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The Dream Song of AnonymousThis is based off The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot. It might help to read Eliot's poem first, if you haven't before.

Shall I stay, then, alone,
When the dawn is straying from the sky
Like a child roaming the sea;
Dare I stay – amidst parades of kings,
The rising revolution
Of tranquil days in silk-spread beds
And colours of mayhem in blacks and reds:
Wind chimes that jingle without judgement
Without affront –
And follow the questioning wind, without answers –
Oh, do answer, "Why not?" and
Let me stay, and dream of a candle you lit.

On the beaches the men wander alone
Driven speechle

Souls and SparklesTo write something that is meaningful to someone else, you must first write something that is meaningful to yourself.

There are a thousand rooms in each person's mind, and each mind is a maze because it has been tangled. The hallways are criss-crossing and clumping, like long hair in the wind. Society has made it so.

We all have impure thoughts. Things that would make us "bad", unequal, or imperfect. Thoughts that make us different in gloriously unusual ways. We are born into the world unashamed, but then we are taught the unspoken words. Words that are rules. Words like normal, like good and bad, ugly and pretty. We are taught that if we d

grassy field with rustgrassy field with rust
--------------------------

I'd heard about the old car, three miles out of town and all alone. I just had to see it. It was time. School was over for the summer, my friends were at camp, and I was bored. I set out Thursday morning for a hike, following directions that Uncle Will had given me. As the heat was still growing with the climb of the sun, I found the field and wandered around looking, and looking some more, trying not to be distracted by bees buzzing in the flowers, and butterflies and baby mice. Then it was there, just a bit upslope from the bottom of a natural swale, and just below the sky at th

the Chandler's Around the WayThe hose slipped out again. Chan cursed, and shoved it back into the incision he'd made, adjusted his mask, and bent over the pump. He yanked the cord, and the pump started to life with a cough of biodiesel. It bounced on the sand as it grumbled away. Chan kept one hand on it and held the hose in place with the other.
If fucking Fathers would spend the bone on a new one, I wouldn't be all night at this, Chan grumbled. He ached for a smoke, but didn't have the hands to spare. Plenty of hands here, he thought as he glanced at the riverbank. Some of them even had a pulse.
"Hey," he said to whoever was closest.
It was a sunbather. A walker who drew enough bone to slot time on the beach without having to fight for it. She had each arm draped around a man, both of them tattooed in the same place with the same sigil. Chan was jealous. Someday he'd have his own numbers, but they'd be women. All of them. He was old-fashioned like that.
The walker answered without raising her sungl

MeanderingHardly a mountain, though on lowering days its head sits wreathed
By the mists of a passing front, aged and befogged as bygone elders
Doddering about – before there were names for the malaise
That hazed their thinking
And from this modest crown there slouched and sloped
A long shoulder, meandering down to meadows below
Pausing now and again to coddle a pleasant hollow
Casting a sloping pitch – enough to rush a torrent
After a sudden shower
Seldom pooling
Its glint and glimmer burble among the stones
To join a rill and plash and swirl and putter about a root
It's there I'm apt to wander

Not much of a path, hard passed a

Never Told He thinks it's odd, sometimes, though he's not certain why.

A sense of dislocation, perhaps. Like cutting yourself on an unsharpened blade. He walks the immense aisles of the cathedral, footsteps echoing hollowly into the blue shadows of high vaulted ceilings and arches, stone figures watching him from above as he, in turn, watches dawn play across their carved and weathered faces. The grandeur of this place is oddly soothing in the solitude it affords him. A holy place, just hushed, here suspended in the silence after Mattins when most have shuffled out. It's a favorite moment of his, a favorite service to attend, and today it gives him p

Critic vs Writer: A Conversation of ReconciliationI am a book blogger.

Since not everyone is familiar with the term, I'll go ahead and lay it out for you. I read, analyze, and write about books. I give my opinion on characters, setting, genre, style, and sometimes even covers. I say what works, what doesn't, and what I'd like to see.

In short, I criticize.

Back - back foul demon! Burn the witch! Don't come anywhere near me!

Yeah, I know you're all thinking it. What gives me the right to rifle through someone's hard work and put its flaws on display? Who do I think I am, slandering authors with false interpretations and quotes made out of context?

I'm a writer.

Yeah, of nothing but muck

SomedayJane and Ellis floated parallel to one another across the vast canvas of space, eyeing the marble-like planets that slowly crept past them. Their skin reflected the starlight with a dull orange sheen. Ellis had called it 'planet gazing,' an activity he apparently thought suitable for a date.

"Do you see that one below us?" Ellis said, pointing to a round blue mass.

Jane shrugged.

"Isn't it beautiful?" he asked. "I'll bet it's beautiful on the surface, too. Like the way the dust begins to spiral when a star is forming."

"Something like that," Jane said. She didn't understand his excitement. Planets were nothing interesting. They were just

Forgiveness EconomicsGenesis

But for the small purple stain on its border, the banknote was non-descript.

It had a value but men value things in different ways and by different means. It had a value, but its value is not it's story.

