Wordgrove Post & Review

Quoted in the Grove:
It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it’s so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn’t come back.
~Henry Rollins

It is pointless to get your knickers in a twist if a certain person fails to react the way you want. It is best to avoid people and situations that you know drive you crazy. Remember to vote with your feet. If a situation is untenable or unchangeable, walk away.
~Stuart Wilde

Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.
~Joseph Campbell

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Posted from the Grove:
Piffin continues to recover from her health scare, while Greenie and whitefeather suffered thru bouts of internetus interruptus. Thurs Word Games was a bit flat without them and the evening ended early. If tame by usual standards, it was not boring. Widely traveled and well-read, Odin filled in generously from his history, and this old editor was pleased to feel young and happily in school again. Then came the evening’s grand surprise. High on the horizon, a name appeared onscreen with the shock of seeing a ghost. BriarRoseEve has returned to There and Wordgrove! The commitment to good writing in WG just kicked up a notch. Welcome back, Briar!

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A recent visit to the local video store turned up an interesting debate in the form of a movie, titled: Words and Pictures. The question that gets batted around: which of the two arts listed in the title is most useful in exploring the human condition? The setting is the English and Art departments of a prep school; the protagonists are the advanced placement teachers. This editor rooted for the drunk poet, but Juliet Binoche as the artist ice-queen presents a compelling case for an art made up of more than 26 letters. The story holds up well, and the characters’ pain is real. The phones are the right size for the movie to be current, but the story and the debates are timeless.

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Aluria sponsor’s a weekly Poetry Jam, and has asked that the following notice be entered in this week’s Post & Review. Anyone with an interest or questions concerning her Poetry Jam, please contact at: [email protected], or thru her club, Dead Poet’s Society.

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All poems should be original work; Tmail them to Aluria at the above address. Raps are allowed. Subject will be announced before each Jam. A Buggy will be awarded for the best entry by Poetry Jam’s sponsor. Poets may win more than once. Those winning a Jam qualify to enter the Grand Slam Poetry Jam (to be announced). Poets may enter as many poems as Jams they have won. (Example: win one Jam, enter one poem, win two jams, enter two.) A bundle of prizes will be awarded the Grand Slam winner. Poets will be asked to read their work or Rap at each event. Poems can be read by another if preferred. Good Luck!

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A note to Thereins on the prowl for something new: Stop by Writers Platform and check out the evocative beauty of whitefeather’s current photo on display. It is worth a visit. Anyone interested in viewing more of her work can find her @Flickr.com under, WhiteFeather MacBeth. Also note that WG’s Platform Gallery is available to other graphic artists in search of a venue.

The introduction of platform pics led, by natural extension, to thoughts of what else might be done brighten up Wordgrove’s corner of There. The greenway north of WG offered itself immediately as a solution. For writers who dance and the dancers who read, there is now the Black Box Bar, a dance hall with lots of room to chat and a corner for canoodling. Look for it on the greenway on WG’s east end behind Greymane’s Greyed Expectations and The Greyed Escape. Bossa nova is the rhythm on the juke box; the lights are low and the drinks are cheap … it’s BYOB.

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Prewritten for Thurs (04/17) @6pm PT/9 ET is: audition, tarragon

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@Writers Platform:

Prewritten: a pic
http://ishtari.arcticworlds3d.com/therestuff/zzz23.jpg

~Greymane: The Journey

They set out to battle unbeatable foes
down pathways that seemed without end
Before it was over their pain would expose
the love that they dared to defend
They wandered past ruins and great fallen trees
through shadows that laughed at their doom
With mystery broken by reverent disease
they hid in it’s festering tomb
The darkness so distant it swallowed them whole
and left them alone in defeat
Insanity gently caressing their souls
by laying their foes at their feet
The centuries wrapping ’round pillars of stone
with tendrils of time so obscene
that never again would they venture alone
to worlds that lie in between
They begged to remember the places they roamed
to dance with their love one more day
When journeys are over and hearth calls you home
the night puts her silence away

~

~BarTalk: Remnants

The story begins: He left
Unforced agreed no exodus
Moss encrusted memories
Stone cold luv’s statuary
of the She he left behind

Barbed barriers bark out
Gnarled and twisted words
Bared limbs bar the way
Shadows follow creeping
On the road to his escape

~

Impromptu: renegade

~Greymane: Renegade

He was a renegade rider alone on the plain
Running from fears that he kept on a chain
He followed his darkness into desire
with the devil pursuing spitting out fire
The years were the sentence he could not outrun
The laughing repentance he earned with his gun

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~BarTalk: not-a-haiku

seared land prayers for rain
clouds form, refuse their service
renegades on high

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Writers in Residence:

~GaryBob @Nutter Fountain site: Wherewithall

I’m on the sunset train riding into a storm
The air is dark, but my past is warm
We fly down the tracks, headlong toward fate
The lamplights are out even though it’s getting late

Where do I go from here? Where do I go from here?

I don’t know what’s next or how I’m getting there
I bought a package trip with an all-inclusive fare
I can vary the course, but the end is set
Though there’s still switchpoints and layovers and I ain’t done yet

Where do I go from here? Where do I go from here?

Pitch black now and I want to get out
But the howling wind outside silences my shout
I’m stuck between potential pain and uncertain bliss
Do I choose the dark, yet known or the darker abyss?

Where do I go from here? Where do I go from here?

The screaming inside, the mounting tension
The horde of regrets too vast to mention
It’s all too much. I can’t wait anymore
I stumble up and pry open the door

Where do I go from here? Where do I go from here?

On the cliff’s edge between inside and lost
This doorway a tollbooth announcing the cost
The ground races back under the barren sky
Nothing left now but to do or to die.

~ . ~