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Stick the knife in.
Look, the words, they bleed
Draw it out, write in the inky smoothness,
Can you see entrails?
Lay them out like flowers
A great kingdom will fall in two,
And it will rain next Thursday.

Oh, the piece appears to have died
No matter.
The next page will do better.

I actually really like it. Excuse my surprise, but we do turn up a lot of sub-par story work on here. This is interesting however.

The idea of "Amerika" as an ultimate paradise will be one shared by thousands of immigrants, and I definitely think you should build on that. It is an unattainable and mysterious goal, yet the centre of hope for so many. Make sure the ending about him finally getting to this paradise ambiguous; let the reader wonder whether it is all he hopes for or not.

The Christian thing seems a strange aside. Is your world something of a totalitarian state, an overly conservative one? That definitely needs to be clarified for your novel, and there is definitely potential for world-building.

Lose the tollbooth unless you're going to give it more importance in the story, i.e. as a symbol for something. Keep the friendship - maybe add it in earlier, it depends where about in the novel he is captured.

Last thing, the boy's family seems to be forgotten in the plot. Their problem sets off the chain of events in the first place, so are we going to see more of them later on?

Keep at it. Losing chapters because of silly technical errors is annoying, but it just gives you the opportunity to write it again in a more interesting way. Once you've pushed through that, I'm sure you'll end up with a great result :)

I hoped she liked them. They're really quite lovely in places and sometimes a line just clicks, "Blasting heart" paticuarly.

However, sometimes the rhythm can be clunky and the lines drawn out. Whilst a poem does not need to fit a regular pattern to "flow", it does need to have a bit more of an internal rhythm. The second one especially feels a little awkward.

Thats not to say they're not good poems, just practice a little more with your line structure and I'm sure you'll be able to write even better ones for her next time :)

Really guys? Nothing?

Prufrock Rides Again

"We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown."
- T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Here we are again. We find
The evening beckons, cold and bright
With all the promises of the night.
Do not ask "Where", but follow in your meekness
For questioning but brings another trouble,
And undiscloses your potential weakness.
The streets care not for those who wonder,
Worry, that their halo shall be tarnished
For tarnished it will be
You will see
We bring ourselves around the next dark alley
To add ourselves once more to His dark tally.

Does this place seem all too friendly?
Does it gnaw, like half recalled regret
Or incidents that we shall soon forget?
It is like every other,
Every other den of ill repute
That holds astute its flashing lights of pride.
Then let us wander straight inside.

No, I've not had enough.
I know when I have had enough.

Does the drink seem all too apt?
Does it drown the voices from the floor?
Does it hold the half-brained audience rapt
And paint its weary smell upon the door?
The glasses fill and empty, fill again
And muttered words of thanks escape the hand.
The liquid downs, it scalds the throat with sand
Then quickly numbs the memory of pain.

No, I've not had enough.
I know when I have had enough.

We stumble, skip and hobble to the floor
A crowd of ancient bones in wandering procession
Stumble to the rhythm, the beat in our possession.
Or so we think, for when all things are said
Is not the music in possession of your head?
What minds for those who dance in skin-tight jeans
And opened collared shirts wreathed in sweat
and doused by hormones floundering in brine.
Can we say what is yours and what is mine?
We could, but I forget the means
To explain or demonstrate my dreams.

No, I've not had enough.
I know when I've had enough.

I am a stranger, lost within the crowd
Of writhing grubs, I have not quit my station.
I look to those with low cut tops and wonder
What to say, how not to tear
The moment straight asunder.
Instead, I crawl inside my shell and simper
How things might be, and in my elation
I think myself successful, hold myself taller
Despite the fact I am a bottom crawler.

If I could have one wish, I would take
The night and mould it, give it hands to guide
The drunkards back inside.

Time should still, know its place, remain
But a term for what we do not comprehend.
Instead, I feel like all the years have passed
On a pinhead. "I do not mean to offend,
But are you insane. Why dance? What does it solve
Beyond the traditional dawn awaking
Upon a mind with thoughts of glass breaking?"
But do not listen, the lights and drink are present
And the music still rings pleasant.

Let me wander by the moon
And take the streets within a conquering stride.
Oh, do not send me back inside.
No flesh for me, no promise of delight.
I always was a creature of the night
And always shall be.
The dark welcomes without prejudice.
What else could make life better
Than this?

I am no Plato, no hermit king.
Not wise in ways of meaning, just a man
Who holds the door, tip him if you can.
He wants for nothing more.

Be still now, let those quibbling voices calm
And return, once more, to that lonely crowded place
Where we shall revel in oblivion's embrace.

Alright, time for a real challenge.

I'd like a sig with a truly mechanical feel, with either an industrial metal palette or a steampunk bronze pallete. It has to contain my name, and (the clincher) if you can work the image of a tech priest in there, you get mega bonus points :)

Of you go! And thanks in advance.

I know some people don't like critiquing a poem with a prologue, but this one has a bit of a story behind it (and the unusual subject. Recently, one of my student colleagues described poetry as "stringing a bunch of words together that rhyme and giving them some kind of meaning". Needless to say, I gaped for a short time, before issuing a challenge. He was to write a poem on "Misery" (a fairly common subject for the aspiring bard it seems) and I got a subject somewhat more mundane i.e. bug zappers - those bright blue things that hang on the wall to attract flies. Needless to say, I think I did fairly well with the source material provided. Enjoy!

