Thinking / I will bolt, / I am shown the rope / To judge / Whether I find / The braid / To my liking. / Hide and hair, / Sinew and / Fiber: / Lariats created / For barter and raiding / And war and the / Quelling of beeves…
Idle Musings from a Floored Mind…
Several million words per year hit my screen. Far, far fewer will ever hit yours, to include those words I throw at this log of events and other unconventionally-published meanderings of a strange organ locked in a bone cage.
Conover, Nebraska, 1986… As summer break winds-down, Lee and Rocky Keller inherit a joy-buzzer from Grandpa Steve’s service in the Pacific. A war trophy, the buzzer acts the part—the horror!
Lee Keller’s life is hell—a hormonal brother, troubled parents, oblivious grandparents, a girl-friend, football practice, the first day of middle school… oh yes, and the Boy of Smoke, harbinger of the Faceless One.
Oh… yes, of course / Take my turn, honey / Take my place in line / It’s fine / Take my copper money / Sip my box of lemon-lime / Make me last / Make me last.
The best / Marketers are all / Poets / Who know each word / Is a bullet / Point / To be used / Sparingly to make / Clear / Arguments; / To win / Tired hearts.
He survived Chickamauga, the war, and went West, swearing to never kill any man again—now, twenty-six years later, he’ll have to break his oath, or else he’ll die at a sun-baked southwestern railstop.
Herman Melville based the original Great White—sorry, Jaws—the whale in Moby Dick, on a real incident and sinking. What of his family? Did the whale, too, want only revenge?
What follows is a reaction from a fictional teen girl. It is a song, or the lyrics to one, composed by Sarah Bronagh and Cole Miller as the Born Again fever ravages her body and mind…
Two years I fought my brother in the War—we’d of killed each other then. Could be we would now, meeting by letters sent: at the little plantation, a ruin now, burnt and sagging, and dead…
The novel I didn’t have any intention of writing—it without asking—brought the baggage of inspiration. One of the better ways to combat creative bursts is to put them out of mind…