The Post With No Name

I always want to hang on to my work until it's exactly perfect, just Emily Dickinson it away in a drawer somewhere, but I also want it to be seen. This means I have to edit it and release it into the wind. I've done that pretty well in the last month with my poetry, but when it comes to my short stories, I can barely stand to read them over once.

I just write what I like to read. I'm very selective about poetry, and carefully examine the structure, the flow, and the images that just stick in your mind and never leave before I decide I enjoy something. When it comes to prose fiction, I just really love little silly horror stories. Brief little flashes of spoopy trash are where it's at. I'm just accepting that now, and throwing my trash into the wind.

This little whiff of a story was submitted to bogleech.com's annual Creepypasta Cookoff in 2014. This year, I've submitted like 6 things. 

The previous archives are a lot of fun if you like small terrifying confections of tales. Good little munches. 

Whitewaterfall, by Jenne Kaivo

Gravity pulled in its typical way at your foot

that ought not have been bare.
The mountain-goat stones do not hold to their own,
As slick things quite like to let go.

The pool down beneath is your world.
Shall you slither inside? If slowed
To a slide, most graceful would be
Your descent to the water like cream.

Like a sweet cappuccino with full-fatted milk
Like this morning went cold
As you stared at the screen
Which is dimming and has been for days.
Everything’s silt-water hue but you cannot
Pay rent, let alone pay what's due-
And only half done with that twenty-page paper.

Philosophy major.
Likes dancing ’till sunrise
Come up from Virginia just six months ago.
In childhood chose to go barefoot for always,
Your parents protested but yet the kick lasted
‘til Sophomore summer, your grades giving honor,
The Yukon allowed you inside for a several-week course
Free of charge to the family
And one morning, early, the permafrost lawn
Held your tender flesh fast.

Before that an infancy filled with detective adventures-
Crawled in the hall like a dinosaur would one fine birthday-
Blackberry stains sticking fat little fingers and faces-
Halloween, third grade, sicking up
On your desk and the cereal-killer
That faced you, little girls in what they claimed to be cat-suits
Just leotards, bowties and cotton-filled tails, Lord did those irk you.

And the puke was quite nearly pure water,
With foam on, the grain
Of what passed for wood-pattern shone through it
Though muddled, and look at those swirls
Below. And the stones look so smooth-
That glint, could it be
That the steelhead are running?

Packed so thick one can land
On their backs and be carried
Quite gently to where rocks
Curve out in a flat little basin and so
The stream calms from its fury.

The sort of place you could catch tadpoles.
The week you went camping and every night as you lay
Hard on the gravel, eyes fastened
As shut as they could be, the polliwogs
Wriggled at the place in the darkness
Where you could not focus.

Learning the lesson
Of swan-dive in swimming, your Senior-year
Extra-cirric. But now you will outstrip the swan
And stay down there as long as a cormorant could,
Likely longer. Your bones
Will house guppies like those tiny castles
Ceramic in the old Chinese restaurant, so lovely,
The napkins embroidered with dragons,
Your mother and father with faces romantically
Glowing, and breaking the cookie but finding no fortune
Though the trout was delicious and filled you
A warm sort of way.

Your early days down by the pond
As you flopped on your belly and the water stung sharply
But not quite as sharply
As you assume the stones looming up will,
And your splash goes unheeded in water that whirls and you think
Of a strawberry daiquiri stirred by a stick….

(A previous version of this was posted on PoemHunter.com, so it's not being considered for serious submission unless I find a venue that accepts previously published poems. I still feel the work is strong, so I'm sharing it here.)

A Bit of Fun

Certain individuals refer to me by the nomenclature "the space cowboy"
and others prefer to adopt the appellation "the gangster of love".
In addition, there are those persons who dub me "Maurice"
due to my tendency to soliloquize regarding the pompitous of love.

I am a recent subject of much conjectural conversation, baby
which implies that I have been committing misdeeds against your person, committing misdeeds against your person.
Do not allow your cogitation to be perturbed by this, baby
do not allow your cogitation to be perturbed by this
For I am in this location, in this location, in this location where we mutually dwell.

This is due to the fact that I am a selective individual,
one who bares my teeth in displays of pleasure.
I am prone to passionate affairs of the heart,
and am one who engages in endeavors frowned upon by the religious orthodoxy.
I perform my rhythmic auditory displays in the light radiating from the star at the core of the Solar System.

I am a corporeal representative of the harlequin archetype.
I am one who engages in the immolation and inhalation of dried vegetable material.
I do this clandestinely, at the hour when one day becomes the next.
It is not my intention to cause harm to any being.
I obtain the fruits of romantic endeavors peripatetically.

This is due to the fact that I am a selective individual,
one who bares my teeth in displays of pleasure.
I am prone to passionate affairs of the heart,
and am one who engages in endeavors frowned upon by the religious orthodoxy.
I perform my rhythmic auditory displays in the light radiating from the star at the core of the Solar System.

I am a corporeal representative of the harlequin archetype.
I am one who engages in the immolation and inhalation of dried vegetable material.
I do this clandestinely, at the hour when one day becomes the next.
It is not my intention to cause harm to any being.
I obtain the fruits of romantic endeavors peripatetically.

Woo woooo

You are the most pleasingly attractive object which has ever appeared in the field of my vision.
I am tremendously fond of your callipygous assets which can be likened to vegetative growths, and have a strong desire to agitate the woody stalk on which these metaphorical growths have developed.
Lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey, lovely-dovey at a constant rate.
Proceed along with me, one for whom I feel affection, and I will demonstrate to you a period of felicitous activity.

