Not too long ago I committed myself to writing 1,000 words each day. Tonight's project turned out a bit differently, a kind of conscious flow rather than an edit-as-you-go process. Though much of it could be refined and edited, I am pleased with the raw essence that it is now. Here it is:


Drama 101. Right next door to Deposing a Tyrant 254. Such is the banality of my writing tonight. Torn between forfeiting a day of writ, and actually beginning to feel the compulsion of habit forming. My thousand words, elusive sycophantic pomp, expressing themselves in whatever loinal flame intuits. Sometimes it’s pure nonsense; others suggestive of mastercraft. Today, though, I simply write: unadorned, unfettered, and unafraid. I write. Thoughts and words in Word inseparable and insidious. This is not one of those times that makes sense. Even the very sentences that craft this daily obligation do not in themselves organize coherently. Leaps in logic and language, bounds in babble and bidding, gaps in gregarious garbage. I want it all and want to want for nothing – alas, such a pitiful fate, a manqué destiny already realized. Lyrical theft and disorder characterize and trivialize what I call work and others call fluff. Platitudes passed as pure predilection: none of it makes sense; pedant penchants, precarious proclivities. How many other words that begin with P can I include in this drivel? This soppy foddersotch. Go ahead, make up words. No one can care if no one reads, n’est ce pas? Such trivial ideas and ideals, inclinations and insights – to pass the petty as grandeur, and dismiss the grand as unintelligent. Might as well dismiss the entire universe, if truly grandeur is forsaken. You and you and you and you – all gone, and no one cares for even the poet has vanished – is that why I’ve been left behind? To stay and stink and stain the page with my foddersotch words, my sorry, pitiful expressions, written in dichotomous delight and despair, only to be dispatched in the face of true talent – of pretty much anyone else who puts pen to paper, or fingertip to protruding letters in this case.

My thousand words; my spellings and misspellings and typos and mistypes. How dare Word try to correct me on my grammar! Has the vile paper clip ever considered the human equation? The human desire to put it to death in visions of glorified and satisfying hell, where piece by piece it’s suggestive agony suffers for each time it tells me it looks like I’m writing a letter or that I have some form of unidentified fragment yet cannot offer even a single suggestion. Die, motherfucking paperclip, die you rat bastard! Oh forsooth and forlorn! My thousand words might as well be a daily million, as I type and type and it just becomes more nonsense piled on more nonsense. These are the words of neither the poet nor the craftsman. They are fluff; empty, shallow, surface words, designed to appear important but really included only because they sound intelligent. If only the writer possessed even a grasp of lingual comprehension, perhaps he might be more...

Oh thousands words, elusive thousand, perpetual chase, a fair maiden dressed in dreamy white, glancing behind as she runs away in playful games; I never get closer, though I run with more vigour. Were I to catch up she would simply disappear. If particularly feisty this evening she would appear behind me with a sudden tap tap so that I might reverse my chase and repeat the same foolish game on a path already trodden. And if I get tired and lay my head to rest, she comes and kisses me so tenderly that I dare not wake, lest the tear I just shed proves imagined. And if I lie perfectly still, she will rest her head on my chest, listening to the pounding of my heart. She knows it beats for only her, and she loves me for it, loves me, loves me, loves me for it. And never, though my wildest and fondest dreams but reach, never does she fall asleep before I. I awake, and she is gone, and a different tear falls this time. She is gone. She is gone. My mistress is gone. Oh sorrow-filled heartbeat.

My thousand words has died tonight, before it was ever born. It leaves behind its cousins: sensible sentences under fifty words and stories told in tandem – both more lazy and inferior products. Where is the emotion? Where is the drive? Where is the human spirit in such order and laziness? Where is the arcane pining? The capricious whim? These are not found here! Nor should they be. This wordy garbage should die before associating with that filth! Oh lexical villain, phonetic antagonist, go back to your infernal pit and entreat us no more with your sordid business. Deprive someone else of their joy, for I have already paid you too much. Indeed, what more can you ask for than ruin? Where is my maiden? Where are my words that stir the human soul? Such insipid, banal claims, these should be abhorred like the whore they are. Oh Babylonian canvas. I long to exist as a pillar of Sodom salt, better dismantled tiny piece by tiny piece than turn in this drivel for marks. And all this but an act, some pseudo-feeling, feigned for the duration of my maiden search. But she is on the road ahead – I can see her! Why does she not move? Is this my fixed mark? Hath summer’s lease shortened its day? Why can I not run to her? Such terror, such loathing! What have you done with her, insidious paper clip? You mock my pain. No, I do not want to write an obituary! Fuck off!

Yes, that is the difference: we bury our dead. My mistress, cold and etiolated – good for one last lay when you get right down to it. Oh dear mistress, fair white lady: thou art slain. Thou art passed beyond this world, and I must bid farewell to my Annabel, though no sea can be seen. My thousand words, elusive sycophantic pomp, expressing themselves in whatever loinal flame intuits. Torn between forfeiting a day of writ, and actually beginning to feel the compulsion of habit forming. Such is the banality of my writing tonight. Right next door to Deposing a Tyrant 254: Drama 101.