mechanical way, so it's hard to switch from that to this loathing, anxious, angry sort of personality. On a second read, I will say that I see two bits which hint to the personality, he slams his heel and he tosses the shovel, but neither are strong enough to suggest the emotions in the second paragraph.

Really, the word-to-word writing is fine quality. You've got a lot of word economy, saying stuff briefly, which puts me in a rare position where I can say that if you wanted to, you could probably indulge more. It might help the flow of the first paragraph especially if you were a bit more verbose.

I've got a few grammar issues you should know about in case you edit it and share it again:
>shock of piercing turf
This might be false, but I think "from" would be better than "of." (On my first read I read it like piercing was an adjective, like it's turf that pierces)
>Leveraging the shovel against the earth a piece of turf was torn
Technically, you should say "he tore a piece of turf" because otherwise, there is no subject for the leveraging. Could be fine stylistically, but I thought I'd point it out. There should definitely be a comma after earth, though, either way.
>He asked if he did not know
Should this be AS if he did not know?
>He looked at it, with his palm up
should have a comma after up
>bosses' skull
Should be boss', bosses is plural

>>8283256
Thanks very much for the feedback.

>>8283375
Lots of grammar errors and strangely worded sentences. Learn a bit about possessives (should be Emily's), proper nouns (Mom and Dad not mom and dad), the punctuation following quotes, and especially run-on sentences. There are other prose issues, but it's hard to tackle those while there are so many grammar issues.

>>8283569
I'll correct the grammar issues
But
>prose
I don't understand what you mean.
It's strangely worded because of the different time period this is set in.

>>8283375
>>8283378
>>8283380
With some polishing it could make for a decent kids horror story. I like the way it's written. Just needs to be refined.

>>8283603
>kids horror story
while I thank you. It has profane language, use of black humor, racial slangs, and a story about a prostitute in it. It's not a children's book. I'm going for a more progressive YA novel. Something that'll not end as cookie cutter. It's about a vampire, that is taunting and stalking the family. Following two different characters (Dracula inspo). I want to write this as my beginner novel, something that might get my name out. Before I start writing something bigger than horror fiction.

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I'm working on a screenplay about female space navigators/fighters... I don't know if anyone would be interested but I'm writing a full movie after a 15min screenplay project

>>8283615
Neat idea, anon.

>>8283653
Thanks. xx

>>8283601
I'll touch on a couple of them, but I bet that if you worked on the grammar a lot of these other issues would clear up. Feel free to argue with me or ask for me to elaborate on any of these points.

>I grabbed a four-by-four piece of wood from under the bed and miniature lamp by my bed
The repetition of "bed" is dull, and it should be "the miniature lamp" to match the fact that you used "a" four by four earlier.

>I was shaking by the noise
This doesn't make sense. Were you shaken by the noise, perhaps?

>Then suddenly I heard a moan, not a moan of pleasure or sigh
Again, you should match the "a", and make it "not a moan of pleasure or a sigh" because otherwise it sounds like you're trying to say "not a moan of pleasure or a moan of sigh"

>But his physical structure was seen off the glass windows of her room
Are you referring to his silhouette or his reflection? You can't just see somebody off the glass. Do you maybe mean that you can see him through the glass?

>A bat was morphed and he flew out the window
You mean that he was morphed into a bat, obviously, but you say the opposite, that a bat was morphed. You could get away with saying "a bat was morphed out of the man." Also, "it flew out the window" is better (than "he"), even if I guess we know that the bat is a male bat, but it's hard to explain my reasoning there.

There are some more on the next page too, but I hope that's enough to get the picture. Keep reading and writing and you'll notice these easily.

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I've been dabbling with poetry for a class I am in and have come up with a few that I like and would love feedback.

This one, I'm wondering if what I'm talking about makes sense to anyone but me.

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>>8283773
and this one

>>8283764
Thanks for the constructive criticism. I'll make the changes and post a revised version/ I might want to take some time to edit because this is the 50th page, and I know I'll have more.
>btw this is what I meant by the glass

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I was talking to a feminist yesterday and I wrote this in response to their messages. They were messaging me because I made a post saying I have sympathy for brock turner. There was a lot of discussion leading up to this, but this is what concluded the conversation basically, nothing has come after this and idk if I'll get a response.

btw, I'm the post above. I didn't know that there was a critique thread. sorry for making a new thread without knowing there was a thread for this.

>>8283988
hmm.. it's okay.
I disagree that each person is an "ultimate authority". Some may have more information than others; furthermore, groups of people are more authoritative because they delineate trends in human behaviour.

>>8283773
>>8283778
your ideas are probably okay but I'm not keen on the execution. could be more eloquent.

>>8282560
I am OP so no difference

>>8282286
That's well and good, but you should make the structure more pertinent to the poem itself.

>>8284842
In regards to the two poems, do you have something in particular that could be more elequent or that isnt?

>>8286075
eloquent* tee-hee!

>>8283988
Sounds like a high school essay trying to impress the teacher and fill a word quota with cringy name dropping of Camus. A flawed viewpoint that could be presented more cohesive.

>>8283375
>almost an abyss
Pulled me out of the story, way too try hard and flowery for a fucking dark room.

>I was shaking by the noise
Well, English isn't my first language so it might be correct, but reads weird.

>But it was a crying moan
Reads weird and amateurish.

Pretty mediocre so far.

>>8283378
>Dad was wandering (wondering?) what the hell was going on
Weird perspective switch.

The whole scene seems very constructed and doesn't feel real. Also don't bother to replace "said", it breaks the flow with all the cried, wailed, ordered shit. Repeating it all to the police in a dialogue is unnecessary too.

>>8283380
>he was writing notes in his book
Rather a notebook, no?

The police guy sounds like a total newb.

>"knowing that someone could break into our house like that..."
Decent thought but reads very awkward, "show don't tell" yo.

Overall the best of the 3 you posted.

>>8283105
>courier new
Damn, nigga.

The writing itself is pretty good but I wasn't very interested in the story.

>>8282678
>she's preparing a salad with her head and curly hair down facing the counter
Reads weird.

Rest was fine but second person should be made illegal already. Also kinda boring.

>>8282556
Cool first sentence. "Fuck" was used a bit too liberal in the end of the second paragraph, felt unnecessary. Ending was kinda lame, overall a pretty good fucking read and decently amusing.

>>8282011
Meh. Not bad writing per se but just so ... meh. Words that are correctly arranged to sentences, not much else.

>>8282017
More on point and much better than the first part.

And if you toil to reap your worth
then sow, we've dug up all goddamn.
Toss off those dreams of lassoed sky,
then the prayers. Quit the world's bedside.

"For Lord will soon emancipate me."
"And surely Lord will swivel the ship."
"Whirldom met song, heart to succor heart."
This sinks too, by the bye.
Yet look.
"And Lord is Just and all is fair."
"And Great is He in all I fare."
"I am knit a sweater of salvation in silk."
Or made mute, like a bureaucrat.
Or deaf to myth, defaced in dirt.

Ah, when the earth is bereft of its music it simmers
like Hell. The pit lush in pathetic wail.
The luthier's dead and the oven floods.
Valor gone besieged, love's ribbon lost.
Judgement is penned in new alphabets.
The devil is in high frenzy.
When the earth is unwashed, sweet's the hour then.
Oh, Arch of Olympia will thunder on.
It soothes me. Yes, and it gives me color.
Sit under the blueberries and sleep your fill.

Still.
The ensemble will cave.
It collapses in silence.
It flakes, then pares in its odd anguish.
The hinges fall off timelessness and mops us in horror.
This is not sadness.
This is not death.
I do not know what I see.
What for the love of your remains do not talk, speak.
This is the hour.

No wing to console me.
I turn to no backdrop.
Lia
So-phia
Pe-ne-lo-pe
I surround myself mercilessly.
And as the sorrows of man are never borrowed, I will soon become them.
There is no prayer like awakening.

>>8283988
Cringiest thing I've ever read.

>>8282556
Cat guy, and I think it is right in saying the narrator knows smething he ought to do but doesn't know how or feel comfortable chasing it.

And your story was a lot of fun and honestly funny. My favorite line "my friend gave me a lemon and said I might like it" I dunno man that was just such a fucking giggle to me.

Here's a thing I did, short and without a specific aim in mind. If anyone can read Italian, I have plenty more to post - essays, for the most part.

http://pastebin.com/BcFBmZLK

And here's a little something, an essay-ish thing I've had to write for a honors school that kicked me out. I think it's at least smirk-worthy, you tell me. If you want. Thanks for the time anyway.

http://pastebin.com/hTe0ukjg

[reposting this from another thread, it's 4am here so I'll give some critiques tomorrow - for what's worth, I'm a man of my word]

>>8287091
P-please, add paragraphs to the first one, anon. Going by the second piece, your writing should at very least be decent, just not enough to force one through a wall of text.

Second bit is pretty cheeky and an enjoyable read. I agree with your opinion, so there is that too.

>I've had to write for a honors school that kicked me out
Do tell more.

>>8287453
Seconding this

>>8287091
Best in the thread

I wrote something that got eaten up, but I loved your story. Great imagery, excellent style with an interesting play of dialogue and observations. Reminds me of the sort of vamp style that's heavily tied to music/scene-fashion (but real, as evident by their superiority) like in the Lost Boys and Only Lovers Left Alive.

>>8287546
fug I hate being banned and having to use my phone for this. Meant that for >>8287091

Please keep it up anon!

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>>8286217
I didn't get too much meaning out of this, but reading it aloud was pleasurable. Care to explain it at all? What translation of the bible are you quoting from? It reads nicely.

>>8287679
>but his lungs gasped for air
Why the "but"? He just took a breath.

>probably
Redundant.

Rest was pretty decent though. What is the story about?

>>8287679
Are you going anywhere with this or is it just a short reflection on lifting? I liked it regardless, the last paragraph is the strongest.

http://pastebin.com/dZeVGA1G
Posted parts of this before, based on the bureaucratic hell of military intelligence.

>>8287715
Thanks for the help. Those are necessary changes.
>>8287776
>>8287715
It's not part of a larger story. I'm just trying to write a bit everyday. Just little blurbs, 250-350 words, to practice based on previous criticism I've gotten.

I'm not sure I could craft an entire story yet. I've only started writing recently.

>>8287776
>http://pastebin.com/dZeVGA1G

This is fucking hilarious! It's like office space but in the army. I loved it. Where can I read more? Will this be a novel someday?

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Did I improve it /lit/?

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>>8286216
>second person should be made illegal already.

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>>8287776
this is actually really good.

>>8282268

Aside from the last line, the subject matter of this is pretty cliche, but I can't hate too much on a Fibonacci poem.

Slick rush in the nose, head back, to the mirror—
catch it drop by drip by splash till it slows, look up.
Red stream wetting the desert, iron taste seeping
down into the mud to nourish and be reclaimed.

Fingers of the unsullied hand, dip into cupped,
precious gore now lost but given new purpose—
not to fuel the vehicle of flesh but challenge
the master, with shape and spiral traced on skin
unsunned and hidden but for here, where letters
dredged from nothing spell words said nowhere,
but in the corners of the mind– lorn and fey–
that no thoughts reach.

Sedent in the dark now, decoration done, painted,
in that ink shared common to beast and borne.
Cryptic signs play and whisper as they dry,
set in memory without meaning, so now to rest,
to nest, to lay in the dark, to chase those mad signs,
to dream.

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If anyone is interested....

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>>8288084
Page 2 of 5

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>>8288085
Page 3 of 5

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>>8288089
Page 4 of 5

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>>8288091
Page 5 of 5

Tear my life into pieces senpai....

>>8288084
Uhh, I know /lit/ isn't a very nice community sometimes and all the memers and ... there are more friendly and better boards indeed but ... what in all earth did it do to deserve such an eye cancer font with claustrophobia inducing lack of spaces between the lines?

Please have some mercy and upload it on pastebin or something.

>>8288084
>>8288085
>>8288089
>>8288091
>>8288093

Stop?

But seriously, you could maybe sell a four-part series of this to tween girls, if you had an incredible editor.

>>8288095
I'm a newfag, but how does one post on a pastebin on 4chan?

Yes I'm serious.

Oh and the font is Gramond.... Guess Times New Romans is the jazz these days huh?

But what about the content senpai, the content?!

>>8288116

>But what about the content senpai, the content?!

>>8288112

>>8288116
>http://pastebin.com
Then you get a link from them, which you can post here. You don't need to make an account or anything.

