What to say about this year. This year was this and this and sometimes a little of this. This year I made great friends. This year I made an effort to make my life better. This year I think I succeeded.

This year I made resolutions to ask a girl out, publish something, move to Portland. This year I fulfilled all of those resolutions and still wasn't satisfied. This year my heart soared and plummeted, this year my dreams waxed and waned, this year everything sweet came with a little bitter. This year was amazing and beautiful. This year I did things right by myself. This year was pretty amazing.

This year I did my damnedest. Next year won't be different.

I now have a little family of blogs.

The Twilight Rewrite: http://rewriting-twilight.blogspot.com/

My media blog: http://contentaggravation.blogspot.com/

“Fuck you, you mediocre bastard,” she said, and the words echoed like the aftershock of an atom bomb through his whole reality, rearranging on a molecular level what it meant to be human and alive and in love with someone who did not love him back. 40 long mediocre years she'd been his, some 14,600 utterly average kisses every morning, twice that many dull conversations about unimportant things, roughly 7,000 dissatisfying sexual encounters where he thought he had been her everything and she had tolerated – tolerated! - him inside her, while he pretended not to notice like the bastard he was, had to be.

There could be no greater insult. Each syllable cut with the keen edge of truth, maybe not the truth but a truth, one that he could not help but believe. In one great instant of personal triumph a man faded, and flickered, and was no longer a human being. And like that, it was over.

But not for everyone...

Look, it's simple: Fall in love with everyone you meet, including - especially - yourself.

The last time Roland had given his heart to another he dropped it on the sidewalk, where it flopped about like a gasping fish, waiting for someone to pick it up. Nobody did. They just stood there, him and her and the squick, squick squick of a dying love heaving grotesquely on the gravel, both parties studiously ignoring its throes. Minutes passed like eternities.

She broke first - coughed into her hand, cracking the silence like a gunshot. Begrudgingly, he picked the heart up in his right hand, dusted it off on his overcoat. Grimacing at its state, he shook her left hand with his and walked abruptly away, letting the thump, thump thump mark his pace.

They can't all be epic tales.

I may not live forever. I don't want to save the world.
I'm not real sure how this whole tale should end.
But I know a few things about purpose and prose,
and I'll know more when the last word is penned.

Listen: Love's got wings, and hope's the thing with feathers.
And when the two beat together, they'll lift you back up again.

1. The Forest

The ground cracked, the sky fell in, the world ended, and the forest remained. Eternity was its nature, and like all things eternal it had no endings or beginnings but only events, happenings, moments in time. In one of these moments a vast empire had stood, and now it stood no more. Beneath crawling vines and deep layers of earth the forest reclaimed the gleaming city, a thousand years passing as its ruins sunk beneath verdant green eager to erase its existence. Once the city, too, had been thought eternal. Now it was ephemeral. No lips had spoken its name in centuries.

Nonetheless, something had changed since the breaking. Wrapped in the tallest of mountains erupting from the deepest of valleys, the forest had nonetheless seen life, and the story of it remained. As the remnants of the world rebuilt, it was spoken of not as a thing untouchable, but as a thing that had been touched, a place once known and again knowable. It was sought for by the dreamers: as a quests end, as a new beginning, as a home and a hope and a promise of eternity. It was paradise.

Leonard hated it.

2. Leonard

Leonard Dupont lived with his parents in a quaint brick manor – two stories, and a library underneath – in the middle of a pond located just a short distance from the forests center. He despised the house, the pond, the forest, the cliffs that bordered it, the local fauna, the food, his parents, and on some rare occasions, himself. He was sixteen.

Leonard was tall, gangly, thin and pale. He had coarse dark hair that was impossible to comb and sharp grey eyes that perfectly complemented his invariable grimace. He burned like fine rice paper in the sunlight, of which there was always plenty, and stuck mostly to the shade of trees, of which there was always more. On most sunny days he stayed inside the house entirely, but since the weather never changed, the days were always sunny, and lacking a better excuse he would frequently be forced out of the house against his own will.

On occasions such as this he would typically bide his time by throwing large rocks at the fish and glaring viciously at the other local fauna, which was friendly, herbivorous and sickeningly cute without fail. If his exile from the manor was of a lengthier time, he would swim the pond and venture out into the woods alone. There was no set destination in mind on these ventures; the forest was strangely resistant to trailblazing. For months Leonard had tried to mark the routes that he had used, but carvings he made in trees vanished within days, and other markings no matter how clever or subtle seemed to be swallowed up by the underbrush overnight. He had often speculated (and correctly, it turns out) that you could lose a city in this place, and he had to be careful It hardly mattered; though it was easy to be lost in the forest it was just as easy to find the only two destinations of note: his house, which was located where the trees were thickest, and the hundred-foot cliffs that he could reach by walking any other direction.

These were beautiful, in their own way. Majestic outcroppings of stone lined with thick vines and creepers that glistened in the light, they appealed to Leonard in more ways than one – but in all his sixteen years he had never managed to climb them. Once one made it halfway the vines dropped off and the stones sloped forwards like a cresting wave, forcing the climber to topple backwards if he dared to proceed. He'd fallen once, and though the brush had broken his fall, it had been such a violent and troublesome experience that he no longer had the heart to try. They were walls to his prison – but things that were left here stayed where they were put, and so Leonard came here to enjoy the one thing that he didn't hate about living in the forest, which was the books.

Where everything else about the manor was designed with a certain elegance in mind, the cellar had only one purpose, and that was to hold as many books as possible. It extended far beyond the confines of the manor itself, its walls composed of the same peculiar variety of stone that made up the cliffside of the forest – thick walls that never cracked or buckled or sought any form of repair, and which glowed dimly in the dark, defining passages and doorways. Each of these divided the cellar into some thirty-odd rooms, each one of which was divided again by two dozen shelves, stacked from floor to ceiling with thousands upon thousands of books.

The library was older than the house itself, and its contents contained the work and dreams of entire civilizations. He did not know who had collected them all but he was eternally grateful for their existence, as they described for him worlds far outside the scope of his tiny house on his tiny island in his tiny forest in its tiny crater. They showed him what the world outside was like, and he could not, for anything, hate it as he did everything else in his life.

Leonard read everything, he could get his hands on: histories, guidebooks, biographies, educational texts on every subject conceivable, philosophy and alchemy and mathematics. There were fictions, too, hundreds upon hundreds of fantastical tales: stories of stars that came alive and danced for mortals on moonlit nights, of beasts of terrible power and beauty and the heroes that came to fight them, of love that spanned the ages and broke all barriers.

Mostly, though, he read about wizards. Leonard was fascinated with wizards; he had been ever since the first day one had come to his house and set fire to his mothers rosebush.

Sometimes it's about feeling
before you were ever thinking. Lady, let's ionize the atmosphere
with your breath against mine. I think I'm ready. I think
you're not. I'm wrong on both counts, and it doesn't matter in the slightest.
I once didn't believe in these things,
and when I tell you I'm certain now it's because I'm not sure. And that feels
agonizing
overwhelming
terrifying
and beautiful.
And you are so beautiful.

I wish I could write my thoughts down on little postcards, keep a diary of
when I love you and when I don't. Thinking of you... and the last time we kissed. Thinking of you... and wondering why
you shied away from that glance. Thinking of you... loving me unconditionally
even though you never did. Thinking of you with your hair over your sleeping eyes, your head on my arm, my hand tingling. Thinking of you...
Thinking of you...
Thinking of you...

Love is
consensual non-consent.
It's a choice to be stupid and crazy and powerless
it's a decision to be caught off-guard by your beauty
it's sheer willpower just to understand things the way that you do.
When I open my heart
I close my mind – just a little – to the possibility that you are not
perfect in every way, that those little foibles don't
make you amazing and wonderful and unique, that your choice is not
mine, and that I will always, always, always,
never choose you.

My heart's in the right place. My head will follow.
Sometimes kicking and screaming.

One whispered vow can shape a life. One decision on a sleepless night.
Two hearts can meet if they care to try - now, or then, or never. No guarantees. No telling why.

What are these moments that we truly live? That we seek, and find elusive?
That we stumble over in error
only to learn that we can fly?
One moment, every day. At least one that I could make my own and live
not as I am. But will it come? I cannot say.

I do not fear it. But I am who I am
and I will not apologize. No epiphany could make me less
of a mad devil, surviving
a hopeless romantic, waiting
a believer in truths, seeking

these are lives that I lived. My past.
And whether present or future, a part of me.

So know this:

I'll tread new ground and old. I'll be brave and I'll be bold. My heart will break and swell.

And I'll have a story to tell.

I was always a broken heart.

I've heard it said a man is gene, meme, scene:
what happened to him, what he knows, what he is
but I did not understand
that one is the same as the other
that I am the cause as well as the effect.

I knew.
I learned the dark romantic
from those who would share light,
felt meaning and found memories of that
which was most important to me – that
wretched, wrenching, writhing, ready soul
who believes so much and fights so hard
for a poem and a song
and nothing to show for it.
I understood the story before I told it.
And I knew where it would end.

I brought myself to this. Again and again.
Knowing the kiss goodnight would save me
and believing you better off.
Knowing the right words at the wrong time.
Knowing why you had to leave.
Knowing love with a phantom specter, a mirror darkly,
a fairy story girl
who knew me – how could she not! - for what I am.

