Cyril Darkcloud

Belated good wishes on the feast of your birth and the warmest of hopes for this year that unfolds in reaching for notes of tomorrow with the voice of today. May the singing of life and the chords that it plays bring you happy tomorrows and joyful todays and here’s wishing you truly a very happy birthday. Happy birthday, Rhapsody.

Rhapsody, if I understand the Cirque du Soleil's style correctly, they often make use of their own peculiar language in their performances -- something that a number of fans have dubbed Cirque-ish. From what I've been able to track down online, only 3 of the songs from the Dralion performance have lyrics in a traditional language -- Ombra (Italian and French), Ballare (Italian) and Miraculam Aeternitatis (Latin). The other songs would then seem to make use of the peculiar "in-house" language of the Cirque.

Writing is a bit like bleeding, life is traced in drops and streaks of words and thoughts scratched in quiet cuts across leaves that brush against the running of one’s pen. A well-crafted piece featuring a flow of images that are simply stated and creatively joined. The final 3 lines in particular are both well-conceived and well-executed. Very nicely done, Wavechild. Good luck with your application.

For my parents ..... Thunder Dance The birds have gotten quiet like they always do when the air gets heavy and sets itself to swaying. So you just leave that basket setting right there by the steps. It just ain’t worth the bother of hanging clothes out on that line. The clouds are getting dusky on top of Bear Mountain and the thunder’s making ready to dance for us tonight. You just come up here beside me and we’ll sit here on this porch and watch that sweaty purple stretch out right across the sky and shove the busy red of sunset out of the way a while to make some space for the clouds to exhale long and slow and me to tangle my fingers in your hair and you to steal a few swallows from out of my beer. And that basket of clothes that need to be hung can just be left off to the side. Mary ..... Mary, you worry about so many things. And tonight just ain’t the time for paying attention to anything but that whispered rumbling in the throat of the sky and that breath of rain hanging warm and quiet beneath that curtain of clouds upon the mountain where the wind is keeping time to that muted drumbeat behind those purple folds where the thunder's fixing to dance for us tonight. This piece took shape in the Writers' Workshop here.

Words themselves are frail and fragile things, small before the mysteries, the dreams, the pain that beats in unspoken cadences of feeling from the wounded corners and tender places of the living heart. Speech itself is little more than stammering, a dance of stutters, in the face of that which is most real, most deep, most true about the hidden beating of the living heart and the wordless weeping of the wounded life. Clumsiness of tongue and awkwardness of pen are the price one pays to dare to speak, to sing, to write, those things whose homes lie in the deepest parts of life and whose features burn with a clarity that wounds the eye and makes stiff the speaking tongue. Tattered, there is nothing pathetic about needing to bring that which one feels into some form of expression, however incomplete that expression might be. To find one's words to be inadequate before the strength of one's feelings is no fault -- it is a sign of having something truly worth saying. Learning how to express strong feelings takes work in no small part because our strongest feelings often touch what is most important in our lives and such things need to be spoken of with care. That you care enough to seek not only to express what you feel but to find the best words to express it is the mark of one who is well on the way to becoming a strong writer. Keep writing - the words will come as will your own style of expressing them.

