Archived entries for poetry and prose

Good golly, Miss Polly!

Good golly, Miss Polly! What a state you is in!
Giddy and reeling, your head in a spin.
Did dapper John Capper flash you his grin?
Or frisky Tom Whisky splash you with gin!

Good golly, Miss Polly! Why you is so mad?
Did you get flicked again, by another young lad?
Was it William Golightly? He always was bad.
He don’t truly love you, I think you is been had.

Good golly, Miss Polly! You been out all night?
Prancing round town trying to find Mister Right.
I tells you, my dear, would you heed my advice?
They’ll cheat soon as look at you, then pretend it’s alright.

Good golly, Miss Polly! Come rest your tired head.
Lay down your burdens, right here on my bed.
Don’t never listen to what anyone said.
I love you Miss Polly, until I am dead.

Short story: Irrevers-able

I discovered time travel back on the 29th of December, 2013. You might wonder at my using such an archaic date nomenclature if I had access to all of eternity, but the nature of the thing is not as you might think. I am not a traveller in time; I am a scientist, and I should not be using language so imprecisely. However, I do travel, and it is not going back in time to kill your grandfather and all that nonsense. This is impossible, and I can prove it. It is a very different kind of travel, for very different reasons.

What I discovered was a kind of particle. Not a particle of matter, but a particle of time. Billions upon billions of these particles surround us at any moment, swarming through us – not really affecting us, but at the same time changing us completely. We age because the particles lap at our bodily matter like waves on a rock. But the particles care not that they are propelling us all forward. They are simply fleeing from the singularity, and hence we have only ever known time as marching inexorably onward.

Going back in time is possible in as far as you can unwind all of history, playing 7 billion movies in reverse. You must calculate and undo each and every reaction between matter and these particles, in the correct order, for each and every quark on the planet (and possibly those beyond), in order to turn back the clock. Of course, it is far from necessary to perform this feat on such a grand scale; one might only have need of it on a smaller scale. It can be done, and I will achieve it.

The first part is easy: the reaction with the particles is reversible; one merely needs to direct them in the right way. The other part not so much: performing the calculations to achieve a complete and correct reversal requires an immense amount of computing power, which itself requires the energy of many suns. But this is no more than an inconvenience. I have a ship, and all I have done is set it on autopilot towards the nearest star, and locked myself inside a chamber that prevents the particles from decaying my body, effectively putting me into a complete stasis only to wake once I have achieved my destination, ready to feed.

I travel from star to star, devouring each one to progress my calculations one atom at a time. And the atoms number as many as the stars.

So I will destroy this universe.

Just to get you back.

—-

I originally posted this on Quora, but it just disappeared into the great nebula of excellent creative writing already on the site.

Grind

Whizzing by while standing still
Time to waste and time to kill
Lazy as a busy bee
Idle productivity

Kicking goals and scoring nil
Climbing up and down the hill
Round and round along the straight
Opening the closing gate

Meaningless profundity
A heathen blessing unto me
Oh miserable happiness
The void that fills my emptiness

Antenascent

Little girl, where are you
Why’d you miss our rendezvous
Would’ve loved to parlez vous
But now you never were

Little boy, meek and mild
Brave and strong or rough and wild
Still, you would have been my child
But now you never were

Guileless mother, precious load
Paid the Beast a debt not owed
Solemn in your fading glow
It’s like you never were

The Bampyre

Here’s one that’s a little left-field. It’s an idea I had for a children’s story called The Bampyre. The basic premise deals with a little vampire who trips and breaks his fangs, so he can’t dvink ze bluhd (nor pronounce “vampire”). While failing miserably at nibbling on a friendly cow, said bovine sympathises and takes Bampyre on a journey to find something else to fill his stomach.

Yeah, the story is a little bit morbid, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. What I have yet to decide is whether the writing will take the form of poetry or prose.

Here are some attempts at character design and a mock layout:

Some general sketches. Trying to make sure it works in 3D.

A more cartoony look, although it's clearly drifting into South Park territory.

It's gonna be fun -and- educational!

What do you think? Does this have the makings of a children’s classic?



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