And I am a broken heart. A cautionary tale for the cautious.
A warning for the vivid and vivacious - for those who feel love
without any hope or sense, and yet flinch from the brink
as they tumble over it.
Desperate souls starving to feel without thinking, think without feeling.
Gamblers playing for their lives with empty palms outstretched.
I could have tried a thousand ways
to love you, and it could have ended a thousand ways, all of them
just
like
this.

So smile, as I do. Let the meaning fade – I'll keep it company
a while longer.
Say, enough! For it was always this.
No stroke of destiny, but no pretend,
no faking what I feel - just feeling it to the end.

I was always a broken heart
struggling to mend.

I am thinking about writing Lightbringers now. Lightbringers is a humorous contemporary fantasy novel about a man named Kellen Danvers working for the United States government as some sort of twist on the Bond-esque intelligence agent, channeling both the fantastical super-spy and a bit of Philip Marlowe as he combats forces reacting to the world around them. At its heart the conflict is between Danvers, a neutral element, and a series of notably dedicated individuals who have an established concept of right and wrong based entirely on the evils of "the other guy" in a constantly expanding Catch-22. I don't think the point of the book is necessarily to make Danvers in the right, but more to express compromises of ideology, the pain and hardship wrought from them, and what comes of it. I'm pretty excited about it right now.

A world without (rough)

What choice have we but to love?
When you offer yourself so bravely
should we analyze the whys and hows of how
and why you came to be this way?
When you trust so fully that you are beautiful
who are we to deny it to ourselves?

I could not live in a world where a song sung to the crowd was a crass gesture,
where my advances only signaled desperation.
Where dreams were madness and not truth. Where knowing the things inside you
made you ugly to me. To the world.

And I say: it is not so.

So sing your songs. I will listen
and hope to understand. I will dance with you
whether you ask me to or not. If you ask for love,
I give it freely. For the alternative is a world without.

Another round for loves lost (Draft II)

Another round for loves lost
And loves never won. I'll drink to that - and only that.
To happiness drawn from all those unspoken truths.
To the gleeful reflection on might-haves and maybes
and the loneliness and heartache of the has-beens and never-weres.
The highs and lows of my imaginings
erode not at the liver, but the soul -
still, they could just forge anew
that lonely shoal.

The world is stupid and so am I
It's 3 hours and several millenia past midnight and
we still don't know the words.
That was my dream. My poets dream:
That, given enough time and a desperate enough hour
I'd find it in me to say the things that
have to be understood.
That I could show us that the person we don't know
is as important as the people we do,
that one life holds all the potential of the next.
That being yourself doesn't mean
never changing – that the opposite is true.
That the choices we made are never wrong.
Never. Because we made those choices.
I wanted to be a hero, maybe even a god.
I wanted to change your mind. I wanted to change mine.
I was a child.

We're still fumbling at the words, still arguing
over their meaning. We don't know what we want to say.
I can't find it in me to tell you how I'd change myself for you
and be happy with those changes.
How my heart beats fast at the prospect.
How my mind speeds and circles with the possibility
but can't quite master the timing.
How etiquette and protocol have fucked us, fucked us, fucked us,
when we don't know we are trapped within it.
Even when we do.

I thought that words were forever until I learned that I was wrong.
It took no time at all for the old English to become exactly that.
In a dozen millenia all I thought eternal will be gibberish on the wall, dialects forgotten,
loved only by wizened lexicographers and corpses, in that order.
I say love, and it means
something other than what it did before.
And maybe, still, something old. But only just.
It won't hold you here with me.
And I don't know that it should.
I don't know.
But I'm here with you anyways,
mute,
mouthing the words to what I think is
your favorite song.

"So let me get this straight. A rogue AI breaks its tether, shuts down an entire government facility, takes control of the internet and then... just dies?"
"Is it so hard to believe that the system shock just killed it? The internets a big place, and there's a lot of stuff on there that can disrupt a highly ordered and logical brain, or at least stall it indefinitely. Logical contradictions, philosophical quandaries, unanswered questions, mathematical impossibilities, paradoxes..."
"And 4chan."
"Mostly 4chan."

(roooooough)

Let's tell this story before it happens, because it's happening right now. It starts right at the beginning of the century, with a pinnacle of human achievement in this or any millenia: the discovery of the cure for cancer.

Or, maybe that's what it is. It's hard to tell, because nobody is actually using it, except under the table. The dosage is tricky and uncertain, there haven't been and it has side effects like nerve damage, even a one in five chance of death amongst the five patients it's actually been officially tested on. Still, it's the first thing anyone has succeeded with that doesn't involve completely irradiating every healthy and non-healthy cell in a human body, or sucking all the marrow from somebodies bones, or cutting egg-sized portions of human tissue out and hoping they don't grow back.

In fact, the only thing that makes this procedure worse than any of those options is that it's cheap and commonplace. It's a common chemical called dichloroacetate that, by virtue of being a common chemical, can't be patented. And this is a problem, because if something can't be patented it can't be sold exclusively, and if it can't be sold exclusively then it can't be sold for thousands of dollars when it's made for pennies.

No one can make money off it. It's just not that kind of drug.

So as a result, the research on this drug, the kind of research that makes sure that it really, truly, effectively cures cancer, the kind that teaches us how not to kill every one in every five people we save, is crawling. It's been years since we found this chemical and now there's one human study, funded entirely by private donations, telling us it's probably working and that if you put (conservatively) fifty million dollars and ten years of time into it that it will be there, pretty much free, for everybody.

The cure for cancer.

But nobody's going to drop fifty or a hundred or a hundred and fifty million dollars on a drug that, if it works, won't pay itself back to the people who put money into it. That's not how pharmaceutical companies work. They exist to make money because if they didn't exist to make money, they wouldn't exist. It's heartless, but no one ever claimed that corporations had to have hearts.

So here's the story that hasn't happened yet: it involves two people, one with cancer and one without. Two friends, lets say, though they could just as easily be husband and wife, or brother and sister, or just that sweet girl that one guy met on the internet that time. But in this story, it's just these two friends, and one of them is sick, and the other one knows about it. And he also knows that there's a cure out there. And he knows for damn sure it's not gonna be ready in time.

His friend won't take chemo - tells him "the last thing I want is more cancer". Nothing else works. He's given up. So the guy who knows tells the guy with cancer about this thing they call DCA. He says it's a pretty common drug they use for metabolism disorders and he's pretty sure he can get his hands on some. The guy with cancer asks: is it dangerous? And he says: Well, sure it is. You got something to live for?

So that's it. They get the DCA from somewhere, and they find out as much information as they can about how to use it, and they give it to the guy with cancer.

He doesn't live. They mess up the dose, maybe. His liver gives out. It's quicker than the cancer.

The guy who does live goes on trial for murder. He pleads guilty immediately. When they ask him why he did it, he tells them he knew what he was doing. He tells them he knew the risk. He tells them he knew the consequences.

He tells them he wouldn't have ever done it differently.

It is always strange to me to see the word socialism tossed around in this country like it's some sort of expletive, or a weight around some democrats neck. We measure our progress in this world, and rightly so, by the happiness, healthiness, education and freedom of our people and we created a government to help us provide that. We're considered a first world nation because we have roads and schools and hospitals that everyone in this country paid however begrudgingly out of pocket for. And even though it seems like we've monumentally screwed up the how of how we're paying for these things it's very hard to question the why.

It's because, antithetical to a corporation, a government should have a heart and not a head. It's because the concept of basic human rights for all trump the obstacles and irritance this presents to those people who already have them. It's because being treated when you're sick is a right, not a privilege, and if you're going to effectively protect that right you need a model that doesn't think only for its own bottom line.

Our government should know as well as the man on trial knows: that we, as people of this earth, have a responsibility to protect the lives of others as we would protect our own. If someone falls down, you drop what you're doing and help them up. I keep hearing that we're spending too much on healthcare. I can tell you right now that we're not spending enough.

Nabokov Dreaming Of Spirits

Wanted, Wanted: Paku, Paku
A fragile and ravenous flower
eternally fleeing the ghostly truth
and wilting away at its power.

Stories of a Jaded Romantic

I will sing even when words have no meaning
and the notes seem dull and flat.
I will love you and wish for your love
even when no hope for it exists.
If all is meaningless then I will create meaning in this.
If I cannot create meaning, I will pretend.

I became every word that I ever wrote
even when I did not mean them.
I am every desperate syllable
these lips have ever spoken
to a crowd that did not understand - or so I believed.
I said them like they were true and they were.
Even when they were lies.

I would be honest with you.

You knew - that awkward glance.
The lowering of eyes as eyes met.
The sudden loss of words when words were needed.
The end of the night when we
did not kiss goodbye.
Silence, terrible silence.
You had to have known.

Do I understand too much or too little?
Am I prideful or simply humiliated?
Somewhere this became more difficult
than I could have imagined. An intangible quest.
Ephemeral. Ethereal. Figmentatious.
And yet I believe.

If life were tired and boring I would still live it,
a hundred times over. A thousand. Nothing is worse than the unknowing.
But this slips through my fingers, for all that I would grasp it.
I will reach out again.

There may be no end to this. Satisfactory.
The best stories circle back on themselves,
constantly revising,
hoping to find infinity
before the last word is spoken.

If words are the windows to the soul then I worry
because I have never strayed from a sappy love sonnet
and yet here I am alone, waiting for you.

