Tag: writing

Poem–“So, I’m a Sin”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

A timely poem since it’s Pride Month and I wrote it last week in response to a meme someone posted on Facebook. It said something to the effect that we should be spending the month celebrating God rather than celebrating sin. My immediate response was, “So, I’m a sin, huh?”

Then I unfriended them and started working on this poem.

You could say that I helped them by removing a sin from their life.

It’s nothing fancy. Just my usual free verse style.

Stay queer, my dears.

So, I’m a Sin

So, I’m a sin.

Sent by God to test you,
the Devil to tempt you,
man to corrupt you.
I’m a challenge and an insult
to your great faith.
My very existence is a
disturbance, a slight
to your Jesus.

So, I’m a sin.

My ticket already punched for Hell,
I’m just looking for someone to
road trip there with me.
My pleas to be accorded the same rights
you covet like a precious hoard?
A clever ruse to get you in the handbasket with me.
A trick only the Devil could play,
that only a sin could play.

So, I’m a sin.

Preying on your Good Christian sensibilities
of love the sinner, hate the sin.
Because the sin and the sinner are so close
you can’t tell one from the other,
and you’re not willing to risk your afterlife
on getting the difference wrong.
You won’t waste your Good Christian kindness
on a person you’d rather judge.

So, I’m a sin.

I spend a whole month, thirty days start to finish,
celebrating my continued existence in spite
rather than giving glory to your god,
a god that you say loves me, made me in his image,
and wants to punish me
for embodying his design.
You want me to celebrate a god
who’s already condemned me? Please.

So, I’m a sin.

Mortal. Unforgivable.
Unapologetic. Unrepentant.
Just as your God created.
Just as your God intended.
A final exam that you failed.
Yes, I’m going to hell,
my Good Christian,
and I’ll see you there.

Poem–“Tell Me Anyway”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I regret to inform you that I’ve decided to do a monthly poem. I enjoyed torturing you all with the Magnificent Seven series too much. Also, I’m lazy and I don’t always want to write a blog post, but I’ve got gobs of poems that will never be formally published because as we know, I only write terrible poetry.

This one is from the latest Poetry Month Poem-a-Day. The day’s theme was a Two-for-Tuesday theme. On Tuesdays, the themes were usually flip sides. In this case it was Tell Me/Don’t Tell Me.

I decided to do a triolet, which involves repeating lines and a specific rhyme scheme. It’s actually pretty easy to do once you get the right lines to repeat.

Tell Me Anyway

Some secrets should be kept,
but tell me anyway.
I’ll pretend I heard them while I slept.
Some secrets should be kept,
left under the rugs they were swept.
But those are the best ones to say.
Some secrets should be kept,
but tell me anyway.

Writing Confidence (I Don’t Have Any Lately)

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

There was a time in my writing life when I thought I was pretty hot shit.

Okay, maybe that’s something of an exaggeration. I’ve never quite been so keen on myself. But there was definitely a good stretch where I felt solidly competent in my writing work.

I miss those days.

I think that stretch I spent in which writing was hard did more damage than I’d like to admit. When I was writing easy and often, I felt good about what I was putting onto paper. I felt like it was worth reading, even if not too many people wanted to read it.

When I hit that skid, though, I tripped harder than I thought. I’ve recovered when it comes to ideas and the writing being easier, but I think I lost some confidence along the way. I have no real faith in anything I’ve been writing lately. It’s not that I don’t like it or that I don’t enjoy the process, but once that draft is done, I’m at a loss. As much as I enjoy what I wrote, I don’t think it’s good enough for anyone else to enjoy.

Rejection is a natural part of writing, and there was a time when I was getting rejected regularly because I was submitting regularly. When I hit that dry period, the submitting also hit drought mode. When it came time to get back in the game, I found that I really had no game left. Not for lack of trying, either. I subscribed to my writing magazines again, started trolling for places to submit, even submitted a few things, but for the most part, I’ve felt out of my element. I lost my mojo, and I lost my place.

It’s a little bit demoralizing to be honest.

