Excerpt Four from Becoming Real:
Hello, all! The book club this month is featuring my collection of coming out stories, Becoming Real. I will be live to chat today, 7 to 9 PM, but for those of you who may not know what to expect from the work, I think I will post a few sample excepts. These are a personal sampling, and just meant to give you the flavor of the seven short stories through the lens of some of my favorite moments.
Please enjoy, and please leave comments if you have any.
Excerpt Three from Becoming Real:
Hello, all! The book club this month is featuring my collection of coming out stories, Becoming Real. I will be live to chat on the 31st, but for those of you who may not know what to expect from the work, I think I will post a few sample excepts. These are a personal sampling, and just meant to give you the flavor of the seven short stories through the lens of some of my favorite moments.
Please enjoy, and please leave comments if you have any.
Than
Excerpt Two from Becoming Real:
Hello, all! The book club this month is featuring my collection of coming out stories, Becoming Real. I will be live to chat on the 31st, but for those of you who may not know what to expect from the work, I think I will post a few sample excepts. These are a personal sampling, and just meant to give you the flavor of the seven short stories through the lens of some of my favorite moments.
Please enjoy, and please leave comments if you have any.
Thanks
Excerpt One from Becoming Real:
Hello, all! The book club this month is featuring my collection of coming out stories, Becoming Real. I will be live to chat on the 31st, but for those of you who may not know what to expect from the work, I think I will post a few sample excerpts. These are a personal sampling, and just meant to give you the flavor of the seven short stories through the lens of some of my favorite moments.
Please enjoy, and please leave comments if you have any.
Thank
.
Might jaded be the cruelest of concepts,
The one that will allow no sleep at night,
The tormentor with its holy precepts
That only might possesses what is right?
How many are the fucking sad moments
When doubt intrudes on dreams with its moaning,
To tick like a clock with its arguments
That nothing's ever come from my groaning.
How to pray for relief when even faith
Allows no creed to say I'm good enough;
How to foster hope when my mind's
.
Rhyming is Fundamental
I'm no great Rhymin' Simon, and make lots of 'mistakes' that would cause academics to wag boney fingers at my poetry night and day, but I do know something about the basics. I thought I'd share some information and thoughts on how you can be more comfortable making your own rhymes.
I'm not going to present these ideas in a 'right or wrong' method. Rules exist to be broken, but artistry means you know what you are breaking and do it deliberately.
I posted a little quiz in a status update. Here are the answers, and thanks for looking.
Original question: A little game – can you name two of the ways in which W. S. Gilbert (as in Gilbert and Sullivan fame) changed and contributed to everyday English? One is a two-word expression he coined, and the other has a definite Gay connection!
Answer one: Two word expression = "hardly ever." It all has to do with seasickness. In H.M.S. Pinafore, the chorus of sailors takes umbrage at the
Tanka Some translations from the Hyakku-nin Isshu, or The Issue of a Hundred People
51 by Fujiwara no Sanekata
Why so strongly red, As if I could tell of them That sad mogusa[1] Retains their own way of pain And like love, must endure it.
52 by Fujiwara no Michi-Nobu
If the morning breaks, The coming things are all there, Whitened by their length And all by the look of things, Is nothing but morning light.
53 by Udaisho Michi-Tsuna no Hana
Little by lit
Oscar Wilde, the true inspiration for Dracula..?
I ran into this intriguing, and very well-written article. Please enjoy.
http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/coming-out-of-the-coffin/
This dawn I let me sleep my full
And found a dream reward –
A place within the living day
Where recall too can breathe.
Two boys came together once more
And though I've not seen them
For many years, still to my eye
They had not changed at all.
One hand into the other slipped
And off they went to be
Sequestered safe within their love
As if no time had passed.
How wonderful to dream like this
And present meld with past –
That wakes and carries what I've seen
Diffuse in me a
Ok, here's my own attempt at the challenge:
This dawn I let me sleep my full
And found a dream reward –
A place within the living day
Where recall too can breathe.
How wonderful to dream like this
And present meld with past –
That wakes and carries what I've seen
Diffuse in me all day.
Here's my own attempt, as I rarely write Haiku
Nature Haiku:
A poppy amongst
The bushes of rose, will bow
When a chill winds blows.
Urban Haiku:
Shy dog and hydrant
Stand off 'neath the noonday sky –
Which one will get wet?
_
I would like to take this opportunity to praise GA for being the wonderful community that is! The spirit of camaraderie and support is truly awe inspiring.