Mira, I’m sorry for the delay in getting this post together. My work involves moving back and forth between multiple languages and things got so busy the last couple week’s that I actually wasn’t sure at times which language I was working in – a situation which, needless to say, makes it a bit difficult to put any kind of analytical post such as this together. A Structure of Images Often when we think of the structure of a piece of writing such things as the number of syllables, patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables and the rhyme scheme are the first things we look for. In doing so it is easy to forget that a piece of writing can employ other structuring principles than these and that the strongest poetry at times may lack a discernible structure in terms of syllables, meter and rhyme and yet still be tightly put together by means of a skillful interweaving of images and thematic elements. One of the intriguing features of the piece and, in fact, the very thing which arrested my attention at the onset is the importance of the image [or better, perhaps, metaphor] of a house for the integrity of the piece. The first two lines of the piece provide a beautiful and striking complex of images which establish this metaphor at the very outset of the poem. The coupling of the tactile, the auditory and the visual elements in the initial image of oaken doors and hinges is an outstanding piece of writing. A very fine touch here is the movement from the size of the oaken doors to the relative smallness and very specific character of their hinges – that the reader’s mental eye naturally follows the sound of the creeking to focus on the hinges is a wonderful mimetic* touch. That this is followed by shifting the reader’s attention once more to the even greater size of a house is a very powerful move on the part of the writer. By the end of these two lines the coupling of deserted house and love is decisively and effectively executed. The next two lines which like the previous two lines stand as a discrete unit in terms of their spatial separation form the other lines of the poem continue to develop the metaphor of the house by declaring it not merely deserted but also haunted – a curious and effective coupling as deserted implies the lack of presence and haunting by definition implies a presence of some sort. Haunted places are generally also described as deserted, however, and that is quickly capitalized upon by the introduction of the ghosts – insubstantial forms of presence – of narrator and lover. The disturbing absence in presence and presence in absence implied in speaking of a ghost works very well here. The reader now finds himself within a house abandoned but haunted by a lingering pair of present absences that can only seek out one another without ever truly touching one another. The use of habitual to describe the darkness is a bold and interesting choice in that it on the one hand communicates a persistent state of being such as the unbroken darkness one might expect within a deserted building it also is evocative of human behavior producing by means of repeated actions a persistent aspect of character. Once again – a truly fine piece of writing. Unfortunately, however, the subsequent lines of the piece do not capitalize on this fine beginning and actually serve to undermine it. The creative use of such familiar themes as ghosts, haunted houses and deserted buildings is followed by the cliché unholy host which arrests the reader’s attention in the wrong way – linguistically it does not fit with the elegant simplicity of the previous elements of the piece; its implicit imagery of an army or mob emerges from nowhere in the piece and leads nowhere; it is, simply put, a trite expression having a dramatic sound about it but with no visual or truly dramatic substance. In place of the nuanced details of the previous lines one finds here a vague “host” described as “unholy” that acts to “drive someone away” and yet despite the apparent boldness of these words they lack the genuine and substantial visual and emotive feel of the previous lines. In fact, removing this line from the poem does not take anything away from the piece, but rather seems to strengthen the poem. Perhaps it is this loss of the thread of imagery of the first two elements of the piece that leads to the puzzling image that concludes the poem. Until this point the image of a deserted but haunted house – a building in disrepair but still intact – has been fixed in the eye of the reader. Now, however, the reader is told that this house of creaking hinges and oaken doors was merely a construction of clay that has already melted and crumbled. The images here are fine in themselves but they do not seem to work well in combination with the set of images introduced and developed in the first half of the piece. Perhaps another way of speaking of the deterioration of the building would be more effective here - the autumn rain pouring through cracks in the roof, as a rather crude example, and soaking the attic floor. The Shape of the Poem Visually there is a curious structuring at work in the piece. It begins with a single sentence divided into two lines which stands as a single defined unit and cluster of ideas and images. This is followed by a second sentence similarly divided and likewise standing as a single defined unit. This is followed by a single question, simply stated, standing apart at the center of the piece. This question is in turn followed by another pair of questions [again, grammatically the last sentence is an interrogative although it is not punctuated in this way]. The first interrogative which in a direct and simple way gives voice to the very question the reader is asking after reading the first two sentences is a fine touch. That the question itself is small and isolated adds emotional force – a fine use of the placement of text to enhance the effectiveness of an idea. Again, however, it is this very effectiveness which underscores the weakness of the following lines. The immediate follow up question – what unholy host ..... – is not nearly so strong and definite as the questions or conjectures the reader himself might naturally and readily form upon reading that very poignant, even plaintive, interrogative How did we get to this?. This isolated interrogative creates a decisive break in the piece which begs to be followed by writing that is every bit as strong as that which precedes it. In other words, any questions or images that follow upon this question need to engage the vivid images of the initial lines of the piece which are the very images the reader will spontaneously use in understanding the question itself. It is important to note that in asking How did we get to this? the “this” of that question for the reader is nothing other than what he has been told in the previous 4 lines. A Tentative Suggestion As significantly increasing the length of the work might well be too drastic a change, one possible course of action might be to completely drop weakest line of the piece - ....unholy host.... – and to work at producing a two line concluding question that focuses the emotional pain to the short question in terms of the images of the previous lines. ____________________________________ Again, Mira, I want to stress that this piece is a fine bit or writing that has potential to be even stronger. Obviously I found it to be both engaging and stimulating to have written this much and I would be very interested in seeing where you take it should you decide to revisit it. Keep writing! * Mimesis in writing can be understood as a text allowing the reader to experience the reality it is communicating. This is not so much a case of art imitating life as art allowing one to participate in an aspect of life.