What is this light?
Caged in
Chickenwire ribs,
Hanging, spider fashioned
Storm-in-a-box.

Bright ribbons
Hum in strange rhythmns,
Malevolence
Permeates the air.
Do you touch?
Do you dare?

Come, speck of ash.
Lend me your
Gossamer soul.
Touch my filaments,
Lose control.

A snap!
A flash!
A moment sliced.
Flesh crisps,
Life shrivels
Then dimness.

It floats
Leaf-like,
Wanders to the floor.
Search for
Sanctuary
To rise no more.

Hell, I might as well get this started off. I won't have much chance to post in the coming month thanks to uni, so this is going to have to go up early. Hope it's allowed, it is technically a story :)

Sweet Dreams

Listen closely, dear child, as you snuggle up tight
As you lie on your pillow and turn off the light
To the rhyme I recount on this All Hallows' Eve
A story that most would find hard to believe
A tale of shadows and things in the mind
Of strange spirits in the dark and souls cast behind
But do not let such trifling tales worry you
Be safe in the knowledge that it's mostly untrue.

Our black fable starts with a young boy named Billy
Who, every night, would scare himself silly.
For all types of terrors lay still in his head
And came out to play when he rested in bed.
Each night, he would dream of demons and beasts,
Each night he would find himself first in their feasts
And because all his thoughts were so dreadfully dour
He would wake with a start on the stroke of each hour.

Now the bulk of this tale and its events unpleasant
Took place on a Halloween much like the present.
Whilst Billy was sleeping, into his house
Crept a strange little creature, as quiet as a louse.
This creature had heard, loud from his room
The sounds Billy made in his nightmarish doom.
With black button eyes and chestnut brown hairs
A boggart slowly tip-toed its way up the stairs.

Now keep listening, dear child, for despite what you've heard
Not all such fantastical things are absurd.
Some are just frightened, and refuse to be seen
Only emerging in old Halloween.
Boggarts are the most harmless of these fairy creatures
No frightening thoughts or ferocious features.
They won't drink your blood, they won't feed on meat.
It is dreams and their ilk that they love to eat.

This particular boggart, having heard Billy's cries,
Came to see the source with its own little eyes.
And when he found out it was a boy he had sought
He had (how terrible) the exact, wrong thought.
"I seek out the happiest dreams for myself
For they are most tasty, and the best for my health.
How brilliant, how wondrous, this boy's dreams must be
If even in sleep he cries out with glee!"

So he leapt on the bed where the boy lay at rest
And sat himself on top of poor Billy's chest.
He poked out his tiny pink paws in the air.
To catch any dreams that might linger there.
But the boggart soon knew he had picked the wrong boy
For, as you know, these dreams had no joy.
Only fear, only shadow, only darkness and dread
Had any place inside Billy's head.

It swept over the boggart like a filthy, black tide
All the phantoms and devils young Bill kept inside.
They crawled into his bones and under his skin
And started to corrupt the poor fey from within.
His brown hairs fell out, his teeth turned black,
His paws became claws, and his pink flesh cracked
The eyes, once so bright, were now pinpoints of red
And the soul that had once made them shine was now dead.

It was at this point that Bill chose to awake
Which, as you can guess, was an awful mistake
For the first sight to greet Billy's eyes upon waking
Was the transforming boggart and the sound it was making.
What was left of him now, I cannot be sure
But the thing on the bed was a boggart no more.
It grinned at poor Billy, still rooted in place
And then took a bite out of poor Billy's face.

So remember, dear child, bad dreams are but fleeting.
They vanish at the first sign of dawn's bright greeting.
For the ghosts and the ghouls in your head, do not weep...

Instead, fear what sits on your chest as you sleep.

This thread seems an extremely good idea, yet it has all but died of late. If no-one else minds, I'm going to bump it with something a little different. I recently tried writing a play in verse form, a Shakespearean homage if you will. If you haven't tried this, let me tell you it's extremely difficult. However, I would like critique on it just to know if I can make it clearer or more effective.

We set our scene in the city of Acre at the time of the Third Crusade, where a soldier, Malcolm Wren, stands trial for insurbordination. And before anyone asks, it is less than 500 words. I checked :)

Malcolm: And thus to execrable justice
I must lay profound in muted prayer
To await my chosen execution
Without supplication, nor despair

Sebastian: The accused one stands before our view
In full countenance of his own crime

Malcolm: No crime commit did I that no full man
Would not himself commit in mine estate

Sebastian: The sins are listed thus, that Malcolm Wren
Former bearer of arms of our order
Did, with callous frame and villain's will,
Refuse to march against the heretics
That, even now, keep their narrow glare
Close to the sanctum heart of Acre's walls.

Pasquale: How dost the guilty plea?

