Pancakes II: The Fiction and Poetry Thread

[Tragic]

"Now This Is Just Arson"

[Scourge]

Adding to my stuff here. I do this thing where every few years I write an albums worth of material for my fantasy music career. So as I continue to add to this fantasy album, I'll keep putting the stuff into a single post. These are silly pop songs, but they actually have some emotional baggage of mine in them and reflect some actual things from the past few years.

The first one, Empty Parking Lots at 4a.m., is about me and my girlfriend, whom I was with for 3 1/2 years before she had to leave the country. We we very close, but every 8 or 9 months we'd have these really quiet moments and she'd ask me what our plans were together, and I couldn't ever answer her.

The second one, Same Sky, is about two girls. The first verse is about a pen pal I used to have in Shenzhen, China. We'd write pretty often, but then there was a shake up at the magazine she worked at as the government started to crack down on corruption in companies. This was around the same time that a U.S. plane crashed on Hainan Island, and carried over through to the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. During this period, there were several times when I was pretty aware that she wasn't the one emailing me, that someone else was using her account, and they were asking very pointed questions and the "voice" in the messages was very strange and devoid of what I was used to with her.

The second verse goes back to my girlfriend, who after living in the U.S. for 13 years, either waited too long to renew her visa or just was flat out not allowed to, so she had to leave the U.S. and go back to Cyprus.

**edit** Just did a third one called Take Me Home Now. It's more situational. I used to get dragged to parties by my girlfriend a lot, thrown by people I didn't know for people I didn't know. I've got a bit of a social anxiety complex (and she did too, but not as bad and her way of dealing with it was to force herself to do these things) and parties with strangers really freak me out. My only consolation was that she was there with me and could make me feel comfortable from fifty feet away through twenty-five people, just by looking my way and smiling.


Empty Parking Lots at 4a.m.

The lights of the city diffuse in the a.m. dew
The car moves in slow motion, the radio whispering a long ago tune
The streets are all empty, the city is sleeping
Even the ghosts have all gone to bed
You pull into an empty parking lot
And stop ‘neath the skyline towering overhead

We’re still stealing glances, three years in a lifetime
Together, but what lies ahead?
You ask, “What are our chances?” and I stare
In the gloaming silent and sadly
The clock on the dash reads 4a.m.

Overhead a plane full of strangers flies, taking them all
Where their destinations lie, and the airplane so high
Is nearly silent in the black of the early morning sky
From there we walk down a boulevard downtown row
Of Townhomes where few amber lights shine through
Windows of other people’s lives

Back at your place, you’re glowing
In your bedroom, July Christmas lights of blue
And we lay without talking, but I’m holding you tightly
Afraid to let go too soon



Same Sky

You are a friend whom I’ve never met
In a place I’ve longed to get
Imagined voices always unheard
Lives exchanged in the written word
The code we spoke in is still haunting me
Cautious phrases should prying eyes see
Last Lunar New Year I said ‘hello’
You replied in brief, said later details would follow
Well later hasn’t come and I still don’t know
…What happened to you
Did they root you out? Did they let you go?
What if you didn’t make it?
What if you didn’t make it?

Across the great divide
Our world is split twenty thousand miles wide
Four seas between you and I
But every day and night
We live and breathe beneath
The same sky

You are the love I used to know
Now in a place I cannot go
All those hours we used to share
The conversations of a lifetime
…And the bedside theater
Now paired down to quips in text
And I’m always left waiting for the next
It was an accident
You let your papers slip
And now I’m left here hanging
Bereft and inutile
Why couldn’t we just make it?
Why couldn’t we just make it?

Across the great divide
Our world is split ten thousand miles wide
Two seas between you and I
But every day and night
I cry beneath
The same sky



Take Me Home Now

Take me home now
I’ve had my fill
Of drinks and hors d’oeuvres
That keep being shilled

Take me home now
I don’t know these people
And forced conversation
Is taking its toll

I smile and make small talk
With strangers who I’ll have to re-introduce
Myself to again in less than a year

I get myself up for this
But every single time
I swear I feel the same fear

Take me home now
It’s too crowded here
And I’m only here
Because you’re here

Take me home now
Whatever you ask, you know I can’t say no
We’ve put in our face-time
So I think it’s finally time that we can go

You leave me alone
And I stand by the bar
All conspicuous and awkward and weird

I get myself up for this
But every single time
I swear I feel the same fear

Take me home now
Our eyes meet across the crowded room
And every time I look into yours
I smile for real and relax and want to go home with you soon

