Microsoft and the Big Harry Elephant

 This is a short letter to you, my audience. In an illegal move by Microsoft, the entity asks your compliance to ignore international copyright law.

Let me be clear about this.

If you copy and paste, if you steal, if you break copyright law, even though Microsoft is, in my estimation from the agreement I did NOT sign, you have broken international law. One may read this blog, one may even share this blog, however, one cannot claim it is his or hers.

International law protects intellectual property.

Be advised that all writing on this site is copyrighted. Enjoy reading it, sharing it, but be aware that copywrite law exists, protects writers, and is the backbone upon which we are entitled to our compensation, whether monetary or as acknowledgement.

This author does not, will not, adhere to any of Microsoft's terms, nor are you covered by such terms using Microsoft's software to peruse my writing on this or any other site. Writers are protected from abuse by the copywrite law. 

UPDATE:

I have had someone more cerebral, someone with more access to such law, and they have shared this with me:

The new terms and conditions are "concerning." They appear to imply Microsoft can disseminate your creations without adhering to copyright law because they say they are "using it for improvements."

Microsoft is in court more than any average Joe could fathom. If they are using this to attempt to use copyrighted material without compensation/acknowledgement, there will be an exponentially higher amount of global lawsuits.

Those "terms and conditions" could be so vague that they still must respect that copyright law, but their past history suggests to me that I am not counting on them playing by the rules.

 

make poetry make sense again

 is all writing a form of storytelling...even poetry?

it isn't if the poem rails against the evils of social injustice, laden with an asbestos-like toxicity that clings to one's soul after interacting with the poem.

it isn't if the structure overpowers the rationality, leaving us floating in a fetid pool of word excrement.

it isn't if the meaning meanders around in our craniums until it leaks out somewhere unsettled.

poetry has meaning. if it doesn't, it is not poetry. it is something else. it is structural ambiguity. it is semantic nonsense. it could even be soundscript.

but it isn't poetry. it is presumptuous, mindless drivel.

make poetry make sense again.

 

 

the college poet

straight-jacket words on a page

is formulaic diarrhea,

walking blindly inside structure

profits no man, no woman

no poetic rhythm

no poetic reason

collegiate poetry.

A Moment of Disaster

 Here is a piece of poetic fiction within my WIP, my new book- a moment of disaster:

Out back of Back Fork, at the Cogar Cottage, Timmy waited for the plumber. He sat on the front porch, drinking a sweet tea.

As he stepped inside to check the time...he heard a gushing whoosh.

He tried to open the back door, but a chaotic wave crashed through the walls...splintering pine, hemlock, and hardwood-thrown matchsticks...ice chunks, water, debris busting boards...the man with a wad of bills in his pocket thrown up against studs...the white-whirl sweeping him out to the street, chucked like a limp doll against a fence, where he settled, broken and bleeding...

How would you like to be remembered?

There's a scene in So, I Married An Axe Murderer, where Mike Myers, in character, describes a distasteful girlfriend as "she smelled like soup." He rejects her based on a single characteristic that overpowers the senses and makes her odious in the audience's minds.

Such a description dismisses such characters, confines them to "the fragmentary." 

I would not wish this on any of my readers. It may suffice to call one "thin as a pencil at 20 paces" with additional details to make one create a living vision within the movie in one's head. One can build on said "pencil in the wind" whenever the character is interacting with another. Another character may reveal other traits..."she made me think of Aunt Martha, the waif of a creature that looked like she'd gone through her own private Auschwitz." 

Anything less than the components needed to create that figure in your mind, and with that figure you've pictured, move through a series of events, either physical or emotional, does not do the reader justice. It is not fair to the contemporary reader, who may or may not have the same imagination of a well-read 19th century schoolteacher.

Mike Myers' line works because she is in a list of failed ex-girlfriends. That is the only time it should work- if we, as authors, do not want to torture our readers with more insight and then drop her from any other mention within the story.

My goal is to create the clearest image in your head as you read. It may linger like the taste of an expensive wine. It may not sharpen until you're read three or more sentences of descriptive characteristics of that person. But you should be able to envision that story in your head from my additional descriptive words, including those that create a gentle or harsh image because of the words used. 

Do you enjoy reading that helps you create such images as you read? Is it taxing when you are left with two or three words to describe a character? 

