A Reason to Live

Those who go on living
must find a reason to.
Some have latched on diving,
and others make the stew.
To cook and swim are dear,
but my purpose is other.
Seamus told me to live here,
and call out thoughts when bothered.
Call "Out on thee!" when they strike,
and do not give them license
To act in assholes-in-action's like,
or batter and grow a crisis.
Drive out the insolents all,
and give the ignorants care,
So our children cannot fall
under the refuse they must bear.

Muse, I must needs express myself.
This woman's honesty
puts volumes of love on my shelf,
and I cry out "Gramercy!"
A reason for me to strive
is to make me a good man
In all of my friends' lives,
so their love may sister my stand.
Untruths be made unwords,
or cleave my head with a blade,
Or with a trick or hand from my lord,
or make all my shine-dears fade.
Raise every birthed child's voice,
and climb a peak in morning,
So you may smile on your choice,
and keep this purpose burning.

Majority

I turn 18 today. I hope to have time to work on some substantive and entertaining writing soon. The last worthy thing I wrote involves certain people that I care about whom I've ended up promising I wouldn't publish it until fifty years have passed. I'm hoping I don't have to wait quite that long.

Best regards,

-Davy

The Oldest Joke

      I was born yesterday. My child will be born to night. The words that I use to transcribe my thoughts are being born into being by my fingers on an archaic console. The does not exist until I say, “The!”  Love will not be an emotion until I have my mate, and she does not arrive for hours. Hate will not appear until I have a rival, and yet I am able to theorize these emotions. The concept of any emotion but contentment for existence is merely postulation without source data. I wonder what I will eat for lunch. I turn to the sky, and I say, “Hello, Sky! You are looking terribly vermillion in this squalor of green around me, though I know you to be the only true azure. You, Sky, are the azure that my child’s eyes will be an emulation of. You are the azure that my morning glories fail to replicate. Why should a man cultivate plants when I can look upon your lovely blueness, and eat you as well?”

