Author: DavidNaumann

Categories
Poetry

Stars

Ripples of water, reflections of the night sky

and inflections of why, words came but all authors’

pens dried and faltered, moments of the divine

lost to the sacrilege of time, senses came but altered.

Darkness came and surrounded,

confusion came and confounded,

as deep as valleys, as tall as mountains,

heartbeat in chest pounded.

Little lamp lead the way, the end is not today.

Tomorrow will come and stay, so do what I must to stay

a lit by this gentle flame, as all of will not be in vane.

I said aloud in a moment of panic to stay sane.

But time came and the light did not falter,

faith grew in this little, little light of mine,

and it grew to shine without any signs of alter.

Hope flickered as the flame stayed a lit on the twine.

Alone and afraid, frayed rope dwindling

burning as vibrant kindling, however closer did it fade

luckily in the darkness laid, countless stars swindling.

My heart rejoices as I have made it to the rekindling.

No longer alone, no longer afraid

pulse dropped, pounding laid to rest

the stars came and a lit my flame

I need to thank them all by name.

As I laid staring up at the stars,

feeling so small and alone on Mars,

I forgot all of the people who have came

who shared their flame and allowed me to share my flame.

I hope I can keep being your flame,

and a piece of yours mine.

Days will be dark and dreary,

but glow on and glow forth into the night.

Categories
Poetry

Blackbird

Blackbird sitting on the windowsill,

out of the cage and still not knowing.

Trying to think of flying or staying still,

as not wanting to stay but no point in flying.

Blackbird looking out to the ground outside,

seeing other birds flying up, up and away.

Dreaming of a chance to break free and soar in the skies,

being grounded by the thought that today is not the day.

Today is not the day to fly,

fly with the pain of everything associated with departure.

Today is not the day to say goodbye,

goodbye to all the bad and the good whichever is harder.

Blackbird looking out the window and just hopin’,

without realizing the window was open.

Categories
Short Stories

Universal Love Song

The entirety of nothing laid dormant for an indeterminable amount of nonexistent time. A paradoxical time this was as nothing was occurring but everything was unfolding. Every law and axiom we hold near and dear today were all broken and set forth in an imperceptible amount of space time. From nothing, came something like a nonexistent seed growing into a beautiful budding flower. The flower blooms and explodes out into a display of infinite colors bringing forth the very fundamental building blocks of what would become essential to what we know to be necessary to life today. In this explosion an infinite capacity of energy brought forward, yet an infinite capacity of energy reserved.

Quarks were born, quarks matured and bonded together to create atoms, atoms matured together to create matter. Everything so seemingly paradoxical, seemingly irrational but yet the most natural and most rational occurrence since what came forth from nothingness. Atoms drifting through space colliding and collecting to create stars if so desired and others to create large balls of fire to cool and turn to what will eventually turn into planets.

Many stars and planets collide in a death march trying to be balanced and survive. An infinite, finite amount of these collisions occur until from this constant chaos comes a delicate balance. Many of these collisions’ outcome resulted in destitute and inhabitable cocktails of matter and gas. In a few, uncountable amount of these cocktails brought forth the capacity that was all but guaranteed from the paradoxical night that came before the dawn and life that existed all along was brought forth into matter. Life in these new instances of matter struggled and fought to grow. In many cases life grew but all but dwindled in the wrong environments. A subset of that subset however was able to handle the adversity brought forth and fought for its right to exist even through the infinitely improbable odds that confronted it.

Life grew. And from there brought forth a variety of things. Many of them beautiful and unique. But nothing in comparison to me and you.

We came from nothing. Yet we have fought together through infinite amount of days and nights even before days and nights existed to become what we are today. But yet even when we drew so close to not existing the odds were stacked in our favor from before the existence of everything and the existence of nothing.

The imperceptible thoughts of the universe sung out with beautiful bliss in a song for every next moment of existence. A love song for every particle and every molecule as they swindled together in countless dances. A love song for the relationship of planets and stars as they pensively intertwined and cautiously fell in love for each other. A love song for life so that it go forth and multiply. A love song that will continue into the bleakest of nights and dreariest of dawns from now and forever on even after we are all but gone.

Categories
Poetry

Shadows

Shadows span the entirety of Shikoku line.

Shadows of men and women,

hustling to and from work to punch their final card.

Shadows of children and grandparents,

ending both days beginning and days well spent.

Shadows of lovers and loved ones,

holding each other tightly at the world’s end.

Each shadow told a story,

of the day when the sun set in the east.

Each shadow was cast long and the thin,

as the sun went down over the sea side.

Each shadow never faded,

even as the day grew so shaded.

Some say at night you can watch the shadows,

as they dance and move with delight.