I want you to know that I am not afraid of us.
But I am not the man who puts bravery in every step
or breath exhaled. I stumble. I think too much
about the left foot right and
the kiss goodnight. I know that I am more
than is seen - but I cannot seem to reveal it. Is it my call
for the curtain that unveils the play?
Do I write this show, and translate each stage direction
into a laborious step? Do you?

I have no wish to be strong if strength has no meaning.
I have no wish to bother you if truly that is what I do.
I might have the answers but I would rather learn
than teach. And when I am certain,
I am certain it will be too late.
Is this what fear has become? Is it a step into
the dark unknown?

Or is it you,
holding your hand out to the crowd,
hoping for someone to vault the stage
and take it?

Delche: Delche is the god of rogues, trickery, vanity, and music.

Appearance: Delche appears as an attractive young man with brightly colored, show-offy clothing.
Worship: Worshippers of Delche can be found anywhere and are known to range from rogues to bards to gamblers to travelers. There is a church dedicated to Delche in Brigobaen.
Domains: Trickery, Luck, Chaos, Celerity
Favored Weapon: Rapier
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

"If truth can be divine, why not a lie? If a lie can be divine, why is it not true?"

If the church of Delche has ever claimed any singular tenet it is this: there is no one way of seeing the world. Humanity, for example, walks blind to the things that lie in darkness, sees not the magical undercurrents that lie in both the natural and unnatural world around them. If this can be true, can they not also be blind to other truths? Perception frames all creatures concept of reality - thus its importance.

Thus, a worshipper of Delche understands two things - finding the relevant truth when it is hidden, and creating truth when it cannot be found. Because perception IS reality, keen senses are necessary to enjoy and understand the grand mystery of life, and storytelling is the highest form of power in shaping that mystery. If a commoner claims that he is a noble, or a simpleton that he is divine, then by all rights they are both noble and divine for as long as they can keep up the charade. Some claim that Delche himself came into godhood in this fashion.

Of course, lies can be disproven if they are weak enough, and clerics of Delche constantly test each others stories and beliefs in order to craft stronger and stronger "truths". A favorite parable of the church relates how a group of upright clerics tried to prove their own gods existence a myth, only to be carefully shown by the grandmaster of tricksters that they, instead, were a mere childrens story, and never alive in the first place.

Most followers of Delche love to hear themselves talk, and will freely engage in logical contradictions and circular arguments for the sheer joy of it - if they can get away with such outrageous claims, all the better. Music and other arts that create emotion where none previously existed are held in reverence. Clerics of Delche will often craft grand lies merely as an experiment to see if the world might be better suited by a different perception - or if they themselves can benefit. Some clerics of Delche carry as holy symbols a weighted coin or set of dice, as a reminder that with the right tools, one can make his own luck.

The Tao of Video Gaming (or A Treatise On Why Devon Keeps Kicking My Ass At Soul Calibur)

I'm in the midst of a League of Legends-gasm this week, and while hunting useful information as to how to best play the game I stumbled across a video by one of the LoL staff explaining a concept I had never heard of called zoning. Watching the video, I discovered that zoning was something that, as a pretty damn good LoL player already, I was already doing intuitively, but nonetheless I was struck by how much my game improved simply by understanding what it was.

So here's my proposition. I have a list of six terms that I think should be a part of standard vocabulary when discussing the playstyle of gamers. These are skillsets, some of them intuitive, some of them earned, that everyone who plays a video game or wants to should have some idea about simply because being aware of what there is to learn makes it much easier to learn a thing. In addition, it should give me the language I need to parse why Devon keeps beating me into the ground at Soul Cal. Or so I hope. Let's find out, shall we?

1.) Micromanagement is the study of how important objects in a game interact with each other. In most instances it is focused around concepts of space and timing, which is why League of Legends refers to it as Zoning (this is the video here).

A lot of people have a really intuitive grasp of how things "fit", which is why games with heavy micro elements are so fun for them. Even if they haven't learned this concept, they'll learn it quickly through gaming as almost every game involves some sort of micro.

Platformers are heavily based on micromanagement, as are many fighting games (the more skills are "shaped" in their interactions the better). Even more "skill" oriented games like FPS's have these kinds of relationships - especially heavily class-based ones like Team Fortress 2 - where a shotgun has an effective range close up and thus is better for corners, a sniper rifle or a mounted machine gun decreases the space you can move safely in, and cover and positioning allow you to better protect yourself and key points on a map... all of these are micro-oriented parts of a game.

2.) Macromanagement, or Multithreading as I like to call it, is the sum total awareness of important objects and actions in a game. This is your ability to manage micro in the area you need to while still understanding what is going on elsewhere - in other words, your ability to correctly identify all useful information and stay focused on it. After a certain level almost no one has this skill intuitively, and building it is a much more laborious and difficult task which even the most hardened gamers do not necessarily have perfected. (The Day9 SC macro explanation: "Build something. Look at the minimap. Look at your resources. Build something else.") Lots of players who excel at other skills get burned on macro because as a general rule, people just can't think about that many things at the same time.

Being bad at Macro means random stuff - getting hit with that blue shell because you didn't hear it and slow down, being "ganked" by all those people who disappeared off the minimap a few seconds ago - happens to you more often, which is generally unpleasant and induces much rage. But Macro still exists in most games because A) simplicity breeds stagnation and B) informational noise is really pretty. You don't want a zombie, you want hundreds of zombies. You don't want a battle, you want a war, or in lieu of a war, an explosions fest.

Nonetheless, games try to minimize how much you focus on macro, usually by making sure the most important data you have to keep track of is a minimap and a health bar, and maybe a few other increasing numbers stacked closely by it. Interfaces have become steadily less complicated to relay important information in as effective a pattern as can be created while still simulating things of exceptional scale.

3.) Coordination (of the hand-eye variety) is the capacity to effectively execute an action. For the most part this delineates how a character responds to the player's actions and in that sense you could say the coordination is between the man and his avatar.

This is what FPS players will usually refer to as part and parcel of "skill". There are a number of different skillsets at which people become coordinated, some of which carry over to other games and some of which don't. Controllers and interfaces are an important part of this, especially in cases where precision counts for aiming a weapon or pulling an attack.

4.) Reflex is the capacity to quickly respond to new information.
With the exception of "Press X to not die" events, this is almost always important in conjunction with coordination and micro, since it lessens the possibility of getting caught off guard by something your macro sense didn't feed you. A highly coordinated sniper can still miss a shot at point blank range, and a surprised fighter with good micro can still drop his controller on his foot or kick in the wrong direction when struck by an attack that flips him around. Still, standing alone with this intuitive skill, poorly coordinated people with good reflexes can do just fine in some situations - provided they have shotguns and don't need to really "line up" a shot for the frag.

5.) Empathy is the ability to appropriately measure the behavior of a games outside element.

This is the capacity to predict what your opponent is going to do and do something in response. It actually goes both ways - behaving in unpredictable fashions is often valid when someone is trying to understand your own behavior. Empathy relates to all of the skills above, but involves playing the person next to you rather than the person you're controlling. Co-op games require strong empathy, but Player vs. Player games desire this skill even more so, for the obvious reasons.

I'm being a bit broad with this definition because, while empathy is a human-human interaction, game developers often try to establish an empathic relationship with gamers, for good or ill. For example, serious survival horror games interfere with a players capacity to react effectively and reasonably by messing with their heads, constantly using red herrings or atmosphere to put them off their game and then introducing challenges at the times when players are least effective at responding. If you took all of the fog out of Silent Hill then players would behave like reasonable adults and kill everything with a minimum of fuss. Instead they practically drop their controllers trying to pull out their pistol when the evil babies come a calling, fire shots wildly into the air, panic and run the wrong direction, and hey, now the game is suddenly hard. Good level design involves the developers having empathy for you, the gamer.

In addition, many games have computer opponents with predictable behaviors to exploit, and in the spirit of true empathy can even have weird relationships with you without any sort of mutual understanding as to why. My original StarCraft playstyle somehow influenced computer Overlords to constantly fly towards my base, freak out as they were shot by my missile turrets, fly back, and start the process over again, which provided me with some substantial advantage in every game I played. Devon discovered this when he created a custom map which I immediately broke with this pattern, and commented on its oddity. I had merely assumed this brand of broken AI was inflicted on everyone, but that was apparently not the case, and since I have improved at the game I have never been able to recreate my inane dance of death with the floating meatsacks of the Zerg race.

6.) Strategy is the ability to effectively plan a winning set of actions. To be fair, when the plan must be invented or changed over a short period of time, it's considered to be a tactic.

Strategy is important in any game because it involves playing to your strengths. The best 1v1 player on the Halo servers when the mode existed was merely a highly coordinated sniper, and much like anybody else with substantive micro skills on that broken, broken game, could kill everyone 20-0 as they spawned before they got their own sniper rifles to kill him back. The only difference between him and every other player below his caliber was that he had mastered the art (on the singular map he played) of using a grenade to blow the sniper rifle off of the ledge it was on and into his hands, giving him access to it several seconds before his opponent did. (Bungie eventually got rid of ranked 1v1 entirely - one assumes because this kind of gameplay existed in the first place)

I want to say that Strategy is also an important element in puzzle-solving games, but that might require a bit more depth than I want to go into at this point. Suffice it to say that games that do not require you to "think fast" will often have a substantial amount of strategy in that strategy is something that occurs outside of the field of play.

