implied-author

[implied-author]

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing. What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don’t force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don’t understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day.

Ray Bradbury, Zen In The Art of Writing

Mesogeios:  

(via aerialistme)

[implied-author]

I have to start writing again.  Nothing is okay when I don't write.

[implied-author]

Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.

Orson Scott Card (via writingquotes)

[implied-author]

I see you: Old Woman walking into the grocery store in your faux-fur lined coat  giving me dirty looks as I walk out. Like you know I just returned all of my cans  then spent what could be my last five dollars on lottery tickets, desperately hoping to leave with more than I had. Like you know I overdrew my bank account trying to pay my car insurance. Like you know I know I should've put twenty dollars in my gas tank but instead only put ten and spent the other ten on a pack of cigarettes.

The look on your face killed me.   A stranger I'll never see again staring at me in my fitted cap and sweatpants, as I try to scrape together a few bucks to get me until my next paycheck; try to save the money I have until then so I can get drunk this week and make eye contact across the bar with the brightest blue eyes I've ever seen; try to get her to talk to me and drape her arm cautiously across my lower back.

[implied-author]

I sat in the parking lot of the laundry mat smoking cigarettes and thinking about you today.  About how I saw you at the bar on Christmas Eve; about how you kissed me on the cheek last week; about how I got drunk and did a body shot off your friend this week.  

But mostly about Christmas Eve.  I got drunk on red wine at family gatherings and didn't want to stop.  So I did the logical thing and called my best friend and told him we were going out.  It was a Tuesday, so Domestic Bottles were 2-for-1 and I had too many.  I can still see you swiveling in your bar-stool and not saying hello.  A tiny fragment of me wanted to be in love with you that night.  I wanted to know your family.  I wanted to know what you were doing at a gay bar on Christmas Eve.  I wanted to know what you thought about me.  I still want to know what you think about me; where I stand with you.  I want to learn the science behind having a crush on someone and at what point it becomes a borderline dangerous obsession.  

I don't want to be sad anymore.  No, allow me to rephrase.  I want to feel something.  The black hole inside of me needs to be filled with something besides whiskey and coffee and cigarettes.  I want to be in love.  I want to be happy.  And I'm not sure those things are necessarily interchangeable, love and happiness, but I'm afraid they might be.  I'm afraid that falling hopelessly in love is the only way to fix myself.  

So if I see you say hello.  My heart gets buried a little deeper every time you don't.  I'm tired of dancing alone.

[implied-author]

I want to write about you, but I don't know what to say.  

I don't know how to perfectly explain the feeling I get when we lock eyes through a sea of gay men grinding on each other.  Your eyes are painful: piercing, blue, seeing into my very soul and unlocking locks I didn't know existed.  They're why I don't know where I stand with you.  One night, I buy you a shot and you kiss me on the cheek; the next I say hi three times and you ignore me.  But your eyes tell me something I can't fully understand.  

Part of me thinks you might be actually crazy; the more rational part assumes you're a Gemini.  Twin souls, battling for dominance.  It's frustrating; stop it.  

It's almost Valentine's Day.  All of your friends have girlfriends.  Spend some time with me; we can be alone together.  Or together together.  Whatever.

[implied-author]

I want the girl people write songs about. I want the girl I write songs about.

[implied-author]

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

Oscar Wilde (via thefagartist)

[implied-author]

If the protagonist is queer, and the story doesn't revolve around romance, then why is the protagonist queer in the first place if it's largely irrelevant? I'm simply curious .

Because our lives are not defined by romance and sex and we deserve better and more diverse stories than that.

[implied-author]

I tend to give the same advice to writers over and over, because they ask the same questions over and over: I want to be a writer, what should I DO? And the only reply I can ever give them is, you have to write. You have to finish what you write. You have to keep going.

Neil Gaiman (via souvenirsandlostluggage)

[implied-author]

26. Summer in the City

Summer seems so long when I'm counting the days until it ends; counting the minutes until I can see you again.

[implied-author]

25. Oceans

In a haze of cigarette smoke and men's cologne, you held your hand in my back pocket until it felt like home. I wish I could promise you'll never be alone, but I left in the middle of the night because I didn't want to know

how far apart the oceans are or whether we could see the same stars.

[implied-author]

Eventually soulmates meet, for they have the same hiding place.

Robert Brault (via thambos)

[implied-author]

24. Pieces

Every time our eyes meet, I realize I let you leave with a part of me that I can't get back.

Then I think of all the people I keep accidentally handing myself  out to and I feel so fucking good about it because I want to pull myself apart at the seams; to taste the heartbeat of everyone I meet.

Everyone is all tiny fragments.

[implied-author]

23.

The nights we don't remember are the nights I'll never forget. So many things must have happened, yet I can only recall the way your hand fell perfectly into mine, and how I planted kisses on your forehead like I had something to prove.

With summer ending and days getting cooler I thought everything was right there in front of me.

But now you're so far away  and I can only do so much  to keep you safe and warm.

[implied-author]

22. Spirits

Everyone sings about whiskey and wine, as all the tequila drunks choke on their limes. And I'm not saying either one is right, but I'm in a too-crowded room wishing for spirits to get me through the night.

[implied-author]

21. What Does that Mean?

I dreamt we held hands on the bus, and your hair fell in waves on the seat. It wasn't meant to be something serious, but, in retrospect, I'll never really know what it all was supposed to mean.

I wish I could remember what you said. But, I guess the fault in dreams is that you don't remember a thing.