>Guess Times New Romans is the jazz these days huh?
Dear Lord, no. Palatino all the way. Gramond might work on paper but on screen it looks pretty bad, especially since we're not getting it directly but as a screenshot and a jpg to boot, adding extra noise.

>But what about the content senpai, the content?!
My eyes started to bleed after the (admittedly cheeky) first sentence.

>>8288126
>>8288112
Thanks for the help senpais

>My eyes started to bleed after the (admittedly cheeky) first sentence.

If it;s any consolation; the story is targeted for the teen crowd. Still. that is no excuse to write shitty.

If there are areas I can work on, please tell me more yo :)

>>8283375
>>8283378
>>8283380
This is really food. If you correct your grammar and fix a few things I could really see this selling.

>>8288150
Nono, the criticism was solely meant for the visual presentation, the sentence was cool.

>the story is targeted for the teen crowd.
Well, that makes it more interesting than a lot of the circle jerk here. Let's summon my inner masochist and read the first page...

So the protagonist is an edgy, aloof witch, I like her, your writing flows pretty good too, liked page 1 overall, cool last line too. Made me read further.

Lame bits were:
>my wealth makes peasants slobber
Pretty weak, in a "I have more money than a beggar"- way. Would change peasants for nobility.

>dumb idiot boyfriend
Sounds too modern. As is cheating. More use of "idiot" was pretty glaring later.

The switch to flashback was too abrupt.

>words leapt from my lips like instinct
Reads kinda weird, not bad per se though. Or did you mean insects, though that wouldn't fit in the mood.

>hot coco
Too modern.

>any century now
Nice bantz. But Onomatopoeia is fucking disgusting. Don't do it, please.

>Devon's hair did match my cute spring dress after all
Pretty cool too, altho the description in the next line could be done more elegantly.

Though why is she assuming that he is cheating on her just because he is too late? Or something else? Kinda weird. It started to feel bit dragged on here.

>taken or not
Unnecessary.

>my unmentionables
Lawl

Damn, I am at page 3:
>14 year old
Eh, assumed her to be bit older given the vocabulary, caring about standing and boys so much, but mkay.

>he's too gorgeous to be this dumb
Lawl

>I swung him a half-face
Reads weird but paints a pretty good picture.

Cute scene overall. Though it's weird that she thinks that the guy is that dumb if he is such a good duelist. And later he seems dumb indeed, so it wasn't just her perception.

Mhmm, pace picks up on page 4, not much more to add.

>but again - probably best to stay on topic with this one
Mhmm, niceee.

>girlfriend material
Too modern again.

Pretty funny bit about the guy going over the top, the kiss in the end was cute too but overall the page felt bit dragged and aimless.

Well, I'd read more.

>>8282012
Good.

I've been attempting children's poetry recently; I used to enjoy nonsense poetry and humorous stuff as a kid. Would welcome any feedback/criticism.

I hopped off the bus, past the last stop
And across the road I saw Mr. Top;
He lived in a nest above a tea shop.
And inside the shop, believe it or not
Was old Mr. Bottom pushing a mop.
Said Mr. Top at the top of his voice
"Just leave me alone, I have no choice!"
But as Mr. Bottom had done so before,
Rushed out of the shop and cried with a roar,
"You shant be living above me no more!"
And with a swift thrust of his raggedy mop,
He poked Mr. Top, and would not stop
Until Mr. Top did promise again,
To come down from the nest, and dig out a den.
To do so was a matter of 'if', not when,
So old Mr. Bottom counted from ten
And bashed at the nest with the mop's handle end,
With a crash down to Earth arrived Mr. Top,
The pavement below brought him to stop
And off did he scuttle to dig out that den,
That was the last I saw of him ever again.

>>8288240
This flows very well. It's good prose. Looks like something you'd write trying to look busy at work, and you leave it thinking "OK.", if you read it at all. There's no particular pull. Could be (hopefully) all leading to something, in which case this would be your second paragraph, i.e. the one you probably shouldn't have posted. In terms of technique, you could probably write a great story.

>>8288268
For the most part it bounces along very neatly. It's cute, simple, would probably make a great poem full stop. The meter could use some work in places, though - especially the last line, where you can probably cut the "of". It does seem a little forced even for nonsense verse in places. "To do so was a matter of 'if', not when" - that's gold. Bear in mind kids are a little mixed up these days, and Mr. Bottom bashing the pubic nest and Mr Top digging out a den might... well.

>>8288281
Thanks for the insight, it's really helpful. Meter-wise I've used anacruses massively in a 4/4 rhythm which I was very unsure as to whether it would be appropriate or not. The offending lines I was particularly concerned with were "And across", where the rhythm would have to fall on the second syllable of across, "Until Mr. Top", falling on the -til of until, "To come down", falling on down, "With a crash", falling on Crash and the last line which is indeed not fitting would have no anacrusis or having to skip the first three words to "last". Not easy at all, especially as all the others only employ a single syllable passover. Michael Rosen who has written some really superb comedy poetry for kids does employ it a fair amount, but I do suspect I've gone over the top with it.

I lost it with the pubic nest and digging out a den. I hadn't even thought about that; genius. Thanks again.

>>8288272
Well that's encouraging. This is the first piece of fiction I've ever written.

>>8288257
Witch Writer anon here.

By any chance, are you a girl? Or at least familiar with YAs or children's literature?

I want to aim for a younger crowd as I feel I'm far too inexperienced for more serious literature. But I want to know if this kind of shlock resonates well with the young crowd. Would boys enjoy it too if the Protagonist is a girl? (I also plan on writing three more POV's to the story and all of them are male.)

>>8288164
>this is really food
kek. Thanks pal, glad you liked it. xx

Birds are lessons
When they grow they fly
Their chirp progressive,
To dwindle in the sky
Beautiful songs they carry aray
From the dusk to the dawn
To the end of the day

Sweet love that battles on and on
In the trees, undisturbed
Above the lawn
The babys they carry but not for long
Till they hit an age
When they must move on

They're dependent but so independency
Makes the best of what they'll be
Birds eat all the worms and hunt for feed
They sparkle around the globe and see
The beautiful nature, and travesties
They buddy in warmth on the polelines of streets
Which sway and wave at the wind of car speed

But when their children were birth
But not so naturally, a human touched theyre heads
Now the momma can't smell her tweet
Human destroyed the nest
And tore down the tree
Now the babies die, because of insensitivity
Momma bird cries, but she still stands on her feet
She'll wait in life for another oppertunity

Her death she waited, but happy and patiently
She takes it with grace and moves up and beyond to heavens entry
With smiles all around, and gold polelines on gold streets
She found her little ones, she kisses her tweets

>>8288372
>are you a girl?
Nope, sorry. 23 year old penis equipped individual here.

>Or at least familiar with YAs or children's literature?
Hardly. I liked HP, forced myself through one Hunger Games book, gave up at John Green after 10 pages. As for Children's books ... uhh, my girlfriend loves Roald Dahl stories and reads them to me.

>Would boys enjoy it too if the Protagonist is a girl?
Well, Hunger Games and even Divergent were rather popular, Star Wars had a female Luke (not a book but shows global trends pretty well), I doubt it will be a huge issue these days.

Personally I find female POV's slightly more appealing to read, and never minded them as a boy either; it's something else and literature, even trashy one is supposed to offer us another perspective; and if you got 3 guys as a back up, even the readers who can't empathize with a chick, should be happy. Though 4 POV's sounds like the upper limit for mix of YA and children's book. (That's how the story felt)

>>8288409
>Nope, sorry. 23 year old penis equipped individual here.
So you have a female Penis?

>>8288424
Yeah, it's very big and scary.

>>8288409
Is it hard getting work published these days for the teen and children's genre?

Where the heck do I even start? (Suppose I even finish my 500 page fantasy story)

Where do I go? Where do all professional writers start? (BTW not full-time, as I'm aiming for a trade apprenticeship on the side)

>>8288456
Dorrance Publishing Company

>>8288456
>Is it hard getting work published these days for the teen and children's genre?
Yes, very hard but probably still more easy than with many other genres.

>Where the heck do I even start?
Finding an agent seems the most common way.

>Where do I go?
agentquery.com would be a start

>>8288464
At what point does a YA stop being YA

>>8288466
That's a tricky question, YA itself doesn't say much in the first place since it usually just means "works about young adults" although in 99% cases a "written for young adults" is part of the definition too.

>>8288470
so let say I wrote a book that is fairly dark. (I.E, Rape, drugs, sex trafficking, etc, etc) and said it was for YA? Would it be consider YA or something entirely different?

>>8288475
Depends on the publisher, in the end all the genre shit are just marketing terms; so if they think they can market it for young adults, it'd be YA, probably with a lot focus on how edgy it is. If it's very plot heavy, they might market it as a thriller and if you do it in a very realistic, explicit way and more of a character study, perhaps adult fiction.

>>8288500
>first novel is going to be a somewhat realistic paranormal science fiction novel in which certain character cliches are going to be deconstruc.

>>8288546
A-are you me?

Although I tried to keep the sci-fi and paranormal stuff to a minimum because I hate supernatural shit but can't deny that it will make the novel more accessible and faster paced.

I sent this to my gf last night. She hasn't replied to me yet. What went wrong?

Those delightful nibbly nipples. I still remember the first night I saw them, dear Stacey. Pink, and prickly and ready to pull. Like a toddler I tugged on those teats, then bit the tit with my teeth. Oh how I love your nipples. Big puffy nipples that contract with a slap into ripples and bumps. How you moan when I flick those long teats with my tongue. I trade the moan for a cry when I slap you on the bum. But oh, you naughtly nippily nymph you like that too, don't you? You like a slap on your haughty, hefty haunch, you like it slapped red. Oh you are a terrible beast indeed, Stacey.

>>8282192
this is really good.

There are a million things I haven’t done and
There are countless more I’d never think to do but
even if I did all of them in
a day
in
a minute
in
a second
in the sidelong glance of a subway passenger it
would never be enough for me because
My clock is ticking; each pendulum swing might
crush me, beat me back into nothingness and
I am scared, not by the emptiness of death but
the lack of life found therein: no pain or bliss, no
anger or sorrow, no joy or love; for these are the
things I have found to be beautiful. I should weep if
I was to be damned. for in the hell or hells there would
be life after a fashion. Even with the serpent coiled
around my throat, the flames billowing at my feet I
Would smile for the eternal consciousness
and that would be enough

Very rough and probably shit but I don't think I'm okay

>>8288240
Clean and fun to read. My only issue is the two yets, but that could just be me.

here's a short story i'm working on. any criticism welcome.

I would have walked into the house but I was now a shepherd dog, committed to the flock and to the wielder of the staff. I knew my street dog days were done, so I sat on the curb and watched Rothko paint his rust and blue in the sky and felt good and glad that I had not walked into the house for an innocent family of seven could live there now. On the curb with my tail between my legs, I thought. When a man becomes old he goes back to being a child, but never back to being a young man. At seventeen I would walk the streets of Panama in search of women who drank and ate ambrosia. I preferred older women because they had no ideals and only cared about money and I on the other hand had only ideals and little money. Now married with children and forty-two years old the young man is gone.

“Materialism! Materialism! Renounce materialism!” Says the youth, and even said I in my younger days. But how easy it is to reject the knowledge of the fathers when it has just been discovered? When one is a child he only sees or cares for the material, feeling uneasy whenever he is left with nothing, but as the child grows, he realizes that the material is superficial, and that there must be a deeper meaning to the world. The young man then turns his vision away from the world, and unto himself. Once inside he sees hundreds of thousands of crystals reflecting a vase. The scattered images show him that there is something, but the location of the vase is unknown to him, and will always be. And how bitterness overtakes the young man when he realizes that mortals only ever get a glimpse and never a taste! Alas, this is how I have come to exist. In my first year of college the mind was the only weapon I had so I sharpened it against anything I could find; Christianity, positivism, I clashed against it all. I devoured texts and studied and made money tutoring the children of the high class. Money was okay, but most of it would be put back into the Panamanian economy, strengthening the nightlife industry and keeping the price of booze down for all. I pondered, and felt myself wander into what seemed like a past life, coming close to feeling ennui.

Éternel appétit, meurtrier ennui,
Soif du grand voyageur, estomac implosant,
Chatouillement charnel ou repos nécrosant,
Légèreté de cœur, continuelle nuit;

Ainsi varie l’humeur, de bonheur à malheur,
De futur opulent à décès imminent,
De promesse tiède à néant lancinant
Et la sueur séchée recherche le voleur.