      I reach up and scoop a piece of Sky away, and I put its beauty to my lips. “You are delicious, Sky! Your glory is beyond glories; your worth is as the worth that cannot be counted for I have not invented a system of coinage! Your flavor is the flavor that any meal that I should have in the mud will be a shadow of. You bear within you all good flavors, and several of the bad ones as well so that you might be balanced, oh Sky! I have grown apples, and I have eaten tomatoes, and the potatoes in my cupboard were done boiling ten minutes ago, but I love none of them as I love you, Sky!”
      The sky hangs just within reach of me with a contented look to it. I scoop away a larger handful and eat more of the sky, and another larger yet after that, and eat more. Then I look up at the sky and shout, “I should be leaving you now, but you know that I believe in you now as well. Take heart, for I shall return to gaze upon your loveliness and eat your colorful bounty, and you will be the most beautiful thing above any other as long as I gaze at you, and as long as I do not.”
      The sky is indifferent as I turn away and walk west. The trees are still getting taller and the shrubs more full, and the animals are all the same, but I will change that eventually. I will, or the sky will. A bird floats towards me and buzzes with the same voice that the bear and the rabbit buzz. It buzzes and gurgles, and bobs up and down without any reason for me to differentiate it except for the large nickname that dangles from its back, and it can barely support. It is a nametag that readsRobin, a kind of bird, and I find that it is a satisfactory descriptor, though eventually I may have to invent an older language and use it to rename the animals so that I and my children may appear more intelligent than other of my children when they and I discuss the names of things.
      The bird buzzes away with its gurgling, warbling bobble, and I shake my hand with the branch of an American Sycamore, a tree as I pass it, and one of its leaves comes away in my hand. I take the leaf to a wide open place with a hill behind it, and I reach out and pick up a part of the hill to make some walls. Then I take the leaf and bury it, and when I dig it up again after fifty two seconds I find many pieces of oiled shingles. I throw them over my walls, and go inside of my home. Inside I see a bed and a table, each made of wood, the bed with a bag of straw for a pallet. I reach under the table and take out my spork and knife, and then I reach into a box that I hauled to this location a few minutes ago. The box is all made of metal and reads Kelvinator, an ice box that runs on the sun. I reach inside of it and take out an empty bowl, then I put the bowl up high above my head, and some of the sky drifts by and pours down the lip of my bowl. I take my bowl back inside and scoop the sky into my mouth with my spork, and it tastes as it did before. “Now it is time I had me a wife, for I recall reading in something that I must have written, though an odd imperative was written on it about wagging a voulge around, right after the declaration that “I am Will,” it read not to look so sad, but to “get thee a wife, Don Pedro.” I may not be named Peter, but I will get me a wife.
      I wander away from my home with my utensils still in my hands, and I walk until I come upon my road. It is wide and long and made of black, and it is covered in dust, but it smells like oil, and in the middle are two lines of yellow paint. I turn to the right and look up at the sky. I walk towards the sun and don’t stop until I see the village on the horizon. Then I keep on walking because that is where I am going, I simply like to stop at the top of that particular hill to look at the skyline of so many buildings. Many of them are falling over, and some did long before my time, but they’re all much taller than me, and poke at the sky I should think. In the village there is a place with many other people, but I just want one of them. I want the woman named Gold who is frozen there in the ice and water and strange things under thick glass. I pick up a hammer that is leaning against a wall of glass panels that reads DR, and I keep on walking towards the frozen mausoleum. When I get there I smash the door to a mound of broken splinters with my hammer, because I’ve tried the lock before and it’s closed. I walk over to Gold’s bed, enclosure, and I start talking to her, and to the old machines that are keeping her alive without letting her get older. The screen blinks at me and says in a buzzing, droning voice, “What do you want, Rain?”
      “I’ve come for, Gold. I have the sky to look upon, and a home to sleep inside of, but I want to have a child by tomorrow morning. Give me Gold so I can go.”
      “Alright, alright. Keep your nudity in check, sir. I’ll awaken Miss Gold for you.”
      “Thank you.”
      The foggy air inside of her glass tube begins to ripple and flow, and then I see Gold rolling around on her sides inside as if she’s quite suddenly restless, then the glass top rises and I reach inside and pick her up. “Good morning, Gold.”
      “Hello, Rain.” She says with a voice that in my ears is the only voice.
      “I’m taking you home today, Gold.”
      “That’s good, Rain. Where is home?”
      “It is on a hill, surrounded by windy, green grass and trees that will be filled with green leaves in thirty days. It is far from the roads that smell like tar, but not far from here. No, no not far.”