Malcolm: Why, thou must know already, O wise judge.
The prophet has gifted thine with his eyes
If thou name me such before I speak my case

Pasquale: Does thou make a mockery of our tenets?
If it be so, speak it plainly, so we
May put thy intentions to light at last

Malcolm: Not mock, fair and noble justices, no
I do not intend to play the fool to thee
Rather illuminate, to unveil
All false creeds and couplets that construct
My situation. You call my acts crime.
What crime? Is staying blade from babes a crime?
Is letting mothers stray about their homes
A crime? If it be so, we all have sinned
For we have left our sons untouched, unchanged
And kept our mothers safe from battles call.

Pasquale: These are not good Christian folk you spare
You speak of them as such

Malcolm: How are they not?
Do they not pray as we? Do they not work?
Do they not scratch the dried earth for sweet seed?
They are as much our mothers as our own

Pasquale: They are our foe, blind and foolish soldier
Quiet these rebellious thoughts and think
Upon the demands of our people's war!

Malcolm: So, our foe is now endless. Enemies
Not bound by the lines of innocence.
All may be accountable, all guilty.
The ranks of Ares manned by mewling children,
His chariots driven by frightened babes.
Wives clutch their broomsticks made sarrisas
For families are not spared high Battle's call.
Who else supplies the war? Are we to slay
Cattle in their pens for dwelling with those
Who worship strange exotic deities?
Are we to strip those mountains that dare ring
Sparkling waters with jagged horizons
Slowing our sacred duty? Should we hunt
The sun for granting them light to see or
The moon for cloaking them with sable hoods?
Call it war, good sirs, if name it you must.
But name it not a people's war, for they
Fear you make them part of it. They fear that
When shields are raised and lines of conflict drawn
They will stand at arms to greet the dawn.

Thank you, but I wrote this my dear girl, hence it being on the writing forum :)

And no, it isn't copyrighted, but if anyone else uses it they should really give the author proper credit. That's true of any material you find on Newgrounds.

Yes, I know its not Halloween, but I'm getting this up now for two reasons. First, I start university soon, and I doubt I'm going to have much time to set anything up during October. Second, I think this poem could be quite good as an animation, so I want to get it up now to give people a chance to think about it. Its a poem in a children's fairy tale style. Enjoy!

---------------

Listen closely, dear child, as you snuggle up tight
As you lie on your pillow and turn off the light
To the rhyme I recount on this All Hallow's Eve
A story that most would find hard to believe
A tale of shadows and things in the mind
Of strange spirits in the dark and souls cast behind
But do not let such trifling tales worry you
Be safe in the knowledge that it's mostly untrue.

Our black fable starts with a young boy named Billy
Who, every night, would scare himself silly.
For all types of terrors lay still in his head
And came out to play when he rested in bed.
Each night, he would dream of demons and beasts,
Each night he would find himself part if their feasts
And because all his thoughts were so dreadfully dour
He would wake with a start on the stroke of each hour.

Now the bulk of this tale and its events unpleasant
Took place on a Halloween much like the present.
Whilst Billy was sleeping, into his house
Crept a strange creature, as quiet as a louse.
This creature had heard, loud from his room
The sounds Billy made in his nightmarish doom.
With black button eyes and chestnut brown hairs
A boggart tip-toed its way up the stairs.

Now keep listening, dear child, for despite what you've heard
Not all such fantastical things are absurd.
Some are just frightened, and refuse to be seen
Only emerging in old Halloween.
Boggarts are the most harmless of these fairy creatures
No frightening thoughts or ferocious features.
They won't drink your blood, they won't feed on meat.
It is dreams and their ilk that they love to eat.

This paticular boggart had heard Billy's cries
And came to see the source with its own little eyes.
And when he found out it was a boy he had sought
He had (how terrible) the exact, wrong thought.
"I seek out the happiest dreams for myself
For they are quite tasty, and the best for my health.
How brilliant, how wondrous, this boy's dreams must be
If even in sleep he cries out in glee!"

So he lept on the bed where the boy lay at rest
And sat himself on top of poor Billy's chest.
He poked out his tiny pink paws in the air.
To try to catch dreams still lingering there.
But the boggart soon knew he had picked the wrong boy
For, as you know, these dreams had no joy.
Only fear, only shadow, only darkness and dread
Had any place inside Billy's head.

It swept over the boggart like a filthy, black tide
All the phantoms and devils young Bill kept inside.
They crawled into his bones and under his skin
And began to corrupt the poor fey from within.
His brown hairs fell out, his teeth turned black,
His paws became claws, and his pink flesh cracked
The eyes, once so bright, were now pinpoints of red
And the soul that had once made them shine was now dead.

It was at this point that Bill chose to awake
Which, as you can guess, was an awful mistake
For the first sight to greet Billy's eyes upon waking
Was the transforming boggart and the sound it was making.
What was left of him now, I cannot be sure
But the thing on the bed was a boggart no more.
It grinned at poor Billy, still rooted in place
And then took a bite out of poor Billy's face.

So remember, dear child, bad dreams are but fleeting.
They vanish at the first sign of dawns bright greeting.
For the ghosts and the ghouls in your head, do not weep...

Instead, fear what sits on your chest as you sleep.

Fin

I actually find these kind of challenges interesting, because Madness is the last thing I would have thought would be suitable for a written piece. Action sequences are notoriously difficult to do without degenerating into the "And he shot at him, then he shot back, then I shot back and killed him" sort of style.

