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This is a thread for posting material that you feel satisfied with and expect to never revise.

Should you occasionally need a "junkyard" or "scratchpad" to tinker around in that serves the opposite purpose, that companion topic is here. Clutter the latter up with as many do-overs and "experiments" as you want. (I've already broken it in, in terms of illustrating that messy and ignoble purpose.)

Needless to say, should probably only showcase "pseudo-juvenilia" or non-professional [intended] items. Keep your "Excelsior!" class stuff in a locked chest like Emily Dickinson or a vault as J. D. Salinger perhaps did (after his mid-40s) -- if a magazine, publisher, known musician or hip-hop artist might eventually warm to _X_ after several returns.
Pre-emptive: And yes, Unn is a "real" name. It just sounds fantasy world setting: https://www.babynamespedia.com/meaning/Unn
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Items that are non-verse, like stories, might be a problem at times due to length. Especially when they're not as short on descriptive details as threadbare anecdotes, jokes, or a sparse yarn like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale (that's almost equivalent to a summary or mere outline). 

You can get around that by writing a "floating snapshot" which internally presents itself as part of a larger narrative. Crude, improvised example:

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The rumors circulating in the village had reached Unn's ears. It was time to leave. Approaching from the North, there was a well-armed party, of unidentified origin, searching for a curiously valued runaway.   

Taking a final glance at the Sanctuary of the Lambent Sisterhood brooding on the clifftop above, she gathered the goods given her into a rucksack.

Asking a wagoner if she could follow along, she chose what was said to be the least used passage out of the Waif Hills, to Holgoon. It was more precarious, but had fewer wayfarers to encounter that might notice and remember her. And the wrinkled man seemed to be an unperturbed veteran of the route. 

It was an old mountain cart, originally for conveying supplies shorter distances, that had apparently been converted for longer travel and perhaps even the option of passengers. Crudely fitted with wagon bows, using old quilts as makeshift covering, and large enough to accommodate at least two.

Unn had not been invited to ride inside by the unsympathetic driver, and lagged behind, trotting in spurts to keep up with the mercifully slow-moving oxen. 

Jolting and groaning at every depression and bulge afflicting the rough road, the wooden vehicle revealed itself to have an occupant that had been obscured by the stubborn darkness within the shroud of weathered quilts.

Unn heard a voice with an oddly cooing quality singing in a language she was unfamiliar with. The cryptic passenger could surely see her through the narrowed opening, but likewise ignored her presence and growing weariness.

Over the course of hours, the hilly country they had begun the trip in dwindled to a flatland. Sore, exhausted and less worried now about what might scramble down from surrounding heights and boulders, Unn decided to abandon the modest security of the noisy wagon, letting it recede as she finally rested in the middle of the road and drank water from her bundle.

Unexpectedly, the driver halted his progress, apparently due to a request from the passenger. Far enough down the road that Unn was initially unaware of the change, having accepted the increasing silence left by the fading cart. When reinvigorated enough to resume her journey South, what had been a briefly familiar, albeit indifferent or callous, acquaintance took on the character of a mysteriously looming object waiting patiently ahead.

As she drew close enough to the vehicle to again hear its dove-voiced occupant, the stranger was no longer singing blithely and disregarding her existence: "Climb in, child."
Allegory for any effort to keep two forces, agencies, or idiots (especially young ones) apart. To prevent them from bringing ruin to themselves and collateral hardship to those around them. Usually futile in terms of working, but catering to sentimental optimism here.
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Full Moon Valentine

Down a highway barren of traffic.
Lonely stretch with no demographic.
Its crumbling pavement sprouting grass, 
Billboards wincing at their vintage past.

Troubled spaces, where dogs run in packs.
Broke trees kneeling atop railroad tracks.
Trains have not rumbled here for ages; 
Gone as convicts escaped from cages.

Enter a town pocked by street art scars,
Sunken-eyed facades, and rusted cars.
Where only death greets our monthly rite
Of passing through to a better fright.

Relic diner outside the limits. 
Abandoned farmsteads reached in minutes.
Afternoon still dominates this land,
Yet already the witch seeks his hand.