      “Alright, Rain, let’s go home. However, I ask that you carry me. My legs are stiff, and the sinews are weak.”
      “I would carry you until the sun was not, Gold.”
      “Thank you, Rain, though I do hope that I will walk again some day.”
      “You will.”
      I carry her away from the mausoleum with the lippy machines. I have left the hammer there. I walk, and she talks to me about how the village is. I know all of what she is saying before she says it, but I love her more for each syllable that she mouths. The ground is all stone, but I don’t mind because my feet are strong, and nothing can cut them. We walk until I am back on my hill, and when we are there we look down at the village again. Now the sun is above us, and it no longer shines behind the buildings, but they are still beautiful, and the sun shines again from each of them. “Come with me, darling Gold.” I say, “There is food, and there is a right bed where we are going.”
      “Alright, Rain. That sounds lovely.” She coos in my arms.
      The road does not feel so long when I walk with her in my arms, nor does the hill seem so high. I open the door to my home with my toes, and I go and put gold onto a large, soft, enveloping couch near my table and sink; I then sit down beside her and grip her to me. “Wait…  Rain… Mm, Rain! Ow. Should you not stow those pieces of metal so that they don’t stick me?”
      “Certainly, my love. What a capital idea.” I drop my spork and knife from my pockets into the sink and pour water on them. I scrub them with a rough, yellow cloth, and place them in a sieve cup on the corner of the rack next to the sink. Now I return to the couch, and my darling Gold.
      “Darling… Oh! Rain… Wait. I am hungry, Love. Should you not prepare me a meal?”
      “Certainly, my love. What a decadent idea.” I take my bowl and the bowl that I made precisely for her, outside and greet the sky again.
      “Good afternoon, Sky! My lady love has been returned to me. She is my darling Gold, and she is going to produce a son for me. However, Sky, I’m afraid that Gold is hungry, and so I ask to take a bit more of you to feed her, and I would like to take a bit more for myself so that I can eat beside her and not leave her eating uncomfortably alone.” I pause. “Alright.”
      I reach up with the bowls and scoop more of the sky away. “My! What brilliant stars there are…?”
      “RAIN!”
      “Y-yes, darling…?”
      “Is the food coming, love?”
      “O-of course, love.”
      “Thank you, Rain. It’s alright.”
      “What is?”
      “What?”
      “What is alright?”
      “The fact that you’ve decided to keep me waiting so that you can look at your friend, the Sky.”
      “I’m not intentionally keeping you-“
      “No, no. It’s alright that you like to spend time with the Sky more than you like to spend time with me.”
      “Now, Gold, that is entirely unfair. I go to talk to the sky to put food on your table. I expect gratitude, not acceptance… Well I expect acceptance, I accept acceptance, as well.”
      “Alright, Rain. Whatever you say. Just come inside so we can eat now, love.”
      “Yes, love.”
      I wander back to the door and open it. She is still lying on the couch, though I cannot quite recall whether she was facing this direction, or the other before. I would be surprised for her to find the strength to turn herself, or the cause to do so. I shrug.
      “Here it is, darling Gold.”
      “Ohhh, goody.”
      I hand her, her perfect bowl into her perfect hand, and offer her the other spork.
      “Honey?”
      “Yes, love?”
      “What is that?”
      “It’s a spork. You use it to eat with. See look here-“
      “No, no. I know what it’s used for. Why do you, why do I, have to use it?”
      “Well, you see, it’s a more efficient utensil than the old ones, the spoon and the fork, because it is capable of each of their tasks without having to change what I am carrying in my hand.”
      “I know dear, but it’s just, a bit goofy. A bit… uncivilized.”
      “Uncivilized? I am the first man! I have invented civilization. You don’t get to tell me what is and is not uncivilized!”
      “Darling, don’t shout. That’s terribly uncivil.”
      “Criticizing your savior in his own home is what is uncivil.”
      “Darling I won’t be bearing any children ever if you continue to harass me.”
      I pause at this.
      “Do you want that? Do you want no children at all? Do you want to be so famous that you are both first and last man?”
      “No, darling Gold. I want a son. I’m sorry. I meant no disrespect. I’ll make you every variety of fork and spoon that you can imagine tomorrow morning. For now, will a spork suffice?”
      “Yes, dear, it most certainly will.”
      “Good… How gracious…”
      We eat the sky and then I put our dishes in the sink and scrub them with my rough, yellow cloth. Then I sit down beside her again and hold her to me once more.
      “Wait, uh, darling. Oh! Wait, wait, Rain!!”
      “Yes, Gold?”
      “I am,” She yawned, “Terribly drowsy after our meal. Perhaps we could merely take a nap tonight, and then tomorrow I might bear you a child?”
      “My Gold… Certainly. What a slothful idea.”
      She smiles at me as if she did not understand what I just said to her, but that it does not matter, and yea though I have walked on roads of black tar, the first woman is a difficult nut to crack.

