POETRY

Day

Late to bed but early to rise,

Whoever said sleeping is wise,

Mix my coffee with some oats,

I take my time, I let it roast.

Noon

Idle, idle, faraway look,

Skimming pages of a used book,

Summer heat by the swimming pool,

Waste my day on a plastic stool.

Night

There’s an ashtray full of butts,

Watching films that are uncut,

Empty case, pull it here,

I think I need to buy more beer.

Poetry

Am I speaking too softly?

Can you hear me,

Can you hear me?

Are my words unintelligible?

From my tongue, they roll,

They roll.

Am I acting too strangely?

Can you see me,

Can you see me?

My hands are shaking wildly,

Can’t control them,

I’m damned.

Am I thinking extremely,

Excitedly,

Or exactly?

Are my thoughts spread, scattered?

Were they heard?

I’m burned.

Am I screaming too loudly?

Should you hush me,

Do you rush me?

Is it better if I whisper?

Oh, my mother,

You there?

Am I stinking so badly?

Will you wash me?

Should you hose me?

But I’m feeling very thirsty,

Oh have mercy,

My dear.

Am I feeling intensely?

I was cedar,

Now I’m paper.

Is it better if I’m stronger?

But I wander,

Under.

I dare you to start reading Steinbeck with one of his hefty works.

An author’s short stories or novelettes are like testers that allow readers to assess whether or not the style fits their taste. It’s kind of like food-tasting that serves small portions of the dishes to be catered…

Name something that feels so good that you feel like screaming every now and then. I know what you’re probably thinking but I am talking about Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

Similar to your implicit thoughts, reading Karamazov made me want to swear and say “yes” over and over. …

How conflicted we are, humans. We complain that our worlds seem small, suffocating. But at the same time, we take comfort in the thought that we are all connected. The link makes the world feel not as big and overwhelming. We are on an ironic search for freedom and connection. We liberate ourselves from what we think burdens us, to discover something new to feel welcomed. The chase is indefinite. We’ll never be content. What a blessing. What a curse.

According to Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse once called Franz Kafka “the uncrowned king of German prose.” (What a gossip). That was before Kafka was famous. Safe to say that in their time, he was

Franz the
Up-and-
Coming
Kafka

It’s my goal to, at least once in my life, use…

From Hermann Hesse’s Demian, Emil Sinclair is a good boy who wants to be bad. He is raised righteously by religious parents but Sinclair wants to, in the words of Jim Morrison, break on through to the other side. …

I used three exclamation points and I know it’s not proper but I lost all of my writing discipline when I regressed to writing privately in the last two months. To be honest, I have nothing valuable to say. …