Lorsque le cœur se tait, l’oreille s’aperçoit
Que le cœur ne bat plus, que la soie, pour les doigts,
N’est que laine vulgaire amollissant la bouche.

De priape constant à collante impuissance,
Comment devrais-je aimer celle avec qui je couche,
La Vie, si elle oublie qu’existe la Jouissance?

Was making real progress in my ballbuster's anonymous support group but I had a moment of weakness on the way home from work today and I'm fucking ashamed. I was desperate for a piss, so managed to manouver my cock and bollocks out of my trousers and started to go in a 330ml bottle of coke I had lying around in the footwell. However, the bottle starts filling up too quick. Luckily I managed to pull into a layby quickly and jumped out the car, slamming the door shut. Well, in my haste I managed to trap the twins in the door. It was total, euphoric agony.

As I pissed myself in ecstasy and pain I thought back to the words of my priest and case worker, but my animalistic instincts took over, I went into a frenzy. I began slamming the door over and over again, hoping to rekindle the flame in my heart that gave life to my love for having my giblets pulverised. It wasn't enough.

At this point I'm desperate, when I suddenly realise where I am, right next to one of the busiest motorways in the UK, the M6. I popped a stiffy at the thought and waited for a gap in the traffic to cast my family jewels out onto the tarmac. Thankfully years of voluntary work as a sous-chef in return for unlimited access to their pestle & mortar and rolling pins has made my scrot incredibly malleable and elastic, spreading it across the road was no trouble.

After my nutsack had taken a sufficient pounding from the late night trucker crowd I spotted some leakage, mainly from where the staples that were previously holding my boys together had come lose, I didn't think this was a big issue until an OAP-filled minibus aquaplaned across my scrotal discharge and crashed into the side of the motorway. I managed to scrape what was left of my goolies off of the road and get away before the air ambulance arrived, I'm just hoping they can't lift any DNA off of the tyres. I'm pretty sure the M6 is still choc-a-block because of it. I'm fucking wired.

>>8283988
You sound so damn uncertain.
>Well, I guess
>something like
>so to speak
>I don't mean to sound weird
>I think
And even worse:
>I suppose I think

You should cut the shit out, you would end up with half as much text, which would be more digest, and you wouldn't lose any meaning.

(recording a video selfie style in front of my bathroom mirror) pokemon go fuck yourself. pokemon go out and do something with your god damn life. pokemon, guy walks into a bar with a chip on his shoulder, drinks one too many and drives off a cliff. pokemon guy fresh out of high school breaks up with his girlfriend and sobs in his room. its night out and the moon shines like a guiding light leading him to lake who-gives-a-fuck where his app tells him a nice and shiny seagirl lays lapping pearls on the bottom of the sea. some mysterious object obscures the light of the moon at a frightening pace covering him in a warm embrace of smoldering metal and glass and flesh leaving him dead for the next- pokemon guy and girl have a picknick at a lake rated eight on yelp and google plus. a real hoot gone kaput at the astute observation of an off-roading traffic altercation. Look at them pokemon go. (I try to press the stop button on my smartphone, but my fingers are too greasy, and the video also captures my mother yelling and knocking on the door)

>>8289505
Vapid posturing

>>8287679
I love it. Would read a book like this.

>>8288240
Nice prose, clean and efficient.

>>8289612
Sounds like American Psycho, but with less descriptions of clothing.

>>8289307
the line breaks are not dramatic like you thing they are
>my clock is ticking
cliche
>I am scared
show us or have better build up to a statment like that
> no - or -
work on this model, because the repitition could evolve into something
>for in hell or hells
that's a cool line, play with it

A really interesting poem that needs a lot of work. Also if you're writing for therapeutic reasons, reading how Anne Sexton felt about the idea. If this was just a passing thought, then take comfort in knowing that feel the same about the lack of afterlife.

>>8288390
scratch the first line
it's too on the nose
>from the dusk to the dawn
a little trite

not crazy about fourth stanza, but
>now the momma can't smell her tweet
is a cool line, even if inaccurate about their biology

the rhyming is strong on this one, but that may be your intention


>>8287857
will someone plz critque?

>>8287679
>What translation of the bible are you quoting from?
There are no quotations, these are all my creation. As for meaning: it's a dialogue I imagined between religious-myself and poetic-myself.

File: Is it.png (5KB, 315x294px)

5KB, 315x294px

Here we go

>>8290465
...with no survivors?

>>8289050
The lost Joyce letter.

>>8290465
>its
BRO

>>8290532
who can say?
>>8290547
thanks lol, its always those little things for me.

>>8290465
I tried a restructure, see how you like it

Crashing glass.
Wind Rushing.
Cities bright and living.
With red and blue
Sirens below.
Cold winds; gut dropping.
The ground is hard --
it's better than burning.

just a little shuffle to see if anything might stick

>>8290738
Reminds me of that DFW quote, which I believe was in Infinite Jest, about suicidal people. Possibly Madame Psychosis's thought?

I call this poem "Come On"

Oh pearly ropes descending down upon
My face, this freckled bed awaits disgrace.
Those arcs I saw now close my shameful eyes
Cannot I say I was surprised? Those arc-
ing ropes of pearl, they fly capriciously
my shocked, blinded eye no longer sees

>>8282011
I got four words in and began fantasizing about throwing your book across the room in disgust

>>8282057
"Freshly falling" sounds like a mistake (for "freshly fallen"). if it's intentional it's still awkward

I have this one poet.


Penis penis penis in my hand.
Behind, the beautiful gland.

My grace is upon the grass.

There is no.
Mass.

>>8290824
Freshly falling and falling freshly upon all the living and the dead

>>8290738
Thanks anon, I did get the feeling I could space out things a little more in some ways. Like you say a little shuffle may do the trick.

>>8282268
This is really cool, good work with fibonacci sequence.
>>8288050
I like it, but the last stanza loses it's flow because of the use of punctuation. Could just be me though.

There was a moment when hands would carress the mirror, fingerprints that traced a reflection not yet there would appear on the mirror, and he would grow angry at the constant noise. A mixture of flesh that would sicken him constantly morphed before him. Ill.

>>8290819
I appreciate the constructive criticism

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>>8289626

>>8290942
no problem, man. It was a fun read and playing with someone else's work always gives me insight in how I want to write.

On the marble slab protrudes a metal gnomon. In sunlight, the gnomon projects a ray of shadow. Radiating from the center of the circular base, tracing the straight hour line recess notched in the smooth white marble, the shadow thins gradually until it disappears upon reaching the Latin numeral IX. The shadow's sharp tip extending into the heart of `X.' From the sundial, a forest trail begins; covered by maple leaves and wood chips leading into the thickets beyond, it so appears, until it disappears where forest begins. Down this path, leaf rustling may be heard. Some tree branches may sway with the wind, despite lacking foliage.

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>>8291829
In the woods, successive thumping of hooves on dirt may transpire yards away, dimmer and dimmer until it's gone, the sound belonging to an animal light and quick. It may rustle low bush and scrub during it's escape. The path can lead across a meadow, with open air and dead grass all around. In the meadow's center sits an old refrigerator, with a white exterior that has yellowed, with its door slightly ajar, while the bottom freezer lies half buried in the earth, tilting the entire refrigerator. The common wood pigeon may perch on top, glancing sideways so one of its eyes is directed at the intruder. With suspicion it may stride forward by a few steps on it's raised platform; head bobbing back and forth, then proceed to fly away.

On the marble slab protrudes a metal gnomon. It projects a ray of shadow. The shadow thins gradually until it disappears upon reaching the Latin numeral IX. The shadow's sharp tip extending into the heart of `X', exactly as it was.

She felt pinned beneath the indifferent eyes before her like a wrought iron cage, austere in its beauty and purpose, too small to contain her gangly limbs. The earth pulled the weight into her chest and her still breath escaped as a rod pierced her lung - perhaps the last piece of her that might ever escape.

Victor stared long into the mirror.

In that reflection was a man, the same man who arrived at this island, and the distinction between the two was not lost upon him. He laid his hand upon his face and trailed it downwards, then laid it upon his breast.

And in that reflection, he noticed that the glint in his eyes were not dissimilar from the same ones he had seen in Clark’s. The same glint that Jade had when Victor had seen her in the morning, both of them more bare and naked than they had been to anyone else in their lives. Like the dirt, blood, and smoke that had filled his once-clean pores, the circumstances that he had been tempered by had distilled into his hollow psyche, filling the void with a bright flame as solid and unyielding as the stone he stood on.

He nodded to the mirror and walked on.

>>8292241
This says a whole lotta nothing honestly. It's also pretty trite sounding and I get the impression you're digesting what you read and are just replicating it here.

>>8292380
You're probably right with regards to it being a lot about nothing, just that it's a section in a story where a lot of stuff happens and this is meant to be a brief moment of reflection. I should probably just get rid of it entirely though.

What do you mean its trite sounding? Does it just sound like a mishmash of words and sentence styles?

>>8292400
Something to that affect. It's so full of weighty observations and emotional, flowery sentiments that it's all equally as insignificant seeming as the other flowery and heavy sounding detail you offer. It's like you're stringing along a combo of pretty thoughts for some prose multiplier you hope to maintain.

"more bare and naked than ever..." "as solid and unyielding as the stone..." "the same man... and the distinction (??) was not lost on him."

These say things and sound nice but hardly mean anything imo.

>>8292241
You need to remove some of the upons, man

>>8292422
Thanks a lot actually. My whole goal when writing is to try to trim as much fat as possible off so it helps to know when things like this end up watering down the writing rather than help it.

I'd still like there to be this sort of breather passage towards the end that emphasizes the main character's total shift, but another critical part of me says to not even bother and let the reader think of that themselves rather than try to explicitly say it.

>>8292451
I couldn't quite suggest any one way or the other for your closing passage, but the idea is not inherently a bad one so it could be cool!

I think the example you offered was a bit rich, but that could just be my taste. Some people really dig that kind of romantic writing but it just makes me roll my eyes sometimes.

Here's a little blurb from a scrapped piece I was working on. Is this concept cool or retarded? What problems are there with this little segment?

“You know nothing!” He snarled, raising a clenched fist. “My eyes have opened, Charles.” Dr. Willem gently rubbed his temples and drew a heavy breath. “Even now, with my eyes tightly shut, I can see everything. I can see the blood circulating through your veins. I can see the individual cells of your skin; I can see the molecules and the atoms from which molecules are made. I can see neutrinos passing through your body as we speak. Trillions of them, Charles, all flowing through your flesh, like a deluge of impotent energy.” Francis coughed quietly into his arm.

>>8292478
I dig it. Doesn't seem really serious, kind of goofy but aware, so I think it has potential.

>>8292485
Yeah I was playing Bloodborne and thought that it would be kinda funny to subvert the actually horrific implications of obtaining eldritch knowledge, but the tone of the piece at large was all over the place so I dropped it

My mother named me Unknown
after my father
and my favorite food
is hand-me-down Hamburger Helper.

A Leonard Cohen tune plays around my head
but I don't know who that is
or if 'I don't know' and 'idk'
sound the same in people's heads
or how that applies to my trailer trash theme.

Do people with Tourette's curse in thought
or when they're by themselves?
That answer is one Google search away
but then I couldn't win the argument satisfactorily
against my girlfriend named I'm not talking to anyone.

Two beats skipped simultaneously
sound like a tree falling in the
woods is a weird name for a forest
because wood is dead trees.

Apparently instantaneity is a word
which is how I believe things occur
from a god's perspective
which is why tomorrow never comes
and yesterday never goes
and watched pots never boil
because pots don't boil,
just the water boils.

I used to paint my poems purple
thereby obfuscating their meaning
(or the cringeworthy lack thereof)
with big awkward words
only a sesquipedalian would use
(to try to make myself seem smarter).
But then I realized
how people perceive how intelligent I am
has zero effect on how intelligent I am
and stopped worrying about such impractical shit
and became better at writing and exuding confidence
and also getting laid, which is pretty cool.