Each shadow goes and lives its own life,

waiting for their stop to come,

and for the train to take them away.

Categories
Short Stories

Bottomless

Even though I captain this ship, I feel powerless against the infinite sea around us. And the sea makes sure to remind me of this too. Just last week I saw my second mate get swallowed whole by the mouth of the sea. I just remember yelling at him before he went out to try to save the bosun.

“All in naught, the sea has him now!” is what I said. True as this was, the siren call was already luring my second mate out. He just opened the main hatch and faced the storm. I remember his blank face as he received the news and the seemingly destruction of his soul. The trance-like steps he took past the rest of the crew huddled together and out he went.

This bright young man was no fool. So it confounds me on why he left so quickly after his friend. He has been on plenty of shipping routes to know how cruel the sea can be. How many shipping routes I’ve been on to know not to go after him. Instinct took over as I saw his shadow slip out of the door.

I remember running topside as he made his way to the bow of the ship. For a brief second I lost sight of his figure as he went deeper into the endless rain. Soon, I saw his outline looking over the sea and heard his distinct yelling that seemed to be barely strong enough to win the fight over the roar of the sea. I didn’t think and I just ran to him. One step at a time until I felt nearly weightless as I traveled towards him.

When I reached the second mate, I heard what he was screaming more vividly and more distinctly:

“JOHN, JOHN, JOHN…” He screamed endlessly at the sea in hopes to get his friend back. It took a second for him to see I was there for him. His grim look and despairing eyes fell upon me. I almost think that he knew his end was drawing near.

“I loved him.” He said. I gripped him hard to pull him in further on to the ship. A crack of lightning lit the darkened sea to reveal the hand of destruction coming for us. I pulled him but the second mate was frozen in place. I yelled at him, I screamed with all my might but he didn’t move. I heard the rush of water getting nearer and nearer.

“I loved him.” The second mate said again. It was then I knew that he made his mind up and no amount of tugging will make him move. So I ran, ran fast and hard further on to the deck. The sound of rushing water grew louder and louder, screaming for blood.

A shock wave like no other I felt made its way across the boat and was followed by a sound akin to a bomb going off inches from you. The water fell upon us first as rain, then as hail, then as an avalanche. No matter where I was to run, the sea would’ve engulfed me. At first naively I tried to fight the sea with all my might but sensing the inevitability of the sea, I just let it take me. The sea dragged me across the deck of the ship hitting me against every surface it could find. First it swung me against all of the containers on the deck then swept me over to hit the rigging of the ship. I’ve never felt a power so boundless upon me like this before. The swings kept getting harder and harder as my corpse gained more and more momentum. A sudden crack popped and before I had a chance to wonder what the sound was everything went black.

Next thing I know I was grabbed against the railing of the ship mere inches from the cold cliff that divides us and death itself. I was dragged and dragged through the water until the water just stopped. I began going through what I can only describe as the inverse of drowning, the water that made its way into my body was forced up and out like a spirit exiting my body. This kept going until I felt empty and hollow inside.

Through all of those traumatic events, I’m not haunted by the sea in my memories. I’m haunted by those bottomless eyes, deeper than any ocean or sea can be.

Categories
Short Stories

Bygone

After the dust had settled, people began to rebuild. Rebuild what came before and what was to come after. The past wasn’t left to decay and stagnate where it was but instead was brought forward to future generations in words of warning of what not to become.

After the loss of human interference above ground and the near hibernation of humans underground. Nature too began rebuild, rebuild in ways that centuries of human’s haven’t seen before. There was growing of trees and budding of roses where once laid dust and sand. In the concrete came first the weeds, then the weeds gave way to grass and fields of dandelions.

After the factories stopped, the sea waters calmed and cleared. Animals who which many thought were extinct that laid dormant at the bottom of the ocean’s were able to return their normal stations. The fish returning to the rivers and lakes were able to be eaten again by the omnivores that were starving in the years following the end. For the animals at least, life seemed to normalize as people were buried beneath Earth’s rotten crust.

When people returned to the surface and rebuilding went well (as it eventually does). People had a newly gained respect for the sensitive balance that must be maintained on Earth in order to survive. People worked together to create preventive methods of their waters getting polluted. People worked on harnessing alternative energies than the one’s polluting their air. People worked together on finding ways to have more reusable materials in their everyday life.

In one of the more motivational speeches after the apocalypse by one of the more notable politicians to survive through the end of the world, they said the following:

“We cannot make the same mistakes over and over again. We must stand as one and think of problem’s before they occur instead of waiting for the problems to be on the future generation’s shoulders. The second time will be the last time.”

The second time was not the last time.

Categories
Poetry

Certainty

Life is uncertain

Time come and goes,
where no one knows.
It goes as surely as wind blows,
and rivers flow.