A Prophetic Dream?

I received a vivid dream last morning. It began with me in a dual-perspective. I perceived everything as myself watching a movie with my siblings, but felt such direct empathy as the apparent protagonist of the movie who was some canned, Westley-like, dashing hero that I felt as if I was him also. I, myself, was making jokes about the movie with my brothers, while I, the protagonist, swept up a beautiful woman who loved me and took her to a bed in some beautifully designed room that was massive in my eyes. It had the quality of some Romantic ballroom, with marble trimmings and pillars, and gorgeous reliefs on the walls and ceiling. Then a giant stormed through the door. The giant held both a terrifying association, and a friendly familiarity. The giant seemed to be filled with jealousy, or some paternally protective psychology. My perception was fully in the movie now, but I was still split, now between the handsome protagonist, and a reasonably ugly, short creature named Bilbo (my unconscious is creative). Through some mixture of an absurdly proportioned saw and a gouging drill, the floor beneath the bed was about to fall out, taking the bed and the dashing hero and his woman with it down through another room that I assumed was going to be equally tall. Therefore we would fall to our deaths. The bed and the floor beneath it were all rotating in the distinct manner that a merry-go-round does before I realized that the floor was going to go away. Then Bilbo saved the hero to some sanctuary by unclear means, and the whole dream switched to the giant driving bilbo in a pick-up truck to some massive, vividly colorful, well-lit farm in the wee hours of the morning. The drive in the truck was utterly silent, both for lack of things that seemed possible to say, and because we were both numbed by the fatigue of having recently awaked. The drive was also immeasurably long, when considered chronologically. I was wearing the boots that I wear in real-life, except they were bright red and white, and the laces were red yarn. When I stepped out of the truck the boots had turned orange, with orange yarn for laces, and I turned to the giant and said some meaningless phrase that implied some manner of solidarity between him and I, and he responded, “There’s no more we, there’s no more us. We aren’t friends at all anymore, Bilbo. It’s finished.” Then I leaned up out of my bed and turned off my alarm. This dream seemed oddly indicative to me of certain things related to a woman that I have recently fallen in love with. However, I am not certain how much weight I should give the dream, or if I do give it weight, I know not whether I should attempt to avoid involving myself with her, or simply progress further with her while protecting myself from one large, impressive man or another. Love is murky.

