Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 12

TRUMP v The Huddled Masses

A senior Trump advisor, Stephen Miller, sparked a furor last week when he dismissed the famous poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty. In response, The Guardian asked 21 poets: what type of poem would Trump like to see at the statue?

So I thought I’d have a go myself and here’s my tuppence worth.

THE SENTINEL

Not like the mighty woman with a torch,

who stood like a beacon of liberty and freedom,

now stands a craven, jackbooted coward,

to welcome the stuffed pursed,

pale of skin and supplicant.

Not for us, the sombre Sentinel cries,

the homeless and their vacant eyes,

nor those who are hounded by repression,

the teeming mass of shadowed complexion,

only influence, degrees and currency are welcome.

GLARING

 

He was wearing those reflector shades.

You know the kind, all macho Top Gun style that make you feel as though your life has become a vast, bottomless cavern of vacuous nothingness.

He smiles, relishing my annoyance.

I walk away.

He phones, asking why?

My reflection was glaring, I say.

Happiness – six word story.

Happiness is so overrated, he sighed.[image error]

SPICY

 

He knows someone’s out to get him. The notes say so, planted everywhere, in his suit pocket, his desk and in the postbox. His ex-wife’s scared so he promises to drop by for lunch.

‘How’s your food?’ she asks.

‘Spicy,’ he says, mopping.

She smiles, wickedly.

Too late, he knows.

CAROUSEL

 

Jacob hadn’t seen his brother since they got off the plane. Joseph hated flying and always got airsick. He spent the entire two hour flight with his head in a bag like a horse with a bag of oats. Then the carousel began and Joseph appeared, his head, at least.

 

six words

just thought of something, no, gone.

AMBLE

 

He liked to walk fast and his gait, like himself, was long and gangly. He moved fast and could never bear to dawdle so much so he preferred to make arrangements to rendezvous for fear his awkward impatience might cause fault or disturbance. He was resigned and could never amble.

5 Strategies for Becoming a Better Writer That Actually Work

Nico Ryan

An interesting article by Nico Ryan for The Writing Cooperative

Unfortunately, much of the existing advice for improving one’s writing is either far too generic (e.g., “Write with your heart!”), too simplistic (e.g., “You need to write everyday!”), and/or flat-out mistaken (e.g., “Never write in the first person!”)

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William Gibson Has a Theory About Our Cultural Obsession With Dystopias

By Abraham Riesman Vulture (devouring culture)

All week long, Vulture is exploring how dystopias have been imagined in popular culture.

Few authors have crafted more vividly realized future worlds than William Gibson. In timeless classics such as Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, he dreamed up environments filled with fantastical technology and innovative social arrangements. Those works are often held as seminal works of modern dystopian literature, but in his latest outing, Gibson explores the past, too.

Palantir: the ‘special ops’ tech giant that wields as much real-world power as Google

Peter Thiel’s CIA-backed, data-mining firm honed its ‘crime predicting’ techniques against insurgents in Iraq. The same methods are now being sold to police departments. Will they inflame already tense relations between the public and the police?

Jacques Peretti The Guardian