Why Don't You Cry?

Just to avoid confusion, you read this poem right to left, not as two columns. It also might add a cool element to it if it could be read with two people. Again, please critique this. It's in an especially rough draft form. 

Why Don’t You Cry?

Why don’t you cry, dear?

What do you mean, dear?

Just as I said.

Why don’t you cry?

I heard what you said.

And I think I cry.

No, you don’t cry.

Oh, I don’t, do I?

So why don’t you?

Oh, bother, why don’t you?

I do. You know I do.

I know. It’s true.

Did you ever?

Maybe. I can’t say I never.

Did it help, do you think?

Perhaps. I can’t think.

Does it help? When you cry?

It does. I wouldn’t lie.

But why should I?

You mean, why cry?

I’d feel so weak.

But you feel so bleak.

I don’t think I could do it.

There’s nothing much to it.

You just have to let go.

I won’t! I won’t do it!

Don’t talk like you know!

It’s all right, you know.

Why can’t you just go?

Go where?

I don’t care!

Just anywhere but here!

There. There’s a tear.

Too Seldom

Hopefully this starts my posts off with a bang and they'll get better from here. It's just a draft, so if you have critiques, please don't hesitate to take an inky scalpel to it. Thanks!

Too Seldom

Too seldom have I sat

On the back of a bay stallion

Just comin’ over the rise

As the sun sets of the far hills

And the horse is huffin’ and wheezin’

And his hot sides against my legs move

In and out like great bellows

And we both know we ain’t caught the sun.

Naw, not this time,

But the bay and I both know

We’re gonna ride it down

One of these here days

And I’ll throw a loop around it and pull

And tug and get it back up in the sky.

Too seldom have I just sat

And watched the sun gettin’ away again

And patted the thick next of the horse,

My hand comin’ back all hot and damp

And I can’t help but laugh and

Put a new dirty spot on top of

All the other dirty spots

As I drag my hand across my jeans.

Too seldom have I sat

And counted the stars

Peekin’ out one by one like owls

Makin’ sure it was night really,

That the sun ain’t just gone behind a cloud,

Little ground-owl stars pop out their sparklin’ eyes

Down there on the horizon where we last seen the sun

Scamperin’ off with its great blazin’ tail

Tucked snug between its legs.

Higher up, big barn owl stars and screech owl stars

Blink into life, bright and cold and lovely

And a million years away.

Too seldom have I just sat

And tugged the reins back and headed home,

Ridin’ through an upside-down world

Where everything that’s beautiful is above me

And far too far away

And everything that’s alone and ghostly is down below

Waitin’ for life and

Somethin’ worth lookin’ at to come along.

Too seldom have I sat

And let the horse find the way back home,

Not carin’ too much one way or the other

If we ended up somewhere strange and new

Full of danger and straight answers

And everything that ain’t none of us never knew

The stars lookin’ down on the both of us

Like some dusty old judge, tired and half-blind

To the world and the truth

Just wantin’ to condemn some poor ornery fool,

Long as it means he ain’t gonna miss supper.

Too seldom have I just sat

Eyes closed and heart open

Tryin’ to remember who it is I am exactly

Or maybe who it is that I was once

And everywhere I was supposed to go

And all them things I was supposed to do,

Assumin’ I didn’t get lost along the way,

Stumblin’ off the trail after some mirage

Called Love or Money or Happiness.

Too seldom, you know?

Too seldom. 

Beavers and Bogwater, Batman!

I seem to have a terrible case of the writer's block this evening. I'm trying to do that GD Seward project, right? And I know what my story is, more or less. And I know how I want to go about writing it. But I've just been staring at this stupid one page that I actually have been able to eek out, wondering how the holy flyin' heck I'm going to turn it into three.
There are some days I just straight-up dislike writing. She's a fickle, un-giving biznatch some days. All I ask is for three measly pages. They don't even have to be great. I just want to get them done and written. Then I can go back through them and clean up the bad parts. I can't do much with a blank page, though.
I hate a blank page. It sits there, all white, and mocks me with its empty whiteness. I need to kill it with long strands of black words, but I just can't seem to find them.
Send me good thoughts.

