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The Write Stories
The Write Poetry
Critique of the Month
Learn From the Masters
The Write "Stuff"
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Chicpower
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. The quiet quietly surrounded me. It was thick, practically tangible. So quiet, I thought I could hear the non-audible sound of the clock on top of my desk: "Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock."
"Where's mami? " I wondered, as I searched the room through sleepy eyes. Then my door opened, "Vamonos, let's go. Susy, get ready, we're going for a little trip. Welldon't just lie there! Go get David!" replied the voice of my mother over the clatter of high heels crashing against the tile floor, jingling keys, and the rustle of rapidly gathered papers, credit cards, and cash. My stomach grumbled loudly as if to remind me that I had not yet eaten breakfast. Yet, noting the urgency in her voice, the meal was temporarily forgotten as I sped across the hall to my brother David's room. "I wonder where we're going" I thought aloud.
Kneeling beside my brother's bed, I rocked him gently back and forth, hoping he'd wake up quickly because my knees were starting to hurt from rubbing against the floor. At last, the fluttering of eyelids revealed a pair of large, brown eyes, heirlooms from my grandfather. I delivered the message, "Let's go, we're leaving."
"Huh?"
"Put on some clothes. Let's go! Move it." He groaned in reply. I was beginning to see that this task required extreme measures. Seeing as verbal communication was not having its desired effect, I had begun to strip him of his comforter and blankets and had proceeded to opening the curtains. "Okay, okay" came the muttered reply, muffled by the big pillow over his head. Satisfied with the accomplishment of my errand, I ran downstairs to the kitchen, where my mother was preparing buttered toast.
"Did you wake up David?"
"Uh-huh."
Breakfast was short and uneventful. On the drive to the airport, my mother stopped at a neighbor's house. They spoke quietly and in hushed tones and I was unable to make out a single word of their conversation. Noting my puzzlement, my brother decided to clue me in, "I know where mami is taking us." I turned towards him and it seemed that my interest pleased him because a corner of his plump lip curved up into a sly grin. Ignoring it, I inquired, "Where?"
"We're going Puerto Rico."
"Por qu? Why?"
" 'Cuz Grandma died."
"Nah-ah. You're a liar." Shrugging his shoulders, he turned his attention back to his precious Gameboy. Taking my cue from him, I turned back around and settled into my seat. I leaned back and closed my eyes. Seeking clarity, I began to inwardly ponder the issue with which my brother had presented me, "It can't be true. What if it is? No, that's impossible. David is such a little liar. Why would he make up something like that? I'll ask mami. Mami will know the truth."
"Mami!" I called, hoping she heard me above the blare of the radio.
"What?" she yelled back.
"David said Grandma died; that's not true, right?"
"Yes, honey," I thought I heard her murmur, though I could tell she was thoroughly absorbed in something else. There! I was satisfied. I was right. David was wrong.
***
The plane trip that ended at San Juan International Airport took me to a place I was never to leave.
We grabbed our luggage at the terminal and went outside to wait for my father. He had arrived on the island a few days before us. When I first saw him, I could not believe it was him. My father, who never left the house but in a suit-and-tie was wearing a pair of faded jeans and a very wrinkled blue button-down shirt. More striking than his clothing was his face. My father's vivid and luminous eyes were raw and red. My formerly clean-shaven father had grown a beard. I had never seen him with a beard; maybe a mustache, but never a beard. Shock gave way to understanding. It is a custom among Jewish men to grow out one's beard when a close family member has died.
Death. It has been over seven years since that first real experience with death, and still I do not think I have begun to process the concept, nor do I believe I ever will. My grandmother was dead. I repeated the phrase over and over again in my head until it became nothing but an abstract blur of consonants and vowels. From that moment on, the world was no longer secure. I had come to a point of no return. During childhood, we are all protected by an invisible security blanket. It only takes one bad thing for that blanket to begin to unravel, after which we spend the rest of our lives futilely trying to sew the blanket back together. My grandmother's death was the first bad thing that ever happened to me; and, in that one brief instant my blanket was torn brutally away from me. I had learned my first of life's many harsh lessons: change is inevitable and nothing is forever.
