The heart-felt joy of play
One finds in youth, ever striving
For the pure emotion.
And Nero, your heart is light,
In you is joy, the turning of your marble
Toys and the marching of them in their rows.

Old, though, we find you
As you put on your wolf's attire
And with drawn leash are led through
The meadowgrounds.

Innocent, though strange,
Your boyhood's emotions flood into you
Pure, like the syringe.
You bark, you trot, you kick your feet
In the mud.
You wag your tail and I find no sin in it.

Then, the disapproval settles in.
The peoples look on you
And do not understand the spectacle,
The unstructured exorcism of imagination.
What is beautiful, what is serenity
What is joy, is now poisoned forever.

You push it down into your soul
For play was all you knew.
Play was everything you had.
The joy, the frivolity,
The utter freedom.
Constrained to your dog costume---
For you are now old,
And have chosen just this one form of play
As is consistent with sagacity---
But no-one shares your joy.

It is I who sees you are not sinning
But are filled with hearty laughter
And you feel pure child's joy.
I understand you...
But the stranger shares not your joy.

So, what was first innocent
Becomes howling sin.

I've been writing seriously
For fifteen years.
At sixteen I wrote an erotica novel
And got one hundred pages into it.
I imitated what I read in a Playboy Magazine
And told the story of a nightclub owner
Who was secretly a technologically enhanced assassin.
He was in love.

At seventeen I began writing the Fifth Angel's Trumpet.
At Twenty-Seven I finished the Fifth Angel's Trumpet.
At Twenty-Eight I began writing poems
In the Neo-Classical style.

At twenty-three I wrote my best piece;
A novella about a Ship Captain
Trying to persuade his superior
To divert from the course they were heading
For they sailed toward death.

At twenty-seven I wrote Hail Britannica.

When I first started writing,
I had a messy style filled with
Circumlocutions.
In defense of my artistic creations
I set out to defend circumlocution.
I've since recanted that position.

The best piece of writing advice I'd ever gotten
Was to start at the beginning;
And to introduce the setting before anything else.
The setting is like the stage,
And the audience needs to know it
Before anything else.

The worst piece of writing advice I ever got
Was to write what everyone wants
And then when it starts selling
To try and sell the stuff that publishers were rejecting.
I learned from Lady Gaga that 
You are only going to be popular
For what people know you for.
And Lincoln Park for that matter
Who Chester Bennington
Committed suicide
Because his later work 
Was misunderstood.
Albeit, his later work
Was the better.

It is the same with Green Day,
Whose best album, 21st Century Breakdown
Is considered inferior to Dookie.
But 21st Century Breakdown is objectively
Their best piece to date.

American Idiot got them famous;
At least made them a household name.
But it was not as good as 21st Century Breakdown.

The second best piece of writing advice I ever got
Was from my Fictive Family Aunt Ruth.
She said don't use Adverbs, Conjunctions,
Copulas or Pronouns.
Rebelliously I followed suit
And wrote my favorite piece to date.

The second worst piece of writing advice 
I ever got was the exact same advice
But from people who didn't understand
That I wrote in a descriptive style.

I studied grammar meticulously
For four years.
English 051 taught me three quarters of everything I know
And I actually like diagraming sentences.

I have printout sheets of every Prefix and Suffix in the English Language
And also printouts on all the different kinds of clauses and phrases.

My favorite dictionary was an Encarta Dictionary
That came standard with the writing program
I first used to write my books.
That program actually got discontinued
And I had to learn how to use RTF files
To have a universal program
That could always support my writing.
I also learned how to use PDF pretty efficiently.

I have an encyclopedia from 2004
Which I used to research Hail Britannica.
It's an artefact from an age
When people were far less stupid
Than they are now.

When I'm doing research for my writing
I never use Wikipedia, 
But always draw my sources
From the most relevant sources.
I also love using Name Dictionaries
For my writing.

