A Lack of Words

This poem is more or less about the way hands can say things that words cannot, the way letters are meaningless unless they’re grounded in actual thought, and what it feels like to be speechless. Find Calmly Sinking under the poems section of my blog. Enjoy!

let free, your fingers crawl

to clasp upon a talk

grasp at quiet palms

and wade across the dark

dash across grooved skin

wishing to be mute

communicate your spins

your twists

your turns

your loops

discreetly weaving threads of word

so that no smiles go unheard

every movement something more

Enjoying

Calmly

Sinking,

Instead of

Diving First

what pleasure does fresh vocabulary give

when we forget the use of words

to remember hands within

~thelionwriter

 

Fantasy

What I’ve noticed lately in my poetry are fantastic concepts. Not in the sense of “Holy crap this is a fantastic poem!” but in the mythical, dreamy, lack-of-reality sense. This new poem is entitled Dreamcatcher and you can find it under the poems section of my blog. Enjoy!

Where do dreams move to?

waking removed

Glued,

blankets peeling smooth

off your body

and in Through

Some cavernous space

you find before Wake

deepest parts of yourself

slip past the day

only to be sleeping Again

this time out of your Bed

walking around

pretending we’re Dead

The image’s left,

The minute your breath

born on The mouth,

will be hidden with friends

see through their lenses

re-discover these thoughts

before you can End it.

~thelionwriter

 

Action and Thought

This poem was inspired by my friend, King B’s painting:

Check out this new poem underneath the Poems section of my blog. It’s called Collapse.

What twisted ways do we tremble to walk

Confused between action and thought

Captured in ascending plots

Deceiving ourselves from the joy of laughs,

With only clouds to soar on,

Only smiles to float from,

Eyes meant to glow bright like the sun,

Collapse

In this dream before you can run

~thelionwriter

 

Home is Where the Heart Is

Recently my Internet has been acting up at home. Which gave me the idea to take a much needed visit to my parents house. It was here  that I was able to finally post a bunch of things I have been working on while away from the inter-web.

Throw it to Fire  is a piece I wrote about 2 years ago that I realized I hadn’t posted yet so now you can find it under the Poems section.

The message behind the poem is simple and inspired by the famous St. Ignatius of Loyola quote: “Go Forth and Set the World Aflame.” As a Jesuit high school student, St. Ignatius was one of the big motivators in my writing at the time. It’s safe to say his influence can still be seen in most of the writing I do now, even though my religious ideals have changed.

The second piece A (1) Past Life is a poem that came to mind last night while I was visiting a friend. Her little patio area outside had looked familiar yet there were multiple objects (i.e. a T.V. and antenna receiver) that seemed out of place to me. As if the last time I saw this place was in a time when those things didn’t exist yet. This strange feeling of Deja Vu was so prevalent that I decided I would jot down the first words that came to my head about the scene. The result is A Past Life.

The third piece is another poem titled Mirrors in a Dark Room are Nothing but Broken Glass. This title came to me based off the idea of existence only being applicable to those people or things who are being perceived- similar to the way mirrors only have reflection in a lit room. More vaguely placed in this poem is the idea of humans needing other human interaction to truly thrive. For what is a life without loved ones?

And finally, the piece I worked on the most during this time was my short story Q: The Job Interview. This short story started as me wanting to describe the anxious feeling of waiting for a job interview and turned into another Twilight Zone-esque adventure featuring a level-headed protagonists and snarky sense of irony. One of the ideas behind this story came from my current job as a delivery boy.

I urge readers to give me their comments and critiques on this story especially. One of my ideas for the character of “Q” is to continue his narrative possibly with a new short story for him each week- each situation more confusing or strange than the last. For those that think this is a great idea or would like to see this character continue to make appearances please let me know!

Besides that, Enjoy!

~thelionwriter

 

The Making of Art

Yesterday as I helped my friend King B paint a mural on an barber shop’s wall, I walked around taking several pictures.

Some of them came out perfectly straight, well cropped, following the rule of thirds.

Others were crooked or simply blurry.

And as the day went on, I couldn’t help thinking about the idea of artists- specifically in this case, painters- working outside of a canvas.