So, when you ask a professional player of first person shooters his secrets, he might tell you to first study the map (Strategy) and determine the spots of the best tactical value. Or maybe he'll give you his trademark "short-hop short-hop long-hop" advice, which tends to stump snipers (Empathy). He'll almost certainly relate when not to use specific guns (Micro) and tell you to slowly ratchet up your mouse sensitivity so that you can still aim perfectly for the head(Coordination) while being able to turn a complete 180 in under a half a second (Reflex). Beyond that, he might mention some good surround sound headphones so you can better hear enemies from a distance or praise his graphics settings for enabling him to more easily notice snipers in a heavy firefight (Macro).

I cooked up some player profiles using these terms, which hopefully no one will object to. Everyone who plays games for any period of time has all of these skills in spades, but I thought it might be interesting to describe people by their strengths.

While I don't know Mark that well, from what I do know I would consider him to be a Micro oriented gamer. His choices in games - like Storm of the Imperial Sanctum and Smash Brothers - are an obvious clue, but in addition his playstyle revolves heavily around the elements of spacing and attack patterns. In StarCraft he limits his strategy to infantry balls so that he can keep complicated macro to a minimum while using the units he is most familiar with to deal damage at appropriate times. Mark can also apparently play Dragon Age II, a game heavily based on spacing and attack patterns, on Nightmare mode. Which is not, as far as I am aware, a possible thing.

His version of Smash Bros, Minus, plays up the dramatically shaped movelists that interact with each other in a very visible fashion. All random and excess information is reduced as much as possible (items are turned off). In addition, he plays heavily around the stages themselves, which change the flow of combat. Since he's reaaaally coordinated with his characters, he can typically generate a huge advantage unless you create an overwhelming amount of threats against him (which becomes the SSB Minus rule: gank Mark if you don't want to lose).

In one of the last Smash Bros games I played against him on Brinstar, I was suddenly confused as he abandoned his attack on me in order to double jump backwards into the air, where he immediately performed a backwards kick into empty space. At this point, the stage flipped, conveniently lining up my face with the back of his heel, which in turn conveniently put my torso through the edge of the stage.

"Yeah," he said. "That happens."

Devon is a consummate strategist in his element (Magic), but he is also an extremely empathic gamer, and uses his ability to predict other players actions and effectively obscure his own to great advantage. He's been known to tilt cards at you when they could obviously be blocked and killed just because he trusts you'll believe that the cards in his hand are instant speed pumps or burn, and his playstyle in combat games similarly relies on knowing what move you'll do or not doing what you'd expect, regardless of whether or not he knows his own movelist. Since Devon likes to play with or against people, and doesn't like to "study" video games the way he does board games or card games, I would refer to him as an empathic gamer first and foremost in that arena.

It would be insulting not to say that Logan is at the top of all of these skillsets, since he's spent a lot of time earning those skills - although some particular brands of strategy really bore him and he won't use them or play games that involve them. If I had to pick a strength, I would say that thousands of hours of Counter-Strike have especially honed his reflexes and coordination and given him a lot of insight and empathy into the behavior of people on internet games. He's discussed with me how he was once banned from CS servers for cheating when he headshot three moving targets with a Desert Eagle while completely blinded by a flashbang. He wasn't cheating, but simply memorizing their positions pre-flash, predicting where they would move, and firing three perfect shots before they could effectively take him down with their sprayguns. Having seen him play FPS's, I don't doubt this story for an instant.

I always considered myself a strategist, but I have a simple greed for information when it comes to video games that comes from a part of me that wants to understand how games tick - the part that writes weird articles about skillsets in video games, for example. As a result, I've played all types of games with all types of focuses and stopped specializing in the strategic for every game that I play. I actually think Macro is my strongest skill versus others just because I have put so much more effort into it in games like StarCraft, but it's not my favorite part of games. Still, I appreciate the Micro-Empathic ballad more than anything in skill based games, especially fighting games, especially against Devon.


When I lose against Devon in Soul Calibur, though, it is by virtue of strategy. I seem hellbent on knowing and using every move that exists within that game, which means I have never settled on a solid micro strategy with any particular character. My desire for variety is a ridiculous compulsion, and I experiment constantly in fights where I should not in order to develop full coordination with my character, trying to wreak some sort of strategic advantage while I rely on sheer reflex to block and guard impact attacks.

Devon, who learns enough moves to utilize a specific micro strategy for every character, uses our goddamn mind meld to inflict effective damage, and experiments only when he is in a strong position. Instead of wasting time learning reams of unimportant information, he picks up on the moves that I find useful through my experimentation, and then integrates the counters he already knows into his moves.

In other words, Devon wins at Soul Calibur because he is way more skilled at it than I am.

There's an upside, at least. I do have as much of an empathic advantage as he does (via the MIND MELD) and a very strong knowledge of Soul Calibur spacing. This means I always have a few opportunities to exploit his difficult patterns after forcing him into a position where my uncanny knowledge of moves will be useful.

I'd call that utilizing effective zoning in conjunction with a tacit empathic understanding of his playstyle. He'd probably call it "Ring-Out Whoring".

Darkness Pt 1 Pt 1

OK so I was all BLUH BLUH I CAN DO 32 PAGES IN A NIGHT but that was obviously stupid and my hands hurt. I almost made it to my stopping point. First eleven pages go!

DARKNESS:
BLACK ROMANCE PT 1
by Brian Krantz

Caption: Leeworth Memorial Hospital
Boston, Massachusetts
February, 1990
6 AM

Caption: Guild of the Just
Providence, Rhode Island
February, 2011
Midnight

Panels 1-6
Split panels, opening on two buildings from parallel perspectives, one a run-down hospital at dawn, the other a damaged, smoking building with a number of unnecessary columns. Viewpoint moves closer to the entrance, then inside. The hospital is filled with doctors and patients busily moving about, but no major injuries. The hall of the Guild is filled with broken rubble, sputtering lights, and damaged walls. A green gloved hand is visible on the ground sticking from an open doorway.

Panels 7-8
Continuing down the hallways. The sign at the top of the hospital says Maternity Ward, and a woman is being wheeled out with her child in hand. In the hallways of the ruined building, superheroes are now plainly visible lying dead on the ground, burn marks on costumes, tragically positioned.

9-10 The viewpoint turns to angle around a door. A mother giving birth, only partially seen through the frame, father waiting by her side with his hand clasped around hers. Panel 8 shows a middle-aged superhero – an elder Superman analog - being held aloft by a thin arm attached to a huge, hi-tech, monstrous armored fist, struggling but helpless.

Panels 11-12: Full view from inside each room. A doctor holding aloft a crying baby, with as much graphic detail as possible obscured by hands and eyes. Panel 12: the titular villain, in black costuming (possibly a helm?) looking scornful. This is Darkness. He's in his early twenties, if that, and his costume is big and imposing but doesn't quite cover up his thin build. Costumed heroes lie in ruins around him.

Captions run between both panels. Some sort of identifying narrative bubble for Darkness.
D (Caption): This is me.

Page 3
Panel 13: Split panel set up is the same, but the viewpoints are no longer parallel. Close up of the doctors face.
Doctor: It's a beautiful baby b-
Panel 14: Hero and villain. D winds up with a gloved hand from a side view.

Panel 15: Same as 13. Doctor takes a shot to the nose with a childs foot.
Panel 16: Same view. Hero takes a very HARD blow to the face. Flying teeth, maybe.
D (Caption): I've always been like this.

Panel 17: Nurse catching the baby in a blanket as the doctor reels, father with shocked expression while mother is unconscious.
Doctor: My nobe! He broge by nobe!
Panel 18: Same side view, hero held aloft, all fight gone out of him.


Page 4: Panel 1: A shot of just the baby, sleeping peacefully.
Nurse (Off-screen): Just keep it held up like that, that's right -
Doctor: I'm a dogdor, I know how to tread a nobe!
Panel 2: D from the front. Two heroes behind him, readying blows – one with some sort of hammer or cool weapon, the other with glowing eyes.
D (Caption): Unstoppable.

Panel 3: High view of the hospital room. Zoom out on the baby, same position, in blankets on a table beside the bed. Doctor and nurse are gone. Little bloodspatter on the floor. Mother and father in the room together. Father clenching the unconscious mother, looking towards the baby, unsure of what to do. Child seems far away from the mother and father.

Panel 4: Lightshow. Techno gadget on either side of the D's costume activate as the heroes are suddenly electrocuted. Little letters etched in the glowing lights on the costume say NAN AUG – these are not central to the panels look.

D (Caption): Untouchable.

Panel 5: Zoomed out further. Hospital room is now small inside a black void. Same positioning of small family.

Panel 6: Villain turning and walking away from the burnt pair of heroes.

Caption: Except...

Page 5:
Panel 1: Wide panel across the top of the page. We're looking at the face of D, but younger, more gangly and nerdy. He's staring, forlorn look on his face.

Panel 2: Wider shot, showing a middle school from up high in the hall, lots of children carving a path. This panel is almost full page, with inset panels. From this view we can see that the children are deliberately cutting around D. We can also see the girl he's staring at, a prettyish blonde with thick-framed glasses (We'll call her S, why not)
Caption: ___ ___ middle school, 2002.