Take me home now
You know I’ve really tried my best
Our obligation is filled and all that is left
Is that you and I get out of this place



If You’re All That’s Left I’ll Be All Right

Two hearts in far off places and never the twain shall meet
Two ships in the night lost on the same black sea
Two lovers entwined was just a fool’s dream
A stitch not in time to save a ripped seam

Too much too soon or too little too late
When the lust turns to love and the love turns to hate
If you’re all that’s left I’ll be all right
If we stumble upon one another like thieves in the night

Amid concrete and clay and general decay
How dearly we would love to kick with the fray
We paint on smiles and hang with the fey
But not a day goes by that’s not a dog-end day

Too little too late or too much too soon
When the sun goes down and up comes the moon
If you’re all that’s left I’ll be all right
Should we stumble upon each other like thieves in the night



First Rain of Summer

The summer burns two months on
No reprieve from the heat seems near
The days seem much too long
Especially without you here

Out of nowhere comes the clouds today
A draize settles in and the day turns gray
A few sparse drops turn into a drizzle
And the city begins to hiss and to sizzle

Most of these days start the same
A dream of things I’d rather forget
The sun comes up and hangs in place
And warms over my regret

Today buildings steam and slick are the streets
And the baked ground and grass wet smell so sweet
The drizzle picks up and soon is a storm
And the first rain of summer washes over us all

You said one year, maybe a little more
But things got screwed up for you
And one year maybe more
Soon turned into never

The dust is beat down and soon drowned in puddles
The cars are confused, the drivers’ minds muddled
Headlights shine at the peak of the afternoon
And I wonder if it’s raining where you are too

[Scourge]

Another one for the above collection. I'm a bit of a hopeless romantic I guess.

Wide Awake Asleep Again

A pox and a palsy
Must have taken over me
As I rose from bed this morning
And my head was swimming
Sleep is infrequent these nights
Maybe exhaustion’s setting in

No green light beckons across the way
Like forgotten spirits of yesterday
I’ve pushed you as far as I’m comfortable pushing
No matter how hard I’ve tried
I can’t purge you from my mind
Though you’ve pushed me entirely away

Conversations still linger unfinished
Questions asked and playful repartees
Ripostes of the charming kind that still endear me
And how I miss the voice behind them
It fades and it echoes, echoes and fades
As much as it warms me, I should probably wish it away

Driving in to work today
Another long way like every other day
Another hour lost in my head
Another reason I should stay in bed
If I could only sleep without dreaming
Or force myself to stay awake again

I’m wide awake asleep again
Or narrowly asleep waking
And the toll it’s taking is the last grip I’ve got
On being sober, and it’s slipping

[Cowutopia]

I like the last three lines a lot.

[Scourge]

I like the last three lines a lot.

Thanks

Here's something else I was working on today. I'm not sure where it's going or if I like it. It's not done, but I might not finish it.


Photographs of Consequence

Photographs of consequence
Fade in family albums
Until forgotten moments
No longer fleeting
Disappear forever
Transparent in their silence

Remembering some Halloween
October autumn cool
The dark is early, the sidewalks full
We three trick-or-treat the last time

I’m a pirate, he’s a ghost, you’re a princess

Here I stand outside our old house
We’ve just moved in, first on the street
Boys with bikes and pom-pom girls
Were soon to move in stealthily

A butterfly with broken wings, a private school, a would be friend

This is church and these are churchies
And that’s you running in the church yard
Trying to get away from bee stings,
Bees chasing you away from Sunday walnut collecting

A parking lot for congregating, glass doors and hands for shaking

That’s dad’s work truck in the drive
I used to like to work the vice
The bumper’s still bent on the left
Where someone one time bumped into it

Tube tops, doctor, and telephone calls, three sisters and a new pet

Here are cousins we hardly met
Like a mirrored family alternate
We were close for some weeks or months
But ultimately stayed separate

[Brisco Bold]

Does this stuff just hit you? Or do you plan it out? I know nothing about poetry.

[Scourge]

Does this stuff just hit you? Or do you plan it out? I know nothing about poetry.

