Archive for the ‘Creative Writing’ Category
Uncovered
Last night I dug up this piece I wrote back in February of 2003. I recognize some of it, but I don’t really have clear recollection of the time when I composed it. My curiosity for pronouncing “th” as a “d” sound was satisfied back then by a friend who described the phenomenon as resulting in their family of polish immigrants from not having the “th” sound present in their native language. Dat seems an obvious and understandable enough explanation for me.
.
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What if I simply wrote about it
and when you read it you were moved
by its inherent tendency to apply
rendering all your suppositions proved
not like the tacky film of ad campaigns that try
no farther
much farther a way than that
down where involuntary doesn’t even begin to exist
and up into the stratospheres of our existential bliss
where the vibrations of our ever-present song
invigorate our reasons to believe
which we do
and have been all along
neither color nor flavor
but both all that and more
where nothing else disturbs
the focal distance from before
the shoelace became frayed
and elastic recoil that happens not
sickly film forming over soup in pan
as simmer faintly fades from hot
beneath the late afternoon’s waning light
revealing brilliant yellow gold
where moments ago there was only white
there’s both new and also something old
already been here already done all that
it’s the same as what already was
as if that’s some bright new found fact
a digression from a fear
accessory after the act
it fascinates and it bores
though mostly alluding every grasp
like a meaning getting briskly stamped
upon our spongy blue-green minds
and we wile away while we can
or is it them or me or you?
flailing away in attempt to understand
both a meaning and intent
focussed solely on the only thing that
hasn’t even happened yet
slippery sliding down a slanted slope
of largely hypothetic tries
to heap ungodly piles of healing balm
on swollen red and tired eyes
and waiting ’til the late of any night
as if waiting makes it all alright
seeking not that phantom wisp of what
it is that starts
and stops
this unattainable freight in flight
which circles round upon
the very path
it paved away from here in desperate fright
a feeling not so bad in fact
except for when it lingers far too long
draining out the last of tact
struggling grip on the flowered teacup
steady enough to avoid
stuttering clatter as you sup
a smile and a worry that have grown together
as if wed years ago
when nothing that has happened
had even begun to happen yet
wonder what
if any
silly significance lies
in the way that some people skew their words
to pronounce the “th” sound
as if it were a “d”
and say with cultivated aplomb
dat dem’s da ones dat up and died.© 2003 John W. Hays
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Dizzy Reflection
.
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cubes of ice
melt in my glass
and drops of rain
rattle my roof
while nothing else
happens
to reveal
what happens
while the rain
rattles my roof
and the ice
melts in my glass
.
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The Future?
There is an item of discussion in my online virtual community where nothing but utter nonsense and silliness is posted. The Conference is titled, “Phun” and the item is, “In the future…” I have been known to post several of my highly insightful visions there for the benefit of the members, and feel it is only fair that readers here be given the same opportunity to see what the future holds.
In the future, right after we forget about the past, we will remember that the last time that happened, we were bound to repeat it. Won’t that be great?
In the future, greatness will be measured out to each and every boy and girl in a thimble for their use. Unauthorized use will not be authorized. Users will be allotted space and time to utilize the greatness as dictated by panels of experts whose credentials will be impeccable, mostly drug-free, and established with the underwriters for authenticity. It will be great.
In the future, when something happens, everyone will notice at the same time. Nothing will go unnoticed. Mass media will morph into doing everything in their imaginations to keep people keenly aware of what Lindsey Lohan is doing at every moment, regardless the fact the people will already be noticing absolutely everything about anything. There will be no news programs because of the redundancy inherent in describing news to an audience that already is informed on anything that could possibly be considered news. Because of this, there will be so many media oriented types that have free time to devote solely to Ms. Lohan and her every move that they will be able to make it appear as if there is something about Lindsey that must be worthy of the attention and thus even though everyone will already know absolutely every possible thing there could ever be deserving to be noticed about Lindsey Lohan, seeing what the media outlets have to present will be perceived as being not only trendy, but mightily worth the act of finding a way to get one of those things people used to have that hung on their walls in their homes across from the large couch of plush leather and that flashed full color High-Definition (oh remember how quaint that was) moving images on a 2-D screen depicting all things corporately newsworthy. They will think it is great.
In the future, and this is true, I just figured it out, everything that we thought was funny will actually turn out to be just as funny as we actually thought all along, even though most everyone we were aware of had been something less than mildly amused by the incredibly amusing funniness we clearly sensed. Meanwhile, the things in life that are particularly unfunny will melt away like lemondrops on the dash of an old automobile in the heat of high noon in a mid-saharan desert, only a lot less sticky, and people with no sense of humor will suddenly feel all queasy and faint at the realisation that the seriousness with which they had previously purported to conduct themselves will collapse in a heap of self-important tatters. They won’t think it to be great, but guess what? It will be great.
It’s bound to happen. You just wait.
Numbers, Again
Number of mosquitoes swatted in the house last night: 6
Mosquito count outside the house lately: Googolplex
Seconds until hoards of mosquitoes descend on my exposed flesh in the garage: 6
Amount of bug repellent I like putting on my skin: 0
Amount of day being worked today: 1/2
Hours to be driven out of town: 3
Number of mosquitoes waiting for me up north: nevermind
Related families uniting for the weekend: 9
Family reunions so far this summer: 2
The unqualified answer to anything: six
Number of kids who know what that’s all about: 2
What that has to do with anything right now: nothing
Number of ideas I had when I decided to create this list: 0
Number of times numbers have been repeated in the answers above: 3
Significance of that: come on, it’s a numbers list!
Number of times the State Fair was brought up at work yesterday: way too many
Calories in an order of cheese curds at the fair: 1,140
Miles of walking the fair grounds required to burn that many calories: 11.5
How much less that makes me lust for fried cheese curds: zilch, zippo, hardly at all
How fond mosquitoes are of fried cheese curds: now that’s just plain silly
Relative Something 