It landed on the church plate face up, coming to rest softly on the flat silver base amongst the loose change like it was tossed to the cloth of a gambling table, soundless but with a small sense of resignation. A man paying for luck, a man asking his God for a favor.

It came from the wallet of a small sad man, who feared the Good Lord daily. The banknote was the weekly price of his penance, the bill of sale for those half-remembe

petrichorNiobe weeps.

gold scattered rough across
cracked earth and the last
remains of summer - they fell
like leaves in the arms of the wind.

some scents cannot be captured.
the gods bleed onto rock,
and the stone sends her prayers
in return: petrichor.

listen - the heavy thud of
rain on parched ground;
the monsoon sealing life back in;
the sky bows and kisses earth.

Niobe weeps.

SuperimposeHe doesn't look like a gymnast. He's all button down shirts and frazzled grey hair framing wire spectacles, a picture perfect professorial archetype down to the very tips of his frayed shoelaces. But he was a gymnast once, or so he tells us, and I believe him because he smiles like he knows something while he's chatting before class.

It's strange to see that image superimposed over the current one – the distinguished professor in pressed khaki slacks and a jacket, worn brown loafers exuding a faintly courteous manner (you can always tell them by their shoes), and a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand – versus the athletic ki

The Origin of the InternetThis is the story of Compudites and Internedes – great gods of knowledge and communication. It is a story of their love for each other. It is a story of their betrayal at the hands of Hermes the messenger. It is a story of Internedes' destruction at the hands of Zeus. And it is a story of how, with the help of Athena, Compudites was able to be together with Internedes once more. It is the story of how and why humanity got one of the greatest resources ever known – the internet.

Compudites was a kind and gentle god, frail and limited in power, but boundless in intellect – a patron of sciences, mathematics, and technology. He wa

The Order of Sublime Simulacra Kamon woke to the sound of bells and saws. The ceremony must have started hours ago; there was invigorating yellow sunlight outside the gauzy curtains. Kamon's Self was intoning eight o'clock, eight o'clock with all the insistence of a song looping in his head.

Flesh brain, he thought, you should have caught that alarm. Sometimes the flesh was louder than the devices supposed to make it properly quiet. The flesh insisted on the persistence of the Real. This was exactly the type of lesson that the brothers were supposed to learn, and Kamon hoped that relaying to the abbot how thoroughly he had learned it might lighten the inevitable punishm

The BenchThere's a bench in the park that I never sit on. It sits tucked away, separate from the rest, coddled by the arms of a great old oak tree. Or beech. Or chestnut. Or something. Behind the tree curves the grey concrete of a 1970s flowerbed. Filled with the wax yellow and red of begonias in the summer, the flimsy flickers of pansies in the winter.

I come to the park every day. Sometimes I sit and eat my lunch, freed from the mire of the joyless office box I inhabit for 40 hours a week. Sometimes I walk around, following the tarmac tracks without thought or hope or desire.

Today is no special day. Its grey. One of those British days of murk. It

Gnome Noir  "I did it for the money and I did it for the girl.
        Well, I didn't get the money – and I didn't get the girl."
::  Walter Neff - Double Indemnity
So I point the flintlock at the guy – and that's no easy thing, big musket like that on a little gnome like me – and I peer down the sight. Not many people know what it's like to stare at a man through a glass. But in those sacred moments, the whole world takes a breath and it's just you and him. I line up the shot, and I think about the girl, and--

What? That is the start. What do you want, Sheriff, my life story?

Alright, well, I'm Gniles Brody the Third – that's

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Mount AlbertMount Albert, called Owairaka
also: volcano in slumber,
scoria thighs and skirts of grass
feed half a dozen grazing cows
cookies-and-cream coloured
flanks, fat bellies wobbling

at crater's edge
alongside an archery range,
an old football field
amidst eucalypt trees
windbent and scattered
bark-tongues peeling patchwork,

and beneath the cattlehooves,
beneath mud, beneath leaf-litter
and fine-grade footpath gravel
are older stones, buried deep:
some cold, some warming

Neon CherriesOur crew all red-eyed,
awake in the dim early
morning glow, no more
than cocaine-white rats
in a skinner box,
no more than a mouse
click from victory
deferred, put-off
sleep and sunlight,
circadian cycles,
for side quests and swords
experience points and gold
dispersed on a whim
contingent on variable-ratio
reinforcement like video poker
machines, sweet neon cherries
taste them, taste them, taste them

subsisting on Domino's
and flat Mountain Dew
cold grease and crumbs
collage our keyboards,
bare feet on thin carpet
inside the amniotic warmth
and hum of a home office
the swivel chairs are calling
again: take thy thron

SanguinaryRust on bare hands
and dust in nostrils
John searches for truth
in the attic again

while down in mainstreet
they've caught the rapist
the sadist the killer the stabber
of young Laura Green

and in the hot sun
this rapist sweats
into the hempen rope
that collars his reddened neck

as the people drag his feet
rasped by rocks and dust
towards the rustic gallows
with jasmine growing beneath

and the crowd demands
and shouts for blood
and the rapist says
--you already got your wish--

and John comes panting out
into the townsquare
and cries--stop don't
I have composed

a convincing cinquain
against capital punishment
and mob-

Birthday BoyOn Nick's fifteenth birthday something disconcerting happens to him. Crosslegged on the living room floor, he is connecting up his new PS3 to the family's plasma, when a bizarre memory comes:

It's his old man. Standing in their laundry, expression perfectly normal, wearing a goatee... and also fishnets. Stiletto boots. A black-leather minidress.

