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So my job recently took a turn for the AWESOME. I now get to write blog articles, trawl the internet for links, and post stuff to Facebook and Twitter - and get paid for it. That's pretty cool. It also means I have cash (woo!), which means I can do stuff like a pre-order signed copy of The Ocean at the End of the Lane  and freak out over it and see if putting it next to a signed Terry Pratchett novel will spawn a signed Good Omens. Unfortunately, it has not as of yet.

So my life is pretty cool right now. Have a poem:


In days long past, when night was gone
Us children faced the sun;
We'd sing and play, we'd grasp the day,
and enjoy the light we'd won.

From the to now the night is nothing
but the shadow of the world,
Not a terror or a fiend
nor dangerous flag unfurled.

I remember days long past
when daylight was the goal
To survive the night, spread wings, take flight
and escape the darkness whole.

Where did the sense of terror go?
And the joy of fighting through?
Why do only children fear the dark,
What was it that we knew?

I wish that I could feel again
that fear, that fierce desire,
To know the night as children do,
and to know that inner fire.

Notebook Week Part 2

Hullo there. Another poem, because they're what I do when my brain doesn't work. Next post should be written the day it's posted, which mean probably far less thought will be put into it. Sorry about that.

This is a villanelle, which is, according to the illustrious Poets.org, "a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2."

Honestly, when I wrote this, I had the pattern for lines and repetitions sitting next to me so I wouldn't screw it up. I rather like it.

The Problem with Curiosity

Strange things wait beyond every door

The world's grown strange as it's grown old

No one knows everything anymore

More and more, people grew bold

Knowing there's always more tale to be told

Strange things wait beyond every door

Secrets of the universe unfold

But still more multiply uncontrolled

No one knows everything anymore.

Though we write facts down, and grab ahold

Knowledge odder yet lurks out in the cold

Strange things wait beyond every door

Where once men could know all that was told

Fact's kith and kin have run and unrolled

No one knows everything anymore

Our calm piece of mind was long ago sold

For knowledge, or gold that begets ever gold

Strange things wait beyond every door

No one know everything anymore.

Notebook Week Part 1

Here's a pantoum from my notebook, because I promised content, and goshdarnit, I'll deliver!  It's not one of my favorite things I've done, but it's a decent example of how my inner poet has been affected by Gaiman and goths.

A pantoum, according to Poets.org, is "a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first."

Time

Bricked up doors and empty arches

Empty nights and empty bottles

Onward, onward, time it marches

Lovers least of all it coddles

Empty nights and empty bottles

Mark the time as it passes

Lovers least of all it coddles

Left in tears and broken glasses

Mark the time as it passes

For mem'ry of moments now long gone

Left in tears and broken glasses

Inexorably, time moves on

For mem'ry of moments now long gone

Try to better those passing now

Inexorably, time moves on

But only as empty as we allow

Try to better those passing now

Moments precious, moments swift

Only as empty as we allow

Treat them well or have nothing left

Moments precious, moments swift

Onward, onward, time it marches

Treat it well or have nothing left

But bricked up doors and empty arches

Can't Believe I'm Posting This

So I did an experiment in rhythmic poetry a while back, but never really did anything with it. Then I was clearing off a thumb drive this afternoon and found it, and realized it wasn't that awful. So for the sake of content I present to you a poem meant to be read aloud:


Untitled - an Experiment in Rhythm

This is a story of the other – a basic tale, just another
Fable of the brother, border haunter, whom we’d rather
Never know, whose name we will not, cannot speak,
Lest he know we still remember and our places comes to seek.
‘A bleak December.’ Words more true were never spoken
Yet they are but barest token of the havoc he would wreak.

This other man (whose name we shun) is the not first true flesh-born Son,
Born of man and not of earth, born of her whose name means breath,
But his brother – the second ‘til his Lord, he chose him, chose the other
(First is nextborn), chose sweet blood o’er sweat of firstborn, choosing sacrifice
Of Lamb over work of human hand, chose last lifeblood over life’s work
And so quickly caused the slaughter of the other by the elder.

They claim the elder is the evil, caused all evil, was the Devil
But we here know he was lesser – crimes of passion rarely fester.
Vengeance is the worst of evils, lasts forever, never over.
And the other (resurrected, by the Lord who loved him over
Elder Brother, and thus now lives a half-life on the border)
Now seeks vengeance o’er the brother, he who slew him, his own brother.

He has lived his half-life for a lifetime and another
Never over, never dying - for the Lord in understanding
Granted him a life eternal, him to rescue from infernal
Fires (Lucifer was even then a mortal terror). For the other
Was the favorite of the Lord (who reigns forever), thus could not be
Let to die, like some poor mortal, like all mortals such as we.

But no mere human (he was human) could survive eternal life
And he didn’t, he went madder then the children of a hatter.
As he walked along the border ‘tween the world and our own lands,
He died slowly, became other. But the Lord, he did not notice,
For the Lord’s mind (it is constant) lays beyond the reach of madness,
And even if it didn’t, tell me, could we ever know?

So the other brother, first but last-born, went insane
As he trod along the border, in the never-ending rain.
His mind it wandered far abroad, South and East and West
And North, and far in Faerie-lands, and hells, and all the rest
He went insane and wondered who had caused him to live on,
But could not censor Lord on high upon the great eternal throne.

Then he realized his brother, he who sleweth him in slumber,
Caused the death from which he had been resurrected into this
Unlife which he could not, never, would not ever be released from
(For the Lord he loved him so that he would never rot (Release him!))
So against his brother’s offspring (The Lord still guarded Elder Brother),
Second-born swore vengeance past the hundredth generation.

So he lurked along the border, (the Lord on high paid him no heed)
And he killed those first cross-overs and he watched them slowly bleed
He felt the scars of likened wounds trace fire ‘cross his chest
(Even so the Lord’s own Son had death-wound scars, such as these)
And he felt a satisfaction that had never before been imagined
So Blood Lust entered the world, and all mortals hence have suffered.

The other kept up his killing and precious few have made the cross,
From this world unto the other, and this has been a life-long loss
Us children of the elder son are mythical (they think us gone),
The other world believes us dead (they never were) and moves along
Second-born knows this, and rejoices, he will rest when we’re forgotten
The children of the elder son, the Fae, the misbegotten.

The thousandth generation long ago has died away
Us few poor remnants forced to hide and fear the light of day
We hide between the borders of the Garden and the world
One never more to enter, and the other to be feared.
We cannot cross those age-old lines, (we yet fear retaliation)
The race of Fae shall die away, due to one man’s detestation.