Archive for the ‘Creative Writing’ Category
A Simple Trick
It is a bit of an understatement to call it a bit of a trick to describe in words, the thoughts that float like wisps of cloud through the catacombs of consciousness in a mind never trained to think in the same way as others who’ve endured years of direction to align and compartmentalize mental activity with almost military precision. Unrestrained, the result is some pretty wicked sentence structure, often with too much going on all at once which hardly allows a casual reader the simple courtesy of effortlessly gliding through the reading while simultaneously drinking their coffee and snacking on a treat to the background sounds of someone talking to them about an entirely different subject while the usual ambient noise of the television or a favorite Broadway musical soundtrack drowns out the monotone vibration of the droning fan bashing the humid summer air filled with clattering chipmunks chirps that compete with the squawking and tweeting whistles of the birds that seem to be earnestly carrying out their business with critical incident importance. It’s as if there aren’t enough words in the dictionary to capture the images of faces, let alone expressions on faces, and places, real and imagined, that materialize intangibly in mind-space at a rate of speed that would be mind boggling if a mind were able to disassociate itself long enough to discern such a thing. Then, smack dab in the middle of such a barrage of mental imagery, there appears the understandable interruption of thought along the lines of detached curiosity for the indescribable probability of explaining the origin for so many ‘out of context’ subjects surfacing without anything resembling logic for the train of thinking currently barreling along. With any luck at all, cloaked within all those brainwaves vibrating along, there resides a contiguous thread of an objective idea that slithers along until it grows legs that bring it to the launchpad of realization to blossom like the smile of a pretty girl that suddenly grows into a laugh. At that point, all that remains to be done is execute the simple trick of describing it succinctly and accurately with words. Succeed with that, and some artist just might come along to take it from there and turn it into a movie. The thought of that is absolutely brilliant, yet at the same time, just plain wrong.
Early Morning
.
.
In the early morning hour
when the birds are making song
as daylight’s seeping in
and nothing else is moving
it feels rather sacred
a gift of being alive
a kingdom truly magic
through no doing of our own
which we walk in like we own it
rarely noticing we don’t
and we fill our world with noise
that reflects our many works
while birds just keep on singing
they watch us do our worst
.
.
Whatever Happens
.
whatever happens
don’t look down
past the unintended consequences
of all those forgone conclusions
left undone
time and again
while the evil genius villain
wraps his ultimate plan
around our world
despite our best intentions
for good to dispatch evil
once and for all
.
Tight Corners
There is something right around the corner and you can just sense that it will influence your otherwise uneventful experience of late. But there is no corner. Why do we say things like, “The corner of my mind?” Metaphoric corners are rolling around us all the time. The word “corner” looks just fine until you focus on the word “corn” and then you get that strange feeling that it doesn’t look like a correctly spelled word at all. How is it that our mind can suddenly see a group of characters of the alphabet in such a way that the word formed looks totally nonsensical? I have found myself pausing in disbelief at the word, “then” as if there were no way it could possibly be a word, even though logic led me to carry on as if it must be legitimate. This might explain why I have neglected to master a second language all these years. I can hardly maintain order in my head with the words of the language I grew up speaking.
Any credit for understanding the English language should go to my ears and the blessing of having parents who spoke properly. When rules of grammar were being taught in grade school, I quickly discovered that the correct answer was simply the one that sounded right to me. Unfortunately, that means I didn’t ever really memorize the actual rules of grammar. That will be visible in my writing style, where I often opt for choosing to lay out a sentence in a manner that reflects how it sounds to me when spoken, which sometimes turns out to be grammatically incorrect.
I still find myself occasionally choosing to follow a few grammar rules that result in written sentences sounding different than the way I would actually say things, but it is because there are times when doing so just reads better. I credit that to the reading I do and how I ‘hear’ the words written by professional journalists. I don’t know if everyone ‘listens’ to the words and sentences they read in their mind to the same extent that I do. (I think it makes me a slower reader.) I have a tendency to mimic what I see and hear, for better or worse. My writing will tend to reflect the writing of others that appeal to me.
When I edit, I don’t always know what is correct for a given sentence, but I usually sense when it just doesn’t sound right. I credit my parents for the way they spoke and also for their habit of having a radio or television on where I heard broadcasts of WCCO and dialects that most closely matched what I found to read in published works. I have no idea what led me to start thinking about things like corners of a mind or why I see things from a somewhat skewed vantage point at times. I guess it’s just a relative point of view. Relative to something.
A Rich Life
.
what did I do
on my day off
that started this holiday
weekend early
other than waking up
at the crack of dawn
to drive to the lake
with a stop at the bakery
arriving in time
to catch the second half
of a World Cup win
that shook things up
when a favorite fell
then head into town
to find out who owns
all those acres of woods
north of our place
where I love to roam
and have for years
but that now are posted
with “No Trespassing” signs
and while in town
stopping for a pizza
at the best place around
returning in time
imagine this
to see more World Cup
while playing guitar
and a game-ending drama
too wild to believe
so we took all that energy
down to the lodge
for games of our own
of classic ping-pong
then we fiddled about
nieces and nephews around
bringing full belly laughs
while the summer wind blew
floating sounds of the loon
such evocative tunes
and the table was set
as the grill charcoal primed
then a dinner feast next
more divine every time
it’s hard to conceive
how the same food again
tastes more fine every time
but that’s indeed how it goes
every day at the lake
where paradise glows
and divine defines life
yes that’s how it goes
richness of life
blessedly flows
.
.
Relative Something 