Poem for my brother.

Axe

Strung like a bow, and spiked like a club,

you’ll belt it and bash it, and shake the very walls.

Built for harmonics, but born for chaos,

you’ll use it to calm the soul, and to smash the status.

Your first was a present, given to tame your anger.

You tamed it, then burned it, and then gave it names.

Your first ones were lousy, loudly blasted bastards.

Your latest are fine tuned planned pokes at power.

Polished like a gemstone, and burnished like a blade,

you’ll slice and slash, and take another head from the hydra.

It’s blessed with a voice, one that barks like a daemon,

you’ll make it belch the truth, antagonize old arrogant few.

Your arsenal now includes your latest axe blade,

your earthquake machine to sunder the foundations,

your banshee wail to pierce the walls of the mind,

and your eyes possessed of hypnotic mind flaying fire.

Carved from living stone, and toothed with knives,

you’ll loose its natural fury, spike the screaming strings.

Gift from the old gods, match for your chaotic zeal,

you’ll honour this boon, and make known your name.

Tim Hunter

Absence

Absence

Please forgive my absence,

what I lack in attendance, I gain in presence.

Where my timing, and memory fail painfully,

my growth, and contentment flourish.

I stopped to watch the butcherbird,

as it chortled on my clothesline.

I was cut off in traffic by an office clerk,

whose schedule was off by a five whole minutes.

Please forgive my absence,

I forgot that it was your day today, but I’ll never forget you.

I forgot the brand of your shoes, and the name of your scent,

But not the texture of the hide, or the waft that you leave.

I had to remember author of a book,

and that Spanish word for helmet

I was told not to forget your other day,

or that one we shared, I’ll remember it soon.

Please forgive my absence,

for all that I lacked, and all that found and then lost.

But don’t forgive me the worst of my absence,

the one where we forgot to meet again.

Tim Hunter

Ghazal Poem

Hello to all,
so this week's poetry exercise is a Ghazal poem. I enjoyed this form, as it allowed for some mix of freedom, and convention (you'll see what I mean). Ghazals are a pretty neat format, so I highly recommend you look into them for yourself.

What Makes Him?

Is it a sense of honour, piety, and duty that makes a man?

Or maybe some form of righteous divinity that makes a man?

Maybe they’re born with blood of Achilles or Hercules,

But isn’t it quite bloody unlikely that’s what makes a man?

It could be his capacity to collect romantic conquests,

Maybe that’d cancel the majority for what makes a man?

I’ve got it, the secret is money, and power, and shiny stuff,

Not looking good is it, my journey to what makes a man?

All I have is the soul of a Hunter, patient, and accurate,

Won’t that do, tell me now quickly is what makes a man?




Tim Hunter

101

This is the first draft of my reflective assignment for my English grammar course. As a reflective assignment it's a more personal work, so don't be discouraged from reading:

As a final year undergraduate student, I have developed a writing style, and grammatical capability that have been sufficient to endure a number of difficult assessments. These assessments have tested many of my writing skills, including research, data collation, and synthesisation. However, one constant throughout this period has been my largely unprofessional grammar. While my level of grammar has certainly carried me through my university career, it has also caused the loss of a few marks here and there. The development of my grammatical capability was the result of an insufficient grammatical focus during earlier schooling, and a rapid learning process at university, involving a combination of self-teaching, and osmotic learning.

Reflecting on my earlier schooling I can recall brief, and ineffectual attempts at grammar lessons from my teachers. Adjectives are describing words; this was about the extent of the lesson. Adverbs were not really discussed in much depth. It sufficed to say that adjectives were the describing words, adverbs are the “ly” words, and verbs were the ones that had “s” where he, and she were concerned, and “ed” when it happened already. Public schooling wants you to know what to say, and how to function in society, but places little emphasis on why we speak the way we do. My subsequent years in adult tertiary preparation were spent trying to prepare me for university, and even there the emphasis was on style and content, and developing some basic ability to cite and source. Sometimes I would wonder if the teachers groaned at the sight of public school level grammar: a system they were forced to emulate, whether they wanted to or not.

The university world was a strange change of pace. Everything needed to be professional, and written to suit the formats of scholars, and wordsmiths of great stature. The first year is the most difficult. You will try to make your language flowery and expressive, and filled with adjectives stacked upon adverbs, stacked on qualifiers and interesting tangents. You wonder if starting a sentence with the word “and” is punishable with some form of incarceration, and using the dreaded perpendicular pronoun –it that must not be named- is so mighty an offence as to be worthy of immediate dismissal, and excommunication from scholarly society. The second year is generally spent slowly breaking down the misconceptions surrounding the rules of scholarly writing, and absorbing the style, content, and grammar of the many readings that each student must digest.