In particular, I with to thank Timothy M and Renee Stevens for a recent posting, and I would be honored if everyone could check out my personal notes of thanks within the entry itself.
You guys, everyone on this site, are all the simply the best!
http://www.gayauthors.org/forums/blog/258/entry-14864-featured-story-judas-tree-novel
Poem 3: Many Vespers
On a road stretching to the horizon,
The grey arrow of our marching is deterred
By muddy feet and hearts without the sun
To troop along behind the line of one life pilfered.
His boots placed reversed in the riding mount
Remind us all that we are leaderless,
Tho no tears can come from the dried-up fount
Where once our sorrows flowed pure and boundless.
The funeral procession will march on,
But this fuss for one rankles when many others
Received cold obse
"Don't Panic!"
– or, how to read a screenplay
In a scene from the pen of the immortal Douglas Adams, we are presented with this image:
"Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys
outside who want to talk to us about this
script for Hamlet they've worked out."
Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (London 1981) explains that the situation of the monkeys with movie ambitions is merely temporary, and is one of the unavoidable res
Ok. It's a classic sketch of TV comedy. John Cleese walks into a cheese monger's shop and wants to buy some 'cheesy comestibles.' To his surprise, no matter how many types of clotted and aged dairy foods of the cheese kind he names, the shop is out.
At one point Cleese kisses his fingertips and cries out "Vive le fromage de la belle France!" and now he has a new product and region to extol. Vive le fromage de la belle Tarim Basin…?
Yes. If you are a fan of well-aged fermented curd
Poem 2: The Waltz and the Lance
Every man will dance to his tune,
Whether his comrades can hear it or not,
And when the music fades too soon,
The memory will glue him to the spot.
Feted wonder then is it there
That to such a man as this, others will stare.
To twist and turn about his fate,
Is no mean feat when others are in charge,
Inclined to pause and hesitate,
A private moment to enlarge.
But what's done in equality
Is bold beyond words, for all that might agree.
Poem 1: Hyacinths on the Somme
The beat in the air is like a drum
Where every drop of rain falls cold
And snares the mud where blood was sold
To march the men to kingdom come.
Too late we there upon the field
Were to find the reason to live
Was our life to each other give
And soothe the wound that never healed.
So flowers in the mud are we
Boldly blooming within our hearts
By His command and lusty darts
Before our time to die could be.
Ballade:
Shadows creep up my wall to say
The time is ticking fast on me
And though I wait, it's long in the day
To have so many doubts about me –
To weigh me down, and not be free.
Questions crawl up my heart inside
Where no one sees, not even me
The shadow's pace that I long to hide.
Then sometimes it seems I should pray
Humbly upon a bended knee
To hurry up the long Judgment Day
That from my mind will clear the debris –
That will rend my heart most holy.
So until that t
The Sensualist Burger
Not much has been said about the typewriter's powerful limitations on an artist's imagination. Typing a thing makes it look so permanent, and shatters the pretty illusion that a pen-stroke offers of an easy redo. To that end, there came a generation of writers tied to the terrible indelibility of a typewritten word, sentence and paragraph. And, I have read that Earnest Hemingway would sit in agonized concentration for an hour or more before he dared to strike the k
(Reprinted from here: https://www.gayauthors.org/story/ac-benus/amarriagebelowzero-operalibretto/5)
Part 2:
Refuting the Voice of the Majority –
A Marriage Below Zero and its Contemporary Readers[1]
An honest tale speeds best,
B
eing plainly told
.
Shakespeare
Richard III,
Act I, Scene iv
Part Five – Romantic Ideal
Damon and Who..? [50]
Under persecution their love held firm, and that, even to the point of death. What mor
(Reprinted from here: https://www.gayauthors.org/story/ac-benus/amarriagebelowzero-operalibretto/5)
Part 1:
Refuting the Voice of the Majority –
A Marriage Below Zero and its Contemporary Readers[1]
An honest tale speeds best,
B
eing plainly told
.
Shakespeare
Richard III,
Act I, Scene iv
Part One – Opening Volley
The Barrage of Questions
In terms of preparing a libretto based on A Marriage Below Zero, I know that I have lef
Questa cosa qua condicione dell'amore?
Sempre questa, respirare alla polmoni,
il sangue dal vene mio,
e il pensieri nella mia testa –
tutte sono la vostra voce,
e so che in me ho ancora è la vita.
