TEN ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL THINGS TO HAVE IN A GREAT NOVEL, IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE

TEN ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL THINGS TO HAVE IN A GREAT NOVEL, IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE*

1. A Pirate Map**
2. Some Cunning Illustrations***
3. A Villian ^
4. A Virtuous Virgin^^
5. Two or Three Unfortunate Events that cannot be Easily Solved
6. A Crime
7. "The Flight From Egypt"
8. A Jinx
9. Some Burlesque Horseplay
10. The One Day of Reckoning

OPTIONAL
11. All Chapters, or Sections, should have a synopsis of what will take place in any Chapter, or Section at the start of said Chapter of Section~

* I know what some of you are thinking, after reading this list, "Are you serious?" But these points are true. I am also assuming the writer will do the required character development and research into whatever period they intend to put the story in. I am assuming the writer knows how to write and knows what they are writing about.
** Preferably on the inside, before the TOC and any dedications
*** Should be curious pictures of devices, scenes, mystery writing, sigils, and above all, strategic moments in the plot
^ Like Darth Vader
^^ Don't like having a Virtuous Virgin in the story? Then why not write pulp fiction.

~ I don't know why this practice has fallen out of style. If anything, it forces the novelist to be clear

you are beveling my brain

you are beveling my brain
with your impatience
with your impatience
with your impatience
with your impatience

i wish i knew what/ the dog was thinking

two dirty
bums stand there
talking
waiting for the
dog to get up

he'll jump
right up and run
after
me if i go far enough
says one bum

c'mon! he yells
the dog lifts it's
head
as the guy walks
father away

he keeps walking
the dog doesn't
move
so the bum comes
back towards the dog

c'mon! the bum yells
the dog does not
move
i wish i knew what
the dog was thinking

confessions/ how things have changed

confessions
how things have changed

we are only
interested in zeus
if he owes us money or sells
luxury cars
for a living

we only care
about apollinare
if we can fuck him in a
dark bar
phone booth

at 4pm @ hollywood &
vine

Okay

Entering the restaurant, when I say, "One, I have no reservations.", the two hostesses laugh, rolling their eyes like this statement is an exquisitely pathetic joke. I can't figure out if this is laughable because I said I had no reservations, or that I am alone -- or both. Or they are casually mocking because I was polite. I feel like saying something like, "What the fuck is so funny?", but I shut up because I can't be too bothered. I sit down and I can feel the subtle, yet pulsing pick-up joint vibes -- I realize I am eating at a place that is supposed to be like a Dave & Buster's, but there are no video games like in Dave & Buster's, plus they've tried to add a shot of testosterone in the decor imagining how it must be to have this kind of a joint in the big OC, but we are far away in dim anonymous Oak Brook Terrace, IL. But what the hell, the hostesses act like it is real, so I go along with it and I order a gin & tonic, the drink comes extra strong and extra big to get chicks drunk and I'm okay.

Cartoon - My Haunted Bathroom

I never had a haunted bathroom, but I did know someone who had a haunted room. Specifically, the wallpaper in the room was haunted. How we determined the wallpaper was haunted, I can't fully explain, but it was so. In my time I have encountered other haunted objects, like an unabridged dictionary, a painting, and a stuffed toy doll. But back to the story: before my friend moved into this house, on Valencia Street in San Francisco, the previous roommate who lived in that room would not sleep in the room at night. This roommate would sleep in the bathroom, on one of the marble counter tops that was just big enough for her to curl up on. Due to the flat having one bathroom, the other people in the household got used to this, and would use the bathroom discreetly at night. I had a few interesting dreams while sleeping in the room with haunted wallpaper. In one dream, I imagined that there was a space in the ceiling immediately above my head, like a hollowed out bubble, about the size of a volleyball. In this space, I saw there was a miniature skeleton, like that of a baby, it was wearing a sombrero. It's bones were a ghastly nicotine yellow color, and when it realized I could see it, the skeleton grinned at me and manically danced, pumping its knees up and down like pistons and jiggling it's elbows in that cramped bubble in the ceiling. This was comical and terrifying at the same time, mostly terrifying while it was happening. I yelled and woke up. CM Evans Cartoons

Phoebe's Poem About School

School is out
I feel a breeze

From the branches
Of the trees

And when school is in again
I will have fun until....

