"Do You Want To Play A Game"

Back in my days on LiveJournal, the little group I was connected to would occasionally play a game where one member would throw out a list of five or more words and the rest of us would write a poem containing the words on the list. It was a game we didn't play often, but I enjoyed when we did.

I've mentioned British speculative fiction author Jeff Noon's Twitter game #speedlit before:

RULES

20 words or less

no punctuation

lower case

one line break

As a larger meme, it hasn't caught on, and even Mr. Noon doesn't play anymore. Mostly it's just me and the brilliant poet and artist ReVerse Butcher.

Words are my LEGO blocks, my lumber and nails. Programming is such a joy because it's a place where I literally build things out of words and phrases.

So despite playing it in solitaire mode, Mr. Noon's game is one I come back to at regular intervals.

Due to the limits, the initial work is quick and simple, not requiring dedicated time or energy, and lends itself to the way I get tiny flashes of story scenes or strange phrases stuck in my head throughout the day. The mental bits get jotted into a window on my screen where they sit with too many words and commas, and not enough edge or story, as I poke, poke, poke for the next several hours until I'm either satisfied or exasperated.

The rules themselves make no such requirement, but from Noon's early examples and my own internalization, I try to avoid treating the projects as poetry. It would be easy to argue the constraints and most of the forms produced are absolutely a kind of poesy, similar to a haiku, and I have no counter. My own goal, though, is to construct a tight prose narrative, a single degree of story arc containing hints of what came before and where they're going after while containing a sharp stabby sense of what's happening right now.

My own enjoyment comes from processing the original ideas through the mental still set up by dark, boozy pirates the in the Broca's area of my brain, condensing the mash originally put onto the screen into something which meets the constraints, but still contains enough flavor to be valuable. Reducing phrases to their skeletal frames, finding words with a higher degree of specificity or generality or impact, changing order to increase clarity or reduce word count, making myself do without extraneous adjectives and adverbs.

A perfect bit will create a specific image or feeling in the reader and make them intensely curious to know the whole of the story. Maybe:

dream flensing knife

only three seraph pelts

the blind ifrit calls from a back stall

time to go hunting

Or:

he never spoke

of the spider hearts

beating

keeping the watch hands sweeping

or the cost of every midnight chime

An imperfect, but good bit, does function like a haiku: capturing the image or feeling of a moment, but existing mostly outside a larger specific narrative, and making the reader content with what they have, rather than curious about what they don't.

Say:

shapes of morning

cut roughly from the sheet of night

collaged carefully together

a map

etched from real to dream

A failing piece will simply be boring as either poem or narrative, and will be dull and fuzzy rather than sharp and clear. I actually do like this:

already haunted

by future ghosts

she spat at lachesis

keep up or cut me loose

but even I don't remember what it's about or get a clear image of what's happening in its moment.

Some of them contain seeds of fuller stories I'd like to write which Is why I keep them after first throwing them to the scouring winds of Twitter.

I'll tuck the rest under the READ MORE link to keep from annoying the disinterested.

Read More

Becoming Real

stop petting it
please
giving kind words
adoration
make it no more real
than it already is

velveteen monster growls

Don't remember what sparked in me the thought of a dark counterpart to the Velveteen Rabbit. It seems fairly obvious on its face, the way I coddle my anxieties and fears, and how that attention makes them ever more real.

I'm sure a quick Google will show this isn't an original leap, but at some point it would be fun to flesh out anyways.

Picnic

grey maned dandelions
dodging tiny spouts of flame
roar and snap at brazen dragonfly bombardiers

quiet evening in the park

This started as more than a #speedlit bit, and I'm still hoping something longer might come out of it, but what I realized, as I started piling on ladybugs and damselflies and such was too much poorly done detracts from the image rather than improving it. This felt like a good stopping point until I have a better sense of how to properly construct a fuller scene.

Imagination Translation

If Facebook is chiefly a way to track events and adventures, and Instagram is mainly for keeping tabs on what Brian Andreas is currently drawing, then Twitter is as much about watching the fever dreams of Jeff Noon spill out into the world as anything else.

I haven't read his newest novel yet, but I enjoyed it's predecessor, A Man of Shadows, and the short story collection Pixel Juice even more.

On the Twitters he's recently been doing bits with the tag #speedlit which adhere to the following rules:
"20 words or less
no punctuation
lower case
one line break"

I've been trying my hand at it through out the day and found it a fun exercise.

gathering the fuel of fear
from birds
mice
quantum existence engines
revving with each purr

schrodinger had no idea

wherewolves
in teflon and night vision
hunting
through the shadow of crowds
hunger imperceivable
until

unhappy
with spotify ranking
orpheus
packs lyre
coins
dog biscuits

perilous road to contract
renegotiation

do
not
turn
around

transistor cherub
dreaming of flight
bright filament arrays
unfolding

ding

honeysuckle on the cemetery wall
long yellow throats
cooing softly

let us taste
the nectar of you

neural arcing
welding
one lost memory
to another

she remembers
the fall to pandemonium
the rise