Anyway, I'd love to get some comments on my story so far. I have no idea if I'm going in the right direction, but I'd like to get there well :)

Oh, and good luck to everyone else.

Thanks Deathcon. Always nice to meet a fellow Colossus lover.

Your right about the sentence structure. I never really give much thought to how a poem looks on the page, which is silly because that's as much part of the poem as the language and rhythmn. I'll go through this again and think how I can meld it a bit more so the form matches the imagery.

And its interesting you mention the epilogue. Generally I always want to give the reader a bit of context on the piece, but I can see how it is interpreted as a get out clause (especially this one). I'll think more about what I write in them in the future.

Thanks for the reply. Shame I don't like Kanye West :)

In answer to your recent point, I don't think that just because a writer "writes for themself" doesn't mean the validation of others isn't important to them. I think to some degree, every author writes for his or her self - writers tell stories they themselves enjoy. But they also appreciate it when someone else also likes their work, or when someone is willing to publish it. Its not just an icing on the cake, but a filling too.

Didn't I tell you I wasn't happy with this :)

Thank you for the response, and I can see why you might think the poem directionless. Mainly it was an exercise in trying to describe the Colossi themselves. The reference to the reader is a reference to the hero of the game. But there's not much point in writing a poem which you can only understand if you've played the game, is there? :)

Oh, and "Where go you?" is just a self-indulgent bit of sentence mashing. Deathcon7 is going to have my head for this :)

What is your journey?
Where go you?
To the land of wandering towers
Where spires work like limbs

Look, look you.
See how they blot out the sun
How each step shakes the moon from its safe perch
How the stars tremble.

They are gods in moss.
The deities in deep carvings.
Mottled stone like bones, jutting
From their pure skin, deep and bestial.

They are the eyes of a lost time;
The guardians of forgotten graves
Whose occupants
Whisper through the earth.

Yet still you ride,
Insect-like,
With your tiny black horse and feeble sword
To challenge the stature of mountains.

Why? For love?
For the promise of future uncertainties?
Idyllic fields promised by an empty shadow
Who despises all who come.

So go.
The mountains wait in silence
Stand, toe to toe, with their gargantuan frames.
Be strong, for mountains show no mercy.

Fin

Meh, I haven't worked in free verse for a while, and I've been playing a lot of Shadow of the Colossus recently. And thus the two shall meet. I'm not paticularly happy with it, but you can't be inspired all the time. That would just be unfair :)

This seems a much more well thought out argument, Deathcon7, and had it been posted at the top of the thread, quite a lot of angry walls of text would have been avoided :)

That being said, I think we still might have a few misunderstandings.

I agree completely with your point about metaphors being a tool; I think any writer would agree on that score, but I don't think everyone has the same view of what a "murdered metaphor" is. "The sky was a cat's arse of iridesence" is a murdered metaphor, certainly. But there might be a bit more debate over whether "the sky lapped gently at the horizon, tomorrow napping beyond the eves of the world" has been murdered. That is a bit more contextual. Its over the top, but whether it has become useless or not is the question.

Secondly, you seem to be very dismissive of new writing. Whilst there are some depths a story cannot be raised from no matter how much guidance you give to the author, not everyone is divinely gifted with incredible writing skills from the get go. Its all very well finding a medium that satisfies your inner artist, but very few individuals haven't needed to practice and improve over time, no matter what medium that is. It may just be the way I've read it, but you sound a little discouraging.

And thirdly, and bear in mind this is in no way meant as an insult, you can sound arrogant. In some cases, it seems like anything that doesn't meet your standards is immediately worthless. From what I've read, your standards seem quite reasonable, but its your tone that is aggravating to the reader. You also seem to have expected everyone to agree with you from the very start of this thread, which may be another reason readers immediately turn against you.

Hope that helped! I quite like this topic, and I think writing technique should probably be discussed more on this forum.

At 8/22/10 05:07 PM, Jackdabomb wrote: Very good. It's very hard to find a flaw in this, I'm sure someone could nitpick it but it's really very good. The word choice is excellent and everything flows very well. Awesome poem

Thanks mate! Nice to know that a piece doesn't have to be incredibly flawed to get comments :)

I have not suffered enough, you see?
The brain lacks new stimulation
When words are products of anguish and dread
Verse remains stale in the depths of the head
Without just a taste of damnation

That comes from experienced pain. I'm free
From the clouds of average depression.
Instead I am treated to luxuries fleeting
Whilst the artist inside is mercy entreating.
My soul thus receives a possession

Of what would be deemed by most as envy
Of those with memories burning.
Who but a poet would see such content
And do nothing but cry in extended lament
And continue his moronic yearning.

So forgive what must seem like fool's jealousy
A desire of a life that is broken.
What else could it be to the people who've lost
And for the solace of boredom would pay any cost.
The crowds who have bled have spoken:

"Why would you want to suffer like me?"

Fin

Although I quite like writing poetry, I've noticed that most great poets have suffered traumatic experiences in their lives, and for a period I envied their melancholy. Then I realised how naieve that was, and wrote this.

Hmm...

I partially agree with you. Sometimes the desperation to invent original imagery can cause sentences to turn in on themselves and have even less meaning than their simpler forms. I'm probably guilty of this myself.

