Life

 

Dress rehearsals are for amateurs

Life is a stage and you are a player

The main character of the story that is your life

And the genre of your story is as ill-defined as your character

Your life has no discernible plot

And you're often not even the focus

The best lines always go to someone else

And lucky you, you don't even get a script

You have to improvise your way through this mess of a play called life

And you have to do it live, every night,

With a new scenario every single time until the day you die

If your life was a book, it'd be practically unreadable

Assembled together by a team of incompetent writers

Only one of which gets to be you

No proofreader, no editor, no publisher, no distributor

You might have a dozen readers, at best

And they only read the good chapters

“Hey, look at me, I'm a novel that nobody reads!”

Because no one wants to read books,

They wait for it to be made into a movie

A movie that's about as faithful to the source material

As your ex-girlfriend who left you during pre-production

To pursue her career as the leading lady in someone else's studio feature

Your novel sucked, the movie's even worse

And you can't escape any of this

Because this is your life

And you only get one take

Because dress rehearsals are for amateurs

A Response to a Dickhead Pierogi Truck Owner who believes that talking about the Constitution in public isn't 'Family Friendly'

 

Your flag is red, your flag is blue

Your flag is white and so are you

Placed atop your concessions truck

You have just made a political statement at this so-called “family event”

So when you shout at me as a coward in the distance that my politics have no place here

May I remind you, that flag on your truck is a political statement

The American Flag is not a benign symbol

It is the authoritarian reinforcement of a jingoistic value system

That demonizes the “other” and uplifts the privilege of the white male

Whom you just happen to be, sitting in your truck,

Shouting at me as a coward in the distance

Trying to silence a dissenting voice

Because your flag is your politics

And you support the system that I speak out against

If gun control and civil rights are words that children's ears should never hear

Then gun violence, slavery, discrimination and segregation are even greater crimes against out children

Silence will not end the injustice

And waiting for an allegedly appropriate hour to speak

Only results in delays and deference

Tools the white man uses to hold everyone else down

Tone policing our anger

Calling our demonstrations at public events inappropriate

If now is not the time to discuss my civil rights, white man, when is?

When does this marginalized citizen's mere existence STOP being political

Long enough to have a proper conversation about my rights?

It doesn't.

So I will stand here and speak my peace for children's ears to hear

Because it's only then will my voice carry weight

For when your children learn of the injustices you've allowed in the name of preserving White America

They will learn what we have always known -

That your flag is a tool of the oppression we face every single day living under it

And the promises this Nation makes to your children -

That “We hold these truths to be self-evident,

That all men are created equal,

That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,

That among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”

Every last word of that is a lie, and the flag that sits upon your truck is a reinforcement of that lie

I will not protect your lies for the sake of your children

I will speak the truth to power for every child in this nation to hear

Because they deserve to be told the truth

About you, About the flag that sits upon your truck

The political statement that you wave in MY face to oppress and silence ME

When I take this mic, this is no longer a family event

It is an educational seminar about the real America

The America that is Red, and Yellow, and Brown, and Black, and covered in Rainbows

The America that your flag doesn't represent

Your flag drips with red blood on the hands of white skin,

Burying the shameful blue underneath its white stars

And I will not stand silent in the face of your political statement any longer

The Process

 

First draft – happy

Reread – too long

Second draft – cut the piece in half,

Reword clumsy passages

Walk away and leave it be, I'm just going to ruin it if I don't leave it be

Come back to it a couple days later – hate it

Third Draft – essentially rewrite the whole thing from the beginning

Keeping only the best phrases

Realize that I left out important transitional words in phrases like “or” and “and”

Words that I would just assume were actually written on the page as a I read it

But aren't physically on the page, because that's how my perception works

Fix the text, reread slowly and carefully to assure that every word I'm reading is physically on the page

Walk away and leave it be, I'm just going to ruin it if I don't leave it be

Come back to it the afternoon before Open Mic

Reread – feel confident enough to share this with people

Edit clumsy wording, rephrase lines for better verbal flow

Check again for missing transitional words

As well as words written out of order

Final Draft – good enough

Walk away and leave it be, I'm just going to ruin it if I don't leave it be

Go to Open Mic

Review piece at given intervals between performers

Convince yourself that what you have is better than you think it is

Mentally rehearse your performance,

Remind yourself that what you have in hand is brilliant, even if you don't believe it, yet

The only difference between you and JK Rowling is a name

The only difference between you and Stephen King is a name

The only difference between you and every other writer that has what you want is a name

And this, this is how you're going to make that name

Writing this, performing this, because this is what sets you apart

This is what makes you different

This is what makes you better than every other writer that has ever been

Because they can't do what you can do

They can't be you

Perform the piece

Gauge audience response

Socialize and Network with other artists

Absorb anything that helps you improve

Go home

Repeat the process, beginning with the First Draft

Abigail's Revenge

 

She cast a spell to defend her love

Offended by a knowledge unworthy of

The ecclesiastical fraudulence

Of modesty stolen through their violence

The townsfolk come to burn her home

Suspected as a witch and they’re not wrong

Burn the house with the witch inside

Spare the stake, and save ourselves some time

Abigail was never the one to turn the tide or set the sail

She screamed for mercy as her flesh burned to no avail

The mob outside could hear her pleas for sanity

They were more than willing to snuff their humanity

What we did, we did to protect our children

To save ourselves from the Devil’s Fate

To spare our men these lustful thoughts

And snuff the rivalry of women’s hearts

She casts a spell to exact revenge

Inhabits the soul of clueless young man

Oh, the gospels she will preach

To the underlings of a madman within her reach

Recruit a family of ruthless thugs

Build a following of fireflies

She’s taken the whole world in her hands

Slowly picking off the fiends abound

There’s a light on the other side of life

But none of us can see through the night

So we wander ‘round this life so aimlessly

Looking for causes that we can affect

Because nothingness is a fear we can’t reject

Dear Abby died for our sins

Not for our redemption’s sake

But only because our cowards had their way

And remember, young fireflies

Sister Abigail will always light the way

And all we’ll ever have to do

Is let her in

x

I Am A God

 

Hello, my name is Daria Quinn, and I am a god. Not THE God, that's a bit more complicated. Basically, THE God is not so much a being as He is a concept, the idea that all there is, was, or ever could be is connected by a single, shared origin. And, to our knowledge of science and the cosmos, it's true. We all come from hydrogen and carbon and share a common lineage with stars and snails.

However, despite all of that, we are unique, because we know ourselves. We have a greater understanding of ourselves, and the cosmos than any other creature we have ever observed. We built homes, we invented machines, we discovered fire, and electricity, and magnetism and bent them to our will. We have powered our engines through sunlight, water, wind, and the fossilized remains of the dead centuries past. We have forged civilizations, founded nations, built churches and synagogues in tribute to powers beyond our comprehension, yet still managed to hold on to the curiosity of a child and seek out the answers to the questions we have only just learned to ask.

Our creativity makes us gods, whether it's expressed through art, machinery, science, philosophy, literature, athletics, mathematics – we have always looked at what is, and asked ourselves, what could be? What can be? What can we do different? What can we do better? Can this change, and will that change be for the better? And if not, why not, and let's see if we can change that, too.

We refuse, by virtue of our very existence, to be shackled to our limitations as we reach towards greatness. We are the culmination of billions upon billions of centuries of nuclear reactions, mutations, adaptations, diversifications and conceptions, and it is through us that the next great thing in this universe will come to pass, if not by our hands, by the hands of children's children's children.

If you are alive and you have a soul, a thought in your mind and the will to carry it out, you are a god.