Rest. Rest thou well and rest thou in freedom from the cares of this place and what sundry worries distract thee this day. Rest. Rest thou well and in the laying down of thine head close thine eyes to the sight of concerns and close thine ears to the calling of need and avail thyself of the blessing of sleep. Rest. Rest thou well and in thy resting recover thy strength and in recovering be not in a hurry in reclaiming things of busy concern, but pause thyself at least for a time to savor the repose of the sure and quiet peace that comes alongside the return of health and strength. Take your time, my friend. Rest well and don’t shortchange your getting better by fretting about unattended things. Nothing here is so important it cannot wait a few days or even longer if need be.

Mira’s poem can be found here. A quick grammatical note – The final sentence is in the interrogative form of a question and should be punctuated as such. Preliminary Observations This is a piece that really rewards the one who takes a second, and even a third or fourth, look at it. Not only is the imagery of the poem stated with an effectively simple directness, it has a vividness about it that captures the attention of the reader. The images are so strong, in fact, that it does seem to require a second look to notice the intriguing manner in which the poem is structured. The structure of the piece at first glance has an understated directness about it and to a degree this is true, but there is also a surprising complexity about the arrangement of the piece. Despite these considerable strengths, however, the poem has a couple weaknesses which, ironically, seem to result from these very strengths. The initial and concluding images, for example, while each finely executed in their own right do not work well together. Also, the triple interrogative* which concludes the piece is severely limited in its effectiveness by the middle question which is easily the weakest line in the piece. Note, however, that having weaknesses like these is not a bad problem as, rather than making this a bad piece of writing, they can help point the way to turning this good bit of writing into a much stronger poem. * As noted above, the last sentence, while not punctuated to indicate it, is grammatically structured as a question. A more specific look at these issues will follow in an additional post which will hopefully be ready tomorrow.

Absence Silently she sits and breathes and fills her lungs with quiet air and steadily, by slow degrees, respiration’s measured ease gives way to lisping memories of a voice that she no longer hears. And melodies of murmured words and sleeping notes of vanished songs keep an awkward company with the languid stillness of the trees and the rigid instability of shifting sticks within the stream. Cautiously she parts her lips and lifts her fingers to her cheek as whispered echoes of the touch of breath against her hair add quiet punctuation to the silent falling of her tears.

A striking piece which is driven by several well-developed images. While I'm not sure that the piece as it stands is as effective as it could be, this is a bit of writing with much to recommend it. I'll work on putting together some thoughts for a Critics' Corner post which should be up in a day or two. In the meantime, this is well-worth a bump to the top to give those who might have missed it the first time around a chance to take a bit of time with it.

The day draws toward its close, the warm blush of sunfall already having given way to the early darkness of an autumn night. There is a hint of winter upon the winds and the cold sharpness of the air lends a striking clarity to the echoed chorus of birthday greetings whose notes have sounded this day from the Cabaret Room. The celebration of life is a good thing. And he thinks it is good as well for such celebration to linger a bit. His eyes narrow in concentration and he exhales quietly into the night air. The movement of the wind shifts and the scattered fragments of greetings sounded throughout the day gather breath and voice once more. A pity he thinks if such greetings as these would be allowed to speak but once. Quietly at first they arrive, repeating themselves in whispers, the greetings given by those others who make this place their home to that one titled Mistress of Shadows . By degrees their voices build in strength until the air about her sounds once more with full voice the kind wishes that had been made to her this day. And within this gathered song of festal words an awkward whisper adds a greeting of its own in a tongue it has not yet fully mastered. J’espère, mon amie, j’espère que la joie soit avec toi. J’espère que la joie de ce jour soit avec toi tous les jours. J’espère, mon amie, j’espère que les jours de ta vie passent toujours avec la joie d’une vie remplie de bonté et bien estimée. Birthdays, as all celebrations do, must reach their end. But though the festal greetings grow quiet the sentiment in which they have been spoken remains. Ayshela, my fondest hopes and most honest prayers for you today and in the coming year. Happy birthday!