Random phrases hit me. But they normally hit me at inopportune times, so I just try to store them. There's no real planning that goes into it. For Wide Awake Asleep Again, I had the first two lines and a rough idea of what the content would be about (har har). I didn't have a name for it and started reading it back and that phrase came to me and then I wrote the last stanza. Sometimes just a bit of an idea will stay with me for a very long time (weeks, months, years) and then one day I'll have A LINE and be able to work from there

'Wide Awake Asleep Again' took about 15 minutes. 'Photographs of Consequence' (though not done) took fewer than that.

I've got some tricks for writing this stuff that I use that help it to write itself. I'd like to say what they are, but it'd cheapen what I do, and it can't get much cheaper. Okay, okay, here they are:

1) Try to use as few words as possible to describe something as meaningfully as possible.("Remembering some Halloween/October autumn cool/The dark is early, the sidewalks full")

2) Heavy on the alliteration and inner rhyming.(alliteration: "Photographs .../Fade ...family/...forgotten/...fleeting/...forever"; inner rhyming: "I’m wide awake asleep again/Or narrowly asleep waking/And the toll it’s taking is the last grip I’ve got/On being sober, and it’s slipping")

3) Use the same or similar words within a line or within a line of each other more than once, but which have or convey different meanings/ideas.("repartees/Ripostes")

3) Contrast between lines by expressing antonyms as synonyms.("...wide awake asleep again/Or narrowly asleep waking")

4) The cadence is as important as the words.

5) I like to write in a looping way so I end up at the beginning or begin at the end. Kind of always working in a circle or spiral. It's hard to explain, but it's about flow.

5) Literary references are good. ("No green light beckons across the way" ref. The Great Gatsby)

6) If you're unpublished, it's okay to steal from yourself to reuse the good lines for better stuff.("A green light beckons across the way/ Forgotten spirit yesterday" first used about 10 years ago in another poem of mine)

7) If you're not planning on being published, it's okay to steal from others too. Then you can use their good lines for your crappy stuff. (see 'If You're All That's Left I'll Be All Right' almost in it's entirety)

There's more I do I'm sure, but these things are second nature to me now and help to try to get a style down and a voice, but more than anything else they make it to where I can churn out some verses pretty swiftly. I'm not recommending what I do as the Way To Do It or The Way It's Done. It's just what I do. Another thing it's good for is getting over writer's block because I can practice those techniques regardless of any idea or inspiration.

If you look back at some of the past things I've posted in this or the other Pancakes thread, you'll see these little cheats I use in abundance.

[Scourge]

We Three

We three formed a coterie ~
I reminisce, we were the guard,
protecting nothing but our youths
we ran in circles loosely forming
some underground. Laughably
our self-import was our only export,
extolling virtues of mead and song,
'til a turn of events left one of three dead.

Two is hardly company
and we took it really hard,
all that chivalry, cocked up buffoonery
that looking back killed us all a bit,
but you would never recover and left us
all guilty of it in your mother’s eyes,
where cold steel grey would slice us up,
if she chose to recognize us at all.

Never speaking after six month’s time,
he and I went separate ways.
A single street apart, we
avoided each other interminably
until my family moved away.
Behind me I tried to leave it
and did until recently, and then came a letter
that undid everything.

I met him in the corner pub
between our streets of the old neighborhood.
We made our small talk and shared a lot
of quiet, catching up on lives fairly
parallel, struggling through our mid-lives
and trying to talk less to our wives.
We drank one for our fallen friend then,
then shook and left and won’t speak again.

[Scourge]

I like airports. I always find them somehow romantic.

Airports of Call

The planes all taxi synchronized
We make connections and check our flights

Schedules glow and scroll down screens
Arrivals, departures and cancellations

Redeyes read and layovers lie
In plastic chairs killing time

The gate signs blink and draw us apart
Queues at counters align to depart

Everyone vies for window seating
Everyone strangers bent on not meeting

Baggage is checked and carriage is filled
But everyone travels alone


A moment’s the smallest unit of time
The shortest distance between two points a line

Destinations differ even on similar journeys
We’re drifting apart with no date of returning

We’ve only just met and yet, and yet
On the ground we’re together under the sky

In the air we’re waving goodbye
In the air we’re waving goodbye

[Mman]

Although I have occasionally critiqued people's stories in these threads I have never posted one. That is probably because until my creative writing class I am now taking I haven't written fiction since grade school. However, I think I have managed to write at least two decent stories.

This one is called Desert Epic which is kind of cheesy, but it makes more since than it sounds. Anyway, I've been trying to edit it so that the frame narrative and the interior have two seperate and distince voices. Let me know what you think if you check it out.