I bought Bulfinch's Mythology
For research on my Neo-Classical style
And the first book I ever attempted to read was Edith Hamilton's
 Mythology. In fact, artefacts from it
Which were in my subconscious
Ended up in The Fifth Angel's Trumpet.

Me and a girl once started a book when I was in Seventh Grade
Which she wrote the first line,
And were were going to collab. on it.
I ended up writing somewhere near thirty pages
And we stopped collabing because of artistic differences.

I have a Classical Books collection
Which completely fills the bookshelf
My pappy made me when I was about eleven.
Also, every shelf he built is being used
To house my book collection.

The first short story I ever completed
Is in my published work "My Collected Writings".
Same with my first completed poem
Which I wrote as a school project.
My teacher gave me an A on it.
I was a D student.

English was my worst subject in school.
I didn't like to do any of the work
Or read any of the books
Or do any of the homework.
I hated writing essays and doing bibliographies.
Now, I get a certain pleasure from writing bibliographies.
But, most of the reason I didn't like it
Was because it was all rote skills
And none of it was based around practical knowledge.

My best subject in school was Science.
But not the science that required math.
That is why a lot of my earlier work
Focuses on science fiction concepts.

My best friend, Jonathan,
Said my novel The Fifth Angel's Trumpet
Was in the top ten best novels he'd ever read.
He also said my book "Bitter Medicine"
The poems were like T. S. Eliot's.

My writing contains lots of Easter Eggs.
Some of it including allusions to the season I wrote the piece
The year I was writing certain pieces
Allusions to mythology or scientific principles and concepts
Allusions to other literary works,
Allusions to songs or television shows I grew up watching,
Characterizations of the people I knew and grew up with,
Allusions to my actual life,
Among many other things.

I've written about twenty books,
Thirteen of them are published.
Four of them I deleted.
Two of them are works in progress.
One of them will possibly never be published.
One of them was a collection of bad essays
I wrote in my philosophical phase.

I've also published about half a thousand blog posts
On this website. I had two previous blogs
Which I deleted, that probably had two-hundred
Fifty posts each.
On my first blog
I had about twenty of the highest profile bloggers 
Following me, but in a state of utter dejection
I deleted it.
That was one of the stupidest things I ever did
And is probably the reason I'm not famous yet.

I attempted to get published about 100 times.
I sent my work out to 14 literary agents
I sent my work out to about 50 publishing houses
I sent my work out to about 30 literary magazines
I even sent my work to the Art Renewal Center.

I used to have a profile on an app called
"Who's Here", where I would frequently
Write long essays and all sorts of semi-religious 
Nonsense. Which, almost all of that was deleted,
But I wanted to use the app to get exposure.
I also have a Tinder profile just for my writing.
The little paragraph images in My Collected Writing
At the beginning of the book
Were actual comments I sent people,
Trying to put words to their Instagram posts.
I've written probably around 3,000 two page essays
If you account all of my writing on YouTube
And Yahoo Answers. Emails to Content Creators and famous people
And also some Comment Forums on random websites,
Some of which I've saved.
I have 3 gigabytes worth of writing
On my Pen Drive.

I also formatted and created
All the cover art for my books.
I published them on Kindle Direct
And had to build the books
From scratch.
The photographs
Were random images
I'd found on Google Images
Which I spliced together.
The Skiffs in The Fifth Angel's Trumpet
Showing in the left hand corner
Are actually pot lids
And a halo refraction from the lens
Which I used to make a realistic looking object.

And I like chess. 🙂

The shadow within you
Oh River of the Jordan
Flows like the Styx into the recesses
Of cold, imagination.

Passing through desert lands
The ashes of millions
And the starving bodies of billions 
Flow through your wise deltas.

Embrace the shadow?
The cold, monstrous thing
Within us? Who like Death and She'ol
Twists and turns through hideous
Forms, dark and seductive?