Now in my final year, I have developed my own style so that it will emulate the readings that help to constitute my assignments. And yet, the constant element that remains, nagging at my grades, is the less than worthy grammar. Through personal endeavours to improve my grammar, be it through commercially available grammar books or even learning the grammar of other languages, I have managed to learn what grammar is, and develop a desire to improve my own. This year will be spent learning the intricacies of English grammar, and improving my understanding of grammar, with emphasis on improving punctuation, sentence structure, and style. Each of these will require a combination of study, and frequent revision to ensure a synthesis of these concepts with my own personal writing attitude.

Thoughts My Creative Non-Fiction Assignment

So far I have been toying with various ideas for my CNF piece for this semester at uni. For those who are unfamiliar with the notion of Creative Non-Fiction, it is essentially writing that conveys factual events and concepts through a narrative form. Typical examples include Gonzo Journalism, Memoir, and Review. Going with the idea of 'writing what you know',  I am considering writing on the subject of escapism, and morality in gaming (both video, and role playing games). Hopefully I will have some time to interview a number of gamers, and take part in my own share of role play this semester, which should furnish me with additional experiences.

Latest Poetry Exercise

Scoundrel’s Commandments

Thou shall find fault in thyself and others,

Or else loose thy right to criticize

Thou shall find time to embarrass thy mothers,

Or for your birth, thou shall apologize

Thou shall make fun of stupidity, and bigotry,

Or in disregard, empower such hates

Thou shall suffer, then smash thy teacher’s rigidity,

Or thou shall grow to resent their learned traits

Thou shall blunder in where others tread lightly,

To defuse harmful secrets, and not be surprised

Thou shall be thought of charming, but also wily,

So as a friend, thou shall always be prized

Thou shall make thy japes private, and tasteful,

Gaudy humiliations thou should make not

Thou shall laugh with thy patsy, not at, not cruel,

Make legends of jokers, and jokees begot

Thou shall find time for thy parents and children,

Time for them thou shall always allot

Thou shall always remember, every time and again,

Truths are perspectives; thou shall not say thou shall not

Poetry Exercise

Hi all,
today I am working on a poetry exercise for uni. The style of poetry we're looking at today is list poetry, so I've put together a little something in the last hour or so, and I hope you enjoy:

Thou shall find fault in thyself and others,
or else lose all thy right to criticize.

Thou shall find time to embarrass thy mothers,
or else for your birth, you will apologize.

Thou shall make fun of stupidity, and bigotry,
or in disregard, empower such hates.

Thou shall ignore thy master's teaching rigidity,
unless thou wishes to resent his taught traits.

Thou shall welcome thy parents, and children,
to them, time thou shall always allot.

Though shall always remember, time 'n' again,
forbid naught, thou shall not say, "thou shall not".

Tim Hunter

The First Post

Hello to my friends, fellow students, and secret admirers alike. This is the first in what I hope will become a series of posts that will catalog my various writing projects, and university exercises. First I would like to share with all my latest reflective piece written for uni. The questions were: do I regard myself as a good writer, and am I regarded as a good writer by my readers?

Do I regard myself as a good writer? My experience with writing has for the most part been a positive one. My writing skills are the combination of my technical and creative abilities, and in these respects I grade myself very well as a writer, although I do not preclude the possibility of improvement. To the contrary, I have often felt that my technical skills represent a chaotic mixture of absorbed grammar, and style, which has been taken from many sources throughout my life. My lack of formal grammar training during earlier schooling has made university life somewhat difficult. What I have lacked in pure technical skill, I have often made up for in content. The comments I have often been most proud of receiving are those made in criticism of my writing, and so we come to the question of how I think my readers view my writing. The critiques of my scholarly essays have been a process of slow, but positive evolution, with my earlier work being quite unimpressive, and my more recent work enjoying such criticism as, “highly entertaining, and engaging, but also somewhat disorganized and prone to tangential thinking”. In terms of my fictional writing there have rarely been any complaints among my small following. Some have claimed to get to know me better upon reading my various works, and this gives me a feeling that I convey my emotions well in my creative writing. From this I can surmise that my writing is probably better suited toward creative fiction, and creative non-fiction, rather than the highly structured formats of scientific writing. Furthermore, I believe that the primary field I need to improve is in my structural, and mechanical writing skills, as they will assist me in focusing my thoughts, and restricting my overactive imagination, which is largely responsible for my tangent-riddled style.


Well, that's it for my first post. While I hope to offer some more fun, and personal entries, for the most part I will be using this blog to upload my many university activities for peer appraisal, and to keep my friends informed of my progress. I will write again soon, and in the meantime, remember to be good, and if you can't be good be careful, and if you can't be careful, buy a pram. Welcome to my blog.


Tim