Introduction

What an astonishing thing a book is. Its a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic. -Carl Sagan This book allows you a brief glance inside my mind. It is a compilation of short stories and poetry laid down to express thoughts and explore creativity. The prose and poetry are divided into two sections in this book, with prose at the forefront followed by poetry.

Cyclical

Short Stories

Cyclical is a story that is derived from the notion of being trapped in a repetitious, inescapable circle. The idea of solipsism was something that I wanted to toy with from the beginning of this piece, however, I left the option to the reader that all of the characters are a figment, or if the incident had some truth. This can be interpreted as a completely solipsist point of view or from the idea that the incidents leading up to the cycle actually happened at some point prior to the cycle repeating once again. When reading this piece, you believe what you want to believe.

A Journey
This was an experiment with point of view and perspective. The original story is Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff. It was written in a third person perspective about a man, a fairly cocky man, entering a bank. It just so happens that the bank that he entered was one that was getting robbed that very day. Of course Anders, the protagonist remains incapable of silence up to the end. The main body of the story is the depiction and description of a bullet traveling through Anders skull and exploring his final thoughts. I took the approach from the first person point of view of the bullet from prior to the heist, up to and including penetration of Anders thoughts, life, and death.

The Story of Rocky There

An idea that I had from the beginning of this project was to take the song Rocky Raccoon and right it out in story format. The original song tells a story of a boy and a girl, the girl leaves the main character for another man. The boy grows up to find this person at a hoe down with the intent to shoot out his legs, however, the tables are turned and the antagonist shoots Rocky Raccoon before our hero could shoot. I attempted a modern approach to the rustic, classic country sounding song making the gun a nine-millimeter, making the saloon attached to a dilapidated hotel, and making the antagonist a drug dealer. I tried to hold as close to the original song as I could for the storyline by consistently referencing the lyrics to the song, writing, and referencing again.

Poems
Armageddon ABCs
The title of this poem essentially states the necessary. This is a poem about the end of the world, the final battle, and mayhem. It travels through the story while simultaneously traversing the alphabet. There are 26 stanzas, each with four lines, and each containing only words starting with the corresponding letter of the alphabet. Stanza 1 only contains words starting with A, 2 B, 3 C, etcetera.

Eight Seasons
Eight Seasons is a dichotomy of two places so close together. It references the four seasons of each location. For the first section of the poem, we visit the city and the one constant, monotonous, droning season of noise, hustle and bustle. The second section of the poem explores a suburb-esque location that could be located mere minutes from the city. The calmer environment allows for variations in seasons directly opposing its big city counterpart. These are based off of real locations, the city is a description of what I hear and see from my living room in Bremerton Washington, while the more country setting is my parents house located in Port Orchard Washington, only 20 minutes away from my house. This poem does not rhyme, but instead plays with syllabic construction.

Violence Intrigues Me
I am by no means a political individual. I have a reasonable understanding of our constitutional rights, I understand a majority of the amendments, I live how I want to live while trying to maintain social acceptance. Occasionally rules are bent or broken, but thats what they are for, right? This is not a political poem. It starts out sounding like it, stating that the government is a corrupt character from Homers Illiot, and that they only scare us into submission to obtain more oil for profit. This poem is more an ode to my hatred for hipsters, protestors, Occupy Wall Street, off the wall, anarchic individuals. it promotes my belief in war and violence, but it visits the idea that you can not stop a war with small domestic wars on our own country and civilians. Violence intrigues me; I confess but not like this.

Poem Based Story

The Cave
This was an experiment with setting and character. I wasnt sure where to put this particular prose because it is based off of one of my favorite epic poems and slightly has that feel to it. The story is of a young girl who travels through a cave, experiencing souls on her way, in search for omnipotence to destroy the world. The experiment was that three academic colleagues write a portion of the story describing setting and character, and you build off of that. My colleagues had good ideas, but I decided to use the setting and character that was provided to me from one individual colleague and write something completely different. There is explicit content in this story, as was provided to me in the character description. Youve been warned.