Short Story Of the Day – A Screaming Sky (found poetry) by Bill Chance

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.”
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow


Swedish Edition of Gravity’s Rainbow

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#67) More than half way there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.


I enjoyed my  FOUND POETRY  experiment with Moby Dick the other day. –

This is where you take a page of text and remove words until what is left is… well… something… something different. I decided to use another passage that meant a lot to me… the opening of Gravity’s Rainbow. I decided to not try and make it make sense – just pick words that looked interesting. One difficulty was that I am so familiar with that passage I kept reverting to its original meaning.

 


A Screaming Sky

It’s all theatre

lights above girders and glass

A spectacle

Velveteen smoke escaping in puffs

Vibration poising

Feeble sheep out of time

drunks, derelicts belong to salvation

Half-Silvered

Green-Stained

Bulletproof

Speeding through downtown

Faces knotting into rotted loops

Wood smells of winters when

coral-like lonely absence

brilliant dawn passage

Absolute Zero

Secret cities break down for a broader highway

 

It is a judgement from which there is no appeal.

 

The opening scene of Gravity’s Rainbow