The Ginger

 It was November 1^st, that day of blithe spirits, in the year 1897. I was at home with my lady, Martha, and she was informing me of a recent calamity.
      “Where, oh where is my ginger?!” She crowed.
      “Ginger? You’re going to prepare an Indian curry?” I slyly responded.
      “You know what I am discussing, Horatio!” Martha was full of acid at times like this, and it made me sick to be brewed overmuch in it.
      “Yes, yes. You’ve lost your ginger cat. Is that so, my love?”
      “He’s not anywhere! That devilish rogue, I must dress him and give him his duck pâté!”
      “Perhaps ‘twas the pâté that ran him off,” I rumbled, “or possibly the pink bonnet.” I added more audibly.
      “The ginger,” she replied, “is mine to do with as I please… my love.” Martha’s use of the endearing phrase carried no tone of its meaning so that one might easily exchange it for any number of harsher descriptors.
      “Well, Martha,” I began, “what do you expect me to do about your ginger vagabond?”
      “Find him, of course!” Martha exploded. “He must be found and you are the one to do it!”
      “Why me?”
      “Because you are my husband! For the love of our father who arte in heaven! Have you lost all sense of self, Horatio?”
      “I’ve plenty sense of my own self, it’s your self whose logic is unsensible to me.”
      Martha burst into tears and collapsed dramatically into an overstuffed chair. “You awful, awful man!” She cried. “Why have I made such a mistake? My father was correct, ‘A clever tongue matches not an obedient wit and strong back’!”
      I crumpled slightly, “You’re father really said that? Well he’s a perfect example for me to base myself on I suppose. I’ve never seen a more obedient man. Certainly, if I confronted him on this insult and demanded satisfaction, I would not be surprised if he pointed his pistol at himself in our duel.” I chuckled at my own humour. I was quite the comicist in my youth.
      Martha stood up and tiptoed over to me. When she had come closer she bent down to be level with my eyes while I remained in my seat. On this particular morning her corsets seemed to be particularly well trussed, and her dress was flattering, if not scandalous. As any proper husband would, I enjoyed the view. “You pitiful man,” she accused as she stood up straight. “Well, if you ever want to be sharing my bed again you will go out into those woods and you will find my ginger!” With that, Martha stormed off to what had just become her bedroom.
      I sulked for a few moments, and drank a tumbler of brandy before changing from my house coat and pants into the simple clothes of a laborer. I recalled that Martha often carried a bit of her perfume and some of her ginger’s delicacy, the revolting pâté, in her bag. With the thought of baiting the ginger out of hiding, I took her bag with me and set off out the servants’ entrance towards the misty woods beyond.
      The air was crisp and dripping. My hair was damp by the time I had crossed the yard and reached the edge of our woods. There was a high stone wall with an open gate of iron that I crossed through. The path was littered with dead leaves, small weeds and shrubs, and the occasional sapling, though most of the trees were quite large. The pale, late autumn sky would have been completely blotted out by deciduous leaves earlier in the year, but at this point the air above was wild with a spider web of thick and thin branches embracing and tickling one another. There was a small pond in the middle of the woods that burbled in muddy repose. During the warm months it is often surrounded by skunk cabbage and cowslip, and the surface murky with algae. Presently it was murky all on its own.
      I stepped lightly through the dank humus of the path, for any harder steps would have sucked my boots in a muddy embrace. It had rained on all hallow’s eve and everything was still wet; the wood, yard, and me. Each step through those old, foggy woods brought a “squelch, squelch, squelch” to my ears. It was disgusting. Toads chirped near the pond as I veered round its south bank. The dogs barked and crooned in the hills to the east. The woods were alive.
      I found that as I walked, the execrable odour of the cat’s pâté began wafting out of Martha’s bag quite pungently. I grew more and more certain that I would find him soon enough. In a flash I felt a terrible dragging at the bag in my hand as if it had been nabbed by a rosebush in my carelessness. It was in fact my dear Martha’s ginger cat who clung to the bottom of her bag and whose eyes were milky white and strange to me. He dragged at the bag as I attempted to wrest him from it, and in the end he turned his fury upon me. The ginger was filthy from frolicking in the muddy swamp and I was filled with the fear of the pox when his claws were brought to bear. I dropped the bag in my haste to escape him, and the vile devil made off with it and the duck pâté.
      Bewildered, and knowing that I now required two things if my wife were ever again to allow me beside her, I cast about myself in the mucky bole for a stick of wood to threaten the cat with. I brought a thin cudgel up from the mess of leaves and dirt and began sneaking about, wraith like, in search of the ginger cat once more. I assumed that he would soon stop with her bag and dig around for the pâté. It would take time for the ginger to fully consume it, and he would be nauseously satisfied with the amount I had brought.
      Suddenly, I spied an orangish lump a ways before me. I made for it carefully like a rogue dodger, and found it to be quite fuzzy when I went down and lifted it up. However said orangish lump was in fact a strange sweater that bore a striking resemblance to one that I had left at home in the dresser. On it was writing in a bright, complimentary blue that read, “Don’t be daft!” I deemed it good advice, but the writing ruined the sweater, and I had no idea how the sweater or the writing could have appeared at this location, at this time, without another soul in the woods but my ginger quarry.
      Then I grew truly put out with the festersome feline. I brought the stick heavy in my hands, gripped with white knuckles, and went again with the ruined sweater dangled over one shoulder. I thought for a moment I had heard the hungry noise of my prey and so I paused against a tree and spied around for him. Just as I was ready to call it a false alarum and press on, I was startled to the possibility of stroke when the ginger’s melancholic “Merow!” came to my ears from directly behind me. I whirled and raised the bludgeon over my head as if to smite him, but my blow was stopped before I made it by the earth shattering shock of what came next.
      There I stood, stick of wood in my hands, facing down a minuscule, orange cat who opened his mouth and in a squeaky, pompous, little voice he began shooting words out at me from the pit of his larynx. The ginger cat was just as tiny and filthy as before, but now he carried a disturbing and magical quality as he expounded and obfuscated. As he was crouching there before me, and I stood stock still with the cudgel held limply in my hands, his words were drilled permanently into my mind. I call them back in perfect detail now: “Mr. Roth. I want to thank you for the delicious pâté that you so generously brought to me. The aroma was breathtaking. The flavor made my coarse tongue sizzle with delight. The texture held allusions to the heart and liver of a rabbit after one allows it to rot appropriately for three days. I say bravo, Mr. Roth, bravo! You don’t happen to have any more do you?”