However, using stale metaphors and cliches, though recognisable and easier to read, come at the expense of vivid imagery. George Orwell said something similiar himself. New and exciting metaphors can conjure up much more effective images in the reader's mind and thus should not be completely removed in favour of the tired, old staples of writing.

In conclusion, I think writers must strike up a balance between complex, original metaphor and making their text legible. Its all very well making something easy to read, but if its like every other text that has come before it, why would you want to?

A nice version of the traditional "carnivourous plant" story but it really needs to be longer. Your narrator was well voiced but it seemed like the plants got a hold over him too quickly. A few more gruesome murders would have been nice too. Its definitely a story that needs expanding.

Thankyou for the comments. I'm glad someone left a note. I may come back to this story someday but I doubt it. It would be a nice side project, but it would definitely need expanding.

To answer some of your questions, I had in my mind more of a Renaissance setting, a point where science is just coming into its own. But I can understand why a reader would need more clarification.

It's a nice little introduction, and you set the scene very well, as well as giving a history brief enough to peak interest without letting on too much on the details.

However, you need to sort out your sentence structure. Many of the lines in your story are just parades of comma after comma after comma. Break up your sentences. Full stops add punch and definition to the writing. By all means, keep some lines long but makes you use some more interesting ways to join up your clauses. In addition, a variety of sentence lengths make a story more interesting. Only make them the same if you are aiming for a paticular effect or to convey some sort of emotion.

I have been journeying in the wasteland for seven years now. I've been sitting in this same spot for three of them.

I am a scientist, a rationaliser. I seek the logical explanation to the world. I do not admire God's creations because I do not believe they are God's. I have witnessed what trouble religion causes, what problems it vomits up in its hedonism, and I want none of it. So I applied my brain power to further my knowledge of, well, everything. I remember spending hours in the library, pouring over books on particles, quantum physics, advanced mathematics, anything I could get my hands on. I observed and tested theories on gravity and light, the way volcanoes erupt, the way plants feed off the sun. It all made so much sense. Here were sensible, proven theories why everything occurs as it should. I was mesmerised. But so far, all I had done was look and learn. I had not come up with any new idea myself.

So I thought. I considered Gormatus' principles of light refraction, Parascetes' theories of gravitational distribution and Norr's mass formation ideal. This was at a time of considerable religious upheaval, I considered myself lucky to have access to such resources. I went through my mathematics, testing and retesting every thought that came into my head. I drew detailed diagrams, covering the walls of my small but substantial lab in arcing sine waves and storms of coefficients. And then, it struck me. The sun of the perfect idea streamed through the storm of my equations. It was so simple, it surprised me no-one had considered it before. Perhaps this was what went through the minds of all great thinkers when they had a revelation that would change the world.

I brought my papers before the scientific community, showing them my mathematics, proving that my ideals were sound. And they liked it. By all the gold in Az, they loved it! It would be the discovery of the century, they told me. I would get prizes, commendations, the respect of the scientific world! But there were issues. As I have said, this came at a time when religion was at its strongest. My idea struck at the very core of their beliefs. They hurled insults and counter-arguments at me, and I reposted with mathematics and natural explanations. It was clear neither side would yield. That is, until one of the people (those insignificant little things that only sway the world when in the majority) made a suggestion. Things had to be seen to be believed, she said, so bring us visual evidence. Of course, I couldn't. My theory was based on maths, not physical proof. But then, neither could religion.

This was my chance, I could feel it. I requested grants to fund an expedition into the wastes that surrounded Az, to bring back photographic evidence of my discovery. No-one objected, not even the religious leaders, as they believed they were in the right. So I and a handful of explorers set out to cross the border wastes, a feat never accomplished by any man. I would not just be hailed as a hero of science but a hero of exploration. Nothing could go wrong.

So, here I am now, sitting on a rock in the middle of a landscape like bleached bone. The sill is cracked, as broken as my heart. All my hopes and dreams rested on this theory. I had been so sure that our world was spherical, so sure. All my equations were sound, all the natural laws made sense. It had to be true. It had to be.

But what can I see? I can see branches. Branches thicker than mountains, longer than the greatest of rivers, stretching out into the sky. They emerge from the face of the edge of the world, pushing their way out from the rock to spiral away. Leaves the size of islands sprout from the bark, catching the sun's light and warmth. The clouds themselves flow in and around house sized buds, the weather seemingly entangled in the twigs. And, far away in the tangled expanse, I can hear a song, a haunting, wailing song of some great bird perched beyond the clouds.

A tree!? An enormous tree?! How can that be possible? How could its branches support a continent, what roots could fuel such a monstrous beast? Are we resting on a single spindly trunk, or are we resting on an entire forest stretching up into the sky? It should be impossible. It must be. But then I would be denying the evidence of my own eyes, and I would be no better than some nonsensical fanatic. And yet, I can feel all my hopes and dreams tumbling away, as if falling over the edge into the great abyss below me.

I spent years looking at those branches, trying to solve the paradox of denying the plain evidence, while still behaving in a logical way. I couldn't do it. Every time I tried to believe I was hallucinating or that this was some kind of elaborate mirage, it came back to me. That giant tree, bigger than worlds, cradling Az in its heart. I even considered walking out over the edge, just to prove there was solid ground beyond, but I could not bring myself to do it.