My mother was a man
and my father an armadillo.
Curators for art shows
taste like armadillos.
I left my toaster oven on when I went to Panama
on purpose.
To read between the lines
is to seize truth by the panoramic horns.
Listlessness and wishful wistfulness
deign me a servant's king.
But to align thyself with the creeds of olde
is to sacrifice your soul to a heavenly monster,
a heavenly monster we like to call
instead of text: the perfect culmination
of the Venn diagrammatic intersection
of surrealism and realism and transcendental-care.
Which is to say nothing: the eternally confusing concept
conjuring up by the sputtering minds composing
history's my deviously deviantly devouring men of women
whose wombs have contracted to save a life or two,
a life or two hands combined to sell a contract of love
and all of the luggage that comes with it
which he will not name.
Which he will not hame.
Which he will not—okay pain.

The most beautiful bodies are of water.
What percentage are you?

File: ss+(2016-07-18+at+01.40.14).png (68KB, 686x730px) Image search: [Google]

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I would appreciate feedback and opinions on this thing!

Especially if the ending makes sense.

>>8292571
idk why but this poem makes me feel like Walter White's cerebral palsied son from Breaking Bad

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

File: 1468186042548.jpg (74KB, 410x360px) Image search: [Google]

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>>8290828

Ths is solid..

Really triggered my lateral thinking. Thank you for the pleasure.

>>8292910
woah u write this bro?

>>8292910
this is really good, but you should change it to "you should not go gentle into that good night"

>>8292767
>the world's happiest
Meh.
>the animated skeletons of your devoured
I was expected a proper noun when reading this. "A devoured" doesn't sound right to me.

Indeed, I did not get the ending. "Making corrections" in observations sounds weird - how can you correct what you purely observe?

This seems to be an allegory about... not caring about dead people ("as we wash our hands with the dead of this planet")? about everyone dying one day ("Soon there will be no more want")?

I haven't spent that much time analysing to try to get the ending, but I'd suggest that you make sure that every word of the ending is right and coudln't possibly allude to any other conclusion than yours, even if you do not explicit it.

>>8292910
Better than most poems here. Would have been impressive if you had written it.

>>8292910
I-is this some kind of meta-commentary on /lit/?

>>8292556
I actually like this. Got any more?
>>8291829
This reads like a textbook..
>>8291976
Too much.
>>8290465
Bit short fa m.


----

We give each other's time to youth; each mistake we share in kind and grow
around each other, trails of ivy.
In midnight conversations we scorn adults;
no way to fathom boredom.
Existence is for its own sake, else why
bother? -
accepting banal comfort
seems absurd.
Thunder clouds veil the full moon,
a navy shadow over
tomorrow's apathy.
Through scepticism
we become sure of ourselves,
reluctant,
coerced by the hidden pendulum's tide;
most disturbing is that
truths reveal their negation.
No caution, we learn each other,
resenting faults; developing –
delighting in –
not enough hindsight for foresight,
we are foolish
and time beguiles us.

>>8294130
being short is a negative?

I wrote this when I was stupid. If there is a good idea there, please take it and don't attribute to me.

"And come, I am penultimate to disaster wheresoever trapped in the barren land. Onto creation, seventeen tribes high and lo, behold I then thee, to my abode prithee. Seventeen, whycome eye now scintillates over the obsidian nightwing ghoul, seventeen! And unto these a ghastly milieu. If it's too troubling for anytwo the trepidations from tip of tow twindling twain - Love divine, love twists insane! - in a silent gymnasium under the moon, if so, why dance? Our's the avenue. us and seventeen and some dawning boon. You see me now, so my ill repute. Oh, but I keep the Lord's tally in unholy book, not a mustard grain should fall and die, then from its carcass multiply in sin. Writ Lord, fall man and fin, and seventeen waste off the gin.

>>8294316
I actually like it, anon. Pretty Joyce-esque, which I'm assuming is what you were going for. I like the wordplay.

>>8294269
Your poem hasn't developed its theme satisfactorily.

>>8294374
What does that mean on a practical level? I know its not perfect but "thematic"-wise I feel its pretty straightforward. Is there something you think needs adding or taking away?

>>8294394
Really concentrate on building atmosphere. It feels to me like you stopped too early.

>>8293312
Thanks for the feedback. I wrote it pretty quickly and it shows, but you've helped me with seeing if the idea is clear or not which I don't think it is. It's supposed to be a sort of odd answer to what the point is of all the earthly violence that occurs, that all along there was a scheme in someone's head to make all the deaths have material purpose by recycling the bones and what not for useful things like food, crops, poetry. It's definitely meant to be sort of Vonnegut like, I think, and the encounter at the end plays as a comedic part of the picture but also is supposed to reflect the belief that we're self destructive and will die a meaningless death as a species. Something like a Kilgore Trout story.

Dis you think the "world's happiest" is cliche? It's meant to be, but I'm not sure if that is what you meant.

>>8294407
Alright, thanks. I have a feeling on some things I could add.

>>8294409
Interesting. Perhaps needs a bit more work, but you've got something.

>Dis you think the "world's happiest" is cliche?
Yes, cliché and/or out of place. The atmosphere is rather serious and this sounds too... YA-ish? The use doesn't seem to be ironic either. Putting it in italic would perhaps achieve the effect that you want, but I would consider removing it.

I hardly hear them now.
Just auditory clues,
cues to signal– keys to
slot in neuropaths and
drafts to notes to sheets to
this music. Peace in the
pieces– where I sit but
don't listen. These songs that
tend to sidle step in,
change some stone to flesh and
numb law to love. I want
rest but instead this sly
test sets in for the night.
I hardly hear them now.

>>8294484
Thanks for the reply. My intentions with the first line are to disarm the reader, and then slowly juxtapose. I want it to begin with a sense of a magical occurrence that is literally wonderful but then turns darker and more realistic in respects to the world. I'll have to consider some things, but thanks again!

I saw a play last night, it was the play billy elliot. It was a fantastic play, it really tugged on my heart on numerous occasions. The beauty of the contrast between the young dancer and the civil unrest in britain was beautiful, it showed how a boy's pure self expression was more beautiful than the bigotry which surrounded him. I thought to myself, this shows the passion and beauty of dancing and the arts, the young boy's love of dancing when his father instead wanted him to do boxing, and all the homophobic ignorance surrounding him. It was inspirational to me, at times I almost wanted to cry, and wonder if I corrupt my own mind by not allowing myself, I didn't even once. There was also precious moments in the play, where the dancer boy's friend turned out to be gay and love cross dressing, and it was important that the lead actor billy elliot not be gay himself, because it sent a message that you don't have to be gay to like things that others may seem to be gay and girly, and yet he still maintained his friendship with his gay friend, and it touched me so deeply when they would give each other a kiss as a sign of affectionate friendship.

It's not like me to feel so moved by a play, nor one that comes along that I bother seeing which has such issues about sexuality and art. The last play I saw was absolutely ghastly. It was a play called In The Heights. It was in a poor town, where all the people seemed to me to be nothing more than ants, crawling around in their shabby insignificant town. The plot was deeply, severely contrived. The characters were dopey and had little redeeming values about them. There was this very disturbing overtone of belief in god, and the one thing that saved all of them from their poverty was one of the town members winner the lottery. What a fatally superficial twist of events, the lottery is as silly and shallow as they come. Yet, that's what it reflected of the character's lives. I felt as though I may as well have been reading Kafka, but in a very strange and un-self aware, ironic kafka, with an even more painful twist of tragic irony. Unware, tragic irony, is exactly how I would summarize that play, In The Heights. Not only was it absolutely ghastly, but there was one part of it which bothered me very much. A girl who's parents were trying to get here into college dropped out, and she came back and her parents were in such dismay, because college was the only way she could escape her poor town. They, of course, resolved that problem with another superficially and unsatisfying resolution; sending her back to college with the fucking lottery money, of course. She never liked college in the first place, and I don't like it either.

>>8294827
>The beauty of the contrast between the young dancer and the civil unrest in britain was beautiful

come on.

the rest is equally bad.

>>8294827
>tugged on my heart
The phrase you're looking for is "tugged at my heartstrings".
>I thought to myself, this shows the passion and beauty of dancing and the arts
"I thought to myself" is implied, there's no real need to say it unless you're trying to hit a word count.
Actually, I'm just gonna stop there. What are you writing? As in, what is this?

>>8294856
>The phrase you're looking for is "tugged at my heartstrings".
No, it's actually not, because I didn't want to be too trite. If my writing is so positively sappy, at least it's moved you, which is what all great things do.

>>8294856
>Actually, I'm just gonna stop there. What are you writing? As in, what is this?
I simply wanted to write about the play I saw last night, nothing more. Writing about things is a hobby of mine, I suppose.

>>8294841
I suppose I could have elaborated on that, but I didn't want to see bigoted. I was going to say, the contrast between the dirty and futureless, uncultured and depressing coal miners and the young dancer was beautiful. I am rather bigoted against people who do common jobs I'm afraid, which is why I'm so afraid of work.

>>8294862
... What? No, it didn't move me. If you were trying to make up a new cliché, I'd strongly advise you not to make one that sounds exactly like someone saying an existing cliché incorrectly.
>>8294866
Well, alright. Then I'd advise you to write a bit more "casually". That is, it seems like you're trying to emulate someone from a different time, and you can't pull that off well enough for it to seem natural yet. Even the first sentence, with its repetition of "play", feels odd, and the entire rest of it is filled with inaccuracies and weird/wrong phrasing. You don't have to try to "write like an author", which it what it seems you're doing.

I used to have this odd fetish - I don't know if you'd call it that, maybe it was just a weird fantasy. Basically I'd found this old pdf (well, now that I remember, it was an EPUB) of an old grammar of classical chinese. Don't get me wrong, clasical chinese grammar was engrossing enough on its own, but once, while I was reading it, a pretty weird image popped into my mind, and I couldn't quite get it out. A cute white girl of about my age, with a pretty cute face, you know, freckles and stuff, and she was reading the information in the epub. Her voice was nice too, and I guess nominalization was also pretty nice, but her voice made it better. She was about my height too, but I'm pretty short, so I was okay with it. I mean, it's not that I don't occasionally find girls slightly taller than me attractive, it's just that, you know, I was more comfortable with her being my height, but I digress. So, she'd like, read the stuff from the book, and she'd like, be in her underwear and it was pretty attractive, you know, at the time anyways. I don't know when it was, but eventually I just sort of stopped having this stuff pop into my head - now I have to like, will it to happen in my head, and now I just usually do it when I want to masturbate. It's sort of like a dream, but more lucid and less spooky, and also I don't jizz in my pants.

Tugging on my heart "strings" is figurative and meant to mean it plays you like a sappy instrument but tugging on my heart is just a thing I do to induce heart attacks.

>>8294910
>Well, alright. Then I'd advise you to write a bit more "casually". That is, it seems like you're trying to emulate someone from a different time, and you can't pull that off well enough for it to seem natural yet. Even the first sentence, with its repetition of "play", feels odd, and the entire rest of it is filled with inaccuracies and weird/wrong phrasing. You don't have to try to "write like an author", which it what it seems you're doing.
I think you're mistaken. I don't think that I was writing like an author, but I'm a rather impressionable person, and if it seems like I'm emulating anyone it's the characters from the story of the last book I read. I find though, that to be impressionable is a wonderful quality to have, and I'm not sure what inaccuracies you're talking about. You know, the way human beings learn is because they take impressions of other people and adopt it for themselves. I've been wondering lately, if being yourself really just finding a part that you can act consistently, or is there really a genuine and innate character in every one of us.

But really though, I don't have the slighted care for how embarrassing I may come off, I find that the fact other people can find me embarrassing is an undesirable feeling. If a person was truly an honest person, they wouldn't feel that sense of disgust that is present in bigots, which I find so distasteful. If I felt like being an outright bitch, then sure I would be as bigoted as I want. However, I believe to be bigoted in earnest, as if you're faking some sense of justice, is just bad taste. However, I can't say that I wouldn't mix the two and get entirely confused about which one I'm doing at any specific time.

>>8294926
LOL

>>8282275
Ugh. Not even novel. A cheap trick

>>8294946
>I don't think that I was writing like an author
No, but you're "writing like an author". Nobody says "a rather impressionable person" nowadays, and they don't say "absolutely ghastly". That's from a different century. Or, well, millennium, I guess. And, for that matter, why would you even say "mistaken" when "wrong" is right there?
>I'm not sure what inaccuracies you're talking about
A few examples:
Inconsistent use of capital letters
Using "was" when "were" would be right
Calling "billy elliot" the lead actor in Billy Elliot
Using "nor" wrong
Calling In the Heights "the last play [you] saw" when you say you saw Billy Elliot last night (not impossible, just weird)
Using the phrase "un-self aware ironic kafka"

>>8294959
It was cheap in the sense that it didn't require much thought, but saying that isn't a justified criticism. Critics don't ultimately judge works based on how much thought they think was put in, as you can see by visiting literally any contemporary art exhibit; they ultimately judge a piece based on its execution, originality, and other shit. That being said, to me this poem is novel, for I have never seen another like it and therefore thought I was being original.