      I was dumb to his question, but my stupefied stuttering was quickly cut off by his resumed monologue.
      “It matters not, for I doubt that I could stomach another morsel of the magnificent concoction. In the meantime, what would you say to continuing our little game of cat and man? I was finding it so delightful that I can barely contain my glee at this very moment. All I truly desire presently is to leap upon you and have you hide away once more as you so deliberately did the first time I showed my teeth!” The cat laughed abominably at this juncture. Then he went on, “You are such a canny adversary, Mr. Roth, although I do say that I have quite soiled myself with all of this frolicking. My fur is filthy beyond measure! Particularly this blue paint. I do say that bit of wordsmithing on your sweater took a great deal of effort and has charged me a certain bath in exchange, though truly I do delight in my baths with your wife. She is such a lovely woman, and a magnificent bather.” Then the cat dropped off into nostalgic mewling.
        Obviously, I was appalled and disturbed beyond reference by the time the ginger had finished his pontification, and assuming the ginger to in fact be the familiar of a witch who one would assume is undoubtedly my wife, though I doubted that, I resumed my former posture and smote him with the stick. However what I had not realized before was that the piece of wood was truly coated with mushrooms and was naught but punky rot within. It disintegrated in my hands from the force of air pushing against it and nothing at all struck the ginger cat when I had come to the end of my swing. He cackled good-naturedly and stated, “Oh my, that was an auspicious occurrence for me, Mr. Roth. What do you say we simply head back to the home? I would quite like a nuzzling from Mrs. Roth about now.”
      “I certainly am ready to call this off and head home, you truly fair, and kind Samaritan of a ginger cat.” I had wanted to call him a number of other things, but my clearest desire was to simply get him into my home, get my wife into bed one last time, collect my effects and escape that daft witch and her felinis familiarus. I scooped the cat up and wrapped my ruined sweater around him, which served to get more blue paint on his fur than there had been already.
      As I walked back through the mucky woods the mist was beginning to clear, and a white November sky shown brightly through the net of skeleton branches up above. The dirt was a bit drier than I had first found it, and my steps no longer spoke of, “squelch, squelch, squelch,” but simply, “Tap, tap, tap, shuffle, tap, tap, tap.” The cat would occasionally attempt to strike up a conversation with me, but I simply pressed the sweater down harder each time and pretended that it was only the muffled calls of dogs in the distance.
      When I finally saw the iron gate ahead my heart felt lighter than ever before, I would return this demonic beast to his rightful owner, she would shower me with her affections one last time, and I would steal away in the night after battering her with a rock. The grass was finally dry enough that it did not soak into my socks and pants legs, though it did brush a bit of the mud off, and my house looked the same going in as it had going out. When I came to the door I rapped on it, and Martha came to the door; her hair a mess and her face distressed.
      “Did you find him?!”
      “I did. I found him and more.” I replied as I scooped him out of my defiled sweater. “Apparently the garish little rogue had stolen away my sweater and written a bit of good advice on it for me. Luckily I didn’t need the advice and, um… Darling?”
      Martha had taken the ginger from my hands and was indeed holding his face up to her mouth and kissing him full on the… well, um, whiskers I suppose. Cats don’t have proper lips so it’s hard to describe, but I sensed a distinct romantic quality to her gesture that I thought was more due to me, than to a rubbish ginger who had stolen away again.
      I tramped in, pushing past their lovers’ embrace, dropped her bag on the ground beside them, and went upstairs. I changed into proper travel clothes and began assorting my necessary belongings within a suitcase. As diabolous noises of repugnant debauch came to my ears from below, I uttered a cruel oath, and described my wife Martha, “vile woman.”
      I began ranting aloud in my chamber, for there was no one around. “What a filthy, vile woman. I can barely describe her as a woman! To love a ginger cat, not just emotionally more than myself, but physically! She’s a demon! A witch! She invokes Him to me when manipulating me merely to capture her… lover. She disgusts me! Honestly Horatio what have you done? Why would you ever marry such a vile woman? A vile woman!!!!”
      I latched up the suitcase and collected my rapier and pistol. When I had properly appropriated them I went down stairs with the case’s handle gripped firmly in my left hand. My pistol was holstered on my left side so that by reaching across myself I could easily go to draw it with my right hand. Down in the den Martha was playfully caressing the ginger cat on our sofa and he purred suggestively to her. I scowled at them and faced Martha head on.
      “Martha,” I said, “I’m leaving for an extended trip. I’m taking my money with me, and all that I will need. I hope that your feline comrade can perhaps go and hunt you some food, or perhaps you would conjure your sustenance out of a heretical blood fire.”
      Her gay laughter stopped and Martha faced me, “Horatio, what in God’s name are you talking about?”
      “Do not speak of His name! I know what you are, witch. Your ginger spoke to me in conversational tones!”
      “Spoke, Horatio?” She asked. “That’s preposterous, Horatio, why would a cat ever do that?”
      My eyes narrowed as I looked on my wife playing with her delicate little Beelzebub. He smirked up at me, and his white eyes winked playfully.
      “Martha,” I addressed her, “It matters not whether you are willing to admit to your vileness now, or ever. I know what I experienced, and I take my leave now. Good day!” I ended the little speech as firmly as I could. She looked back at me as I stepped out of the den and towards my stables, but soon I knew that she was back to doing unclean things with her ginger. I unhitched my strongest horse, and rode hard for the city. I am happy here.
      Though as I complete this telling of scorn and strange tidings on that blithe day, I find I am still rich in wondering of what was happening there in my home. Whether my wife deserves a burning stake or not, I stand by my recording of her ginger’s uncouth, familiar speech, and though I wonder still on their relationship, I would not return to that property without a legion at my back.

