Experimenting With Novellettes

Recently I ordered some experimental novels I found in articles online. I believe I wrote awhile back about dabbling in fiction.

I dropped that for awhile. Now I am back. In desperate need of a sense of structure, I wanted new novels to read. However, I don’t want to write a regular sort of novel. As a poem writer, I want to break things down. I also want a shorter story. Can a story with no plot be good? Can the color orange be my protagonist? Can I structure my book as a series of ekphrastic poems? What does it mean to structure a story as a scrapbook? Can I include footnotes, to-do notes, and playlists?

I want to find out. I have a lot to learn. I am a voracious reader, but this is stuff I haven’t really touched. It is time to leave the familiar terrains of my mind and map a new world.

The Last Painting

Labored seeing –
The artist as his canvas drifts away.

The IV hums a little.
They only let him squeeze
The morphine button every five minutes.

4 out of every 5 minutes
Is a dog gnawing on his body.

Please…
He begs…
One more painting and I will go
Without complaint.

Less of You

The advertisement promised diligent bread.
The sort of thing that will eat for you

While you bask prideful in a fashionable,
Contemporary hunger.

The world loves you as it loves itself.

That’s why it wants less of you, Dear.
Of course.

Don’t doubt.
Pout.
There is a new job coming,
To be done by someone else.

HDR

The Atmosphere

Light and Heat

What does the light ray feel
Falling to her death on
My skin?

When the end is near
She does not perceive darkness
Where she is, the dark is not.
When she is gone
She is cancerous trash

The heat is her child
And will move on
To other mothers

Maybe she feels what I do
When I close my eyes
Wilted.

Hell Is

It rains on desert,
Granola,
Landsscape.

The jagged rocks crusted
With love letters to Dante.

He had the levels of hell all wrong.

There is so much dancing,
But the music is atonal,
And pestilence bores holes through
The dancers’ feet.

Hell is a life if obligator dancing.

Beer

Beaches of lime and slow.
We are home to the most unpopular beer.

I have a lot to drink here
but eat slowly.
Threatening texture
Physical.

Overload

I am basically overloaded lately. I can’t get through the evening without an anxiety attack that is crippling. It builds all day. So much light and color and things to do. I’m at the doctor now.

UPDATE

I had a full blown panic attack at the doctor’s office. They put me on oxygen and gave me an injection of something.

Something has me wound so tight. Meds maybe. Or just sensory overload, Asperger’s style. But I have anxiety every day. The doctor gave me a new prescription to take as well. He isn’t my psych, but he took care of things, which I needed.

Just praying for calm soon, and that the medicine will alleviate the problem when I need it to. Klonopin is a huge help, but by law quantities are limited. Lately the anxiety has been more than I can cover with my allotted Klonopin.

Justice

Justice is a poor best friend,
Sticking knives in me
Where I can see them.

I reach for the cookie
He slaps me gently
I smell the desiccated marsh

He holds my hand on rollercoasters.
It wouldn’t be fair
For me to die when I
Have been so innocuous

But the tide looked
Innocuous and the
Fish is dead.

I am not a reed in the marsh.

When he takes me home
He always takes the
Long route

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