The End

the going home poem

stories

i'll tell you a story
that has two endings

one ending is a happy ending
the other ending is a sad ending

you tell me which one
is best suited for the story

then i'll throw both of them out
and write a new story

where the end is at the beginning
the beginning is at the end

and the middle is sprinkled
throughout the whole length

but a final story will be about the journey
the branch of a cherry tree takes

as it grows from a twig in 1977
until it is at least 5 inches in diameter

and how this branch with its fine blossoms
is admired by a bird on that fine day

with a blue sky and a trembling wind
hinting of the coming spring

and with not much concern is/is not
lopped off for a fire

Smoke Bunnies

Hey, I know how to blow smoke rings, but do you know how to blow smoke bunnies?

A Letter Sent By Bird

Saturday
39 degrees 26.470 minutes North Latitude
44 degrees 14.110 minutes East
Day 29?

Dear Lord,

Today, one of the Unicorns died. I know they are one of your favorites, "Take extras special care with the Unicorns!", you told me as we screwed down the hatches and slammed the door. There wasn't much I could do about it, this boat sure is a lot smaller than it looks once we were packed with all those late arrivals. But nobody got serious until the water was waist deep.

Lord, could you be troubled to say something to my wife? One hot cooked meal per day is not being unreasonable -- we all have been troubled by this calamity. I just happen to not wear my feelings on the sleeve of my robe. My Dad was like that, and his Dad before him. She could also stop with the attitude, Lord, lots of attitude. And please don't say that I should beat her with a stick. I'd no sooner beat my wife than beat any of my children. We all end out the best we can.

Speaking of the children Lord, I thought they'd be more serious about the gravity of the situation and also of greater overall use. There's been some horseplay with them and a few pairs of animals and much hard feeling all around because of it. I don't know if the doves and the elephants will ever be reconciled because of these frivolous hijinks by Shem, Ham and Japhe.

Well, that about does it, my back is killing me and it is no fun cleaning up pens, as you could well imagine, I think. A nice steady wind out of the west would be much obliged with no more griping from the cheatas and the wolverines at 3 AM, is that so much to ask? But you told me you knew the plan and what you are doing. I am still trying to get over the images of my whole neighborhood, and then country, drowning.

Your most faithful servant,

N

Being Hurt

We hurt ourselves, it is avoidable, but we intentionally hurt ourselves in the body and in the mind. Kerouac had the opinion that this was a self regulating subconscious attitude -- a way of offsetting our boundless good fortune with an amount of self-generated bad fortune, to keep things feeling balanced & normal. We do this to keep feeling we live in a world with walls, a world that needs walls and doors and our stuff, we have Joy as our right hand and Suffering and Anguish on the left. Like a snake eating it's tail, ignorance reinforces ignorance. We get hurt. Being hurt is safe.

Happy Father's Day

I love him, but we don't talk. It is that Father/Son combo we have chosen to follow. Two not talkers. To his two grandchildren (one 8 and the other 9 months) he Terra Incognito. But why drag other people or kids into this, right? That only makes things more complicated. Like someone responsible for their own happiness, I try not to add people to the equation, though there are naturally many people who are part of the equation. There are many people who keep things running smoothly for me and him, that is exactly part of the problem. We tried therapy a few years back, had one meeting with a consoler, and that helped, but we didn't follow through.

If there is a question of Blame, and we need to make up our minds, my Dad says I left, and never came back. Never returned to the Table, never returned to the Circle, never united with Family. I say, in response, I left a long time ago. I left before high school. I left in junior high when I had to protect myself from my Dad's disapproval, disappointment, and resentment. And later, much later, whenever I'd visit, you'd sit there and let me talk, not listening to me while you read your newspaper and got on with your day. I was a noise.