Loki Wyrd - I've enjoyed both reading your work here and taking a bit of time play around with how its pieces fit together. Keep writing! Feedback posted in the Critics' Corner here.

Loki Wyrd’s original piece and it’s first rewrite can both be found in the Assembly Room here. Loki Wyrd, thanks for sharing what is an intriguing piece of writing and even moreso for investing the time to revisit it with a rewrite. It is a piece well worth spending a bit more time and effort on revising and tightening as it has the potential to be a very fine bit of work. Before proceeding to a look at the work itself, a mild criticism of your request for feedback: Please include a link to the original thread when you post a request for feedback here – it makes life a lot easier for those of us with limited time and who tend to disappear for months at a clip You might also want to consider starting a thread for this piece in the Writer’s Workshop if you’re planning to do any additional rewrites as that area of the Pen lends itself well to the piecemeal work that rewriting can often involve. With regard to the work itself, it seems best not to dwell on stylistic or grammatical points for the time being as I believe the real potential of the piece and its present problem spots lie elsewhere. For the moment at least I would identify them as follows: A question of quantity and quality – you are trying to do an awful lot in a very small narrative space. This is not a bad thing in itself by any means. It is, however, a very difficult thing to realize successfully. Quantitatively speaking, you have the philosophical question of the relationship between memory and identity; the character and emotions of the narrator; the recollected backstory of the narrator’s friendship. That you succeed in communicating them in the few paragraphs you employ is a genuine strength. However, this communication is not as qualitatively sound as it might be – in other words the pieces do not quite fit together nor are they individually as sharp as they need to be in order for the piece as a whole to be effective. You might want to try to identify how these elements need to work together and what each element needs to contribute to the overall piece of writing and determine how best to sharpen that contribution. The Narrator – Simply put, the narrator is too weak a presence in the story. This may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but I believe a deeper look will bear this out. The narrator is a strong presence early in the piece – vividly described and engaging. However, he disappears in his reminiscing in a way that does nothing to further the theme of memory which is part of the story. Granted the reader still hears his voice but there is no emotional or personal substance behind the memories – they read more like disaffected accounts of events or, worse, as mere nostalgia – and not the recollections of a life that has just been lost. From, his going back to bed through his reminiscences to his passionless reflection at the end – and also at the beginning in the rewritten version – the narrator seems to sleepwalk through the tale. No grief is shown over the death of his friend and no real joy or loss seems to be present in his remembering. Was this friend really important? The narrator is most vivid standing on the stairs in his boxer shorts and the piece needs something equally strong at its conclusion as well as perhaps a reference or two to what the narrator is doing or feeling in his memories to punctuate the reminiscing. Memory and Identity – This is a very fine idea to work with and I applaud you for even attempting it, but it needs a bit of care to accomplish well. One needs to see the question as one with genuine emotional and personal weight to the narrator for it to be effective here – what in his life gives rise to these questions? What does the uncertainty it produces feel like? What, if anything, does it have to do with this set of memories? Does he perhaps have questions about the details he is remembering or is he unsure if the feelings he has now are actually the feelings of his memories? Questions of identity are deeply personal and doubts of one’s identity can be real crisis points in someone’s life. What the reader receives, however, is a few summary statements and some very heavy ideas given rather superficial wording and – effectively framing the narrator as one who had not really devoted any significant time or energy into engaging them. The concluding section is weak both in terms of characterization and in terms of philosophic depth. You have some very good ideas in play and they are well worth some serious attention both as ideas and as issues that the narrator is attempting to deal with. The Reminiscing – Honestly, I think this is best handled in light of the issues raised above as the memories themselves – and the act of remembering - seem to serve as the vehicle for making the connection between the person of the narrator and the theme of the interrelation between memory and identity. Loki Wyrd, again, thank you for a stimulating read. As I’ve said above this piece has some very real potential about it – you’ve put together a fine beginning and I'm very interesting in seeing where you might take it. Hopefully you’ll find these comments to be helpful in revisiting your work. Keep writing! Cyril