I would not like to be referred to as "the guy with garlic breath" if the only interaction with the character the readers had of me was in an Italian restaurant eating garlic bread. And then, every time I was introduced in another scene, it is my garlic breath that you remember. I never move on from that, and every line of dialogue comes "from that guy with garlic breath." Even after I am in bed dreaming about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Even after I have met the love of my life within the story, and she is described in various ways while the audience remembers me for my garlic breath. That is a failure of storytelling. As an author, I am trying to bridge the gap, to add more paint to the picture, so you, as the reader, can enjoy the story from start through the finish...not confuse you with not enough information.

 

  

when the words will not come

 i will groan from my heart

when the words will not come,

and share because i must

when the words will not come.

though seasons may change

and deep trouble sleep long

the tears will keep coming

when the words will not come.

so, I ponder my lovely predicament

amidst the rows of gathered lore

when grief steels my stiffened hand  

and i put feet, shoes, upon this wooden floor.

I have one painful wish to share my wounded heart

in the room full of books that will never depart

like a library of life these feelings galore

must come in word form or come nevermore.

There's A World Outside My Rockin' Chair

There's a world outside my rockin' chair

from the front porch to the stream

where the rocks and ripples chase each other

and the winds in the branches sing

it's a pretty stretch of piney woodland

a fine saunter by flowers in spring

but I'm eighty years old a draggin' a walker

let's see what next year should bring...

There are too many brambles, briers, and cares

from where my Pa built a house and a shed

too many tangles in the mire of my mind

when i think on all them kinfolk that's dead

to that wire gate and them plots of fate 

the winding path in the meadow I dread

where i'll lay down my cane in this very last frame

and finally find some peace for my head.

My grandkids come here, play dress-up in pearls,

When their mama's depressed, down in the holler

Their daddy spends his time selling possums and squirrels

Then visits the bars, spends nearly every dollar.

That man had a talent for paintin' building-sized murals

But ran through his money till it left them in squalor.

Still, I'm blessed with granddaughters dolled up in curls

Though I am old and frail and my young'uns are taller.

Down along the creek lives a dimwitted woman

near a shack with a loner, and his two baby bears

a Pentecostal preacher with his three-legged dog

and a mechanic who got fired for stealing some spares

That family in the home falling slowly down the slope

And that rich guy, with five kids, and too many heirs 

Dear Lord, I repent, you have spared me such trouble

So, I'll get off my rocker, for you've answered my prayers.

Silentium Aureum

 Golden silence. The curtain falls and you are no longer in foreplay. You are no longer seething with passionate muse. You are alone with page and vision; the exact act in your mind as you write the word-pictures only you and your audience follow. You are no longer parallel with the work, you and the audience are on the same line.

At this point, the two of us, you and I, have entered the new world. We are creating together- me with the words that formulate what follows in my head, you with what your background, knowledge, and interpretation bring to that paradigm. 

I cannot revel in dangerously poetic classical music anymore. I am beyond that. 

The adolescent- in composition, not age- must mature beyond what is present and enter what can be future. 

It is why composure, at this juncture, can be so draining, without the winds of divine inspiration. One can research, organize, synthetize work into art, or one can use all the components and surrender form and process to what cannot be contained in the mind. It spills to the page because it is as if it was written for you.

The most creative writing is not process-driven drivel, it is writing driven to be a connection with the audience that is deeper than purely in the mind. 

 

Status Rerum

When was the last time you read fiction, written in this century, that was vivid, that was revolutionary, that left you wanting more?

Chances are you do not have a long list. It is not as financially rewarding to publish work that breaks barriers in style. It is less accepted to create not just a work, but a whole philosophy, breaking with standard publishing norms, while expecting a significant worldwide response. But it has been done. And once the floodgates open, the old ways will have to give way to a new standard.

 That is why I have left normal behind to embrace something more poetic, something more vivid. 

I am engaged in the creation of an 85,000 word journey at present, so I ask that you have patience and expect fewer posts here while engaged in this work. 

In the meantime, enjoy these posts...and expect a random post now and again...

The ruthless writer

 Of the four Ruths that I have known in my life, two of them were often quiet and calming. They were the opposite presence of what is necessary for creating a well-delivered, readable story- ruthlessness.

How ruthless must I be to craft a quality piece of readable literature?

compassionate ruthlessness.

Compassionate because the story is your love. You have woven a web of wonderful words and phrases that may even leave an audience breathless after a few pages, but.... without ruthlessly extracting what is not consistent, not in continuity, the reader, the listener, stumbles over a stone in the path. And, we don't want that, do we?