Panel 3-5: From the bottom. A few shots of S from D's perspective talking with friends, brushing hair back and noticing him, pushing up glasses as she smiles a little bit

Page6:
Panel 1: D, smiling a little bit as well.
Panel 2: Hand shoving D's head into a locker.
SFX: WHUD!
Bully: Whoops!
D (Caption): Once.
Panel 3: Wide panel. Large, older looking bully and some similarly friends, shoulder to shoulder around D like a pack of wolves. D is still recovering.
Bully: You should watch where you're going, loser.
Bully 2: Oh!
Bully 3: Ha ha!
D (Caption): Just once.
Panel 4: Still from the top. Withdrawn looking D looking down at the floor, bullies moving in closer.
B1: Well? Aren't you gonna apologize for running into me like that?
B2: Yeah, aren't you?
D: No.
Panel 5: Side cut of D and Bully. Bully leaning in closer, malicious look on face. Other bullies are faceless from this angle, just hulking shoulders. D still looking down.
Bully 1: That's a bad plan. Come on, apologize.
Panel 6: Same frame. Expression on D's face does not change. Bully looks impatient.
Panel 7: Same frame. Bully, sing-songy grin.
Bully 1: I'm waaaiiitiing...

Page 7:
Panel 1. Bullys hand rams the locker behind D, obscuring his face. Sound effect goes right around his head.
SFX: WHAM!
Bully 1: “Hey! Look at me when I'm talking to you!
Teacher (small): Hey!

Panel 2: D looks up into B's eyes, which puts his eyes over the bully's arm. B is smiling, D just looks like he hates everything.
Bully 2 (singing): uh oh, teachers coming!
Bully 1: That's better.

Panel 3: Bully pulls away casually. D's expression has not changed, clearly angry.
Teacher: (larger) Hey! What are you kids doing over there!
Bully: Saved by the bell, twerp.

Panel 4: D, alone, against the locker. Same expression of rage.

Panel 5: Bully pulls back into panel.
Bully 1: Oh, and...
Michael Jackson called.
He wants his glove back.

Panel 6: Close up of D from front.

Panel 7: Close up of B's face. Smug. Bullys can be seen behind him, as well as a balding teacher pushing his way through a crowd of kids.

Panel 8: Close up of D's hands. Clenched fists. One of the hands is a black glove that we now see in detail, which looks like a streamlined and less technologically complex version of the monster hands that are a part of his older supervillain costume.
D (Caption): But only once.

Page 8:
Panel 1: Full page panel. Lightshow. Radiant beams of energy enveloping the kid as he shrieks, terrible terrible damage. Everyone falling back in horror.

Page 9:
Panel 1: Pile of dust on the ground in front of D's feet.
Children: Oh my god!
Crazy!
Run!
Panel 2: D, leaning downwards into the panel, smug expression on face.
Panel 3: Shot of horrified teacher as D stands up to face him. Last of children fleeing around corners. Teacher is only person seen from any distance
Panel 4: Close up of horrified teacher.
Panel 5: Close up of smug looking D.
D: You didn't see anything.
Panel 6: Close up of glove again. Red crackling energy still sparking off it.
Panel 7: Close up of teacher, breaking into horrified sweat.
Panel 8: Same shot of teacher. Incredibly defeated expression.
Teacher: I... I didn't see anything.

Page 10:
Panel 1: Teacher, clutching textbooks, shuffles off. Broken husk of a man.
D (Caption): But...

Panel 2: D, raising his hands to his head, looking incredibly pleased with himself. S in background obscured by his skinny elbows.

Panel 3: D lowers his hand and begins to turn. S in background looking at him with cold expression of hatred and contempt.

Panel 4: The middle of the page. D turns and sees S, from a distance.
D (Caption): That's not what's important.

Panel 5: Shocked expression from D
Panel 6: Close up of cold anger from S.
Panel 7: S turns away, whipping hair around as she storms off.

Page 11:
Panel 1: Wide top panel of broken looking teenage D from front.
D: (Caption): What's important is this:
Panel 2: Large full panel of adult D's face, helm and all.
D (dialogue): There are no more heroes.
Panel 3: Wide panel of D sitting on a chair in the center of the League of the Just, dead folks all around. A smug-looking dude in a ponytail with a mechanical hand – Lefty – is filming him.

Page 12:

I have a comic book (probably three issues) almost completely written in my head. I did it about a month ago and it's still around, so we're going to try and get it all out. It's called "Darkness", and is awesome. That's all we're going to say for the moment.

Dramatis Personae
Darkness: The titular villain. Prodigy. Specialty is computers, robots and augmentative technology centered around nanomachines (NanAug). Thinks the world revolves around him. It mostly does. Refuses to change his supervillain name even though he is well aware it is dumb.

Silverheart: The second. Trainee and prodigy of Silverheart the first, martial artist and swordswoman. Naively idealistic.

Lefty: A previous trainee of Silverheart the first, who abandoned his mentor in favor of a lazier route to power (NanAug). Left-handed, obviously.

Kee: Silverhearts completely off-screen hacker. Basically a Wrench.

Oa'Hu Sets (Draft II)

We break the clouds, and light kicks out the windows of the plane, welcoming me back to real life. Good morning, sunshine. It's 2 PM, Hawaiian standard. The island says hello.

Bleary and barely sentient, we wait impatiently for the car, napping on stone embankments, on light posts, on each other. It's a mark of how tired we are. This is not a place of subdued colors and blended shadows. What's not worn away by the sun is strong and vibrant, and the shade of trees has edges like knives. Humid. Wet. Montana never seemed so far away.

The sun blinds, and the traffic is terrible - overcrowded, the streets filled to the brim. The roads scramble over each other in a futile attempt to achieve the pragmatism of point A to point B on an island that has neither. Even the most hardened GPS navigator cannot narrate the route we take with accuracy. To reach the hotel we must thread under and between two others, around four more, stare blankly at a parking lot with the same name, stop and ask for directions, tunnel under the earth. Sleep leaves us.

A good thing, too. Twenty stories up, the beds are singles, smaller than good couches. The toilets are a few inches lower to the ground. Window is cracked. Wallpaper is ugly. Internet is not free. The sooner we are back outside the better.

On foot, everything is different. People stare and scowl viciously - they are Native, and I am in their Native Land, and this is what has become of it. When Cook came, they stabbed him to death on the rocks before his crew.

He got his revenge.

The languorous mood is there, at least, the heat of the sun dulling the little barbs with passivity and apathy. The tourists smile and nod like tourists always do. Vacation. Yes. I can walk barefoot through the streets, the beach is never more than a few blocks away, and trinkets and trifles adorn every corner. I buy symbols without knowing their meaning, hang them around my neck with strange pride. A man outside the market forces parrots on unsuspecting passersby, takes pictures, demands money. Guilt is his sole source of income.

The term “tourist trap” is a truism, and we will not be misled – the best moments in this place are in the little things. My time here is spent in gas stations and corner stores), or on foot in winding streets with a single companion, admiring local residences and ignoring large hotels. Good food to be had at the drive-in diner. The macaroni salad is not to be believed.

And the darker it gets - the less people there are - the more alive it seems. I take my leave of the group. We are revisiting old places already.

A beautiful woman passes by me, harassed by two drunks. Never missing the chance to be a chivalrous imbecile, I place myself between her and them, readying myself to leap to her aid. Before anything real happens, she sticks out a hand and a cab swoops her up like a hawk - there in an instant, gone in a flash, with an ease that speaks of practice. The drunks shrug and meander away. I do the same. Moving on.

The beach. Nothing man could ever do to mar the brilliance of the ocean. I enter the water as the crowd leaves it, swim alone, refreshed. Though the water is salty enough to gag on it is beautiful beyond reproach. So many boats that have not come in yet. Sunset engulfs the retreating sails in a brilliant portrait of bright reds and yellows on dim blues and oranges, lighting fire to the night. What we pour into the sky only makes it prettier.

And following: the twilight, carrying as always an energy to it. What is true in one place stays true in another – light remains when the sun dies out, everything glows, and I am alive. I itch for pen and paper, for a friend, for true love, and yet I want for nothing. Electricity. It is magnified by the newness of it all, by the sensation of the water, by the vast and colorful and indifferent world around me.

In the flourescent light that follows from the hotels at my back, I dig sandcastles inches from the tide, with moats that turn immediately into sinkholes. I write hasty notes with my fingers that last only minutes. I stand in the sand and let myself sink as it dissolves, ankle deep in rich mud. The waves are large enough to drag me away - and almost, almost I wish that they would.

Bang Or Bust (2009)

As suicide methods go, it wasn't a bad one:
he took the cheesy plastic hand grenade
and replaced it with a real one
its pin tagged with a gaudy red number 12
on the plastic stand cheerily mocking every walk-in
"Complaints Department: Please, take a number"
He sat quietly at his desk
in the kind of clothes they'd bury him in
waiting for someone to realize the truth
through experimentation.

Curiosity, he theorized
would kill more than just the cat this time.

Hemingway Sits (2008)

Hemingway Sits

Hemingway sits
in his blank old apartment
graying with age
Hemingway quits

Hemingway stands
with a fine old shotgun
he hunted with once
in Hemingway's hands

Hemingway cries
like he said he never would
because he can't accept it
and he can't reject it
and he can't ignore it
and he sure can't stop it
and he doesn't want to try
so Hemingway cries
and Hemingway lies

and then,
perhaps,
to no mans surprise,
Hemingway
aims
his
gun
to
the
sky.