I’ve been working on the novel length version of Stateline for months now, unable to make a whole lot of progress quickly due to the current stress test that is my life. As I’ve progressed through the story, I realize that it’s not exactly what I envisioned, but then again, I’m not entirely surprised by that because I didn’t exactly do the greatest outlining/planning. I jotted down my main beats, but there were a lot of words that needed to fill in the blank spaces between those beats. This isn’t unfamiliar territory for me. I’ve done this before. And there have been moments where I’ve really enjoyed the story I’ve been writing. A line here, a turn of phrase there, a conversation, an interaction. I’m having a good time writing this story even if it is meandering and destined to be in need of much revising.

But too much of it strikes me as a regression of my craft. There are times when I’m writing it that I wonder why I’m writing it because I’ve clearly lost some of my skill. I used to think that writing poetry would help to keep my prose sharp, but it seems like this blade is forever dull.

I keep thinking that I’ll get my confidence back as I go along. After all, I’m going to keep writing. That’s not going to stop.

I guess I don’t know what this means right now.

Look at that. I don’t even have confidence in this blog post.

Poem–“Mating Ritual”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

It’s the last day of National Poetry Month! You made it! The torture is over!

With this last poem.

The final poem featured from the November Poem-a-Day Challenge comes from the theme Disguise. I admit to playing fast and loose with this theme, but you have to admit that my free verse isn’t wrong.

Mating Ritual

I pluck hairs
from my face
to hide that
I’m a mammal.
Men don’t date
within their species.

Poem–“Frayed”

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

We’re almost through National Poetry Month. You guys are such sports.

The theme of this poem from the November Poem-a-Day Challenge was Nerves. A fitting theme at the time because my nerves were, well, frayed.

This poetic form is called a nonce. It’s a poetic form created by a poet for one time use. The rules of this particular nonce is three words a line and nine lines for the poem. Easy peasy.

Frayed

going too fast
on black roads
shiny and wet
glaring like ice
hit the brakes
expect to slide
hope to stop
before I skid
thru the light

Poem–“Careless Syllables”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Good news! You’re half-way through National Poetry Month and my poetic torture. Our half-way point poem from the November Poem-a-Day Challenge features the theme…Poetic Form. Write a poem in a poetic form. Hey! I’ve been studying for this one for months!

Many of the poems I wrote during November were done using scraps of ideas that I’d jotted down. This is one of them. I just crammed that idea into a tricube.

Careless Syllables

I’ve said things
that dug scars
in soft skin

used too much
teeth on a
tender spot

but for me
it was just
a Tuesday

Poem–“Rube Goldberg Revisited”

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

National Poetry Month torture continues with our second poem of the month, which was written on the 22nd day of the November Poem-a-Day challenge. The theme for that day was Machine, so I wrote about the kind of machine I could really use.

This poem is a stornello, which has fast become a favorite form. I have no idea why I like everything lower case in my stornellos, but we’re just going to flow with it.

Rube Goldberg Revisited

i need a machine to make my life easy
the difficulty level makes me queasy
a fan-like device should make it all breezy

Poem–“Hot Flashes”

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

I regret to inform you that it is once again April, and April means National Poetry Month.

This year’s selections all come from the Writer’s Digest November Poem-a-Day challenge. Every day in November, participants were given a theme and best wishes to write a poem. Eleven of the poems I wrote that month were put into a chapbook at the end of the challenge and submitted for funsies. That leaves nineteen poems with nothing better to do.

Let’s get started, shall we?

The first poem of the month features the theme Fire/Ice, and it’s written in my default free verse.

I’m easing you in, kiddos.

Hot Flashes

ice in my veins
fire on my skin
freezing hot
burning cold
maybe it’s love
maybe it’s menopause

What Is My Writing Endgame Now?

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I feel like it’s important as a creative to check in on myself and my creative goals beyond just what projects I’m working on and what deadlines I need to meet. I’m thinking of the big picture, the reason for my creative existence, as it were.

Basically, what the fuck is the point?

My answer to this question has changed. When I first started pursuing a serious writing career in my late 20s, the goal was getting published. Getting published enough would translate to a stable, successful writing career. That was the endgame. Having a writing career and supporting myself with my writing.