ooc: It’s been a while ....... ic: There is a movement in a place where the air had fallen still near the balcony where this chamber’s windows open to the free and living air. And in the wake of this movement a small owl glides, a handwritten note held within its talons. Silently it enters following the lingering tones of well-spoken words until, finding the speaker, it releases the note and turns once more in silent flight back into the newly moving air...... The shifting of the wind has for too long been familiar and its combinations, limitless I’m told, of speed and scent and temperature and moisture under skies of varied clouds and intermittent sun, are infinite only in predictability. Underneath my breathing is a whispered aching in my lungs to exhale this stagnant freshness and to breathe the air of foreign skies. A well-written piece, Ayshela, with some very fine structural nuance. The use of the image of the table at the beginning and end of the piece in tandem with the variation between the actions of writing and conversation is a particularly fine touch. You might want to revisit the piece at some point to clean up a couple linguistic and grammatical features – mundane drudgery, for example, is redundant to no advantage and the inverted sentence structure of the 3rd line in stanza 3 is both distracting and seems to unnecessarily weaken what is an otherwise strong flow to your words. These are very minor things, however, in comparison to how strong a piece this is. Again, nicely done! Keep writing.

An engaging read, Appy. I've posted some thoughts on this poem in the Critics' Corner.

Appy’s original poem can be found here. Appy this is a piece with some very nice touches and a lot of promise. On the off-chance these remarks might be helpful as you revisit this poem, here are a few things I’ve noted about the piece: 1. The basic structure you choose to work with has much to commend it, and, in fact, really enhances the forward movement of the piece. Specifically your two short sentences which provide a forceful punctuation to the piece are worth noting. These simple declarative sentences stand apart by themselves after each long unit and are effective in their blunt directness. The never and always of these two lines effect a sudden broadening of the reader’s perspective beyond the narrow moments of the scene you portray in the longer passages and grant that portrait the enduring character of a scene that has been and will continue to be repeated – as if that is simply the way things work. The contrast between the words never and always is also nicely done. What is effectively striking about your use of contrast here is that the contrast is on the grammatical level as the fact that consolation never arrives is not very different from the fountain always ready to burst at the poem’s conclusion. 2. Building on these parallels, the ending of the first stanza is mirrored by the beginning of the second. This parallel is built upon the absence of felt warmth and the arrival of cold. Just as with the two short lines, grammatical contrast between warmth and cold is used to highlight the similarity between warmth that is not felt and cold that is felt. This is a beautiful touch. One quibble here: The use of warmfelt has 2 problems. The first being that it is not a word in English and the second that it is used as an adjective. Balancing the strong noun cold with the equally strong and direct noun warmth would be more effective. 3. Of the two large stanzas, the first is far and away the stronger. This is in no small measure due to both the overall coherence of its imagery and the very striking image of choked out sobs muffled by a pillow. You have a number of interesting ideas in the second long stanza but they seem to trip over one another rather express themselves clearly. Here contrast works against you as the reader who has just had the striking portrait of a sobbing person before his eyes now reads words that imply that crying may not be happening at all – want to cry usually does not have the connotation of wanting to continue to cry. The shift from the moisture of tears to an arid dryness is abrupt and seems to be missing a bit of clarity. A quibble over word usage: I found myself stopping at the words desert of apathy and thinking that something better could be used here. You may want to consider doing something with your fountain imagery – a dried well, perhaps – instead of employing desert language here, especially as desert imagery in descriptions like this is very common. 4. The conclusion of the second long stanza, however, has a marvelous image within it. The sudden contrast between shallowness and a fountain bursting upward from the depths is both well-placed and well-conceived. This could be an interesting lens to look through with regard to reworking the piece. Needless to say, I’ve enjoyed both reading this poem and playing with how it’s been put together. Thank you for an enjoyable and stimulating read. I’m looking forward to seeing where you take it. Keep writing!