The trouble with creating a salient work of art is that it must consist of only the images formed from the words used. It cannot assume. It cannot fail in subject and number. It cannot fail in form. It cannot leave one scratching one's head wondering what on earth the author is trying to convey.

On the other hand, I am not responsible for the level of one's intellect. If I write for a graduate-level audience, I am not going to explain what I am writing. That detracts from the story.

The most famous Ruth of all my days was a woman with phrases from another era who enlightened me with archaisms like "your tongue is loose at both ends." With that in mind, I shall not be like that character, but shall return to the ruthless revision process one needs to employ to create a finished story.

So long for now- slan go foill.

Momentary blip...pardon me

I have removed "The Struggle." I wrote it in the style that was particularly common before the incoherent random style invading "Western" poetry sites today. I suspect that much of this random-sometimes-incoherent disconnected poetry is actually the work of artificial intelligence. The latter is a term I think we all can agree is dubious, particularly when analyzing attempts at poetry and music.

Like some of you who still embrace the strictly human, when I fail it is because I have strayed from my own styles. I shall refrain from becoming nebulous, unless it is within a body of work to humor my audience. In the meantime, pardon me while I concentrate on the novel in progress. The coming week's forecast is racist against freckled people, so I will be inside, hiding from Venusian weather.

Slan go foill...

   

Renaissance

 There was a time, in a corner of a shingle of Christendom, when more than your fair share of men were "pregnant" with opportunity...bearing  weight, pressing against the repressive confines of a fixed, but expanding wall...pregnant with purpose. 

They were realizing a fundamentally inadequate position in the fallible human structure of a religious entity...so much so that your man was unable to break free without a supernatural birthing that shattered the pagan structure imposed upon him and those with him who did not fit into the structure assigned to him by an aristocracy out of touch with members, active congregants, and those seeking to do God's will.

It was, frankly, a pathetic period of regression, when whole denominations decayed, when vomit-worthy nominalism forced many from those within the movement. This egress from that denominationalism freed the expectant and birthed a more organic house church movement in the flailing West.

But, I am not fixated on that time, venue, nor the aftermath of that era. I am alluding to the same kind of repressed passion in the sense of a Creative in a complicated, anti-creative tech-friendly social environment that makes that Creative feel like a baby stuck within a womb, more than ready to be birthed onto the stage, into relevancy, and freedom.

Some of us have spotted that glimmer of hope, that foreshadowing that we shall come out of obscurity, pregnant with message and purpose, to speak to the hearts and minds of a generation drowning in mediocracy. 

Wherever humanity embraces God-driven creativity, not the warmed leftovers of artificial intelligence, the soul is once again awakened by the written and spoken word, and imagination blooms. Character grows, compassion grows, community grows. When creativity is once again on stage, in action, fervent and connective, we all benefit, we all grow. It borders on a touch of the heavenly because our intellects break free from programmed thought.

Wherever men and women gather to interact with a purveyor of that compassionate Creativity, culture finds a home, and we rise above the downward movement of a society losing touch with the divine and the human.  

I call on all those who desire to break free from this anti-creative, pro-machine world, who have a compassionate creativity to share with the world. There is a growing segment of western society longing for the creative word. It is time to return to a place of performance poetry, prose, and remembrance, to enrich society and bring back culture, a component of today's world that will die without a literary and vocal renaissance.

Mission Oaks

They told him "you can't grow that here" so many times that he purposely planted flowers, trees, and bushes in the ravine behind his house that defied every local landscape artist and every garden center.

Walking along the sidewalk outside the low wrought iron fence around the house lot, Bert planted Banana trees, orchids, and stuff that isn't supposed to grow in Ohio.

One day I was blessed to be able to meet Bert, his wife Susan, and photograph the house and gardens. And while they were inspired by a trip to the Chelsea Flower Show in London in 1990, it sounded like the local attitude toward his plans was what drove Bert to create Mission Oaks Gardens, acquire more land, and establish a Smithsonian Institute recognized American urban garden that has inspired the creation of many community gardens throughout the world.

                            Mission Oaks in May 2021

                            

                            Japanese Red Pine and Bald Cypress,

                            2018

Bert Hendley Jr. was a successful financial planner and a Master Gardener. He and his wife were instrumental in the founding of the Muskingum County Park District. Bert passed away in early 2024, and  the gardens have shifted more toward the conifer and rhododendron plantation, away from some of the more stunning exotic flowers that once lined the garden trails...