I realize by me writing this, there is one more layer between Father and Son. But I can't help it, the writing. The extra layer added I'll now try to peel away: I cannot give my Father the gift of Insight, nobody can be given that, we have to discover it on own. But I can wish him a Happy Father's Day, with Love from your Son.

Wherever we are, Happy Father's Day, Dad.

The Great Day

There is a color picture of them, by the way they are standing, you can tell they are happy, happy in a way like it is Christmas. Grouped together, the shot is close, but the viewer cannot recognize faces, because everyone wears masks. They point their automatic weapons in the air, while smoke is visible in the distance like the wing of a huge black crow. The old, less progressive government has fallen, and now after they have executed a few people from that defective regime, the slate will be pure all clean sparky new. Simply stated, the Great Day has arrived. It has arrived, see, it has.

the oldest question

i feel you hating me
it is a terrible feeling
but what can i do?

this is an old question
old as people have been
in the world to ask it.

Super Jesus Christ

It didn't matter how many "super" criminals I fought. There were no super criminals. I'll say it now, I'll write it now, down, it was all done for PR -- like the biggest three-ring boondoggle of all time. And for awhile I believed it, I played along. Believing for a new tomorrow, like a magical puppet -- almost like a super Jesus Christ. We produced our theater with the finest special effects. Occasionally I was even "defeated". I was left for "dead". Great celebrations were had when I "returned". I was good for the economy. The working classes worked harder because I was there, fighting for Peace and Justice and all that extra fucking shit. Rotting in me was the dawning realization that the FATHER I never KNEW picked a planet whose historical juncture at the time of my arrival was set and unavoidable. Father wasn't an idiot. He knew after the plagues and other natural disasters, by that time, I wouldn't do anything. He knew by then that I would have a revulsion to ever do anything. He must have loved me very much. Dad, why? I can still hear a few of them screaming, on a calm soft night when there is no wind, 2,000 miles away in any direction. Some are killing, others being killed. Men, women, children, babies. Killing, being killed, fighting, crying, dying, why?

Hello News People!

Hello news people out there, reporters, journalists. I just wanted to start out by thanking you for reporting that one seminal story, where an adult, usually a man, hurts a small child. I wanted to thank you for reporting it over and over again, stories of a small innocent children getting hurt or killed -- presented as a punch in the eye. Very dramatic. Of course, the little kid getting brutalized story is not as good as the white blonde female teenager missing, presumed murdered article. That story has a wider demographic I think, don't you agree -- it helps if her parents are reasonably unattractive -- like the missing girl is a veritable "diamond in the rough" compounding the whole tragedy. Of course, when selling & getting those numbers up, you can always fall back on presenting some kid with some kind of disfiguring lamentable disease, anything to get out the news to us. But don't be surprised if I turn away, politely, as a father, and a human being from your horrible compulsion to explain the world as graphically, and as painful as possible, by using small children as punctuation marks in a diatribe to sell ads. Isn't that what it all breaks down to in the end? Selling lipstick, ass shrinkers, canned goods, time-shares, SUVs and alcohol.

Disturbed

We stay at a fine little hotel in Palm Springs, a place where I love to wake up on what will be a flawless desert day and see the huge mountains shimmer in the heat. We are going down to the pool, when I notice a small notice posted in the closet. It says the Hotel wishes us to have a pleasant stay, and that one should not be noisy or be bothering other guests past 10 PM. The flier concludes, "If you are disturbed, please feel free to call the Front Desk (0) immediately." I immediately called them, for I am disturbed. They did not know what to say.

your heart

i thought of a few interesting things
before i went to sleep last night

a funny thing unasked for or a lyrical phrase
both fine untainted like sustained notes

i promised i'd remember
in the morning but knew i'd forget

when a line or a word or an image
jumps out at you but you don't write it down

& you say you'll remember in 12 hours or the next
day or whatever delays you

this is how you slowly and surely damage
and dishonor your heart

after reading a few poems by/john wieners

our life is funny and a bit crazy
like a record (three little pigs)
being played in another room
on the wrong setting, too fast
which in fact is happening right now
& makes me laugh