After three years, I realise that there is nothing I can do, nothing I can say, that will make the tree go away. But another thought strikes me. This is a great discovery. It will be a new challenge to explain it. How the tree lives, how it survives. What secrets could it hold within its bark?

I decide that more research needs to be conducted. I get up off my rock and turn towards home, with only a glance back at the wondrous sight behind me. I set off towards the main camp, one foot in front of the other, kicking up dust as I virtually skip with a smile on my face. Already, theories are beginning to form in my mind.

And behind me, the bird sings its song of the world tree again.

Fin

This is one of my much older stories that I've dredged up from my old deviantArt account. Tell me what you think.

I have to say, I've seen a couple of these kinds of poems on the forum and, whilst it's quite well written, I'm afraid it's very standard. There's nothing here that makes it stand out against other, similiar lamentations.

The metaphors are nothing I haven't seen before, the sentence structure isn't paticuarly original. Whilst this may be your opinion of the world as it is (and hell knows a lot of us agree with you), its lacking something that would make it seem from the heart, that would reach out, grab the reader, and make him think what the world is like.

Thanks for the critique. I apoligise for some of the frankly atrocious grammar and spelling errors. I was writing this at one o'clock in the morning. So certain vital parts of the brain were shutting down.

Ironically, had I been writing it any earlier, I might have continued at a somewhat sedate pace, so perhaps I need to write more as if I'm about to fall asleep. :)

"Even", Tie leaned in even further. "Even if it meant exchanging places with that pretty blonde acquaintance of yours?"

Cuffs' face became a dark parody of his former grief. "Yes. I would have her down here instead of me." His rage became palpable in the air around him "I would have you drag her down to the furthest levels of this corrupted place, and then further. Take her to where there is no light, no joy, no hope."

Tie paused. He leaned out again, an expression of satisfaction arriving smugly on his brow. "Well, I think that's all we needed to hear."

What was once rage withered quickly to panic. "What?" Cuffs stammered through his cage of teeth, his jaw clamped shut to stop himself crying out. "Who's we? What just happened?"

Tie got up from his seat, adjusting the leathery belt tied around the waist of his slacks. It was a good belt, worn from years of use, from years of sitting down and talking to people about their problems. Tie had found it best to wear comfortable clothing for these occasions, as some could propagate themselves for decades. "Your trial, my dear boy, has just reached its conclusion."

All colour was gone. Skin had become as pallid as the petals of a withered rose. "My trial's already over. I was sentenced to the Second Circle. I received the papers to prove it. His will be done, it said." His voice rose to the high pitch of a whining child, trying to extract some small sliver of hope from the situation.

"Like the sign at the door, that wa sjust to scare you. The real judge is me. The real judge is always me." He briefly smoothed down the wrinkles that had developed in his sweater. It had somehow acquired a strange, eldritch sheen to its surface that seemed totally unnatural to what, for all intents and purposes, was wool. "And I'm afraid you're going to be going to a much lower floor than second."

Cuffs tried to get up, but the seat beneath him was disintergrating into a clingy, organic substance that would not release its grip on his buttocks. The walls were no longer boring, they were active and alive and hungry. Every shadow seemed to reach out with thin fingers, each one determined to gain a hold on his soul. Every tick of the clock counted down. He made one last desperate plea. "Please. Please please please, listen to me you bastard! I'm sorry! Is that what you want to hear? Is that what you all want to hear?! I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry..."

"No you're not. Not really. Even now, you don't really believe it was your fault. You blame others and seek to pull them down with you. How very human. But hey, you might change your mind. I'll come back to you in fifty thousand years and ask you then." He turned away briefly, waiting for the unholy screams and groans of pain had died down. It was an awful cacophany, but Tie rather enjoyed it. It was the sound of a job well done. He turned back. He didn't need to. He knew Cuffs would be gone, and all that would be left was an empty plastic chair in a room of grey walls, with a single clock on the wall that would always show three thirty seven forever and ever. Amen.

But something was different. The flowers were still there, resting lightly on the surface of the table. It was only a bouquet of brown and black, but it was still too clourful for the room it inhabited. It should have been removed. But then, this was the house that regret built, so perhaps they felt right at home. Tie thought for a moment, then decided to leave them where they were. Maybe on his next visit he would bring a vase. His outline flickered for a half of a moment, and if you had been looking closely, you would have sworn he had three faces mounted on his head. But it may have just been a trick of the lighting. Besides, if you were watching, you should't have been there. He vanished, transposing his presence to the same indefinable realm that Cuffs had gone, but in a somewhat different role.

And all that was left were the flowers, decaying petals falling to the floor like tear drops.

Fin

Two men sat in the waiting room. It was grey, sombre, like a heavy mist on the morning of a brothers funeral. The walls seemed not just to be an absence of colour, but to be actively sucking the colour from the air. And everywhere else. But the two men didn't notice the wall. They had bigger fish to fry, as it were.

They didn't know how long they had been sitting there. The clock on the wall had been displaying three thirty seven since the beginning of time. It still kept ticking, like it's rythmn had any meaning besides cosmetic, but you couldn't keep count of the ticks. They were like the walls, or the carpet, or the uncomfortable plastic seats apparently stolen from outside the headmasters office. They sucked, no, leeched, at the corners of your soul. Nothing was left of those who waited in this room when they moved on to their appointment. Which was, from the occupants point of view, probably a good thing.