But, Mission Oaks, maintained by three wonderful people I met last week, remains Ohio's premier urban gardens. 

                                            in the conifer garden today

                            

 

when the vines creep and none are cut

you are caged by codes and regulations

all in the name of Health and Safety

power-mad manipulators ruling by control

ignorance and theft on a daily rampage

stealing your dignity, stealing your identity.

there is no freedom when a bully reigns

when your officials create illegal vendettas

destroying your every choice, your every right,

suppressing creativity, speech, and history

in decisions made in temples of immorality.

who fell for the science when the science wasn't fact?

who fell for the mantra when the mantra was a lie?

who fell for the checks when they printed worthless cash?

Drunk on Tyranny

while you were sleeping,

it slithered through your grass.

now it lives, with more slithering things

in your yard, in your house, in your garage

while it feeds on fear and tyranny,

the original sin clothed in governing.

but you have not been crafted for peasantry

nor woven in the depths with hostile hands.

 

she hides in plain sight

 

She hides in plain sight,

her brown blending

with earth...suddenly not so horizontal.

it is only because I stop to attend to my own nature,

that she appears at all…

which begs the question…

what else did I miss on my journey?

it is a question few ask until that rugged edge of time-

passing into an unplanned quadrant-

suddenly without a spouse, without a plan, without a head of hair.

somewhere between someone’s somewhere, and someone's nowhere.

on a road regularly driven in the center, to avoid wandering off

to fall precipitously hundreds of feet below

an unexplainable statistic

for this unfortunate soul, nature was kind to her

to cover her with creeping vines, soft leaves, and soft moss

where one can genuflect the vacancy marked by a cross.

For thou art more neath round yonder sun

Thou art more than dust and roses

Thou are the reflection of a Creator

Though thy bones rot beneath the sod.

Live to love

If you woke up this morning, God gave you another day on Earth to do the right thing. You are not promised tomorrow. Today is the day of salvation. 

If you are awake now, ready to go to bed, to sleep, remember, you have been given another night. If He wakes you tomorrow morning, will you give Him thanks for every person you meet? Will you share His love with those people you meet?

We were made to love as the creator loves- selflessly. While the enemy of our souls seeks to sow fear and hatred, reject the way of the worldly, and be the person God desires you to be. Love as Christ loves. 

In the library

 As a child, I would sit on the carpeted floor at the county library reading through juvenile books while my father would wander "the stacks," a cramped area where adults had to search through smaller books in a labyrinth of rows. It amazed me that I could, if given the opportunity, read through two or three books, then find others to take home, all while my father found himself lost in the stacks.

So many years later, I still remember the titles or faces of some of those books, with occasional flashes of memory, or a strange name appearing in my mind at the most unusual of times.

If I did not read all the books of Eilis Dillon, it wasn't because I did not want to. If I did not read every Madeline book, it wasn't because I tired of the little French watercolor, it was because someone had checked out the book I wanted. 

I have fond memories of that library and the beige carpet. It was in that space that I found so many stories that probably helped contribute to my own storytelling skills at such a young age. 

But it was not always that way. I remember the first readers in school. I remember some phonics, some mixture of sight recognition, but no one method of acquiring reading skills. 

This was before I found solace on the beige carpet. I'd sit in the circle as we read aloud. "See Flip run. See Jane run. See Flip and Jane run." It was dull. It was stupid. And I was bored out of my mind. I could not understand why we only read three or four pages at a session. 

Finally, one day, I took my book home with me. That day I read the rest of the entire reader. I went back to school the next day and wondered aloud why we weren't moving on to other books. 

I went through On Cherry Street so fast the teacher was embarrassed. I went to the school library. While there were books in that library, there were few interesting ones, and certainly none with the kind of story that would enthrall a child who had passed all the reading levels "allowed" in his grade.

The education system there was so poor that many of us lost interest in the texts used. 

But in the county library, I was free to roam like a buffalo on the plains. I had a home to roam while my father...or mother...was preoccupied looking for that one book. Meanwhile, I was accumulating enough books to need a bag to carry them all home.

If the books in that library helped give me a desire to be a reader, imagine what you can do by taking your child to the library. Let your child search through the level-appropriate books. Encourage them to take several books for the week.

Your son or daughter may not become an author, but they will gain an appreciation for reading, and thereby, an appreciation for learning. And reading is just the beginning of that journey.