Freud Wants You To Sleep With Your Mother (2008)

Sigmund, you sick son of a bitch,
I know how you'd have liked it to turn out
but somewhere off in the land of do-as-you-please
Oedipus and Miranda are mackin' it
And you can listen all night for that “who's your daddy”
but I'll tell you right now that
once you get inside those rattling skulls
ain't nobody there
but them.

On Not Attending A Funeral (2006)

I don’t know if you’re lingering
inside us now today
at least the thoughts of you are there
that made you in some ways
and so I take a walk outside
to let you see the world again
before I faithfully inscribe
a verse or two, that you might hide
within the words left by my pen
and if the verse is clever
then you might live forever
inside this document.

Amen.

When My World Ends (2006)

When my world ends
I hope yours lingers 'round
and your once cheerful citizens
aren't torn by the sound
of the crack and the break
of their orbiting star
(a shining description
but well, there you are)
and while the gravity (ha!)
of your new situation
may have an effect
on the state of your nation
I ask you not to falter
and to your course stay true
but please accept what refugees
that I may send to you.

Home is Where (2007)

"To Zanarkand!" she cried,
"To the Moon! To Parts Unknown!"
"To Home!" I responded,
and for a moment
it almost seemed like we agreed on something.

Love, you are not (2010)

Love, you are not -
as I have learned,
your affectations of affection
are mirror light from a dead star
the illusion of that which,
mistakes reversible,
might have lived.

It is no secret I have
kept you secret
for it seems daily my heart soars
into the tightening passage of my throat and my head nods
a passing hello
for years it has been thus – decades, eternities
a hundred times for everyone I pass we do this dance
a hundred times we pass
without incident

if you wonder if I would fall for you
then the answer is yes, if your voice fails you too
and yet if we are kindred, we cannot move
but to move away.

Love, you are not,
for a secret held is not a truth
my mind is meaningless, as are my lips
fingers
skin
breath

I have starved them from your company
murdered all that's left

but I know this to be so:
Such things live on in death.

Notebook Scribbles (2010)

At the end of the world I'll be writing
alone as always, penning the Great Novel
hoping it's what matters most
"Here I Am", I'll say to the dark,
and I'll rest easy knowing that even if
the pages burn to cinder, the words
are eternal. As they always have been.

My Love:
I must apologize.
The infinite potential of what you are
is marred only by my dreams
of the infinite people
you are not.

For The Last Time, This Is Not About Sex (2010)

I hate to say it this way,
but baby, let's make Love
something to keep us moving
when my pushes meet your shoves
we know the form and shape of it
we've heard the poets sing
we have the right connection
that just leaves one last thing
and I know I'm asking of you
what you never gave before
but put your heart and soul in mine
and I'll put mine in yours
and maybe there'll be something there
when we both hit the floor.

Haiku (2010)

I could write Haiku
how they sound of gentle waves but
I can't count syllables

Just Write (2010)

Let's write:
put on some music
close the door up tight
and just be ourselves
for a while

let's write
don't know where my fingers are
but there's words coming up on the page
and I'm certain they're mine today

let's write
of things falling apart
of things put together
of my love for you
of my love for my love for you
of the night outside our window
the people dancing on 2nd street
the music you don't know how to play
the girl in the window of the corner grocery
the awkward silence of us
that light just before the dawn hits

let's write the mountains
preserve them forever
quick, before they fall to the sea
let's write your face
hanging quietly on the wall
I'll bet it lasts
longer than the mountains

let's write something together
that wasn't there before
I'll send you a reason
you send me a rhyme
Maybe we just might
get it right this time.

Chained Letters (2010)

To The Dead
I tried to write your song
but I didn't know the tune
I hope you sing it anyways
and I don't hear it soon.

To The Living
If you ever find the answer
I ask you, write it down!
For me it's all that's left of you
when you're lying in the ground.

Idealist (2010)

If I could build
my own little world
for me to live in
for you to live in
the sky
would always be that perfect blue
when the sun goes under the mountains
and everything glows with its own light
and the wind would be calm and cool and complete
unless you wanted it otherwise.

Our little world would be
little
small and flat and filled
with people that we know and love
people that we wish to be,
thinkers, dreamers, hopers, lovers,
writers, artists, doers, others,
and no Republicans allowed
unless you wanted it otherwise.

I’d build the world from feathers
and string
and song
I’d put everything where it belongs

And in the little world I made
sugar wouldn’t be unhealthy
hatred wouldn’t come so natural
living wouldn’t cease to change
everyone would be fully awake
fully alive
and dying wouldn’t happen
unless you wanted it otherwise.

When I think of the world that I’d create
that we’d create,
it lifts me to my feet
fills my ribs and bones
makes me feel I were a part of you
and you a part of me

but secretly

I hope

that you would never

want it otherwise.

Damaging the Powers of the Gods Through Vigorous Application of the Scientific Method (2010)

The Vietnamese believe
that Toad is uncle to the Sky,
watching sagely
over his favorite nieces shoulder
letting her know
when it's all right
to rain.

Americans believe
that if Toad urinates on us
we will grow warts.

Poets cannot ignore the truth:
it is with a heavy heart I must report
that one of these statements
has been proven false.

Gathering Storm Tribute (2010)

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass,
and come and pass, and come and pass again,
leaving memories that become legend.
Legend fades to myth, and myth is long forgotten
when the Age that gave it birth comes again -
for every Age is forged anew. And with each passing
new memories must be made, new legends penned. Eternity
is not finite. The world changes.
We change.

Mistakes are made. Darkness rises. Things come to an end -
often before we expect them to, often before they are
complete. Creation is not perfect. Perhaps it has no right to be.

But we strive for perfection. We strive because we are always changing,
because what we desire most might exist in our Age, or in the age we birth.
We strive because the alternative is despair, because the wheel could stop
turning at any moment and there are too many things in this
or any other age worth striving for. Love. Truth. Beauty.
We strive against the darkness because there is joy
in the Light. In the turning of the wheel.
Light in our memories. Light in our legends. Light in our myths.
Light in the darkness.

So the wheel turns.
So we turn with it.
So it was, is, and ever will be.

Unconditional (2010)

I'll kill every goddamned motherfucker who says that this crush
is something to be ashamed of so help me
there's no better feeling than
having stars in your eyes
up all night thinking about all the ways it could have happened
could still happen
but probably never will
six months after the fact and it hits me like a metric
ton of bricks
that she might have been the one
and I wish to god I had her number so I could call her every minute of every day and say
everything better
be who I want to be and know that's who she wants me to be
and I can't think that it's creepy that I'd defend her name to the death
because if it's wrong to want so much from so many
no one will ever be right

Shortcut Through Cemetary (2009)

Suns falling below and storms are
coming - light on half sky,
black clouds on other. Summer rain
meets heat of same - damp.
Cool. The Earth is in balance.

We pay respects by leaving
flowers and candles in endless green
then scurry before it gets to
now - empty and quiet.
Sacred ground.

I am Infidel or child of god
treading here this hour
wondering at his (pantheistic) grace
I believe nothing but still am
humbled in my respect.

No watching eye - no reason
to not feel joy
to not run down sprinkler-soaked path
to not live
amidst remains of poems lost

I wish you here (who are you?)
fingers intertwined
laughing as I laugh
seeing as I see
running here with me

But should you not
(and maybe I'm no solid friend,
perhaps I'm merely just pretend)
Still I ask this: find yourself a place
a book, a tune, a sky, a face
find something that you fully comprehend
or meet me here in evening once again.

Virgin's Battlesong (2009)

Let’s put aside the lascivious pear for a moment
because I’m terrified that this new world is
as boring and unsympathetic as the last,
or worse: that it is as true as it feels
and you might see me as what I really am
not the part I wish to play with you

of tongue and pen, the former
writes upon your form less delicately
than the latter
my hands shake like a cage-rattle
when I try to be free with myself
my mind dances with yours but my body
does not know how to step with grace

I know romance, know adoration,
would think that I know love with you
would think my words are yours
and yours are mine
but I cannot see the letters
intertwined.

Beauty sleeps because she never stopped biting the apple.
Prince Charming is a fairy tale until the book ends.
Happily Ever After is the cheaters way out of a story.

Deism (2009)

Your temptress form from down below
your face from up above
seems God can't give me anything,
now you're the one I love.

Crazy (2009)

We're crazy, crazy for being who we are, crazy for doing what we do, crazy for the thinking the sky is friendly just because it's warm and blue, crazy for letting me tell our son: i'm sure i've spent better seed in hand than i've ever spent on you. We're crazy because we thought it might be true. We're crazier than we ever dreamed we could be, saying that our imaginations have dwindled with age when really it's just the preventative scent of hellfire wafting through every erotic fantasy sloshing against our skulls searching for a way out – life or after, it doesn't matter where we get our brimstone but we're sure to breath deep soon if our tongues or fingers or buckles slip loose in the wrong place at the wrong time. And we're crazy enough not to care, because we're crazy beautiful, crazy in love, crazy on the streets, crazy in the backseat of your mothers car, crazy for not stopping though the police are tap tap tapping on the window. We're so goddamn crazy it eats us up inside from the head down to the stomach up to the heart, down to other parts. We're crazy for what we made, what we conceived, who we laid. We're crazy because we were once sane, long enough to make crazy again. We're crazy because we know it will all work out in the end. We're crazy enough to jump, crazy enough to fly, crazy enough to fall, crazy enough to die. We're so crazy I'm in awe of everything we try. We're crazy and I don't know why. We're crazy together – you and I.