This is due to the fact that I am a selective individual,
one who bares my teeth in displays of pleasure.
I am prone to passionate affairs of the heart,
and am one who engages in endeavors frowned upon by the religious orthodoxy.
I perform my rhythmic auditory displays in the light radiating from the star at the core of the Solar System.

I am a corporeal representative of the harlequin archetype.
I am one who engages in the immolation and inhalation of dried vegetable material.
I do this clandestinely, at the hour when one day becomes the next.
It is not my intention to cause harm to any being.
I obtain the fruits of romantic endeavors peripatetically.

This is due to the fact that I am a selective individual,
one who bares my teeth in displays of pleasure.
I am prone to passionate affairs of the heart,
and am one who engages in endeavors frowned upon by the religious orthodoxy.
I perform my rhythmic auditory displays in the light radiating from the star at the core of the Solar System.

I am a corporeal representative of the harlequin archetype.
I am one who engages in the immolation and inhalation of dried vegetable material.
I do this clandestinely, at the hour when one day becomes the next.
It is not my intention to cause harm to any being.
I obtain the fruits of romantic endeavors peripatetically.

Woo woooo

I am a recent subject of much conjectural conversation, baby
which implies that I have been committing misdeeds against your person, committing misdeeds against your person.
Do not allow your cogitation to be perturbed by this, baby
do not allow your cogitation to be perturbed by this
For I am in this location, in this location, in this location where we mutually dwell.

You are the most pleasingly attractive object which has ever appeared in the field of my vision.
I am tremendously fond of your callipygous assets which can be likened to vegetative growths, and have a strong desire to agitate the woody stalk on which these metaphorical growths have developed.
Lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey, lovely-dovey at a constant rate.
Proceed along with me, one for whom I feel affection, and I will demonstrate to you a period of felicitous activity.

Submission Flurry

       After letting my work build up for years, barely ever submitting anything for publication, I have quite the body of work now. I've been working at it furiously for about a week, and currently have no less than 59 pieces out in the world awaiting review, without a single simultaneous submission. I've already gotten two acceptances, but I won't say anything further about those until they're in print, because of the chickens and how I won't count them.

      It'll be up to six months before I've heard back on everything. Nothing to do now but wait (and refresh my gmail obsessively).

a Stry four b,Eacca

won,S ?pon thyme a craine wa}ss flyi. He sa ]]]prettyberries heflow down. he put h*ss ais on stump and said ]]]]]eyes u pot on a lookOut you tell me if is a preditor. So ayes said OK and he was ea???ng briees and then eyEs wer say "HAY IS PREDTOR". crAne says 4444HHH! he p%ust bak in thre eyes and seize NO PREADTOR. u bad ayeayes ssays the cvrane and puts them bek.

and then hEW aste more berries but the ice say "H]]] PREDATTOR" and the Krane goce AAAAH and put the eyhs back in aNNNt sees no monster!?!? AgAin bad eyes.

Crane wass ea ting mor parries 3y3s won s agan sailed "A PRE DATER" Butt a crain is smart he sais NO EYS I DOWNT BE LIVE EWE. but the eys say ]]]serious [Predator+++!!! and the crne sas NO. and the eyes say aaaaa predditooorrrr but thayre voice g$ts sssmaller and smlar they are being tazken by &preadortor!

tHe crane hast no ice now. he PUT in a blackberries four hiss ayes and they make the world PUrple undt compound like a BUckg so Not good. he Trais a hockel barries they ore the red once they make a whoLE ORLD LOOK REDD. so he Pust a bloo berries in eyes pockets and they were jiiiiiist wr]]]ite. now A crane has Blue ice forevear.

Morale of these dowry is you don t take out you bawdy p[ea]rts OK. A bare will eate them.

    This was written as a joke on myself for making a few typos in a conversation. I decided I would write something to demonstrate to the friend I was speaking to how amassing my sleppynig and gReamr. 

    This will not be submitted for publication, for obvious reasons, but it's just so much fun for me to reread. The story it's retelling was the most recent thing I had read, a tale from an Arctic Native American group explaining the eye color of the local cranes through a plot structure familiar to Westerners from "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". I forget which book I read it in: I thought it was Northern Tales, compiled by Howard Norman, but I can't find it in there now. 

The Literature

After making a random Star Trek episode post on a whim several years ago, I forgot I made this blog.

It'll be my blog for Literary Endeavors now. I'll post publication announcements, poems that will not be submitted to journals for one reason or another, and such like that. 

I am a writer who went Full Recluse for the last six years or so. Now I'm entering a new stage in my life, and throwing my stories and poetry out into the world to see if anything sticks to the wall.

My most notable publication credits so far include The Lovecraft Ezine, which paid me for a story/poem that had previously made it to the front page of creepypasta,com (which has since been taken over by the creepypasta wikia, but used to actually review works for merit before giving them archive status), and SubtleTea, which printed two poems that I wrote back in high school. 

I have a few other minor works that I let loose into the wilds of the internet as creepypasta. I was surprised to find dramatic readings of two of these, when I did a self-google some years later.

This is Bottle, which was published under the pseudonym mngamojemo:

This is The Prophecy of Zarah, the one printed in The Lovecraft Ezine:

I had no knowledge of these being made, or creative input into them, but it's neat that two different people decided to read aloud my work prefaced by an evil laugh.

I also have eight old poems publicly available on PoemHunter, and there are a few still readable on my old DeviantART. 

I have started a writing tumblr recently, 

 The Prophecy of Zarah was also quoted in a Wired article about The Lovecraft Ezine. (The Lovecraft Ezine is something anyone with an interest in weird tales should check out. A lot of interesting stuff, and editor Mike Davis makes regular YouTube videos with various writers about the horror and the craft).

That's all I've got to say just now. Stay tuned!