Author Archives: writerspilecki

Camp NaNoWriMo: July 2016

I didn’t realize that the novel I have been working on is actually fitting in to one of the four annual National Novel Writing Months (NaNoWriMo) per year (in the old days (2008?) it was only November). Our friend Gabrielle Massman explains how you can use July’s Camp NaNoWriMo to use your summer time to achieve some writing goals.

Gabrielle Rhody's avatarWrite for the King

I have talk frequently about NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, on this blog, and I have even posted about it in the past. Well, it is time for Camp NaNoWriMo again, and here is my annual (or perhaps bi-annual) post telling you about my novel, plan, and goals and inviting you to join me!

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is an online community that attempts to write a novel in a single month—or at least, write a significant part of a novel in a month. I am of the group that has never been able to write a whole novel in a month. The typical goal is to write 50,000 words in a month, but participants can have goals ranging from 10,000 to 200,000 words. To write 50,000 words in a month, participants try to write 1,667 words a day. National Novel Writing Month started with just the month of…

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And again, Robert comes through…

In Response to Nadia’s Misdirected Email, I State Exactly What I Am Looking For Balance. The ability to stand on one foot, on a tightrope, and juggle AR-15s, ethics and dollar bills, while chanting the U.S. Constitution, in tongues. Or good health. Unweighted dreams. A mechanism for disagreeing without needing to annihilate the opposition. […]

via In Response to Nadia’s Misdirected Email, I State Exactly What I Am Looking For — O at the Edges

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Sh*t, Robert, You’ve Done it Again

Human Distance 1 Apart from edges, and into deeper darkness, our scars crawl, remaining aloof. 2 Open windows frame the ache in motion, the displaced notes between two wavering spaces. 3 Absent light, absent voice. What is the longitude of grace? Consider errors and their remnants. 4 Navigators measured lunar distance and the height of […]

via Human Distance — O at the Edges

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Zoom Lens

Watching from the shadows, the heart wears dark

Glasses, a trenchcoat, carries a camera optimized

For distance and details. Curiosity kills cats

Regularly, it seems, but hearts don’t learn. They long

To know, to be prepared, to study the pictures–

Foreground, background, shadow on top of shadow.

 

Photo+graphein: Greek, to draw with light. We think

That light reveals, unveils, shows us an image

We can recognized. We know that the eyes

Rely on light to differentiate what (and who)

We should walk toward or away from. The heart

More private than the eye, remains in shadows.

Auden Was Right: Orlando 2016

It feels strange today to read people’s Facebook posts about pizza and soccer, when I am reeling from the second largest massacre in US history (Wounded Knee was the first, folks). But then I was reminded of W.H. Auden’s poem about Breughel’s Icarus, both of which I reproduce here. Be kind to each other, children, and activate for control of automatic weapons.

Icarus

Musee des Beaux Arts

W.H. Auden

 

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

 

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Nightmare

Something powerful by our friend at Red Lipstick and Hip Hop.

Nat's avatarAlone at the Round Table

Soft pillow; I apologize in advance.Tonight my heavy heart will carry its weight on to you…in hopes of consolation.

Reaching for a hug from arms not made of metal that I am afraid to touch.

My city let loose and took off her bulletproof vest for the night, despite the warnings from sirens heard from blocks away.

Streets ripped from concrete as gunshots made their way on to the dancefloor, shoving through hundreds of prideful feet.

Cellphones and music competed with the loud boom bap of the bullets finding homes in bodies of innocent men and women.

They tell me I should be used to this; they say bullets and gunshots should be of no surprise to me because I’m not from “here,”

But that doesn’t make it easier to deal with.

I can’t help but think of all the cellphones hidden in back pockets and purses of lifeless bodies….

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Third of Three for Jane

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Postcard from the Pillow

 

the world i have discovered

is full of more than sunsets and dreams

are not the only reason for being

sorry to leave you to sleep without me

supporting your head (if i had feet

i would stand by my decision) the world

is full of leaves and waking people

not limited by the fading colors

of sheets not tucked in and

not apologetic i am travelling

through a world so full of skyscrapers

and fireworks so full so full I bet you

wish you were here

 

Photo by Jane Kokernak.