One man, wearing a bright red tie over a vomit green sweater that stood out like a putrescent scar despite the grey ambience, turned to the other, a worried looking thirty-something with his black blazer askew and his cuffs undone. There were flowers next to Cuffs, a dead bouquet.

"So", the voice of Tie seemed odd, alone in defying the regularity of the clock. "How far down are you?"

Cuffs tilted his head upward. He only seemed to regard his companion in the loosest sense of the word. His mind was spread thinly across his immediate future. "I'm sorry?" Tie was not sure whther this apology was directed to him or the world at large, but he took it to mean a bout of deafness.

"How far down?" he repeated. The words hung sullenly in the air for a moment, unwilling to be forced into conversation. Cuffs leaned back, sighing with his entire body, and stared at the ceiling (about as exiting a view as the walls.)

"Second circle" he said. It was quick and painless, but he prodded the matter further. "Second level down. Just missed out on the cushy ride by an inch. Doesn't seem fair."

Ties gave this last statement some thought. "But, by definition, it must be. Otherwise what would be the point." He glanced back at Cuffs, who appeared to have descended back into his traditional melancholy. In his dishevelled suit, he looked rather like a romantic poet contemplating the meaning of beauty or some other such excuse to get high. "Still", Tie grinned, "it could be worse."

The sound Cuffs made could have been an honest laugh, an agreement, but it was unlikely. No-one laughed in this room in authentic happiness. "Why yes, getting hurled into rocks by a giant hurricane for all eternity sounds great in the circumstances. Having every bone in my body broken, then remade, then broken again is just peachy. I should thank my lucky, fucking stars." He looked down again, this time studying the dead flowers on the coffee table beside him. They lay there like a shrivelled corpse. Post-life definitely, but you could have been fooled.

"Weddings. Happiest days of your life according to everyone. Not that they give two shits about how you feel. As long as the buffet's stocked and the dress is white and the church is bedecked with confetti up to your fucking eyeballs, its a wedding. Never mind the people, its all about the frills." He grasped the flowers by the stems and brought them up to eye level. Each bloom was of a different origin, roses, violets, daisies, but all had now faded to the same black brown hue, the colour of 'we were but now are not'. "She was a nice girl. I've always like redheads. They're so independant, so exciting, you know. Amazing how I could have thought that a hair colour makes someone different." He layed the flowers down with surprising reverence. "But then I fucked her best friend. In the chapel. Blow job and everything. God, she was good. And she was blonde. Perhaps that's why I did it. Because blondes have more fun. Everyone know blondes are better then redheads. Or is it the other way rou..."

He stopped. His sinuses had strangled the words in his throat and hung them from the roof of his mouth. He didn't cry, but Tie got the feeling there were tears somewhere, great hacking sobs going on deep within his soul. He placed a hand on Cuffs' shoulder, hoping the contact might somehow heal whatever guilt may have lingered beyond the process. Cuffs turned towards him, all unseeable emotion spent. "She saw of course. The world works on Sitcom timing, you see. So I ran. I didn't want to see her expression. I didn't want to know whether she was angry or devastated or just dissappointed. I couldn't express how sorry I was, how completely insane I must have been. I ran straight out of those great gates in the wall and into the road. I never saw the Audi." He threw up his arms and shoulders in an expression of almost divine acceptance. "And here I am. The rest, as they say, is theology."

Cuffs slumped into his chair. The speech seemed to have exhausted him and his reserves of feelings. Whatever depression that had been there was gone for now. Tie once again was lost in thought. He thought a lot, the man in the red tie. He considered every one of his words carefully, before finally selecting the most delectable - "Do you think you deserve it?"

"I do now, but I don't know whether that's me or part of the sentence." He smiled again, one last wave of submission. "Infinity is a long time. Get back to me in fifty thousand years and I might think differently." His eyebrows raised in mock astonishemnt, as if something of great importance had suddenly come to his attention. "But I've been selfish this whole time, only speaking of my problems. Tell me, how far down have you got."

Tie examined his tie, folding it between his fingers over and over, scrutinising the tiniest imperfection in the fabric. Without looking up, he held out his left hand, pointed one finger down, and said three words. "All the way."

Cuffs' eyelids snatched back and every pore in his body started to suffocate. The saliva in his mouth turned to dust and ashes. Even the complex operations in his brain took a pause. He could barely whisper "Shit. I mean... shit."

Tie seemed surprised by Cuffs' reaction. "Oh, its not all that bad." he said, waving a hand as if all the horrors of the pit could be dismissed with such a simple gesture. "I always knew this would be my final stop. I came to terms with it a long time ago."

"Came to... but.... the ice... you have to spend eternity with... him."

Tie smiled his lop-sided, concillatory smile once more. "Well at least I'm in the best of company then. I'm up there, I'm sorry, down there with the greats."

Though Cuff's neurons remained in their fried state, he could just about muster the intelligence for a question. "What did you do?"

"Oh, that's neither here or there. We should always concentrate on the present, that's what I say. So, friend, how are you going to use your present?"