>>8294999
Ah, I would change last play to previous play, and lead actor to lead character. What's wrong with "un-self aware ironic kafka"? I thought that was witty, at least. I also think my use of nor was correct. I forget where exactly I said was incorrectly, but that sounds like a grammatical error, which I believe should be fixed if so.

>>8295023
>I also think my use of nor was correct
Not here:
>It's not like me to feel so moved by a play, nor one that comes along that I bother seeing which has such issues about sexuality and art
And the issue isn't even with whether you used "nor" correctly, it's just that you're writing in an antiquated way, and it's gonna pull the majority of your potential readers out of the text. Is English your first language?

>>8294999
To be honest with you my boy, I think sometimes when I write I do it with the intention of laughing at myself very hard when I'm through with it. Except I don't try to, I simply go in with my guard down, completely self aware. Sometimes I find the most hilarious and refreshing laugh is one where you can laugh at yourself. Perhaps you're simply not getting a feeling for the writing, but I certainly was having a chuckle at some of the corrections you pointed out to me.

>>8295031
>Is English your first language?
Yes. I'm going to be honest with you, and I'm sort of embarrassed to admit it, I just finished A Picture of Dorian Grey.

>>8295032
>>8295036
>I just finished A Picture of Dorian Grey
That might explain it, then, if you're as impressionable as you claim to be. Hurry up and read some more recent stuff, you can't at all pull of the English from Wilde's time. Also, it's called "The Picture of Dorian Gray".

>>8295043
lol, I guess that's what it comes down to, is a popping of my own ego. It's always a shame when the chuckles die. Oh well. Well critiqued, friend.

>it's always a shame when the chuckles die.

:(

>>8290084
There are a million things I haven’t done
And there are millions more I’d never think to do
but even if I could do them all in a day, in a minute, in a second
in the fleeting, sidelong glance of a subway passenger
I fear it will never be enough; my thirst for this life exceeds
All the time I have, all the time I could have

Death lumbers behind me. Peripheral, pestilent, always present.
Childlike in his simplicity. And childlike, he hangs on my sleeve
and asks when it will be time to go

I fear him as an nothingness. I fear that I will be gone, no pain or bliss,
No rage or sorrow, no joy or love. No mountains or crags or beaches
or sunset skies or oceans or any of the countless other wonders
That I have grown too fond of

I should weep if I were to be damned. for in hell or hells
there is an eternity to simply be, which, in the face of
nothingness, would be the greatest wonder of all

I really don't know if I've improved it, except for the line break stuff
I'm also not sure how to end it any more...

>>8287857
Both versions have very solid parts, but I don't think you could just mash the good parts together to make V3

>V1
really, really love the first line of the second stanza
I don't about the first and third stanza. the references to tea and how the narrator feels sound too similar, making it kinda a cut and paste

Overall I think it works very well, and you shouldn't cut anything out entirely, but maybe pare some lines down a little

>v2
>I pour some water over tea leaves
Is a weak opening, at least remove "some"
I think you could just start with the third line for a much stronger opener
>I pour some milk into my tea
Same complaint with "some" and the seeming repetition of the first stanza
Good stanza aside from that
In stanza three, "as boyish" => "As if boyish," and cut "idly," boredom implies it already
>an arch of flame begins to stretch etc.
Another two lines I absolutely love, although I think you mean "lemniscate"

As for the last stanza, it disrupts the idea of the narrator as removed and observing, as well as being kind of off from the rest of V2
"burning friction grinds to bone" and on could be used with the last stanza of V1 though

Little things with both:
Slinky is just off in my mind, literally any word would work better
You seem to be using "bow" to also mean "bough." If you're not, I think you should consider it. If you are, spelling it "bough" makes it more apparent

If I were to pick one as they are now, I'd go with V1, but like I said, they both have value, and taking bits from both and working on it from there would have the best results, I think
Both great overall

File: In tea.png (28KB, 476x809px)

28KB, 476x809px

>>8295170
>i'm sorry, but it looks like v2 is the way i'm headed
here's current version (i think i fixed some of the issuse and I meant lemniscape.

Your poem improved tremendously btw

Ghosts in the sheets,
once exercised go
still to the wash.

I like this one! What do you think?

I find it quite something
how saying a thing is a thing
is now a thing
used to recognize a trend
or the significance of some thing, like

Suicide Squad Will Smith
be gettin' thingamajiggy with it—
nanananananana! Nahnahnahnahnahnahnyah!
Ban all bans. Ban malls and
take all-n-none stands.
Take all-n-none hands.
Make all-n-none plans like

bitch I can't poetically commiserate
or maintain thematic flow,
I just know how to know what I don't know and know
and express what I don't know I know and don't know
like how my skin look like Donald Rumsfeldspar-
rots talk nonsense but mimicry.

It was 7pm and God was already dead. The world is merciless, 2nd chances come and go like a ball on a roulette wheel. People can die without having the luxury of seeing the gun pointing between their eyes. That’s how it was today. I don’t know her well enough to know her name, but I know that she was beautiful. That she had auburn hair cut to her shoulders, pretty but not out of the ordinary clothes that belied her morning thoughts of incorporating color coordination in her dress, and I know that she was married. Thank god that there are no children here to witness this, let alone her own if she has any. The shape of her hips makes me inclined to believe that she has either struggled through several childbirths, or consumed the lion’s share of many dinners alone with her husband. Maybe she wasn’t so beautiful in the classical sense, but she was beautiful like a pond, more so the beauty I intake on some of my morning walks from the simple elegance of nature of my local pond evokes a similar feeling to looking at the parts of her that aren’t splattered in blood. Those disgusting parts of her were when the pond was infested with mosquitos. The noxious feeling of mosquitoes sucking your blood and leaving itchy bumps filled with parasitic worms and deadly diseases. The kind of diseases that pressure the elderly to abandon the lone bench that sits a few feet from the water, and take their precious bread crumbs that sustain the ever growing pigeon population.

There might be something to that stuff about finding symmetry beautiful, as even though her left eye was a warm inviting chocolate brown, her right eye was popped, sizzled into its socket and classically unappealing. This woman was so many things, but now she’s nothing except for a corpse with the unearthly grace of a fleeting freshness.
This is one of the only things I've ever written outside of a classroom. Excuse the carelessness I just figured I'd ask my brother to help me edit it, and kinda learn from the experience.

I don't even know what I'm writing about, but here it goes all the same:

Yerbert the younger stared across the dinner table as his older sister sat with her back straight and her chin held high, trying desperately to look cool and sophisticated in front of their new guest. He sat across from Yerb, next to Yerb's older sister, Emma. Their guest sat taller than Yerb stood, his shoulders broad, and his stubbled face handsome and easy. His name was Simon and he was busy with another one of his stories. How intently everyone always listened! Father, mother, friends, even Yerb's older sister: all of them captivated. Simon, the young man who was full of so many stories, somehow made far away lands seem just around the corner when he spoke. Adulation--Yerb felt it hanging in the air like a too-sweet perfume. He half-heard his sister laugh to his left.

"I can't believe you said that!" she said, leaning towards Simon, her face red with laughter. "Were you scared? I know I would be."

"Oh sure." Simon said, briefly touching Emma's arm with his large callussed hand. They were dark and rough from the sun, the hands of a working man as Yerb's father had said on more than one occasion. Their guest took a long sip of his wine and cleared his throat with a gentle cough. "Sure I was scared, but I wasn't going to let that oaf tell the Yurok chief's daughter she couldn't come inside!" He ran his fingers through his long dark hair. "It was freezing outside! And, she was under my tutelage after all." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "In truth, if I hadn't done something I could be sure I would be hearing about from her father, ol' Tomafar the Fierce." Yerb's father, Yerbert the Elder, now just Elder, chuckled at nothing in particular and finished the last sip of his wine. Upon seeing this, Simon filled Elder's cup from the large carafe and Yerb saw his father's eyes twinkle for a moment.

He had just arrived in town a couple nights before, and Yerb's family made a habit of inviting the young, handsome man over for dinner. Their neighbor, who everyone simply called Old Gaff, was apparently allowing young Simon to stay in his house while Old Gaff was out west in Laudenvale, attending to some familial matters. Something about a funeral. It was a shame, Simon had confided, that he didn't get a chance to see the old geezer before he left. He had arrived too late, a few days after Old Gaff had suddenly taken off during the night. Old Gaff had been like a father to Simon when he was little, and he would have loved the chance to see the old man again. Yerb had never thought of Old Gaff as being the fatherly type, but then again, who really knew Old Gaff?

>>8296328
(cont...)

Breaking the silence, Emma spoke up, "You know, you need a title for yourself like the Yurok people you speak so much of."

"Yes," Elder said, "how about Simon the Wise?"

"Or Simon the Strong?" Emma said, her face red.

"Simon the Storyteller." Yerb said under his breath.

"Simon the Storyteller," Simon repeated his eyes catching Yerb's. He smiled a polite smile. "I like that. In fact, Old Gaff used to call me that." He took a deep breath. "Old Gaff's a funny fellow. He always said I--" he trailed off.

"That reminds me," he said suddenly. He wiped his face with his napkin and took another sip of wine. "Have I told you how I came to tutor Tomafar the Fierce's only daughter in the first place?"

"No, I don't believe so." Elder mused. "Please do though!"

"Oh no, I've been doing too much talking." he replied modestly.

"Oh please! Emma said putting her hands on the table, her fingers resting upon his. She leaned towards him slightly. "You tell such great stories."

"Well... if you insist," Simon said, turning his hand over and letting hers fall into his.

Yerb looked over towards his father and saw he was busying himself with a bite of chicken while his sister sat there giddy with anticipation. He could feel himself growing tired of the constant stream of stories, but he knew better than to sour the mood for the rest of them. With no objections, Simon continued. "You see, it all revolves around a peculiar dance I was forced into, and let me tell you, I barely escaped with my life." To his left Yerb saw his sister rest her chin happily on her other palm as she leaned forward to listen.

>>8296328
>>8296333
(cont...)

"So there I was in my tent on the island," he started, letting go of Emma's hand as he spoke, "My body covered in bug bites and my skin sun-burned to a crisp. I thought I had messed up everything. Tomafar, excuse me, Tomafar the Fierce, did not seem eager to accept my help, and I thought he was sure to tell me to leave, or worse. I knew I was the closest an outsider had ever been allowed to their village and that they did not yet trust me. In truth I didn't blame them, but... I knew they desperately needed my help. Like I said earlier, a bout of Gerghelitis had spread throughout the island and so many of their children were sick. So there I was in my tent taking inventory of the medicine vials for the Yurok children, when I hear the distant thumping of tongas creeping up through the valley," he began beating invisible drums. "Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump they went, growing steadily louder. I listened for a moment wondering if I was imagining it all, for it's not every day that the Yurok play their music within earshot of a known outsider like myself. What an honor, I thought. Me, Simon, just your average country doctor listening to this... music, if you can even call it that. The rhythms they played--oh! How I wish I could have captured it somehow. It's more mechanical, mathematical in its rhythm than what you and I know of music, like an ever-changing pattern that never seemed to repeat, but somehow didn't seem random at all either. I think it has something to do with--" He paused, looking for the word. "The unity in which the Yurok play, like an ever changing set of gears, each of them knowing where their spot was in the complex beat. I was completely unable to predict it, but I could follow it easily, like a trail through the woods. When I realized the music was actually moving towards me, I..."

Yerb sighed and rubbed his eyes, but no one paid him any notice. The rest of the table sat transfixed, their eyes unblinking as Simon talked on. Yerb cast his eyes towards his father and saw he was still sitting there holding his fork with a shred of chicken stuck to it. Frozen in place, he was just holding the fork like some bizarre ridiculous statue, transfixed by the handsome young man, making no move to take the bite or to put it down. Suddenly the whole table burst out laughing and Yerb made half an attempt to join in, completely missing what it was that their guest had so hilariously said.

>>8296328
>>8296333
>>8296339
(cont...)

