Sideways Rain

I fell asleep in the promised land,
fingers crossed for a miracle.
There were crooked streets and fossilized fumes,
clouds gathered in droves to be heard,
nothing was said to the saints
and the sinners were rampant in their faith.
Maybe someone explained things wrong
but who’s the judge of character here?
I walked through a forest of rhetorical questions
and answered each one in kind with a bit of rhetoric,
wisdom squeezed out of quoted words from ages long past.
The clouds began to bathe the world in their own simple song.
It was mostly percussion, with a little woodwind thrown in,
but it was the best symphony I’d heard in years.
We drowned the crooked streets,
the saints and sinners were finally getting along,
but in the end all storms pass.
Including the good ones.

Me, A-Z.

real quick, take a second, i’ll recite you my alphabet

Angels in the air, when you feel that little tug on your soul telling you you’re doing just fine.

Brothers, maybe blood, maybe not, just some guys who have your back without a thought.

Cold winds blowing through a forest at night, bring you peace just to know that they’re there.

Dangerous places with dangerous people, having fun at the risk of your life.

Epiphanies that make life so much easier.

Frost on the leaves and the smell of ice on the air.

Grizzly wintergreen, full can, and someone to bum a dip.

Hazel eyes with that oh-so-mysterious hint of green.

Ignoring everyone and doing what they said you couldn’t.

Just being more than anyone expects.

Kittens.

Love, man. All you need is love.

Morbid fascinations, just for fun.

Never saying die.

Oregon sunsets with pine tree scent.

Portland, and trust me, i have my reasons.

Questions i have the answers to that i probably shouldn’t.

Romancing a girl, just because i’m so damn good at it.

Sappy love poems that get me laid.

Two personalities in one brain that get along with eachother.

Unbelievers suddenly believing

Vaginas. do i need to specify why?

Wind strong enough to make me forget.

X, when used to represent the kiss of a beautiful woman.

You, warm against me. you know who you are.

Zanzibar’s. god, i love that place . . .

Life Goes On. . .But My Bullet’s Faster

Hot sand and sweat beads in eyebrows
just gotta keep your head down
everybody’s praying to someone
no atheists in a foxhole
but no foxholes in hell.
You dodge, you weave, you close your eyes
you pray that the tug on your pants was just the wind.
you sweat some more,
like your trying to leave as much of you behind, just in case.
no matter what happens, life goes on.
for someone.
Face in the dirt, there’s gotta be some way to be smaller.
Canteens and fatigues are just part of the day,
driving trucks and killing time,
but there’s a bit more to it than that.
pull up, sight in, center mass
life goes on. . .

But my bullet’s faster.
Frost

My Crowbar Beats Your Ego.

I speak softly, hold my tongue to teeth
hope i don’t bite to draw blood
you’ve got money, power, and cars
I’ve got a brunette with a knowing stare
and a redhead with a mischievous grin
You’ve got you’re solidarity, keep it, man
I’ve got a split personality with a violent past
and way too many neurosis
I’ve got memories you’ll never dream of
and a scar that you’ll never need
I’ve got the experience of life to back me up
the perfect place to take a swing,
and the perfect one to put my hand.
you make them smile with diamonds and gold
i make them moan with passion
and nothing but a bit of skill and more talent than you’ll ever have.
you think you can hurt me?
little boy, you don’t even know about pain
i’ve seen it, i’ve felt it, i’ve dealt it, friend
and you know what you are?
you’re a dollar sign without a name.

My crowbar beats your ego.

fuck you.
Frost.

The Ethics of Writing

I was asked recently what I felt was the point at which I had taken something “too far”. To be honest, I’d never really thought about it before. The question wasn’t asked about my writing, but as with most things in my life, I ended up applying it to that medium. In all honesty, freedom of expression can only go so far. Rediculously offensive content has it’s place, such as in satire or in a character’s personality, but for the most part, people don’t want to have their minds filled with thoughts and ideas of hatred, biggotry, and the like. So when approached with the idea of having to ask oneself “Is this too much for this particular instance?” the lines can get a little blurry. I’m not here to state factual guidelines, but I will share how I figure out when “too far” has been reached, passed, and forgotten.
The first thing it’s important to do is take a look at your target audience. To use two extremes, if your making up a bedtime story for your child, you are going to use radically different content, language, and ideas (I hope) than you would if you were writing a work of erotic fiction. Obviously, your target group is not always as simply defined. If you are targeting readers from, oh say, 15-30 years of age, then it’s best to cater to somewhere in the lower mid-range, since it’s better to come off a little bit prudish than to be offensive to the majority of your readers, or if it applies, their parents. In the instance of 15-30, I would aim for something that would be easily acceptable for a sixteen or seventeen year old to read.
Another thing to look at is the genre of writing that your story falls into. Science Fiction, Horror, Suspense tend to have a little more leeway when it comes to censorship, when compared to things like language and violence. Sexual content that is not absolutely necessary to the plot of the story can be cut out, but usually if it’s not too explicit it can be slipped by. Romantic Fiction can have a lot of sexually driven scenarios, and some iffy language, but violence tends to be kept to a minimum when it comes to describing violent acts or the results thereof. When you get into the more extreme genres, things geared solely toward adults and expected to be gratuitous, then you can pretty much let free your darker creative musings. Fantasy can go pretty much any way you want because it’s such a broad category, so it relies more on other factors for it’s censorship.
Your characters can actually play a large role in how much and what kind of things you can put into your story. You will catch a lot of flak for putting a 12 year old in a rape scene. If you put a 30 year old in the same scene, you’re still going to catch flak, but probably less. The same rules for underage children usually apply to senior citizens and the physically and mentally disabled. The bottom line is that people do not want to think of things that they perceive as innocent in any other way. Unless your aim is to catch your readers off guard, or there is some other good reason for doing so, I find it best to keep the young and old out of what some would call “Morally reprehensible” scenarios.
Sexual content is usually the biggest stigma in what I like to call “Writing Ethics”. Because of the intimate nature of sex, many people find it offensive for the act to be bandied about, even fictionally. Rape, on the other hand, is a thing usually better alluded to because in most people’s minds (I’m one of them) it is one of the absolute worst things that one human being can do to another. Because of this, people usually don’t want all the sordid details, so when it’s possible to do so, it’s better to simply allude to it happening, or if that is not possible, keep the description of the act as civil as possible. Violence in books is fairly easy to keep under control. If you say “the battle ended with two dead.” it’s a whole lot easier on the mind than saying, “After the blood bath, as we stared at the gore streaked walls, we saw that Michael had been eviscerated, his entrails flung from his body, splattering onto the far wall. Alice had also been slain, her head rolling to a stop ten feet from her bloody corpse, it’s eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling with an unfathomable expression of pain written on her face.” You see, the mind will picture what it reads, regardless of what that is. If you say that two people died, and leave it at that, then the reader’s mind will usually come up with what is most easily dealt with for them. If you describe it yourself, you run the risk of causing discomfort to your reader, which will in turn cause you problems.
That’s really all I have to say on the subject, but I thought it was an interesting line of thinking. So watch what you write, and remember who you’re writing it for, or you may end up with less readers than would otherwise be interested.