Thank you, my creative whatever, for absolutely nothing

So, I'm sitting on the couch in my room with my feet up, trying to totally knock out my whole rough draft tonight. Ambitious, right? But I figure I'm not really busy right now, so I might as well try to do this before the week hits me in the face and knocks me right on my butt. And my creative whatever, wherever it is that my brilliant ideas sometimes spring forth from completely unprovoked, seems to be on the fritz. I can't tell if what I'm putting down right now is good or not. I'm torn between "Dang, this is good" and "I pity the poor sucker who has to slog through this pile of crap". It's truly disheartening.
See, I'm kind of going for length with this one; I need a piece that will help my portfolio size. And so I'm writing for length, and I all of a sudden realize, "I could die writing this story. Sweet hickory, I started writing about someone's life, for cryin' out loud! This could go on forever!"
So that's where I'm at right now, for those of you who have some sort of personal investment in the progress of my writing life. I hope your non-fiction ramblings are pouring out more easily than mine at the moment.

If you write on it, you keep it

I spent an equal amount of time reading this week's essays as I did erasing the stupid little notes from the fool who owned my book before me. At first, I didn't even know if I owned a pencil, or an eraser for that matter. Generally speaking, I'm a pen man myself. I feel like you're more likely to write something stupid with a pencil. After all, it's easily enough erased. With a pen, you're committed to what you're writing. It sort of makes a guy think ahead. If what I put down is permanent, I actually need to think about it. Some fool got a hold of a pencil, and that was game over for my book. Any inane little thought that popped into his or her head went all over the essays. "He doesn't want to be like his father", he/she comments at one point. No way? Was that a profound thought for you, or did you really think you'd forget that?
You'll excuse my bitterness; I hate erasing things. But I did like these two pieces. I have a question, though. Does a guy have to be gay to be published in this anthology? I'm detecting quite the pattern here...

Bouncy Balls and Eternal Halls

"I went to a funeral once."
That's how I started my first paragraph of my second project. I want to write something about my great-grandpa and hopefully capture a little bit of who he was through the piece. But I realized very quickly how nearly impossible it is to capture who someone was using nothing but a child's memories. Trying to write who this man was on a piece of paper is like trying to catch a bucketful of smoke. (Hold on, because this is where the cool title ties in.)
I remember this time as a little kid, we were staying in a hotel with my dad's side of the family for our Christmas get-together. In my grandpa's mind, staying at the Ramada was much better than going to anyone's house. Anyway, I had this bouncy ball, and I carried it around in my pocket over the couple of days we had gotten together for the holiday, taking it out now and again to bounce as I walked. Occasionally, it would deflect off a rough spot in the thin carpet and skip away down the hall, and I would chase after it, bent over like someone attempting to scoop up a loose baby chick. After a while, I just stopped chasing it because I started to feel pretty foolish. I knew eventually the ball would stop and I could catch up to it and pick it up again. But what if the ball never did stop? What if it bounced down a hall that never ended?
I think sometimes writing from memory is like that. You can't wait for the ball to stop and then go pick it up and examine it. Sometimes with memory, all you have is that bent-over hobbling run, trying desperately to catch the ball but getting nothing more than the glimpses of it, now and again a brief touch as it bounces and skips right through your fingers.
And that, Great Grandpa, is why I'm worried about this story. It's because every year, you skip a little further away from me. I hope you like what I write.

If anything came from Hell...

If anything came from Hell, it's flies and other buzzing insects. I'm doing my best to find my muse and really hit my writing stride, and all I can hear is buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. And not just a little buzzing. A constant, maddening drone as if this fly is trying to single-handedly annoy me to death. So of course I try the flail dance, but that didn't help at all. For all my flapping and flailing, I think that fly might have been mocking me as it dodged my efforts with ease.
I would just like to say that if I hadn't found a flyswatter which, apparently, is the only object flies can't avoid, you'd be sitting in class three or so weeks from now listening to a God-awful Takota Thiem draft all about flies. And so help me, there would me research in there. Fortunately, I pancaked that buzzing Satanic annoyance after about a ten-minute chase scene between my parents' kitchen and dining room. All's well that ends well, I suppose, and the writing process continues until a new annoyance takes up the mantel the fly left behind.