This is a fine piece of writing and, if I might be so bold as to say so, marks a real step forward in your work, Falcon. I'll echo Ayshela's comment about the 2nd line of stanza 3 and go a bit further in that I find the entire sequence from that line to the conclusion of the piece to be quite well arranged. Even the use of 'dreading' which can be very trite if poorly handled is well-placed here - that is no small achievement. The use of the interrogative sentence form in the 3rd stanza is very well-chosen and provides an effective counterpoint to the lines of the concluding stanza which are strong in their understated and simple directness. You might want to take another look at the 2nd stanza, however. Foreboding darkness is a rather tired expression and it is a cliche that weakens the rest of the work. The piece, in fact, seems to work just as well if not better without these lines. You have the makings of a powerful poem here and writing with such promise is well worth a second look and a bit of polishing. Well done.

Birthday greetings and wishes times three for all that is pleasant to arrive and move forward with advancement of age. One festal of birth is cause enough for rejoicing with presents and cake. That three such events be contained in the space and the time of but one single day is abundant good reason for rejoicing to increase to excessive good cheer and multiplied mirth such that tables are laden to the point of collapsing and the halls of the keep are filled unto bursting with festival joy for the movement of life outward from birth. Thus my wishes are three-fold on this most curious day of multiplied festals that no simple good measure of celebration be yours, but rather your birthdays be filled near to bursting with good things not once but in abundance times three. Happy birthday! Here’s wishing each of you, and all of you, all the best today and in the coming year.

Moving upward from burning emptiness through moisture running along a cheek one haltingly arrives at a tale of flooding laughter in its violent and sudden seizure of the ductworks of the eyes. An intriguing piece of writing. The use of the fluid imagery generally associated with tears in the description of laughter is striking, as is the movement from images of moisture to the concluding and contrasting image of fire. The piece is a bit rough around the edges and is well-worth a second look with an eye to tightening it up – an understandable need given how many strong elements it contains. Nicely done, Jade! Keep writing.

Feedback posted in Critics' Corner.

The original piece can be found here I’ll echo the comments others have made about the quality and vigor of this short piece. However, I’ll also diverge from those viewpoints a bit in that I don’t think it is quite as effective as it could be, in no small measure due to the weakness of the final line. Still, however, this is a weakness only because the rest of the work is so strong. As such, it is well-worth a few moments to look at its strong points: 1. The imperative structure of the first sentence is a fine touch and the source of much of the energy of the work as the imperative tone is sustained throughout. The implied ‘You’ of the imperative is thus consistently placed before the reader. It creates a sense of identification between the reader and the unseen and unnamed object of these statements – the ‘small one’ of the first line. One natural way of reading this work is as a conversation between a parent and a child – although this is something the reader has to decide for himself as the poem does not directly state this. This ambiguity works very well as the natural way of imagining a conversation between a parent and child is to picture it in terms of physical and emotional immediacy – something the poem challenges at its conclusion. 2. The imperative followed by the naming of the addressee as ‘small one’ in the first line is neatly balanced and strengthened by the double imperatives of the second stanza: Run swiftly – be careful! Don’t stumble; don’t fall. This doubling provides a sharpening of the tone of insistent concern sounded in stanza 1, the brief verb-dominated clauses hammering home this point. 3. The overall thrust of many of the mages in the poem is that of external actions – running, stumbling, etc. This makes the 2 lines which conclude the first stanza all the more effective for the hiding of the heart bespeaks a concern for more than external harm. Still, the strong language of the other lines mutes this at first until the conclusion of the piece at which point these earlier words take on a greater importance – this is a truly fine touch. The inversion of normal word order in the final line of stanza one, something that usually signals weak writing, works very well with both the rhythm and the style of the piece, evoking the manner in which children’s books are often written. Again, a fine touch. 4. The real payoff of the piece, however, is in its concluding lines as these suddenly reshape everything that has been read previously. As such, these lines need to be at least as effective, if not moreso, than the others. The statement of motive in line 3 of stanza 2 is a fine and well-placed echo and expansion upon the final line of the first stanza, again focusing attention upon the inward state of the addressee rather than on external actions. The sudden statement of absence immediately destroys the intimate scene the poem encourages the reader to construct. It also raises a number of powerful and provocative questions: Just who has been speaking? Is this a wounded adult reflecting bitterly on being wounded while vulnerable? Is this one person speaking to another about the loneliness of the world? Is this a concerned person speaking to himself about a loved one at a distance whom he is afraid is about to be hurt? Once more ambiguity such as this which puts the reader to work is a genuine strength and the plurality of possibilities here gives rise to an interpretive richness many longer pieces of writing lack. ___________________________________ All of that being said, for this reader, at least, the final lines are a bit weak. That weakness is two-fold. Its words are simply not as strong as the bold action verbs of the previous lines and it loses the tightly constructed rhythm of the piece in a way that distracts the reader. Normally I am a big proponent of broken rhythm at a decisive point in a piece. Here, however, the loss of the rhythmic strength of the poem seems to be neither intentional - the rhyme scheme is preserved will the rhyming ‘all’ of the final word – nor well-executed. Similarly the italicized ‘know’ of the 3rd line of stanza 2 is an unnecessary and ineffective way of emphasizing an idea – if the words and ideas are suitably strong, their author should be able to avoid tricks of typesetting to highlight their importance. One way of reworking the final lines may be to carry over into them the doubling effect of the imperatives immediately prior to them: This way you won’t know there’s no one there for you no one at all. Note: Small changes can have a large effect on a work so short as this and so I propose the above remarks cautiously and only give an example of a suggested revision as an attempt to enhance the piece and not to re-write in my own style. Ayshela, this is a wonderful and stimulating read! Thanks for sharing it.

