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