The means changed in the ensuing years, utilizing self-publishing and Patreon as a means of making money and establishing a fanbase that would hopefully help me gain more traditional publishing opportunities. But the endgame remained the same. Have a writing career and support myself with my writing.

At some point, though, the endgame changed. Sort of.

As much as I would love to have a writing career and support myself with my writing, it’s become evident in the last few years that this goal is no longer attainable. Even if the world wasn’t currently on fire, traditional publishing has changed enough that lowlifes like me don’t have a chance of making a career of it. Publishers are more invested in their own profits than their authors, looking mostly for writers that already have an established large following online that will translate to guaranteed sales and justify their shrinking commitment to marketing and promotion.

In short, I will never be popular enough to get published by any of the big, traditional publishers or their imprints. That makes me a much less profitable client to take on as an agent, which means I’m much less likely to land one.

This is already a hard business to break into and I have handicapped myself tremendously by my inability to be popular and, I think, by my lack of education. Every author giving advice in the pages of Writer’s Digest has an MFA. I don’t even have a college degree. There is the also not small issue of me not writing stories that people want to read. Even if I had everything else, my brain doesn’t produces the tales the masses want to consume.

And right now, I’m not even really that interested in writing those stories. I am working on Stateline, of course, but I haven’t been inspired to write a short story in months. I’m more invested in writing poetry at the moment, and that’s an even harder sell. As much as I love writing it and as much as I enjoy reading it, I lack what it takes to be truly good at it.

So what is my writing endgame now?

Honestly, I’m not really sure. The dream of supporting myself with my writing remains in the back of my mind, but right now, the writing is more for myself and for the small group of readers who’ve been enjoying my work. Right now I’m content with doing what I’m doing.

I know it’s not the endgame, but for now, it’s enough.

Poem–Magnificent Seven–“Goodnight Robicheaux”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

You made it! The last of the Magnificent Seven poems. You all are such good sports.

The last poem I’m posting was actually the first one I wrote. Goodnight Robicheaux is such an interesting character. His exploits for the losing side of the Civil War made him a legend and also damaged him considerably. While he works as a warrant officer like his friend Chisholm (an odd friendship given their opposing sides during the war), it seems that he mostly earns a living from his legacy and Billy Rocks’s skills with his knives.

Goodnight is deeply conflicted. He’s more than willing to join Chisholm in the Seven’s cause and actually cautions Chisholm about his motivations for saving the town of Rose Creek, knowing that they’re more personal than Chisholm has let the other Seven know. He’s got a Southern wisdom that never fails to produce a turn of phrase for the moment. And when it comes to training the men of the town to shoot, he’s an exacting and serious commander.

But Goodnight is haunted by the demons of his past, of the lives he took during the war. He may be a legendary sharpshooter, but it’s come at a great cost. Goodnight believes that if he shoots to kill again, he’ll die. It’s a paralyzing fear that only Billy knows about, and it leads him to abandon the Seven the night before the fight. Naturally, he overcomes the worst of himself and rejoins his friends. After all, if he’s going to die, he might as well die with them.

It was the scene in which he abandons the rest of the Seven, when he was riding away in the night, that sparked the idea for the poem. Because Goodnight is not a coward. He’s a haunted man. And he carries with him a graveyard of ghosts.

This poem is free verse, which is my default, and the only Magnificent Seven poem I allowed myself to write in my usual form. It was also the only poem that got a significant revision. After writing “Jack Horne” and “Red Harvest”, I realized that there was an emerging theme to these poems and I needed to go back and include that into “Goodnight Robicheaux”.

The overall theme of the Magnificent Seven poems is home. Every member of the Seven lost their home in some way, either by choice or by force, and they’ve all been brought together to defend a home that isn’t theirs.

It’s really obvious in retrospect.

Goodnight Robicheaux

He’s a haunted man.
You can’t half-fill a graveyard
and not expect a few ghosts.
He’s got an army of them now.
Waiting. Whispering his future.
He knows that owl following him
will soon swallow him up
and spit his bones into
the first grave he ever dug.
A grave he’ll call home.