[Watch] To: Aspring Writer | Poem | The Odyssey Online
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[Watch] To: Aspring Writer | Poem

Advice to aspiring writers in video form.

16
Nathan Daniel McCraw

Full text:

The violent stitch of my journal like a rolling wind heard high elsewhere. Sunk back into the rhythm of time, left open broken hoping for something else to come along. Cut the strings and attach and attack like knives, the pens stab belligerent c(h)ords. Bleed onto the white page and make it pure again. We fight you say but who is we? Sink my teeth into a meaty word, digest it until nothing is left but meaning: ugly, in your face, nowhere to hide, despite your feelings pointing otherwise to words whispered watchfully, welcome to the truth tower; trumps tactfully takes monolithic madmen, spouting off words meant for greater things. But the meaning is in the nuance, the specific way light hits plastic at 3 AM in your room, speak from the tomb, beyond the grave rave save every cherished moment to draw meaning from. Your heart like a drum ripped from the symphony of your chest: your lungs: asthmatic, screaming for a way out. The only way through the wheezing, waiting, watchful wisdom is to take the ink and tattoo every page you can get your hands on. Create the hate of mediocrity, lock away your regret and let yourself discover that you can become more than when you started. Curse words and pride fill a mind but gills and bills and wheels you’ve heard: screeching into the night like a powder keg: explode with the load and corrode the rust and dirt lying in the grooves of your skin, stalling falling calling out to every friend of yours. Drop a bomb, solve the wars, shoot a gun, throw paint splatter clatter matter to anyone and you live forever. Write it down and be immortalized. Morals, more or less, the distressed coughing at midnight, lying in the coffin 80 years from now. So how can you say that the way is through fame? Blame the game on your name and the same watchful eyes lie to the lame, lamb and sheep, livestock living only to die, the difference, politics and polished black pen, write a lyric and wait a minute for them to hear it. Instant access to the best, stay a while and listen to what you’ve been missing; wishing on a star, where is the fault, caught in a lie and then with a cry you see different words than when you started. Tell me, is your heart in this? List every qualm and query and quiet crack of a bone you’ve heard, leave the message at the tone, greedily ET phoning home. Media and mass communication, lead free, uh, land of fast gratification, parenthesis question mark end parenthesis. Harken, harden every Harlem light: shine in the night bark start cart away the feeling you felt belt melt the words in a crock-pot: a finished product for the masses to eat, meaning covered in salt and chocolate, sweet and taught that it’s the best, the test: standardized, Samford eyes see through me, yes you see the gooey complexion. Complex, apartment, compartmentalize what I’ve done. Link the parks together and get a state: states of mind over matter water vapor, black lives thrown away like tissue paper. Too political, plot a diagram, eating off me like my name was Jon Hamm. Simile and metaphor similar to what it’s for: wrote a thousand words since my first day; worse way to herd my thought to coherence, turn the frequency and make sure you hear it. You speak for us, held on a pedestal, the pirouette of the limelight, soaring like a kite to the ground. Have you found the meaning you sought? Or was it bought from the cleaning staff? Laugh off the question like a sports star, hike the ball and crash your car. Greed envy hate and pride leave a scar on the skin of the men and women you wished to please. Leave every dark thought there on the page: rage against the dying of creativity and maybe after 45 years you will have learned that the simplest way to achieve your goal is to work harder smarter barter with a necklace and buy the world. Ancestry like an accessory you wear upon your sleeve or like an A on your chest. My heart is open for the picking, pluck the strings until music has filled the earth. Birth the word until it can be heard like a shot around the world. The quiet, only broken by a pen drop. And no matter what you do, don’t ever stop.

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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