I sit here in silence wondering what it all means. Glancing at the clock, it dawns on me that the seconds it marks are the seconds of my life. As I struggle to finish this essay, the clock menaces me in the background. "You cannot shut me out," it whispers. "Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock."
THE WRITE POETRY
One Way Mirror
By Jonathan Kear
He stands in a street,
Alone with his mask,
Surrounded by life.
It does not come off,
And it does not change,
But it will always lie.
Yet it is not a part of him,
Just something given
By the blindness of a man.
Others see the mask only
Through their tainted eyes,
Which cripples the man.
What if the mask was just
Something given and not
A part of who he really is.
If we could learn to see,
See through this mask of
Deceit and untruthfulness,
Wouldn't we see the man
As he really is at heart?
Wouldn't we see his soul
As it exists in reality?
Once we can see past this
Invisible barrier, we will
See the truth in all around us.
The Eulogy
[sphinxmagic@yahoo.com]
"He was a good man,"
they said in hushed whispers
like prowling wolves on the hunt,
"He was a loyal husband,"
she said behind tears
like a bitter spider ready to strike,
"He was a loving father,"
the children said fair
like treacherous ravens in wait,
"I'm still alive!"
the dead said in desperate gasps
like a rich man caught in a trap.
I'm motionless
I lack thought
It happened
You glanced
I felt it
I wanted you
But you remain out of my domain.
It's scary
What you do to me
I run
But in place
There's a part of me that craves you
Craves like a lion for a dear.
Be my prey
You predator
Take me away, on a DIFFERENT trip
You entice me
Your eyes,
Your lips
Our talks
We've never had
How different are we?
HmmI wonder,
Tell them we're normal
That they're the weird ones
Kiss me...
Kiss me now
Once moreplease
Anonymous
CRITIQUE OF THE MONTH
Christopher The Red, 23
Therissa
Allison, high school senior
"I cried for the future"
[jonathankearxxx]
I cried for the future, with all my tears,
My heart filled, (no comma here) with everlasting fears, ((Cliche))
A world undone, (no comma) by a crave for power,
People suffering, (you really don't need all these commas) as evil towers, (what do you mean by evil towers?) ((As evil towers what? As evil towers...fall, stand, rise, dance? I need you to finish this thought.))
Fire spreads, and death plagues, (is 'plagues' a noun or a verb here? Death can't really "plague" anyone-- they're dead! They can't be bothered anymore!)
The sky is dead: (well, THAT'S different; a colon.) hazy and vague, (the s after "plague" messes up the rhyme a little with "vague." Many of these rhymes don't work perfectly.) ((Hazy, maybe, but it's hard for the sky to be vague))
A perfect ocean, once loved by its folk, (What ocean? Is this supposed to be a metaphor? It sounds like you're talking about a real place that's been forsaken and I'm not sure if it actually exists.) ((What is this ocean you're referring to?))
Is forgotten and lost, along with hope, (folk/hope does not rhyme, and folk doesn't make much sense-- it brings to mind merfolk. What's this about an ocean? Rather random...) ((You're really stretching for this rhyme.))
Beauty and freedom, Joy and love, (joy is not capitalized, and DON'T USE THESE WORDS right next to each other)
Now only exist, (No comma.) in heaven above, (For the love of pete, don't do the "heaven above" rhymes with "love" thing. It's gotta be in at least thirty separate songs. Maybe more.) ((cliche, and very unstable as a statement))
Second chances, eternally turned away, (they're "second" chances, not eternal chances-- they can only be turned away once, right?)((Eternally? We don't know that.))
Now the human race, in turn, must pay.
(Okay... commas. Decide which ones you want. Then scrap the rest. The whole string-of-couplets thing doesn't do the poem much good... it reads like a roses-are-red poem. Get rid of all the cliche words like beauty, joy, love, peace, hope, cry, heart, fears, tears, heaven above. Spice up your poetry with incongruous words. Read some good visceral fiction for ideas. Blisters smiling on someone's face, laughing with all my dead energy, etc-- don't TRY to make it "poetic". Just think "don't make sense" and see what slips out of your head. Look up more complex rhyme schemes if you want to still rhyme-- otherwise, drop rhymes entirely.)