We can grasp tightly,
Or we can just let go.
The day will always end nightly,
as the moon sets real low.

Uncertainty is the name of game,
so don’t try to make your life tame.
Because as the end of the day it’ll drive you insane,
so don’t try to stick within your lane.

Love your life,
even through hardship and strife.
As you don’t get another one,
so honor your own and respect other’s one
Categories
Short Stories

Chicken Soup for the Galactic Soul – Intro

If we are going to start from anywhere, might as well start from the beginning (well the very beginning in our case to make this story make sense). While we were correct in many things about the beginning of the universe (nothing, explosion, something) , there were many things that we were just a tad off about. We supposed that from this chaos we came to be but in all reality the chaos wasn’t that chaotic at all. I don’t think we should call it chaos really, I suppose we could call it a very deterministic game of craps. The world we live in was already predetermined even before the big bang (along with the all of the other worlds that exist) because we gave the universe an infinite amount of time and space to play its game of craps which from every known statistics textbook that eventually some event would happen even if there was a very, very low percent chance of it happening (given the odds of it happening aren’t equal to 0 which they never really are). But from those very predetermined rolls of the dice gave us our own paradise (or hell which ever you choose at the time). But that is less important from the second thing we got wrong.

Remember how I said that chaos wasn’t very chaotic, well I should expand on that. Actually the number of times that sentient intelligence started from where we are now in time space to the beginning of the big bang is around an infinite amount of times (give or take 2 for error). Unfortunately, the recorded data from these dimensions are all but slim. Fortunately, we suppose or our favorite theory around the office is that somewhere deep, deep in the depths of space was that an intergalactic mail man either through misfortune, careless or perhaps he was a little tipsy mailed a full hull to the wrong galactic address. We suppose this from the sloppy handwriting (or what we assume to be handwriting because we don’t really know if they have hands or not) on the hull of cards and letters. Now you are probably going to say:

“Hey, narrator man. Isn’t the probability of something like that happening basically 0? And how would you even go about decoding messages like that from a different universe, not like they are in in discernible characters right?”

Firstly, I would say while the probability of this happening in the first place is not quite 0 which in the history of spacetime is proven to be actually quite possible. Secondly, don’t call me narrator man, give me some respect I have a doctorate in astronomy I’ll let you know. Thirdly, no why would some creature from some different galaxy write in a modern day language that is just stupid. However, the language written in was not too far off from a modern day language. Luckily the writers of these letters weren’t the most stellar of writers and managed to use words in the same frequency as someone whose read at least 3 books in their life would. So through the magic of some machine learning algorithms and neural networks (lots of code or lots of programming to the uninformed) we managed to decode/parse some text into readable material while other texts were not treated so kindly and look like what would happen if you threw Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol into the garbage disposal. While we are mostly skeptical about those findings, a few of us suppose or guess it could be possible that all of those letters were from children to there equivalent of Santa Claus (but that is very, very unofficial as of the moment).

But from these discoveries we decided to compile some of the more readable and parse-able texts into a collection so the public would enjoy. So hopefully you do and I’ll see you at the end for the recap and conclusion!

Categories
Poetry

Pocketful of Posies

To play and have a wonderful day.

Childhood came and went away.

Days of hurt, days of wonderful play.

 

Like we all stand on a merry go round,

going round and round,

Still searching for what we already found.

No secret paradise away from our searching pair of eyes.

 

Through our rose tinted glasses,

we looked and searched through the masses.

Forward we looked, backwards we looked.

But what happened upon us:

 

Today.

Not yesterday, not tomorrow.

Not looking for a past or future to borrow.

Yet in this there is no sorrow.

 

Your past self self believes in you,

your future self awaits you.

 

Categories
Poetry

Revolution

At a time of peace we forget,

forget time and time again.

Of how hard it was to obtain,

this fragile little piece of time.

The time after guns were honed,

after the knives were sharpened.

To inflict the most damage possible,

to fight through every obstacle.

Sons and daughters were separated from mothers.

Brothers killed brothers, sisters killed sisters.

Countrymen and countrywomen were torn from their countries.

Citizens killed foreigners, foreigners killed citizens.

We forget, we forget, we forget.

We don’t just stand where those fighters were,

we stand above them, on the shoulders of giants.

Those who fought against tyranny,

those who fought against oppression,

those who fought against darkness.

As a world it never seemed like we got to grieve.

Not for those who were lost on our own sides,

but in the chance of sounding young and naive

to grieve together for those who fought for us.

Grandparents fought for their grandchildren.

Parents fought for their children.

Children fought for those who couldn’t protect themselves.

Whether they know it or not they fought for us.