literary

Don't stop aspiring. Just learn to duck. . .

Let the enemy fall by their swords. Words not worth reading die their own death. But our Words will be Told!

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

Most critics, fond of subservient artstill make the whole depend upon a part.They talk of principles, but notions prizeAnd all to one loved folly sacrifice.

CONGRATULATIONS DL Havlin! Your entry, "There are No Lights in Naples", an unpublished short fiction - flash fiction genre category, is a finalist for the 2016 Royal Palm Literary Awards competition!

I am a bomb but I mean you no harm. That I still am here to tell this, is a miracle: I was deployed on May 15, 1957, but I didn__ go off because a British nuclear engineer, a young father, developed qualms after seeing pictures of native children marveling at the mushrooms in the sky, and sabotaged me. I could see why during that short drop before I hit the atoll: the island looks like god__ knuckles in a bathtub, the ocean is beautifully translucent, corals glow underwater, a dead city of bones, allowing a glimpse into a white netherworld. I met the water and fell a few feet into a chromatic cemetery. The longer I lie here, listening to my still functioning electronic innards, the more afraid I grow of detonating after all this time. I don__ share your gods, but I pray I shall die a silent death.

The gay revolution began as a literary revolution.

A garden is never finished. In that sense it is like the human world and all human undertakings.

When I was eight years old, I was abducted from a fast food restaurant by a man who took me, in all likelihood, because of a small splotch of mayonnaise on his hamburger. And so I believe in neither free will nor predetermination.I believe in condiments.

It was as if they'd discovered something that had once been there but had gotten hidden or misunderstood or forgotten over time, and they were charmed by it once more, and by one another. Which seems only right and expectable for married people. They caught a glimpse of the person they fell in love with, and who sustained life. For some, that vision must never dim - as is true of me. But it was odd that our parents should catch their glimpse, and have frustration, anxiety and worry pass away like clouds dispersing after a storm, refind their best selves, but for that glimpse to happen just before landing our family in ruin.

I'm intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite.

The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighborly Disputes (SO-30) and going onto Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, although it was common knowledge that the ChronoGuard was SO-12 and Antiterrorism SO-9. It is rumored that SO-1 was the department that polices the SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone's guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-military or ex-police and slightly unbalanced. 'If you want to be a SpecOp,' the saying goes, 'act kinda weird...

That Yank glean is long gone anyway; money, sex, power, it__ gone global _ no one has a monopoly on it anymore. The towering skyscrapers of New York had fallen long before the second plane; we all knew it. The twang of the Yank accent doesn__ give girls that twinge these days, even the dollar sign is looking dated, its day long past. No, America doesn__ have it anymore.But then nowhere does. We don__ chop the world up by borders anymore, don__ slice peoples and dice continents. It__ all a sweltering mess, a fucking free-for-all. We went global centuries ago, today we__e gone digital, and digital doesn__ have borders.

The two smallest boys were cut down first, bodies bounding in different directions as they were shot from opposite sides of the field, like pinballs caught in a tight corner.

Shit, man, if you see a dog scratching at the dirt trying to dig something up, walk away real fast,_ he said, then pulled a little square of paper from his pocket and swallowed whatever was folded inside.

All experiences are stories to be told and must be written.

One bright sunny day at a successful Literary Agency_Literary Agent: __o, Tina _ we asked you to try and write a children__ story__ina: __h-huh.

Perhaps that cruel girl was right? I should be a good girl, and my friend will be fine. I am too dramatic, always seeing the end in a flower blossom, the destruction in a raindrop. I must accept the things I cannot change.