From his accustomed place on the balcony he smiles at the ever-growing assortment of cakes and gifts. His eyes narrow slightly and the air around him shifts in its movement. As the breeze moves into he room he releases the handwritten note he has penned for this occasion. A few moments later the scrap of paper drops onto the snout of the Elder of Initiates. Almost draconic and spinning the wheels of thinking and scheming and seeking out deals wherever potential for profit and treasure wherever a chance for geld and for pleasure are present (or even past for good measure) with glint in the eye and swiftness of claw the opportune moment is seized by throat and made to empty its pockets into the coffers the chests and the boxes that fund other projects undertaken for even more glorious profit. Or at least that’s the theory of how things should end when the scheming and the plotting and the grasping for geld are done by a master of things such as these. But at least on one’s birthday even theories are eased so that scheming and plotting, even grasping, might stop to rest for a moment when all that one needs is to simply look up. A soft hooting sounds above the Almost-Dragon and Whisper drops a small, but heavy package suddenly downward upon the Elder of Initiates and flies quietly away. Within the box is a small geld likeness of the esteemed Elder – suitable for either melting down or displaying on one’s mantle. Here’s wishing you a very happy birthday, Wyvern

Alone. The unshared press of knees against floor buttressing awkward exhalations that grope for words. Tonight. Folding and opening my restless hands keep time with eyes unable to focus behind closed lids. Silent. Unfinished thoughts rise unbidden to sing myself to someplace else when I would stay with you. Here. Alone. Silent. Tonight. A fine piece of writing, Gwai, and one well-worth a belated comment and bump up to the top. My apologies for not having gotten this response posted in a more timely fashion.

Thank you all for the birthday greetings, they were a rather pleasant surprise to find here. I'm presently out of town for meetings -- I've been on the road most of the last 2 months -- and only just managed a bit of free time to stop by and catch up a bit on recent postings. Thanks again for the warm wishes, and with a bit of luck my schedule will lighten up a enough after the coming weekend that I can manage to post a few overdue bits of feedback.

The air around the kender moves slightly and a breeze gathers near his ears,. Within the movement of the breeze are the syllabic cadences of the quiet, measured speaking of a hastily composed welcome back: It is the season of returns, or so it would seem, and so we meet, once more my friend, old members both yet new arrivals here within this place of words and posts with the fading of summer into snow. ic: It is good to see you again, Tassle, however briefly! I hope all is going well with you.