"And so I'm being marched back towards their village fearing for my life," Simon said when the laughter finally faded to a light chuckle, "wearing only my underwear and my boots. Let me tell you, I. Felt. Ridiculous. They were all dressed up. Red paint smeared across their faces, elaborate crowns of exotic feathers adorning their heads. The men were bare-chested and they wore these small, almost loincloth-like skirts that they called 'albaras'. And don't get me started on the women--" He proceeded to get started on the outfits of the women, describing in detail the beautiful slit dresses they all wore.

"We get back to their village and the music is every where! Everyone contributed to the complex pattern, whether they were eating, or talking, man, or child. It pervaded through the night, hypnotic, like it was an unearthing of the patterns of our shared realities." He closed his eyes in remembrance. "Oh, how I wish I could share it with you." He stopped for a moment as he recollected himself. "But I digress again. I get to the village and I'm lead to the largest of the huts, where their leader, their 'Falar' awaited me. His name was Tomafar the Fierce, and let me make clear as I'm sure you're confused why I continually refer to him this way; his name was not just 'Tomafar'. It was 'Tomafar the Fierce', and it was the greatest dishonor to speak of an honored person without their title, as you already know from earlier." Soft chuckles littered the table as they all remembered his funny anecdote about Aluya the Witless from earlier.

"He came out of the house carrying this, and I struggle to call it this, stick--it was more like the trunk of a sapling to be honest--that was covered with bells and beads. As Tomafar the Fierce rapped it steadily on the wooden floor it let out an echoing sound that seemed to be the life vein of the whole show, the central construct on which the whole thing was balanced. As I approach him he stops, and so does the whole clan along with him. Silence settled in like a thick fog. He looked me up and down for a moment and then he began to speak in their language. 'Elar,' he said. That's what they called me, their word for outsider. 'Elar, you come here asking for our trust, for us to trust you to put into the bellies of our children a mysterious liquid with a foreboding name. Supposedly it'll cure our children of The Sway, but your explanation as to how it works means nothing to us. Elar, the outsider, he who must be watched: how can we think to trust you with the lives of our children when you know nothing of our people? You claim this medicine will cure us, but we are not the same as you. We are Yurok, and you are Elar. You do not feed a sheep the same as you feed a bird, and you do not treat a Yurok the same way you treat an Elar.'

>>8296342
(cont...)

"'Tomafar the Fierce,' I replied, pleading, 'I come here freely, and I come here solely to help. I have no reason to mislead you or your people. It is true that you do not feed a sheep and a bird the same, but the Yurok and the Elar are not so different as that. We may look different, but... it's only on the outside. Think of your herd of pigs. Some of them are brown, some of them have spots. That's how we are. We come from the same lineage, split long ago, long before any remember. Much longer. But we're still brothers on this world.'"

Simon took a sip of wine and continued. "Tomafar the Fierce looked at me for a long while. I watched the lines soften and he turned and talked with his brother. They beckoned their daughter, Merila, and they spoke among once another. After a moment they all turned back towards me and finally began to speak. He said, 'Elar, you say we one, Yurok and Elar. I know not if you tell the truth, or if you mislead me. However, if what you say is true and we really are fruit from the same tree, then you must prove it to us. Each and every one of the Yurok must prove they are true-born of this world, that they are not empty seeds, filled only with the darkness. If we are to trust you, we must know that you are not Tolok.'"

Simon paused. "The Yurok people believe that some men are born into this world not as a true man, but instead as a sort of husk. They call these men 'Tolok', and while they don't consider their not inherently evil themselves, the void within them can be filled with dark spirits. A true-born man has no capacity for evil, but a Tolok who is unlucky enough to be filled with a dark spirit has the capacity to perform terrible things. Every man's time is different, but in general the Yurok people will test a man or woman's true nature when they begins to go through puberty. The test is a sort of dance, as you will soon here. If a person fails this test, they are escorted through the mountains, to the base of Tolokan Mountain and given a choice. They may live out the remainder of their days within the cave there, where they will be given food and water and allowed to live, but never to leave. Or they may die honorably and jump from the top of the mountain, giving their body as a sacrifice to the island. According to them, every man in living memory has jumped."

The last time I cried
my kitten died in my arms seven years ago
after being mauled by my great danes
after wandering into my backyard
after my parents insisted she grew enough for outside life
all while the gardeners just vacantly watched.
Her name was Chairman Meow
and that pussy was the bomb—
I came in the pussy you came from.
I wish this pussy poem was homespun.

>>8296347
first time a poem made me angry
let yourself have feelings

>>8296325
Remove the first two sentences. Start with the line:

>People can die without having the luxury of seeing the gun pointing between their eyes. That’s how it was today.

It sounds way better without the first two lines.

>>8296345
>That's all I've written btw. No idea where it's going or anything... Just kinda started it out of the blue.

>>8296374
Agreed, thanks

>http://pastebin.com/BUsVDbMK

Wrote this in a class, polished it up a little bit. What do you guys think?

>tfw afraid to post short stories because I only have tumblr and DA links to them and posting a small excerpt is too limiting

>>8296567
wow big fuckin problem mate
use pastebin or something

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>>8296567
>posting a small excerpt is too limiting
Charles Dickens gtfo

I unironically re-wrote a passage from Moby Dick, would like input:

>My re-write:
In the crow's nest, a boy's mind tends to wander. His thoughts are the sea's, and his movements the boat's.
But move with will, and thought returns.
Crow's nest, boy's not. Crow's wing, boy's fall.

>Original passage from Moby Dick:
Lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer’s sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!

Part 1, working on part 2, but need some critique.
English is not my main language. It'll be a 5 part short story.

http://pastebin.com/raw/Xy9UB8Rz

Manicured fingers of gossamer twine tat-tatted away on a clackety keyboard late into the night. Aside on the desk lay open a text on wiring electronics, which held little of Ana's attention even in the peaks of stimulated focus, but seeing it there made her feel dutiful and diligent to her studies regardless of whether or not she was attending to them. Instead she wrung her heart out hunched over the illuminated page and the steady drip drip drip would occasionally spell out something beautiful. For the most part, it was just a slowly congealing mess.

>>8297736
I kind of like it but I think you're trying too hard to effect

>Tat-tatted...Clackety
>Drip drip drip

Just drop that shit unless you're literally James Joyce tier

Hey /crit/. I have about seven stories which have been published in small 'zines but are mostly unavailable now. I thought you might enjoy some of them, I've put them on my tumblr.
http://www.as-arthur.tumblr.com/
>inb4 >tumblr

>>8297788

Thanks, I was actually trying something new with the onomatopoeia so I appreciate that you picked up on it. I'm better with visual metaphor I think. Glad you kind of liked it!

>>8297815
Can I ask you a question? Is it easy to maintain a tumblr account? I'm thinking about creating one to dump my crap in.

>>8294130
Anyone? pls

>>8294494
Should it be "sheets of this music"?
Good flow otherwise.

>>8297830
It's very easy but there's not a lot of feedback on how many views you get or anything. There are lots of people writing stuff that they post there but it does seem to be mainly young women writing poetry and not paying much attention to anyone else, I'm left wondering if there's a more appropriate place to post stuff.

>I am a fey stunt run in a half mad day, walk down the wake haggling teat for tat. Now's way the moon high and, life's yolk fried, spills sin like milk by the gutter-slide. Ah, it's too cold for what dirt's worth I pay but, said on again, nothing's wrong with that. This, climbing without aim at a high hill, all of this is the loneliest blue I look back onto the city with. All that is strung is cut silent, winds scatter sky-up to no swift Harmony. Messenger clouds march into a sad adjective above and elsewhere the stars I do not know. The workings are so shallow under the sun that I may see wet feet from beyond men's rough image in the night's river. Let it engulf me at home, I say, just as well as it whelms the world over, and so I spear in it, out, down by Cocytus.

>>8297830
It's very easy but there's almost no feedback. It's just something I use as an alternative posting site, my main site is DA. I use tumblr to stash completed stuff away so I can clear my own folders and keep it all clean.

>>8296328
You could cut nearly everything before the third section. It's fluff because it "tells" things you plan on "showing" later (using the old "show don't tell" saying): basically that simon is a good storyteller and the group generally likes him. You could work in the descriptions of the people listening during the story, rather than before in that awkward section where they are just praising him.

>>8296555
This definitely comes across as surreal. Maybe I'm just missing the point, but it feels a bit too random and floaty to have any real impact. I think you could ground it some more in descriptions and things would feel less random. Also, your second sentence is a sentence fragment and your third sentence is a jarring sentence fragment. Not like sentence fragments are bad intrinsically, but if I see them in the beginning of a story before the story has "proved itself," so to say, grammatically, it's a big turnoff.

>>8297173
This has a lot of promise. There's a lot of very poetic and interesting writing here, but the non-native way you write also causes a lot of unnecessary confusion. The way you use "stance" on line 13 and beyond doesn't make sense, you have to describe the kind of stance it is. Also, there are many examples of how you word things which are confusing. Here are two:

>The Gate to Tiansha cast its blue light over the stone house with many rooms in which Hao grew up.
There is ambiguity here, which causes the reader to read it twice. "With many rooms" could belong to the stone house or to Hao growing up, but not both. Obviously Hao grew up in the stone house, which has many rooms, but a person could read "over the stone house, with many rooms Hao grew up in."

>Hao went to the garden, to the tree under which he always sat down on the moss to practise silence
This has the same problem. It's like "he always sat down" could belong to "the tree under which he always sat down" or "he always sat down on the moss," but it can't belong to both, not the way it is written.

>>8298175
>"With many rooms" could belong to the stone house or to Hao growing up, but not both. Obviously Hao grew up in the stone house, which has many rooms, but a person could read "over the stone house, with many rooms Hao grew up in."
I appreciate your criticism and I understand what you mean. I think mine is really a problem of knowing the subtleties of the language (my native language is as far from english as it gets) and, mostly from what other criticism I received, the place of choice in which I ultimately put commas (or not).
>The Gate to Tiansha cast its blue light over the stone house with many rooms in which Hao grew up.
I mean that the house in which Hao grew up has many rooms and in that moment the GtT cast its blue light over it. To be completely honest almost nothing from this sentence has any purpose other than establishing the fact that the GtT has a blue light and that the stone house has many rooms.
That being said, this whole sentence can be edited and transformed entirely, or even removed and nothing of much value will be lost because a lot of this information is repeated (and indeed, in much greater detail) in later parts. It's important for the story the fact that GtT shines blue but other than that, nothing else.

>It's like "he always sat down" could belong to "the tree under which he always sat down" or "he always sat down on the moss," but it can't belong to both, not the way it is written.
Ah, I knew this sentence was badly written and I'm glad you called me on it, otherwise I would have forgotten it completely.

Anyway thanks for all the advice and I can say it really helped me formulate the sentences better, or more natural.

I don't really know what this is or what it's about yet; I'm looking through the archive for something I posted in early 2014, and as I'm looking through search results, certain words and phrases jump out at me, and seem like the sort of thing that would be clattering around the head of a schizophrenic man. So I made some of them into that. It's stream of consciousness but with more than one voice.

Grab the cleaver! I'm collecting scalps. There's an atlas. Beautiful eyes. It's an encyclopedia. Collecting scalps. Grab the cleaver! Where'd you put it? Beautiful eyes. Why the atlas? Encyclopedia! What's it say? Grab the cleaver! Can't find it. Oh, you're useless! We don't need an atlas. I'm collecting scalps. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! Grab the cleaver! We don't need an atlas. Where's the cleaver? Read the encyclopedia. Read about cleavers. Read about scalps. We don't need a fucking atlas! Beautiful eyes. Turn the page. Oh, you're useless! I'm collecting scalps. The atlas says cleavers are for cooking. Where'd you put it? I hate you! Try the kitchen. Oh, you're useless! The cleaver! I'm collecting scalps. Scalps are for cooking. Beautiful cleaver.

It's her!

“Where are you going with that?”

Don't trust her!

Beautiful eyes.

Try the kitchen.

“I'm, uh”

Don't mention the scalps!

“I got lost”

Cleavers are for cooking.

“I got lost on the way to the kitchen”

Beautiful eyes.

“You have beautiful eyes”

“Well, uh, thank you”

She's lying!

Use the cleaver!

I'm collecting scalps.

I'm collecting scalps

“I'm collecting scalps”

You've done it now!

“You're… what?”

Oh, you're useless!

Run!
Back to the kitchen!

