Here’s a riveting subject! Anyway, I’m taking a fiction writing class this semester, and this is the submission for our first, very simple and short assignment. The assignment was to write a scene describing a place. The place could not be a familiar place, but rather an invented place. There can be no characters. Here’s what I wrote.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of religion lately. What power it holds, and how that power is used by people to either better or worsen their lives, depending on their perspectives. Also, I’m interested in how people have historically subverted religion’s power for their own gains. I think we see this very brazenly being done today by political or militaristic leaders in many nations, especially the US, and I always marvel at how effective this tactic is, not just regarding its ability to call people to act, but also its ability to stifle rational thinking by those being called to action.
Here is a poem I wrote on this theme.
Fresh earth, neatly tilled and furrowed for growth
At Spring’s eve, expectant of seeds unsown
To bear fruit of that which Shakespeare did quoth
And dear Sir Philip Sidney’s verse intone.
Yet the season was short for common yields
And the harvest relentlessly approach’d,
But I, divided among many fields,
Lost momentum as the reaping encroach’d.
My bushels were bare, and parch’d were my lands,
My scythe dull, the once rich soil now dry.
No purchase could roots find, as life demands,
And all hope of thy seeds to bloom did die.
Yet hope: my soil little life will len’
The bloodroses of thy judgmental pen.