Within the heart lies this
The very thing Christ will exorcise.
For twisting in passions and desire
Murder and blasphemies
Is this darkening of the soul.
The Shadow,
The Doppelganger.
Latent, all feel its pressure
Those who are wise;

Those who are fools do not know it
Yet it exhumes with all of their tongue.  
It is man's perfect enemy
The shade which the white sepulcher contains.
Find it, grab hold of it,
Release it with kindness.
Push it not back down into the body,
But let the wicked beast
Be like mist which steams
Out from the soul
By the sweat of faith
And the renewing of the strength in Christ.

Evening comes, and there raps a surprise
Knock at the door. "Who is it?"
Opening the portal there stands an old
Acquaintance, one with whom several short discussions were made.

Neither truly knowing the each
But make their pleasantries
Not knowing what to say.
It was the thought that counted
And it lifts the spirits.

Oh the possibilities,
The hopes, the spirit of melancholy
With reservations;
Wishing for the acquaintance to stay an hour
Or two, no offensive word is spoken.
No detail about life is given with any haste.
For a good natured call
And a visit bring levity
Yes, but also reserve.
For it is a rare thing
And one which the procedure
Must be precisely
Followed through on.

Hera, you were strong in 
Courtly abodes, where the messengers
Could keep your stead
And give you the sustenance you required.
For it was the infidelity of Zeus
Who led you to your humble position.
This the peoples knew
And gracious was their kindness toward you
In your low estate.
Completely innocent you were
While Zeus made off and courted
Danae. They were but men.

You required rest;
So with Artemis and Apollo.
Yet, you instead wished to smite
And like Prometheus steal the heavenly fire.
You thundered, and your rage flung
For the thunderbolts, but Artemis and Apollo
Were sick of loves, and cried day and night
For peace. Yet in your wrath
There was no peace,
But made war as Egypt's vine.

Then, you established your house
And cast your thunder at Cyrus
Not Zeus; no, you threw down lightning at Cyrus
Just as Cyrus had feared.
Who would free God's people?
Yet you, seeing yourself as a god
Smote the one who shew the most kindness on you.
For Artemis and Apollo's sake
Cyrus rose early to counsel thou, Queen.
Yet your fury hath spilled onto him
Who was your greatest ally.

Furious art you that one had told the truth?
That war among the Titans would ruin
The happiness of your children?
This will be your ruin;
And alas, God has told me it already is.

Lazy, entitled, working all day
To solve problems the world will never solve.
Like so many, finding good solutions
And like so many, those solutions
Work only for the self.

Wise one moment
But the wisdom flees
When a thousand opine, it clouds
The clear declaration from God.

Oh, how everything is known
So sure of it.
Only to be confronted by a thousand presumptions
A thousand baseless reasons;
Thinking the game is won
When, truthfully, hadn't even seen the first move.

How all of it is true
That Morpheus spins the idle
Wet dreams through the night
And in the morning am the man with his beads
Rubbing them, without a single bit
Of entertainment in my house.

For chastity is never saying "Fuck"
And abstaining from video games...
Meanwhile the alarm clock wakens
Me at eight in the mourning
But I awaken at twelve.

A mess, yet within this heart
Is a secret unlocked.
It truly knows God.

Bitter David, I see you unravel
The mysteries of a song.
Your heart in melancholy turn, studied
What would become vanity.

Your daunting effort goes noticed
By those who love music too,
Of ages gone by.
Stand at the age where deep
Calls out to deep;---
But the Cypress in its
Mourning replies,

"Death has taken over the valleys.
"Meaning doth sing her lute
"In the Elburz
"And armies travel through the Gate.
"For the sun makes his revolution 
"Over the mountains
"And on one side is day
"And the other it is night."

Yet none do draw the wisdom
For men are marked out for their sins
In youth.
For a man's sin is discovered
And it is now altered new,
So that David, your effort was in vain.
And with it the Cypress
Mourns, for even the work of man
Is besmirched by what's misunderstood.