“I have to go. I've got an itchy scalp and I left my cleaver in the kitchen. The atlas told me where to find it. You have to find the important things to get going where you need to go to do what you have to do. If you have an itchy scalp you can scratch it but the itch will come back and if your back hurts it's hard to collect things, things like eyes. You have beautiful eyes. Uh, I have to go. Back to the kitchen.”

I hate you!

>>8297855
I like the colloquial language, I like how you describe the scene and what the character does through allusion, I like the rhyming in the second sentence, and I like the imagery. I also like "a sad adjective", like you're so worn out you won't choose a specific one.

My only criticism is that I don't really know what's happening. I get that the character is reflecting about something, but I don't know what or why. But since it's just one short paragraph taken out of context, it's probably fine if it fits into a narrative. But if the whole book/story/whatever is comprised of paragraphs like this one, it will be boring.

>This year got the best of me. This summer in fact. One of sin. I've been made a sinner and coerced others into sin. I don't want to care about it though. Two tickets there and back at $1000, a swell deal. Two cousins for two months, sweetness and salt. Her hair had darkened a bit, yet still was lighter than any of ours. She had a slender physique so well-defined it made her look much taller than she was. Her ancient-looking grey t-shirt and black shorts somehow accentuated her bronzed skin, shades healthier than her previous pale. Seeing her I knew the trip was justified. Every expense, every gamble, I'd wager it all. And I felt proud of it too. Here I knew to postpone all guilt until the true end and sin with peace of mind.

please confirm that I am as shit as I think I am

>>8298607
How shit do you think that you are?
This seems alright, nothing special, but not entirely shit. You skip some important informations (where is "there"? What are the two cousins doing? Is the narrator one of those two cousins?), but otherwise it seems fine to me.

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Incase anyone is wondering what the story is, it's about a kid getting a haircut. Time period would be unspecified but i'm going to mention a cadillac deville and mix some culture from the 1900s in with war phobia.

It'll be short like 10-15 pages i went to the barber yesterday and wanted to make it to test myself.

This is the 2nd thing i've attempted so critique would be welcome.I'm nervous i know it's not much yet but i wanted to check in.

I plan on waking him out of this illusion which in reality is just his over active imagination and the sounds and noises and tugging would be his parents trying to pull him from his bed, which he'll get knocked over the head and come back to reality.

http://pastebin.com/uteZcu3e

a chapter's excerpt from a fantasy novel I started earlier this year. haven't touched it in months, but maybe some dastardly critique can motivate me to not be shit and write again.

>>8292929
>>8292953
>>8293625

W E W

>>8289606
With the power of my meagre French, and of course the internet, and what I know about poetic structure, I have to say I like this.

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http://pastebin.com/PiPqQRBb

Part of an autistic story I am writing. I will return any feedback I receive as soon as I can. If you really want critique leave an email address with your post and I will email you the critique. Thank you in advance to anyone.

>>8298607

Do a bit less adjectives. It's decent though. Do not say you are shit constantly, just say you are at best moderate. Trust me that will drive your insecurity-based will to improve more because you won't have that "lol but I'm not REALLY shit" to fall back on. Be honest with yourself and realize that you are good but not good enough.

>>8289606
Of course I don't know a lot about poetic structure but my gut tells me this sounds right.

File: ook.png (49KB, 829x871px) Image search: [Google]

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>>8299265

cleaned it up boys, i'm scared to hit the dialogue part.

>>8298175
>Maybe I'm just missing the point, but it feels a bit too random and floaty to have any real impact.

I suppose I didn't make the meaning very clear. The little girl, when she died as an adult, was not well-liked. The man was aborted. As for the "random" thing, it must be because of the meaning not being clear enough? I see your point.

>I think you could ground it some more in descriptions and things would feel less random.

I will try this.

> Not like sentence fragments are bad intrinsically, but if I see them in the beginning of a story before the story has "proved itself," so to say, grammatically, it's a big turnoff.

I do see what you mean, you must have this feeling that the author may not have intended to use the style of sentence fragments purposely. Although for my piece, I did choose it to fit more.

Thanks for the critique. I will take all your comments into mind. I suppose I just like using sentence fragments "creatively", so to say.

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Because that‘s not the sun blinding you, it‘s cold, artificial light, and it‘s not the wind pulling her from your arms, but heavily shadowed, heavily covered figures. Human figures. And her singing grows weaker and it‘s not your arms they tear her from and… and…

White blindness burns behind your eyes as unimaginable pain courses through your body. You can’t see, but you can smell, cold steel and blood so strongly you retch. Plastic binding cuts into your ankles and wrists as you convulse against the platform you’re restrained against.

“Wrong.” you think, the pain too brilliant to allow your brain coherent thought. “Wrong. Empty. Gone. Worry. Panic.”

And that’s exactly what you do, thrashing wildly, screaming until your lungs burn, not out of agony but because you can hear her crying, and she’s not a bird.

Oh god she’s not a bird.

>>8298331
sum1 criteek pls

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>>8298331
confusing as fuck but also entertaining.

>>8299807
>>8299815
Thanks. It should indeed be a nice sonnet.

>>8296347
please stop

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>>8300027
Its good, any more to share or is that all?
>>8298331
Intriguing, that all I have to say.
>>8296328
Try showing?

Here's mine please eviscerate me. If confuse I could try answering a few questions

File: ero.png (93KB, 655x867px) Image search: [Google]

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Tried a bit of erotic writing as a little break from the book I'm writing.

>>8300730
Oh my

>>8300618
why anon

did i give y0u feels

are you remembering your dog that died

or your cat that died from feline aids

did you shed a tear like the fur your dead dod used to shed

why an0n

why (serious question)

>>8300730
Why ero?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uoY5f0Y8W8ypLgKy_TRQEa0or0Rhlv8GAMW2QngCeEQ/edit?usp=sharing

Here's the first chapter of a book I'm writing. What do you think?

>>8300701
maybe less exposition in the first few paragraphs? Also is this basically gonna be Red Dawn: The Book?

>>8301614
just expanding on that, I'm guessing you're going for the ASOIAF style of story where every chapter is from a different persons perspective? You can dole out that all that back story easily enough as the story goes on, ya know?

>>8301604
It's not my sort of material that I would go out of my way to read, but it moves along pretty well, good use of language. "kerfuffle" jumped out at me though, seems a little bit contrived.

One big complaint is the use of brackets. It doesn't sit well in fiction. If you can find a way to get the bracketed implication/point across without employing them as a vehicle to do so, it would read a whole lot better.

All in all good work, keep going.

>>8282147
Don't repeat sidewalks with walks. "In the fall, the winter, and the spring it has been since I last saw that cat" might sound better with a comma after and then"I have only grown fonder of those times". That sentence reads awkwardly however, might want to re-do. Your ending comes quite abruptly, I think you should introduce the cat by the first paragraph and make your lonliness more obvious by way of your obsession towards an animal. I'd also bring out it's coldness more, perhaps having him even run from you after an embraceable and despairing period of depression meaning you, not the cat or it's owner, are the reason you don't see it anymore.

Truthfully, it's a good story idea, but I think the cat should take on a more symbolic, human role. Keep it short though, if you can.

>>8282223
Funny.

>>8283105
Talented writing, "Dirt, rock, and root" is good. Unfortunately it doesn't really go anywhere.

>>8288240
A great one paragraph story. Nicely done anon.

I'd leave it at that however.

-----------------------------------------------

Here's a short kind of twin story I'm working on, about a man reading on the train and his character smoking in a hospital bed.

The last two final pages are the ones I'm really looking for feedback on, particuarly the philosophy and flow.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jvtgEg8h0TKQfy_cQJpSZInaKybDA_GMhxTQhBMRyqg/edit?usp=sharing

>>8302320
If you can't open the document or want something shorter, this is the part I'd like feedback most on:

It’s funny, Barnaby thought, but I wouldn’t mind dying. Only I wouldn’t want to do it here. I don’t mind the alone part, not totally. I’ve always felt it would be quite shameful, like a boastful truancy. And it’s not more time I ask for either, I’ve never trusted those fools who try to ration out their endless share like sand on the beach. I’ve always been the type to think: How can you have more time? You get what you get. And after that - well - what’s the point in an after? There’s no time for afters. Oh, I’m not the one to get stuck on befores either. As if those were any more real. I’ve seen men hold onto moments like a woman’s ass in sex, thinking they can hold it and fuck it forever, like you could move and be statues at once. And they’ll clutch it with the clutch of demons: tighter and tighter the closer their little climax comes. Same men who act like times just cinema tape, this celestial decanter you can pour for one second and pause the next. And where’s the space between to go? Some other, newer time? Sub-seconds, and sub-sub-seconds, and sub-sub-sub-seconds with Zeno’s Parthians for cavalry, backed by an army of chairs all held by some beastly line of algebrised garlandry? Only insanity, only madness, can come from putting points to the pointless. No, I don’t mind dying. We’ve been dying our whole life. Dying to claw at whores with the grips of ghosts lost. Oh no, I don’t mind dying - just - not here. Please not here.

It’s funny, I think, but I would really hate to die. Especially not in a train. I remember seeing a man die to a train when it was raining. The platform was only half covered so you could even see the rain dribble out through the dusk streetlight in this dull lilac horizon, but I never saw the man, just heard this slap of wet meat like he’d thrown a butcherbag greased with steakblood onto the tracks, and the train ground and screamed right over him, sparks hissing in the wet, and I just heard it all as a grinding mistake, some faulty engine choking on dust. Ater he died I spent a quiet moment imagining his torn corpse, if he had family, until I heard a nice looking man in a suit swear so violently. For a while after, I heard rain, but then another woman started swearing, more under her breath but still stinging in the silence until a Scotchman gasped “the cunt” so loud that it was a like a firing gun, and then another two joined, and then near half the platform was shouting, all of them swearing and cursing the sad flat man. They were so outraged it was as if he’d streaked them, and it was ridiculous, vain even, I thought, to be that utterly humiliated by guts and skin.

Still: I’d really hate to die.

>>8302335
(The different narrators are marked by italics)

Barnaby felt wind on his cheeks, and he was suddenly aware that a window had been opened in some distant bed. He could not tell where, so hopeful for another thinking bit of life, but it seemed as though that small sign of another had broken his hypnosis. His eyes went past the smoke, adjusting with the tired eyes of a dreamer first to the weak floral sheets of his room, then to the lit shadows of the distant sick. He could see flat men with curved backs and others sitting upright, all as black and gangly as civilised ants. He could not tell if any were looking at him, but he still longed for their eyes, their sick real eyes, to see him too, even just as shadow. Words came to his mouth, but they mumbled like uncrested waves and birthed aborted; gibberish and silence for anyone listening. Then a fierce sense of shame filled him: had they opened the window because of my smoke? Suspecting and suspected, he could not even bare to sit up, or talk ever again to these judging ghosts. Somewhere, likely from the open window, he could hear boys play football. He hadn’t even heard the frame creak and lying down now to avoid their gaze, it really was as if these men had been just shadows of old, leftover nights. His cigarrillo had gone out, so he lit another.

>>8302320
Also, if anyone needs critique, please just ask.

>>8301604
This is well written, but I'm not sure about the tone. It's a tad snarky and the MC seems judgemental but not very deep. The "Kill me." line doesn't work. It is, however, not badly written at all, quite good in places, like this one:

"Bathroom. Queue for the cubicles. Stink of piss. Floor covered in piss. Piss overflowing from the urinal trough. I can hear people sniffing nose drugs in the cubicles. Wonder what speed or coke and piss smells like. It must smell like irritation, numbness and piss. Decide I’ll hold it in for now."

It's brief, repetitive and homes in on the key disgust of the scene well. The half-dialogue at the start is also talentedly done with the slip-ups and the fill-ups

This bit needs more spice "Tall bottles, squat bottles, square bottles, round bottles, domestic bottles, imported bottles, specialty bottles, brown bottles, green bottles, purple bottles, unpronounceable bottles", you choose too bland descriptions for your bottles, I think it needs a touch of fanciness maybe, "rubbered damask" or "sanguine" but generally more detailed descriptives.

Your bit on power and authority is smart and nice, but could be more smoothely done. I'd trim it all down to one paragraph and try and have it in the other scene more smoothly.

The Congo joke is grand.

I feel this piece is funny and well written - but would benefit as a screenplay? I think a third person aspect would improve it, perhaps quicken things a long and even enhance the humour if you could pull it off Peep Show style.