Taking the confined space of what the traditional art-form of painting entails and expanding it: making the world your canvas.

Speaking to King B afterwards, he agreed that working outside of a traditional picture frame or canvas is one of the things he manipulates the most in his artwork.

I watched King B and his friend Rudy paint and occasionally took direction from them to add some primer here, color in a shape or two there. And slowly the painter’s process unfolded right before me.

They would create their basic doodles in white, giving a basic understanding of where faces, shapes, and colors might go.

I understood that to be the writer’s outline or basic premise for a piece: an initial idea for what you decide to eventually write in later.

Then slowly they added their first layers of paint to the bodies and heads, making sure to go over the parts that needed the most paint first.

This is something I do as a writer all the time.

Take the initial idea and begin writing the main conflicts, possibly even finishing it all in one sitting.

Lastly, I witnessed the two muralists mix more colors to add shading, detail, depth and finally outline their characters.

In the same way, my final step to a short story is always to add more details (adverbs and imagery) to scenes, fill in missing plot points (depth), and conclude my piece so that all ideas, images, characters, and moments are completely interlocking.

Not only did I enjoy seeing this transformation happen, but the joy in discovering our two different art forms were the exact same was enlightening. Best of all, it gave me inspiration of my own to create my own artwork that day. You can find the text format of this poem underneath the Poems page, until then enjoy this more visually enticing version. Enjoy!

~thelionwriter

 

A Book Review: The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

It was a year ago on hot August weeknight, similar to this one, that I was marking books in a Used Book store to be given away for free when Michael Chabon’s The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay passed through my hands. I lifted my head, and coughing “Hey Brian?”, without looking up my coworker replied, “Yes, you’re allowed to keep any books that we mark to give for free.” During my shifts I was often able to go throughout the store and search for titles that interested me and had remembered that the summaries for Michael Chabon’s novels always seemed involved, well planned, and descriptive. Upon actually reading the book (which I admit I read on and off for the better part of a year) I found a slew of characters, idyllic storytelling, beautifully painted scenes, and emotions that dripped right off the page.

Truly a page turner, Kavalier and Clay‘s greatness comes not through Chabon’s complicated-and-winding-yet-somehow-still-completely-easy-to-follow sentences or even the immense amount of colorful characters that we meet in Chabon’s masterpiece, rather it comes through his exploitation and exploration of themes like escape and The American Dream. The novel focuses on two cousins, Joe Kavalier- a young Jewish artist trained in the art of escapism and magic that is sent by his family in Prague to live with his relatives in New York City- and Sammy Clay- Joe’s quick-tongued American cousin with a knack for writing and big ideas- who decide to create The Escapist right at the dawn of The Golden Age of Comic Books. Gaining critical success, both Joe and Sam find themselves meeting shrewd businessmen, soldiers, magicians, eccentric artists, and real life saboteurs in a novel that takes us through World War 2 and into the 1950’s. While Joe Kavalier finds physical ways to escape the sorrow in his life as an exiled Jew waiting for his family to join him, Sammy Clay struggles with not being able to escape the burden of being a secret homosexual in an age of bigots. After the two gain popularity, the war pushes itself deep into the folds of their plans and things go sour. Kavalier drops his new American life, leaving behind his fans, lover, and cousin in a moments notice to escape the guilt of being free while his family remains trapped in a rapidly expanding Nazi Europe. Clay dives into a lie of a life by portraying himself to be the typical American husband with a suburban home, all the while longing for the incredible success and dream-fulfilling world The Escapist granted both Joe and Sammy.

At the end of this truly epic American novel, I was left astonished that it was over. Chabon not only gives the reader time to truly know the two cousins, but dedicates every page and chapter to it. Readers will take the emotional journey with Joe from Prague to the States, feel the bruises on Sammy’s cheek after the beating he receives for being a “fairy,” and applaud for the cousins when the final page turns to reveal the two realize they were escaping only from themselves the whole time. This 2000 Pulitzer Prize winning novel deserves all the praise it has ever received and has officially gone on my shelf as a book to be read and enjoyed over and over again. DEFINITELY GO READ THIS!

~thelionwriter