Keep writing,
Frost

On Writing Stories

I was thinking, and I had a bit of an epiphany, a revalation if you will.

I know a lot of people who want to be writers.  Most of these people have the talent, the raw ability to write and have themselves felt as well as understood, to write an engaging story that can be entertaining and understood. What usually happens is that they come up with a character, and an end result they desire, but they can’t figure out how to get from point A to point B in a logical and understandable matter. Recently, I was helping one of my friends with this when I had a revelation about the way I write stories. The way I see it, when you create a character, you aren’t just writing a script that will be followed. You are creating an entire personality that will deal with situations as they arise in their own way. For instance, if the character you write has a streak of fear and uncertainty, then their solutions are going to focus on running, hiding, avoiding conflict as best they can. If your character is a problem solver, they are going to find the most direct path, regardless of danger or confrontation. If your person is insane, they will come at it from the point of view that their neurosis allows them to. Rather than trying to fit the story to the character, you should put the character through the story, allowing the character to react to situations in his or her own way, thus advancing the story. If you put Suzy, a fearful girl of 17, in a story that is about her escaping a hospital, she is going to avoid confrontation, sneaking from place to place, relying on what she knows of her current predicament to avoid anything physical as much as possible, because that is not her strong suit. If you, however, put in Johnathan, a 24 year old private detective, in the same situation, he is not going to shy away from any physical confrontation he thinks he can win. When you start adding in personality traits such as arrogance, cynicism, narcissism, rebelliousness, anger, sorrow, fear, and any other emotion, you start to change the way that character reacts. If Suzy gets angry, she might wallop someone over the head with a fire extinguisher. If Johnathan gets scared, he might run and hide, or try to find a way around a particular obstacle. When writing, one should always bear in mind the emotional and physical states of the characters being used, and adapt their reaction to a situation accordingly. An example of physical state influencing behavior would  be an injury causing avoidance of a situation that would normally be confronted. On the other hand, adrenaline could cause a character to respond violently to  a situation they would normally avoid. The easiest way to create a story from a character is to simply figure out how it starts, putting the character in the starting place, and then using what you know of the character to determine their reaction to the situation. If it turns out that the character being in that situation is utter nonsense, then you need to either rethink the character or change the situation. Also bear in mind that characters change throughout a story, possibly going from naive to cynically educated, or from cynical to optomistic, or from hating to accepting. Always try to take any personality changes into account when having a character respond to a situation. When dealing with multiple characters, think about how each would deal, and go from there. If one would run away, and one would fight, then you have a  bit of a clash in the dynamics of the characters, giving a good point of contention.

Anyway, it’s just a thought. I hope I can give some writers some advice with this.

Frost

What have we here?

Hello.

I’m Frost.

Every once in a while, i get this feeling. I think every person gets the same feeling, but it tells them to do different things. for me, it’s usually “oh, i just thought of something i really need to write down!” but i’m sure for some people it’s a song, or a painting, or something like that. maybe for a scientist it’s like “oh, what would happen in this equasion?” but i wouldn’t know. I apologize for grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, or any other writing error on anything i post. i get a bit lazy in the editing department most of the time. i usually just write things down and then never look at them again. well, i hope that some day in the not distant future i can have people read my blog, and be able to pass on important messages and lovely poetry and whatnot, but i don’t hold my breath. mostly i write for my own sake, and that’s enough for me.

Sort your socks by shade and color
fold them up, put them away
i’ll never need to know why anyone
told me to live this way
categorize my life
certain shades are my delight
and some hues of rose or sky
can make the day seem bright
all relative to everything
a thing alone can’t exist
without a correlative status
without a balance to compare
no one knows whether or not something’s
even there.