>>8302523
>Also, if anyone needs critique, please just ask.

This please! I posted above, no crits. This is a slightly altered version:

We give each other's time to youth; each mistake we share in kind and grow
around each other, trails of ivy.
In midnight conversations we scorn adults
those aliens;
we have no way to fathom boredom.
Existence is for its own sake, else why
bother? -
accepting banal comfort
seems absurd.
Thunder clouds veil the full moon,
a navy shadow over
tomorrow's apathy.
Through scepticism
we become sure of ourselves,
reluctant,
coerced by the hidden pendulum's tide;
most disturbing is that
truths reveal their negation.
No caution, we learn each other,
resenting faults; developing –
delighting in –
not enough hindsight for foresight,
we are foolish
and time beguiles us.

>>8302541
should be a comma after 'adults', whoops.

>>8301614
>Also is this basically basically gonna be Red Dawn: The Book?
Shouldn't be. The Red Dawn feel is going to be limited in her chapters. Its more of a deconstruction of a typical YA.
It's the same for the backstory, just her delusion of grandeur.

>>8302541
This is good. The lack of rhythm scheme and convoluted flow, especially at "those aliens" and "bother", hurt it slightly at the beginning. However, the meter works well after that and your descriptions of "navy shadow" is nice and clean. The philosophy is also intriguing, and the piece comes together by the end.

---

Would you mind just reading my few paragraphs if you have the time? I wrote those today so they're still fresh.

>>8302541
I felt this poem

>>8302560
I see what you mean at the beginning; I was unsure about "those aliens". I think I'll keep the emphasis on 'bother' though. Seems important to me. Thanks, this actually helped.

I've req'd access to your link

>>8302573
I'm glad.


Changed it up a little -
"In midnight conversations we scorn adults.
Abject ancestors object too much to us;
we have no way to fathom boredom."

>>8302609
Oh it's not public? I fucked up.

But about aliens, you're trying to convey foreigness right, while also trying to make them seem developed? I think you could go for an angelic/celestial vibe, but in one of those almost creepy ways, perhaps as beings that have become distorted, like pigs on hindlegs.
>>8302320
This is the new link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jvtgEg8h0TKQfy_cQJpSZInaKybDA_GMhxTQhBMRyqg/edit?usp=sharing

>>8302646
You're re-written paragraph is good, "abject ancestors object" is a solid alternative.

>>8302646
I'm gonna have to read this tomorrow; my eyes have retired. The only thing I can think of at the moment is that the second sentence seems a bit odd; 'around' shouldn't dangle like that.

Maybe yeah.. not sure how to pull off the angelic idea (not too acquainted with the idea). Food for thought though.

>>8302653
Cheers. Might stick with it, might not.

>>8294130
Struggled hard to find the theme, but the last lines kinda linchpind it well nice. Good job on this m8

>>8294316
Not stupid, rather experimental imho. Whatever it was intended to resemble, you were getting good at it

Negligent discharge:
pre-to-posterity:
a rabbit, possum, squirrel flattened:
misshapen turnips:
corporeal spectres:
Clinton for prison:
colonoscopies are for winners.

>>8282001
The girl spit in my face, called me a nazi, and ran away. She had those nice fuckme eyes though

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Trying to portray the character as self-centered but somewhat kind. I don't know if I did a good job

>>8304432
Yeah you don't do a very good job. Get into more details about why she takes such care of her siblings. How does it benefit her?

Everything before the last paragraph seemed to serve no purpose other than a very blatant and boring setting of the story. The grammar seems pretty bad too.

>She didn't knew

You couldn't even fix a simple typo... have some decency and at least give it a quick edit before posting it.

>>8304432
You have a fetish for "for his/her own good"

>>8302560
You've got a few grammatical errors. Be careful. Also it seems as if you're pulling too much from the environment (e.g. the clouds of smoke and the beach memory.. doesn't quite fit together right)
I don't have much helpful to say I'm afraid.

To Frances

They dredged you out from underneath; your breath
Had run away from us. As such, you were
As pale as water; cold and fragile, but
Still trembling. Signs of life still to be lived.

Do you remember? When our mothers held
Firmly in our hands the weight of our youth;
Reminding us to look before we sank.
After all this time, I have not forgot.

They thought they'd save you; such tears and prayer,
But words can only do so much to dry
Your broken parts. We tried so hard; you were
But one small girl, wrung out.
We tried so hard.

>>8306132
Well-executed. Form took me a bit by surprised - expected a sonnet, but found it was shorter. But maybe the truncated form is like the truncated life?

My one criticism is that the poem isn't so distinctive or memorable, but then how many are? The vast majority aren't going to be in any body of work. I'm sure you have it in you to produce that though so just keep doing your thing.

Sonnet to Philip K. Dick

Yeesh! One more Exegesis, and I’m done.
Long years, freakin’ out atop Asklepieion
which taught me what? Oh, I don’t know. Enough.

Since after all, have I not dreamed in Greek

repeatedly? Kandinskies, all that stuff,
flew flashing past my eyes. ‘Cause when the sun
caught on a golden fish, I came undone
with what I learned: enough, but not enough.

For after all, do I not dream in Greek?

Come haunt me in a language I can speak!
Hey Time, what’s on the vast magnetic tape
unwinding here? I see a feeble creek
that meets a basin where parched rivers leak
and pool: but in what… in what latent shape?

>>8306159
to be honest it's a sonnet in progress; i'm still undecided as to the second stanza being a second stanza at all, i may move it to be the third stanza and add the couplet when i find it, or add the last two lines and break it to be two tercets instead of quatrain/couplet

>>8306191
that first stanza is sharp and precise and the placement of references feels right but as it progresses i'm not particularly feeling the last stanza as it starts to try and meld the mystical with the connotative and the nature stuff, it may just be a matter of personal preference though

>>8306219
I think you've nailed it. More sharpness and precision is exactly what I need in general. Thanks.

>>8306077
The beach memory and the clouds of smoke are similar because it reminds the character of chaos and order, how things corrupt in these seemingly steady waves of breath. It's a point I want to home in on, and it's why I'm using the environment, and the smoke really, as it's motif. But your comments are helpful, and I could use human behaviour more and enhance the plot. I got quite carried away. Thank you.

But I'm curious - what exactly are the grammar mistakes?

>>8306243
>writing a first draft with a vague motif in mind
if you're writing fiction you should be taking the time develop your character first, not blindly leaping into thematic ideas

I think I’ve finally understood what nihilism means. Nihilism is to reject the necessities the world creates, because the necessities aren’t always fair. I’m not sure what the opposite of nihilism is, but I guess it’s to believe in creating some sort of order in things, to go along with the program so to speak. I guess in some ways I’m anti nihilistic, if you believe in justice as I do I guess you could say that I’m not nihilistic. In other ways, I think there’s a lot of principles I reject. Yeah, I guess that’s the opposite of nihilism, is principles. To live on principles is to have some faith in the order that you create out of the necessities the world creates, and that’s a very operative word “necessities”. A lot of the things we do are born out of necessity, or what some people perceive blindly as necessity. One example would be money, we need money because of necessity and a principled person works hard to get money and make a living. Living on principle is probably what a lot of people see as “noble”, where as the rejection of principle is to be nihilistic. It’s hard for me to tell where I really fit in, but I don’t think there would be 100% truth in it if I were to try to make that distinction, it couldn’t be done, there’s always unknowns and nuances.

>>8282011
What the fuck are branches of wind?

>>8306227
more criticism as i think of it so bear with me

the second stanza isn't great but interesting. i think you should really hang onto that "enough" repetition as it plays with the connotative meanings of that word and really makes the multitudinous layers fun to dig into

the third stanza isn't all bad; i think the first line is worth a salvage, particularly with the repetition of the greeks, which feels to be the central thought of the poem. my issue with stanza 3 is that line 2 onwards - partiularly with the water stuff - begins to make the poem feel like the first two stanzas are not being sustained, and takes the reader from pointed, meaningful imagery to a thematic meander. there are better places for this poem to go to and rivers are not it

>>8306273
It's not really a character driven piece, just a short philosophical one. I understand what you mean, but plot isn't what I'm trying to practise here so much as expressing a wider point.

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help
am I done yet?

>>8306477
I really like the premise. Abstruse, but the imagery gives it a good lead for the reader. As for the fin of it, I would add more leading up to the interrogative stanzas

>>8282001
(I will critique in a separate post to make things cleaner)

Oh, blast it. Guarding the castle’s outskirts again, I swear, that Beelzebub has a peeve against me. Let’s see, last time Alexander the Chosen was seen was in Blytheberry—blast, he’ll be here any day now. Perhaps I should just run away, I mean surely I’m not the only one that sees the folly of the whole thing. He’s the blasting Chosen One, and we’re supposed to stop him from entering the castle with daggers and leather armor—I think this is just Mr. Beelzebub’s way of controlling the population growth now that I think about it.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa,” blast who was that? Sounded like Steve. Poor lad, he must have been stationed as lookout today. I suppose that means Alexander is arriving and he’s drawn first blood. Better position myself, luckily I was placed near the backline. Maybe I can even make a break for it.

There he is, the famous Alexander. So famous yet he can’t seem to afford a shirt,though I suppose his pecs are the most integral part of his branding. Long flowing blonde hair, big iron sword, and a burly body—and we’re three feet high goblins.

Oh there goes Robby. See ya later Simon. Ouch, that’s gotta hurt for Wedge. Oh blast, at least leave George some dignity. Hey what is he doing with John’s leg? Stop that! It’s gross.

Here he comes, can’t outrun him, his legs are twice the length of mine. Oh dear lord above, I’m going to have to fight. I hope he leaves my leg alone.

“Face your justice at the swing of my sword mons—” huh? He stopped talking.

Wait, he’s dead. My dagger pierced his heart. That can’t be possible, I didn’t even swing or anything. Ha! The bloody Chosen One tripped on a rock and landed directly on the tip of my dagger. You’re pecs aren’t looking so pretty anymore pretty boy! Oh blasting heavens, it seems the Gods are siding with the devils for once.

Oh think of the riches! The promotions bound for me—maybe I’ll finally be able to settle down and follow my passion to make pots. I must hurry to Master Beelzebub, he’ll never believe this. Oh right, I should bring the body, because otherwise he’ll never believe this.

Yes! The master seems pleased. I wonder what type of pot I should sculp first, maybe I can make one that shows me stabbing Alexander through the heart—yeah that would be wonderful. Wait what was that? Castle outskirts duty? Oh, Alexander has a son. Potentially stronger than him, yes, yes. Let me guess this one drew a sword from a rock or something. Of course he did.

>>8307573
me

>>8306289
I think this type of thing could benefit from a more distinguishable voice. As it is right now it sounds more like someone lecturing rather than someone undergoing a character moment.

>>8306132
I really like this, though I'm not very good at judging poetry since I hardly read any.

>>8307580
>As it is right now it sounds more like someone lecturing rather than someone undergoing a character moment.
It's not a character moment, it's me making philosophical musings.

>>8306301
I remember I moved onto the rivers thing because I wanted to convey this sense of several converging "streams" of meaning that together form something beyond his understanding, and it was the best I could think of... But maybe there's a way I can go about that continues from the previous stanzas in a more elegant way?

I'd like to keep the thing about "latent shape" because that's a phrase that actually comes from the Exegesis, but I think that shouldn't be too difficult.

>>8306191
Echoing the first reply, the first stanza is incredibly sharp, but the last one falls off to me. End it with a punch and reincorporate the dreaming in Greek motif.

>>8306289
Huh, interesting as a philosophical musing.

>>8306477
I think it was nicely written but I'm not sure because the imagery was not concrete enough for me to pay good attention. But that's just me.

Okay, here's a poem, if I get replies I'll post another.

She said she would be late tonight,
to warm our home's one bed;
I said that I'd be later still,
walking through my head.

We live along the ocean bluff,
above the cliffs and sandy roughs-
to the land's green linen shirt,
we are the softer faded cuff.

When she drives off in the morn,
she takes the only road,
if I'd asked (I never had),
there's only one place she could go

the road leads straight across the earth
on to the other side
whereupon lies another house,
just this tall and wide.

there must be there another me,
another you as well,
and as I speak of their long lives,
our stories they too tell.

the rain has started coming down
outside my window sill
she said that she'd be late tonight
but I'll be later still.

>>8307896
Very rhythmic. Fun to read. Mör?