Cuffs had become even more confused than before, if that was possible. "What do you mean do? What can I do?"

"Oh you can always do something. There's always hope."

"Hope here is impossible. I thought the sign on the door was pretty clear about that..."

"They do that just to scare you. The truth is there are loopholes. Not for me. I'm as dead as a dodo, but you have shown true regret for your actions. That might be worth something down here from what I've heard." He leaned in with the air of one passing on a sacred secret, one that could shatter the earth if discovered. He whispered, each word tumbling gracefully through the air. "If you could do anything to get away, to get back to the arms of your loving bride, would you? Would you make that choice?"

Cuffs glanced towards the bouquet, the blooms shedding their petals gently, each falling tear-drop shaped from the stem. He looked back. "Yes."

At 6/10/10 10:23 AM, Deathcon7 wrote: For a first entry into a journal, this seems awfully informational and well informed. Please note, if your structure is going to be a journal format, you want to make sure you're authentic. This first section is more akin to a preface or forward to the published journal. Also, in order for these to be entertaining, or enticing, there has to be steady, slow revelations that tease the reader across the journal entries. Each entry would be it s own arc, but there would be meta arcs that span multiple entries, and a meta arc that spans muliple arcs/the entire journal. This complex kind of structure is required in order to bring together each of the journal entries into a cohesive story.

That being said, you may want to rethink the use of the word meta. When you say meta species, I'm think of a single creature composed of smaller, individual creatures. Almost like a beehive being like a single creature with the queen bee as its brain.

Other than that, I think this has a lot of great potential. As a writer, I can already imagine some of the precarious situations our good doctor will find himself in. As a reader, I'm excited to see what you come up with.

Thanks Deathcon! To answer your worries, this Field Guide will definitely be quite informational throughout, it being a study as well as an account. However, thats not to say I'm not going to include any sort of plot, its just going to take a while to get the ball rolling.

And the reasons I chose Meta were a) I thought Cyber and Robo were to cheesy b) it really just means a change of some kind. If I get more concerns I will change it, but I'm going to leave it as is for now.

Account One - July 10th 2046

This is the account of Doctor Arthur Samuel, graduate of the once prestigious Oxford university, and his experiences in the wilderness once known as the city of Sheffield, England, studying and cataloguing the assorted Meta-fauna and flora that now occupies this wilderness.

I'm sorry if I'm boring you. I have always wanted to write one of these. Twelve years I have worked in field biology, and even my university dissertation was on the migratory patterns of hummingbirds. I've never written a definitive study, a study that would find itself on every bookshelf in every library in the world, right next to the Origin of Species. Something that would have put me at least in the scientific community's history books, or the equivalent of. I could look every day at my desk and feel an enormous sense of self-satisfaction as I just stared at the Nobel Prize. Arthur Samuel. Official Genius.

But, to tell the truth, I was never that good. I never got the hang of just waiting hours on end in one spot, knees sodden and hands wobbling from holding a notebook too tight. I would take one look at my subject, and then feel my mind lifted away by flights of fancy. What were they doing here? What does the environment around it mean to its primitive mind? I was too busy swimming through these philosophical day dreams to notice my subject had long since left, and I had no details written down barring a single coloured feature, or the shape of its maw, or how many toes it had on a single foot. The wild psychiatrist they called me. "You're not supposed to think about how they feel" Vivian would always tell me. You just note down how many times they shit a day and then publish it as gospel. I think Vivian secretly admired my somewhat fantastical approach to science. It was so different to her daily life, having to work by numbers and measurements.

You see. Once again I am becoming reminiscent, losing focus of my goals.

[An introduction to Meta-Biological Categories]

Whilst I have not yet established the same complex naming system that is associated with living organisms, I have strived to come up with several categories with which to establish a metaforms most obvious attributes. I have listed these below:

Medium: Terran/Aquan/Avian - The medium of a creature is where it spends most of its life performing survival related activities e.g eating, hunting, reconstruction etc. Terran refers to those metaforms that spend most of their time on land or, in certain cases, underground. Aquan refers to those that dwell either underwater or on the surface, whilst Avian refers to those metaforms that spend their time in the air (despite their occasional need to land). This is the simplest category to attribute to a metaform.

Chassis: Endo/Exo/Duo - This category refers to the location of the main supportive structure of the metaform, whether it is a metal shell or supportive skeleton. Endochassis refers to those metaforms that have a purely internal supporting structure whilst Exochassis refers to those with a purely external one. Some metaforms have both, and these are classified as Duochassis.

Diet: Oxivore/Mineravore/Metavore/Omnivore - Whilst not necessarily needing sustenance to survive, metaforms do consume material in order to reconstruct and replace faulty parts. They have several methods of achieving this. Mineravores are the most comon. They feed on inanimate metals such as scrap which is then reconstituted inside them as new parts. Oxivores feed on the oxide compounds that occur on metals when they react to air i.e rust. Metavores hunt and consume other metaforms for their reconstruction needs. Omnivores combine two or more of these diets.

I must warn the reader that this classification system is still a work in progress, which is why it is presently so basic. After I have made entries on enough metaforms, I may be able to group them into genuses for easier categorisation. Until then, these are the three basic categories I shall be using.