If I Wrote a Poem

If I wrote a poem for every heart I touched,
There's no way the poem would past the second line.
But that's merely the bitch in me talking,
For in reality, I've probably saved many a soul.
And in that line, lies an arrogant asshole,
But somewhere in between I could find
The real me, the true me, the me I need to be
For me to finally see everything I ever wanted to see.

If I wrote a poem for every fight I won,
Then the poem would be of decent length
But if I wrote a poem for every fight that mattered,
The poem would be of a similar length.
If I wrote a poem for every fight I won
With the fight being that of one that mattered,
Then there's a guarantee
That the poem would not exist.

If I wrote a poem for the pain,
Then the poem would last for years.
Floods would start via the rain
From the overflow of tears.
That sick feeling in my stomach
Would have to get a line
As I describe in detail
The emotion of every time.

If I wrote a poem for the love,
Then the poem would last for years.
Water would drop from above
From the overflow of tears.

That sick feeling in my stomach
Would have to get a line
As I describe in detail
The emotion of every time.

Journeys Are Stupid

"Journeys are stupid,"
You try to reason to yourself,
but the fact is,
You love the journey.
You just hate the ends.
Either the satisfaction is short lived,
Or the result is failure.

And you would think you'd learn,
But you never do
Because you go on another journey,
and either get the short-term win,
Or the long-term loss.
And then you come to the conclusion...

"Journeys are stupid,"
You totally agree.
But not totally at all,
because the memories made,
the souls touched,
the new things learned,
They're all worth something,
something greater than the result,
And everything else
you're conscious of.

But that's the problem.
You don't live in the ideal,
You don't live in the subconscious,
You don't live in the hidden realms
Of true knowledge and understanding.
You live in the here.
You live in the now.
You live in the reality.
You live in a life
That consistently kicks you ass.
So you look back at everything
With the most pessimistic outlook
And you think to yourself

"Journeys are stupid."
because you have nothing to show for it.
Nothing of value.
Nothing of worth.
Everything that you ever gained from anything?
Intangible, you can only tell,
but you can't show.
You can't demonstrate.
All of the lessons,
Internal, spiritual, emotional.

You can become as wise as you want to be,
Spread you advice to others,
urging the people to not make
The same mistakes you made,
And somehow, that feels good
To be able to share something
That can keep other people out of harm's way,
But the problem with all of that is,
As much as you block harm from others,
You accept harm for yourself,
And then you realize...

"Journeys are stupid."
You keep coming back to this statement.
At this point, you're convinced
That you have obtained a truth from this statement.
From the broken heart,
To the lost cash,
From the failed attempts,
To the empty fulfillment,
Everything comes back to that statement,
A statement that you hold true at this point.

And there is nothing that could tell you otherwise.
No matter what friend tells you it's gonna be alright,
No matter who appreciated your advice and benefited from it,
No matter if it put you at the right place to avoid a worse fate,
No matter when everything finally comes together for you,
No matter the reasons that you had to go through all of that first place,
The statement of the day holds true.
But you look back anyway.
One more time.
Just to see.
And you know what?

"Journeys are stupid."

Song o the Day

The song of the day is Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N' Roses.

This is the first song I ever played in a Guitar Hero game. And I fell in love with it immediately... without ever catching the name of the song.

Years later, a co-worker blesses me with the name of this song as it played on the restaurant radio.

And I feel reunited with a lost love.

Now if only I had a legit mp3 player to play it on... (mine has a broken volume button, so I can't increase volume... booooo....)

Runner up:

Don't judge me for going from Guns N' Roses to Jay-Z.

I can hear what I wanna hear, post what I wanna post,
Steer where I wanna steer and coast where I wanna coast.

'Cause it's alright.

NaNoWriMo Reflections

So NaNoWriMo's over, and I finished with a solid 50,072 words at 8:30 pm on Wednesday, November 30th. Awesome.