The thoughts behind your poem have a lot of value, but perhaps there are more sophisticated ways to get them across. Often rhyme helps emphasize certain words and ideas that you want to have special impact, but people need to be careful lest it make a poem sound more juvenile than it really is. The concept behind what you're saying isn't juvenile at all, so make sure the poem does it justice. Let the words flow naturally instead of worrying about syncopation and rhyming. I agree that you may also want to stay away from trite words and images--come up with your own that will resonate with the reader as something that he or she wouldn't have thought of but fits perfectly.
((Listen, Jonathan, I get it. I think I see where you're going with this. But the cliches, simple statements, and overused sentimentality is hard to follow. I'm a generally sensitive guy, and even I have to say "Boo-hoo, get over it." because the language is so overly dramatic. You are basically declaring the end of humanity. Not warning against it. Not showing fear of it. But making a statement that all hope is lost and that we should tuck ourselves into bed and wait for the cold kiss of sweet Death to come take us way. Dude, show some spirit. When you gush and groan like this, the power of what you're saying is lost. Even the desperate woe of E.A. Poe had a little more gusto. And he was most likely the most depressed artist in recent memory. My point is that there is an art to sadness or desperation. Read Poe, and compare his art to yours. Read Sartre and see what you learn from him. Hell, read Sylvia Plath and see how she handles sadness (and she stuck her head in an oven). Whatever political agenda you may be trying to express is lost by the language.
Oh, and about your desperate need to rhyme. Stop. Don't try it. Not until you learn how to make the rhymes a part of the poem, and not the poem an excuse to rhyme. There are times in which you literally fail to make sense because the rhyme gets in he way. And other times when you use words like 'folk' to rhyme it with 'hope' (which, by the way, it doesn't.) So my suggestion to you would be to stop writing in rhyme. Even better, stop writing in stanzas until you get what you want to say on the page. Then, when you see that what you wanted to write is all there, break it up, play with it, and if you're very lucky, you can begin to play with the end words to make them rhyme. In a nutshell; don't write a poem unless the poem already exists in what you're trying to say.))
I really liked this poem. It reminded me of Fahrenheit 451 in some ways, and Lord of the Rings, with the crave of power and evil towers. I liked the images that you used. I was just a little unclear on what you meant by evil towers.
"Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, the older child of Otto and Aurelia Schoeber Plath...Sylvia's interests in writing and art continued through her public school years in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and at Smith College, where she attended on scholarships...The depression that was endemic in her father's family troubled her during her junior year; when her mother sought treatment for her, she was given bi-polar electroconvulsive shock treatments as an out-patient. In August 1953, she attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Recovered after six months of intensive therapy, Sylvia returned to Smith and her usual academic success... In the fall of 1955, she sailed for England. Plath studied hard but her life in England was also sexual. As her writing showed, she was angry about double-standard behavior, and claimed for herself the right to as much sexual experience as men had. She believed combining the erotic and the intellectual possible, and when she met Ted Hughes, a Cambridge poet, she felt that life with him would be ideal. The two were married in London on 16 June 1956...Personal jealousies, differences in American and British views of gender roles, and a return of Sylvia's depression complicated the Plath-Hughes marriage. Despite their happiness when Sylvia became pregnant once more, after an earlier miscarriage, the marriage of two aspiring writers living in an isolated village with an infant and little money was difficult. After Nicholas's birth in January 1962, Sylvia faced the fact of Hughes's infidelity, expressing herself through increasingly angry--and powerful--poems...Living with the children in lonely Devon, Plath wrote many of the poems that later appeared in Ariel. Her so-called October poems, written during the month after Hughes had left her, are among her most famous: 'Lady Lazarus,' 'Daddy,' 'Fever 103,' 'Purdah,' 'Poppies in July,' 'Ariel,' and others...Moving with the children to a London flat in December 1962, Plath tried to make a new life for herself, but the worst winter in a century added to her depression. Without a telephone, ill, and troubled with the care of the two infants, she committed suicide by sleeping pills and gas inhalation on 11 February 1963, just two weeks after the publication of The Bell Jar (written by 'Victoria Lucas')."
--Essay by Linda Wagner-Martin, found at http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/plath/twoviews.htm
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/plath/plath.htm
http://www.plathonline.com/
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=11
http://www.sylviaplathforum.com/
http://www.sylviaplath.de/
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