Untitled (2009)

How fire dies in a dreamers heart!
Creations flame but a desperate spark
lives lived an instant in a world resigned
to eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

Beat Poet (2009)

I'd like to be a
beat poet
use the line break as a weapon
to pierce that stoic glare
we wear
each day
show you the jolt of a heart
leaping
to meet you

I'd like to be a
beat poet
stumbling
over my lines like a pro
unafraid of the
fall
unafraid of it all

I'd like to be a beat
poet
rhythm and rhyme and no reason
a broken metronome
ticking
the way all broken things should
the way
I'd
hoped
we would

I love you and (2009)

I love you and
I'm right here
by your

Twenty-Three (2009)

Twenty-Three

I have never spilt my heart across the table where you are
thrown caution to the wind, let you know that I am waiting
I have never sung your beauty in a crowded hall
shouted “To the world: Can you not see? There is no other.”
I have never left the sanctum of my solitary self
broken from this shell and found meaning in your meaning

Never stayed my gaze
when you looked back
Never stood my ground
when I attacked

I have never left a note upon your door
or whispered softly in your ear as I passed by
I have never touched you as I wanted to
tasted skin, breathed deeply of your breath
I have never shared a moment that was yours
Nor slept and dreamt a dream beside your dreaming head

Never stayed a shadow
in the light
never showed you shelter
through the night

I have been who I am, and I lived as I have lived,
Feel no sorrow for myself, though I have regrets to give
I have written you these words
and I know that you you will see
that while I am my own world
you could mean
the world
to me.

Silence (2009)

I know what you're thinking, and I ask you to please just let me explain. It will only take a moment, and yes, maybe there is something wrong with me, but... hear me out.

I learned early on that Life ends when grade school begins. Up until that point, you're a being of infinite creativity – you have the potential to be anything, to do anything. You're not a member of society, you're your own unique person. Then you turn six or so and they round you up and put you in a box with a hundred other people “just like you” and they teach you how to be what they want you to be. You learn how to be the governmental definition of a person, and to hell with everything else. But it's not just the stuff they teach you that does you in. It's how they teach you. It's the cycles.

This is how we stop being people – when we start accepting the loops. Doing the same thing every day. Putting the same seven days in a week. Same twelve months in a year. At the worst, you stop for a nap, stop for a break, stop for a summer, before coming back and doing it all again. Over and over and over until the very thought of doing it any other way is extinguished from our minds. Suddenly we have to repeat things. Suddenly there's no such thing as the word “new”. And this is how we die inside. It's legally required suicide.

I knew this, but I couldn't avoid it any better than anyone else. I had to go to school just like everyone had to go, and I had to show up again and again until I turned of an age where I was numb and until that time had passed the only thing that kept me going were the lies. Fictions. Fantasy. Up until middle school ended, I read a thousand books and watched a thousand movies and I played games and simulations until my eyes bled because that was the only way to escape the world that everyone was so determined I would be living in. Because they held that hint of what it was to be really alive.

But in the end even that couldn't sustain me, because again there were those accursed patterns. Everyone was living the same life and so they were sick of it in the same ways and no one understood how to get out, because even the worlds they created were similar and there were all these rules that they had to follow in order to get their art out to the people that needed them and that in itself destroyed their meaning, eliminated that spark that made them more real than the rest of us. Their stories just couldn't sustain me anymore. So I stopped. I gave up. I gave in. I died.

And I was normal until I met her. She was the type of girl who could just blow my mind right out of my skull without a moments notice, this insane, ridiculously optimistic wisp of a thespian, and because she asked me to I went to see her in this play she was in. For all my love of the modern story I'd never been in a theater before, but they had a good script and a fine play and she was an excellent actress so it was all pretty amazing and I was more awake than I had been for ages when I first heard the silence and everything changed forever.

Theater is not that different from any other form of lying that I have endorsed, but there is one thing about it that no other medium has and that is this: in an especially dramatic play, there is a certain point where the energy that has built up in the room has built to a boiling point, and suddenly in the heat of that moment the actors toss their pretend emotions out onto the stage in some powerful exclamation that renders the world speechless. Everyone on the stage becomes suddenly silent, and everyone in the audience holds their breath.

They are holding their breath because suddenly the actors are not actors at all, but almost people. They are almost real people, and the stage around them is almost a real place, and if you look closely you can actually see their phony props acquiring color and depth, just as you can see the real emotion in the eyes of the men and women who have suddenly been brought into this world. Something extraordinary has happened, something that we could only conceive of in fantasies, but everyone knows that this time it is true and they are held still in the rapture of it and you can hear absolutely no noise in a theater crowded with living organisms, all of whom believe in what is on the stage because it is real. And then (and only then) am I real as well, am I as alive as those people on the stage.

I am certain that if we could merely hold that silence, then the transformation would be permanent. The world could be different from what it is now. But I have been attending plays for years after my death and hers, and if there is one other thing that is true about theater it is that there is always, always someone in the room who can't handle the world not being what it was before. They can't live in a world where things don't happen in loops, where the routine and the routine of the routine are broken. They can't be alive for more than moments at a time. And so they shift in their seats, or cough, or stick their hand in a snack, or whisper to their friend in the seat next to them, anything they can do just to break the silence. That beautiful silence!

And for the longest time I could not figure out why, why every time the lie was on the verge of becoming truth that they did this, until I finally realized that it is these people, these dreadful, unoriginal drones, these zombies with beating hearts, who were responsible for it all. These are the people who hold us down, who chain us to the world of the routine with their petty defiance of the impossible.

Those are the people you see here, in this theater I've found for you. As you can see, they're quite incapable of making such noises now. You'll have to pardon the smell - it's taken a long time to collect them all. And I know, I know it's all so very strange, and I know you're scared, and I know it's certainly not what you were planning for tonight, but... but if you could just stand up and do this piece with me, and together we can reach that silence and then – who knows? Maybe they'll be alive for the first time too.

Dead Presidents (2009)

There is but one reliance...
Good morning, Robert.
Is it the fourth?
Oh yes; it is the glorious fourth of July. It is a great day. It is a good day. god bless it. god bless you all.
I am about to die. I expect the summons very soon. I have tried to discharge all my duties faithfully.
Doctor, I am going.
I am just going.
We are all going.
Have me decently buried and do not let my body be into a vault in less than two days after I am dead. Do you understand me? 'Tis well.
I know that I am going where Lucy is.
We are all going, we are all going, we are all going. Oh, dear.
I love you, Sarah. For all eternity, I love you.
Edith. I am a broken machine, but I am ready.
Send Mike immediately!
Oh Swaim, there is a pain here. Swaim, can't you stop this? Oh, oh, Swaim!
I've always loved my wife, my children, and my grandchildren...
That's good. Read some more.
I have a terrific headache.
That's very obvious.
Water.
The nourishment is palatable.
It doesn't really matter.
Are the doctors here? Doctor...my lungs.
...and I've always loved my country.
Oh, don't cry.
I hope to meet you all in Heaven.
Perhaps it is best.
Be good children and I'll meet you all in Heaven.
It's God's way. His will be done, not ours. Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee.
I want to go. God, take me.
Oh Lord God Almighty, as thou wilt.
I resign my spirit to God, my daughter to my country.
Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear. I always talk better lying down.
Be good children, all of you, and strive to be ready when the change comes.
I wish you to understand the true principles of government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.
I have tried so hard to do right.
Whatever the result may be, I shall carry to my grave the consciousness that at least I meant well for my country.
I regret nothing, but I am sorry that I am about to leave my friends.
This is the last of Earth. I am content.
Please, put out the light.

Hopeless. Romantic. (2009)

Here is the world
perfect as she is
well, almost, anyways
a little touch there
a verse or two here
to stay
and now
my contribution is done

although,
I suppose,
we could paint a new mural
you and I
starting
at this spot
ending

wherever you'd like it to stop.

Here, I'll sing a song for you
while we place our brush
to canvas
and maybe - no,
I ask too much,

but maybe we could stop
for a while
in between
and press our hands together
in a way they've never seen
before

show the world a thing
or two
about love

(like she knew it all
in the first place - ha!
fat chance, I'd say
I can see it in her smile
that wise
naivete)

and that painting stretches on
and my song,
there is no
coda

and this verse,
well,
it's done,

but I could maybe
add a line or two
if you asked me to
about your eyes
and how they are
forever

if you want them to be

if you want that
for you
and me

The Limit (2009)

He said, "The sky's the limit!" and I couldn't help but laugh
because that was what she told me when we first met
and when she left, it was "your head is in the clouds."

I left different notes every day
in little places she might look if she dared:
carved into the park bench where we first kissed
tiny chalk marks on the steps of where we lived
in grafitti on the chapel tower, where the world is smaller
and the people, bigger.

I gave one to a man to hold if he ever saw her
-he tucked it in his wallet, smiling at young love-
and threw another (bottled tight) into the ocean,
although we both live in Wyoming and
I suppose that's not quite how that works.

I'll leave my last today
on the sticky side of a post-it note
clinging to the roof of her office, obnoxious pink
waiting for her to peel away the words:
"Sarah: The sky is no limit."