This was my second attempt at NaNoWriMo. I believe that I mentioned somewhere that I failed miserably last year, but this year was amazingly successful. It was an amazing experience. That said, it's totally possible that I will never do NaNoWriMo again.

You see, I think the concept of NaNoWriMo is to get people to write when they can't write or won't write or something like that. Generally, I don't have much of a problem writing, so long as I'm interested in the material that I'm writing about. The Marko Man series has seen hundreds of stories, thousands of chapters, and billions of words because it's subject matter that I care about. And then there were non-Marko Man stories that were started and never finished because somewhere along the line, I stopped giving a shit. And ultimately, I have no regrets when it comes to not finishing a story that I didn't care for because if I didn't give much of a shit to write it, then readers probably would have given less of a shit to read it. Hell, half of the time, the things that I do write and put care into it doesn't get read because it's too long or what have you. So... yeah.

Still, this was a great experience. It is something that I should do again, provided I have the inspiration in terms of the story to write, but just like with this piece, in no way will I be limiting the story to just 50,000 words (unless that's the best length for it). The worst part, though, had to have been the end. Within the last 5 days, I had 25,000 words to go, and man did I have to pump out some shit to reach the goal. I was pretty much coercing myself to write more than I naturally wanted to do, which is something else. I think during the third day of that five day rush, my brain felt like it was sizzling after a given writing session. Pushing 2000 or 3000 words furiously, and then being done with it like, "whoa... crazy."

But then again, the best part of this thing was the last 5 days as well, specifically that Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday that I had off... I had pretty much isolated myself from the rest of the world to sit down in front of my computer and create my own world (not to mention have breaks from this created world that I was working on and playing video games and watching awesome videos). When I came back to the real world that Wednesday for work, I felt sooo refreshed. Even when I went to work yesterday, I was feeling much, much better than usual.

So yeah... NaNoWriMo? Great experience, like I already said. I may or may not do it again... me not doing it ever again in life wouldn't exactly ruin my life, but I have to say, NaNoWriMo reminded me of how much I love writing fiction, regardless of whether my stories count as "literature" or not. Sure, I've been writing a lot. Between this blog, poetry, the wrestling editioral column that I do on TNAStars.com, and the walls of text that I throw down on FaceBook (and Shoryuken.com during blue moons), I haven't missed a word. I even wrote a few (relatively insignificant) short stories somewhere in between when I was going through this phase of needing some kind of validation for my work by trying to submit "literature" (aka shit not in my style) to random publications and stuff. But the last time I wrote a fictional story of length? Well, I went through my notes on FaceBook, apparently, the last word of Marko Man's Untitled Internet Finale was July 18th, 2010. That was more than a year ago. Quite a hiatus from novel writing (I mean, the UIF may not have started off as a novel, but it sure as fuck turned into one, so yeah). So this... this was kinda like a return to my roots... and boy did it feel good to return to those roots while exploring something slightly different from what I'm used to writing.

What's interesting though, however, is how I'm now reconsidering that decision to make Marko Man a web comic series. Writing... it feels so good and so natural to me... it's the one thing that I know for a fact I can do well under a given circumstance. It's the one thing that I know is mine as a talent (or maybe a very, very, very refined skill), and it's the one thing I love doing at any given moment. You take my video games away from me, and I'm fine as long as I can write.

That said... well... I don't really know how to end this.

"But Mark, didn't you just talk about how writing is your first love and how it comes natural to you?"

Yes. Yes, I did.

Illusion's Void

You can act like you have no fear,
But I know you know the end is near.
You're being tested, that's a fact,
But at this rate, there's no going back.
In your mind you may have passed,
Just as visible as gas
You lost your name to play a game
In victory you tried to claim.

The world has levels, thin and deep,
But you were on a winning streak.
Letter sent to you in mail
Set up for a giant fail.
That end was in fact the end,
You lose, you lose, you lose again.
That end was in fact the end,
You lose, you lose, you lose again.