Ode to Loneliness

Loneliness you are a bland draught;
I have made myself drunk with you
these four years,


Loneliness you drain the color of Earth;
I am now drowned in your flaxen haze
dry of tears,


Loneliness the world is sludge in my hands;
I am your beggar shambling in the mud
of seventeen years,


Loneliness you reek of stale second courses;
I have found no solace from your olfactory reminder
of unshared beer,


Loneliness you ring in my ears even now;
I am quivering with the painful song of your pipes
harmonic with my peers,


Loneliness you plague me unwanted
though well invited,
I shall shatter your withered embrace
and be free in a warm embrasure.

First time around...

So let's see how this keyboard works. Hmm... Ah, so that's how I do an ellipsis. How y'all doin' out there? Any car troubles? Any power supply troubles? I tell ya this here information superhighway is the slickest road that's ever touched my feet. Anyhow, let's get down to business.
I'm gonna be writin' some things, and I'm gonna be postin' up some old things that I wrote before now. I want you all to talk to me about 'em, so we can have a conversation. The best writers I love the most are always tellin' their readers that the most important reason for the written word isn't for packing a vocabulary lesson into every sentence; it is for communicating. I'm gonna do my best to be as grammatically correct as I can be. I'm going to try to stay stylish with my writing without losing the muscle of my words. I'm going to try to say the things that I mean, and not the things that I hope people will like. I'm going to try to write the right words when they are demanded. I'm going to try to keep track of my homonyms. I hope you all enjoy it, or get somethin' out of it.
Much obliged,
-David Blair