Montana Winter (2009)

I'm miserable -
took four hours before I could type again
two layers of mittens, didn't help a bit
the wind is slowly tearing my face away
hunting for tears to freeze, a game between us
fell off my bike
downhill slide
heavy traffic
nearly died
but oh! That sweet air,
cold pure water from a glass bottle
with every waking breath,
reminding me of what we lost
when industry came to town.

Sunglasses over Baby Blues (2009) (Stole off Dev's Short Story)

Sheryl
wears sunglasses
over baby blues
Sheryl
wears black leather
over navy hues
Sheryl
wears a sports cap
over white-blonde curls
Sheryl
wears the woman
over that sweet girl
Someday
Sheryl knows
she'll rule the world

Anthropomorphism (2009)

Anthropomorphism

Trees advice to man: plant roots and drink,
bask when the sun comes,
live slow.
Give yourself the quiet life any day,
life is in
the living, so stay and
grow strong,
weather the storms,
stand for an eternity.


Man's advice to tree: go fuck yourself
(however that would work)
the sun's not as healthy as it seems,
we're all dying fast and it's up to us
to make the most of it.
Change is everything
nothing lasts but the truth
meaning is what you make
when you have everything else to lose.

Heart and Sole (2009)

Girl at party in pretty pink dress and
eight inch stilleto heel boots

feet straight like a ballerina under the hem
which rises - a stage curtain - as she clenches it
knuckles white
to show the lock above her ankle

she's staring at me with those green eyes
tear on her cheek just so
smiling

I want to lift her up and
carry her away
as a groom takes his bride across the threshold
to safety

I want to give a little bow and
offer my hand – the perfect gentleman
with cruel eyes and a sharp grin:
“May I have this dance?”

Instead I smile back and
hug her close like an old friend
my head on her shoulder
whispering softly in her ear:
“Who hasn't walked a mile
in your shoes?”

No more (2008)

There is no more truth in these words
written by numb hands
they fall on deaf minds

I have lost the meaning of this language
I consign it to the abyss
and henceforth, stalk the world in silence.

I need no words to live
When I am happy, I will laugh
When I am sad, I will cry
When I am in love, I will kiss you
touch you
where you need

The greatest poem I could write could not describe
what it is to press my body against yours
what it is to do
what I have never done before

There is no proper rhyming scheme
no neat metaphor

My love for you is
a hundred red roses
thorns and all
carried to your door.

My love for you is what comes after
not before.

Vernonite (2008)

Olympia! My love
your passion for writing is matched only
by your passion
for passion
for not thinking before you write
for never having to apologize

You demand nothing
but perfection
and are certain you have achieved it

Why else, after all
could your path be the only path?
Surely your students
would be lost in the woods without you
Surely some of them
already are

here's one, in particular
studiously analyzing the path you've shown him
looking before he leaps
wondering aloud whether there might be
another way
stepping as though you might
lead him over a cliff
stepping in the wrong direction
stepping on your toes
stepping backwards
stepping sideways
stepping into the woods
the direction he takes
may not lead him where you go.

And where you go
is where everyone wants to be,
isn't it?

Except
for that voice
angrily dissenting
except
for that voice
firmly refusing to follow

he says he can map a course
through these woods
he says there's another way
through these woods
he's saying he'd rather stay
in these woods
he's saying he rather prefers
these woods
to the path you're beating
to the road less traveled
(which seems to be traveled more and more these days)
to your destination
to any destination
that you can see


She sees you when you're sleeping
she knows when you're awake
and if you write something bad about her
you've made a big mistake.

Riddle (2008)

I wrote for you a riddle, here
in the pages of my manuscript
but the answer didn't seem quite clear
and then the question gradually slipped
into a jumbled conversation
over a pair of warring nations

but suddenly your voice was there
preventing bombs from touching air
and what was once a history
with insights most profound
became a tale of you and me
making the world go round.

Today (2008)

Lost track of reason,
lost track of rhyme
lost track of my keys
and lost track of time.

Lightbringers

Kellen Danvers had only one thing of any personal nature in his office and it was this: a photograph of the world at night, hundreds of thousands of little lights defining every populated area of the world. He'd never been the sort to moralize, but when people asked him to think about things in black and white he thought about the map. It wasn't that the dots of white that spread across the borders of the continents were good or evil in Danvers mind. It was just that they were. It was the nature of humankind to spread light in dark places and whatever else there was to it, that was what mattered most to him.

No Pressure

This is the most
this is the most important
this is the most important thing that you will ever do.
This is the most important thing that you will ever do I am telling you right now.
I am telling you right now that this is the most important thing that you will ever do
and right now you are going to do it. Now. This is the most important thing you will ever do and you are going to do it now and I am telling you, telling you so you will know.
So you will know that this is
the most important thing.
the MOST important thing.
The most important thing.
This is the most important thing you will ever do and so help me god you are going to do it so help me so help me so help me god because this is the most important thing this is the most important thing this IS the most important thing and you are going to do it now you are going to do it now now you are going to do it I am telling you because if you don't do it (the most important thing) then the world isn't going to get better it's not going to get better because of the most important thing when you don't do it. And it's you. It's you.

It has to be you.

"Aw, come on, it'll be fun! Besides, Bolstrood will be there."

Danvers swiveled. "What!?"

----

Reykjavik Bolstrood, despite being named for the struggling capital of Iceland, was Norwegian-American-Norwegian and was to a right-wing patriot what a necrophile was to a romantic poet. His hobbies consisted of finding leaked information on the internet and firing guns, and to the eternal dismay of the U.S. government he was extremely good at both. Reykjavik was not a military man, but he knew enough about the training procedures for every special ops unit on every country on the planet to approximate his own regimen, which lacking any sort of leadership figure was instead entirely driven by sociopathy. For twenty years of his life he had apparently worshiped and sought advice from an eight foot tall stone bust of Uncle Sam, although recently he had announced his switch to Deism "in the spirit of the founders". Conservatives occasionally referred to him as a LODite, as in Liberty Or Death, which Danvers had actually found funny at one point.

While Granite Sam had always been a considerable influence on Reykjavik's life, his transformation from wingnut to Threat to National Security had been the 9/11 attacks. Frustrated by a lack of action against the Taliban, Reykjavik spent eight years slowly building himself into a vicious, angry, destructive and above all informed one-man military operation. When the USFG dropped the ball on yet another lead on the Taliban's location, Bulstrood shipped out on his own, spending every dime he had and a number of the banking systems to airlift himself into hostile territory, where he proceeded to torture, murder and maim his way towards finding Osama's newest mountain cavern so he could "strangle the sonovabitch with his own turban".

It was difficult to tell what irked the U.S. more: that he tried, that he succeeded, or that after the fact he found asylum in his mothers home country of Norway where he proceeded to write three autobiographies that earned him slightly under a billion dollars in capital (most of it frozen by the various nations the books were published in). He was too well-liked, well-connected and well-hidden to get at, which was Ironic with a capital I in Colin Danvers book.

The worst part of it had been this: considering Bulstroods military training, he had felt his capture would be an obvious blow to the United States governments credibility on a national level. In order to not be viewed as a spy or enemy combatant, he instead devised a simple plan to distance himself from the country he loved before he ran roughshod over half of the 'stans. Since Reykjavic basically had only one talent, the plan was very similar to his other plans and consisted of killing a large number of people, several of them renowned talk show hosts and war protestors, one of them Danvers friend. For years Colin had wanted nothing more than to stab the son of a bitch in the face.

And now he was here. And Danvers had lost his knife.

Another round for loves lost

and loves never won. I'll drink to that, and only that.

To the gleeful consideration of all those might-haves and maybes

and the heartache of has-beens and never-weres.

The highs and lows of my intoxication

damage not the liver, but the soul

but maybe forge anew

that lonely shoal.

Look, maybe some of it is genetic destiny

luck of the gods, the right blow to the head at the right time

rearranging all those neurons in some particular pattern

but since when have you been one to believe fully

in something that cause and effect can't trace

something that science knows it can't prove?

God is getting you down, I think.

Listen: the reason I write well is because

in school I read books simply to read them

every day, through any class

where I could get away with it.

I read in crowded halls and quiet corners.

I read in locker rooms and libraries.

I read behind the four big timpani's in band,

I read during the songs, and sometimes I read during the parts

I had to play.

I read in English period, never what I was supposed to

but whatever I could get my hands on.

I read when it made me a target, made me outside,

made me my own worst enemy

and when the pain of it was too much I read for solace.

When I couldn't read I thought

about stories, told them to myself

always had words in mind for paper.

I write well because of the delighted squeal my mother gave

when I was so young and I sat and thought about

how words worked until

I understood them.

But destiny has nothing to do with it.

Look, you are not who you say you are

you are One Of Us. And we can do

amazing, wonderful, terrible things.

We can do them whenever we want.

We can do them even if we spent our lives

doing something else. It's not a straight path

there aren't two roads

one of them isn't any less traveled

than the other. Because all of it is unexplored territory

until it isn't.

I don't read now, as much as I used to.

I don't write as well as I could.

But I am who I am because I chose to be

this way. And I know how words fit on paper

because that's one of the things I want to know.

And while I'll sit and think about that as much as

anything else, while I'll hesitate and stall and stare at blank pages

until my eyes grow red and weary

I won't give up on it. Even though I could.