The image seems so real. From family photos, he knows the goatee was gone years ago, before he began school.

"Pass that HDMI cable?"

TransvestiteDad is currently elbow-deep in TV guts.

"Huh? Oh..." Nick flicks the cable across. Despite hypertrophying stomach-dread, and the firm conviction he shou

Goodbye CityI kiss the city goodbye
pasty fist clenched
driver's window wound right down
to toss out the yellow burger
wrappers it bequeathed me

all my adult life
prodded by grey dreams
of company careers
floated on the purple breath
of corporate lunchers
rising like titans to the peak,
dizzying with rare air and commerce

harbour-bridge winds flute by
and stir up exhaust-fume stink,
my tires, tread near-bald,
thud and thump and thud and thump
over lines of reflective indicators
as I shift across lanes
North Albany's faux-suburbia
subdivisions mushroom
and shrink behind hills and forest

the giddy green air of freedom

of co

ButterknifeYou are stainless steel, a true knife
but a sad one, edges all blunt,
rose-inlaid handle tapering to bare
a row of serrated teeth
that cannot bite, were never meant to tear
moist ham or pare squeaking apples
nor even pierce glossy-skinned plums
to cleave the damp flesh from their pits
without a sticky mess
—you were carefully designed
with congealed milkfat in mind,
ripe avocados, sun-softened, maybe
you are truly only good for scraping butter,
wiping its pale smudges across bread
but ah—you are mine, butterknife
and you know and I know
that one small bird in the hand
is worth two billion in the bush.

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The Dream of a Highly Successful Manby ~pseudometry

Literature / Prose / Fiction / General Fiction / Short Stories

Some potential critique points for #theWrittenRevolution (or anyone else feeling generous) :

*Whether the prose sounds like the viewpoint character's train of thought and actions.

*Dialogue seeming believable or wooden, stilted.

*Characters having a clear and understandable goal or desire that is the motivation behind their actions.

*Plot holes, or unsatisfactorily explained/justified implausibilities

*Whether the dream scene 'works', or whether it's too bizarre, nonsensical

*Whether any parts jar or are distracting when you read

*Whether more or less everything that occurs seems a logical consequence of the last event or action or thought or speech

*Parts seeming to 'tell' too much instead of 'showing'

Daily Deviation

Given 2012-10-18

In The Dream of a Highly Successful Man by *pseudometry, a moment of magical realism adds to the author's comment on human nature. ( Suggested by *xlntwtch and Featured by ^neurotype )

~Adonael Oct 21, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Your characters come through the text very three dimensionally and the dream sequence was very effective - bravo!

~pseudometry Oct 22, 2012 Writer

Thank you very much

~Adonael Oct 26, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

No worries!

~pseudometry Oct 26, 2012 Writer

~Hakyness3876 Oct 18, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS.
AMAZING.

~pseudometry Oct 19, 2012 Writer

Haha. Thanks very much!

*glossolalias Oct 18, 2012

alive, fascinating, strange, and thought-provoking-- i rarely see successful magical realism, aside from the work of the spanish masters, and this was a masterfully crafted piece. any issues i may have had have already been addressed by other commentors, so i am going to cut to the chase: this was a fun and brilliant piece, unique and expert.

~pseudometry Oct 18, 2012 Writer

Thanks very much, that's high praise indeed! Those were certainly the attributes I was hoping to wring from it haha. So yes, very pleasing to hear. Yes people have raised some good points, I've been meaning to revise some facets--particularly the ending--for some time now, so will come in handy there.

Magic realism is something I've been interestedly dabbling in for a bit. Any works of the Spanish masters in particular you'd recommend? Any tips at all would be highly appreciated.

Thanks again!

*glossolalias Oct 19, 2012

i, personally, liked the anticlimactic ending, because it cemented the absurdity of the proceeding bit. if anything, i would suggest minorly expanding it to better connect to the point you're making but not changing the overall scene/tone.

personally, i wouldn't suggest work by any of them unless you read spanish because the real mysticism of the work is lost in translation. however, an engaging modern english example is reservation blues by sherman alexie. it's his first novel and has a bit if first novel clumsiness, but it's really a fantastic character piece and sociopolitical statement with strange elements. almost more folksy but still along the same lines.

~pseudometry Oct 19, 2012 Writer

Hmmm. Yes I take your meaning, good advice there.

Haha I figured as much. My Spanish is somewhere on the horrible-to-non-existent end of the scale I'm afraid. Thanks for the recommendation with Reservation Blues though, will be sure to check it out.

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The Dream of a Highly Successful Manby ~pseudometry

Daily Deviation

The Journal Portal

Polls

What is your preferred drawing software?

deviantART [dee·vee·un'nt·ART]

Keep in Touch!

Deviousness

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Style

~pseudometry has limited the viewing of this artwork
to members of the deviantART community only.