So there's the lab near where it started.
The parasitized girl still guarded.
Heartbroken thing pining on a shelf.
Immortal and cursed as he himself.

Armed keepers circle the outdoor scene.
Techs check and tweak the sentry machines.   
His buried hues leak into dry air.
The beast's passion moans deep from its lair.

How was a god interred years ago?
The last tight-lipped survivor might know.
Their alien love wills and wills
As day rests its head behind far hills.

Later, night's trauma slips its levee.
Above, our wheeling orb sags heavy.
The sullen scarecrows thrum in their field.
Forsaken, yes, but shall never yield.
After its recent tweaks in this month's revamping of an older animated GIF (avatar), I'm declaring this one finally done, no further modifications. Ergo, why it's being posted here instead of the "tinkering" thread. First in a series of them that I'm going to set in cement, for better or worse.
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TYPE: lyric 
STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: cult of personality, celebrity worship, etc


Till Animation Reappears

Your ending triggered a doomsday birth,           
A grave spasm of the tortured Earth.         
Rupturing open an arid plain,
Baring deep entrails where the fiends reign.

You're shot in the head, 
But don't be misled.
Your body feels cold, 
But the twelve aren't sold. 
Hibernation is a refuge trait.     

So while custom would rush to cremate...
It's better to watch, better to wait.
Bear the shrill silence for months or years
Till animation reappears.

Fortune is a water skipping stone.
We sink or bounce by how we are thrown.
Except you cheat like a flying fish,
Breathing below whenever you wish.

One cadet can spread
What the master said.
One crew can rebuild
What before was killed.
Seed is that next tree ramming the gate.

Though the victors rush to celebrate...
It's better to watch, better to wait.
Bear the shrill silence for months or years
Till animation reappears.

Your beginning was an extinction
That nurtured a fylfot distinction.
Your epicenter drew them like sleaze,
Thick as sickle and hammer disease.

Oh, could they succumb
To their marching drum?
Are cog suicides
For clockwork that hides?
Don't hold hope robots self-detonate.

Albeit upbeats may bite the bait...
It's better to watch, better to wait.
Bear the shrill silence for months or years
Till animation reappears.
Final version of this.
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STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: manipulation, conspiracy ambience, paranoia, etc


Stirring Tea

Down the hallway, a clique is waiting; 
Their cautious whispers now abating.
What it bodes is wilted witchery;
You and I have purged the mystery.

The misdeeds exhumed by spelunking thought; 
Drugs prescribed and experts bought.
So many weeks since truth was last sighted...
Are you being gaslighted?

We have become this stronghold's creature, 
Haunting its rooms, a phantom feature.     
Stranded in the panoptic tower:
Seeing all, but deplumed of power.             

That coiled, paranoid rattling in your mind:
Was it an uplifting find?
Doubt is what this partnership invited:
Are you being gaslighted?

At sly slants and edges their jaws lurk,
Squeezing fate like tightening clockwork.
Calm your unease, the guests will arrive
To leech us pale until we're alive.

Was it impish wit that scored a titter,
Making them dicey, bitter?
A playhouse built by risks that collided:
Are you being gaslighted?

One exit path we cannot follow, 
Where betrayed promises hang hollow 
Like shivering slabs of butchered beef: 
A wall where they brushed the new motif.

Bundles of cryptic papers are implied 
To be softly ratified. 
Ornamental lies have been decided...
Are you being gaslighted?

Seaside, there crept a wriggly design,
Fattened on sweet spite and salty shore.
It curved through garden and prickly vine
To set a springe for the herbivore.

"Still buying pity with your loud conceits?
Our goodwill veils no deceits."
Deep, deep in what the sewer has guided,
Are you being gaslighted?
Final version.
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STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: simulation theories, idealism, oneirocosmism, BIV, etc


Sleeping Beauty Sublime

Over sanctum walls,
Down deep hallowed halls,
They creep like figures so cancerous.
Invaders surround
A body spellbound.
The girl in the jar is dangerous.

When a Maker beams,
Asleep in its dream,
As a maid fair, that's precarious!
Her guards ascetic
Are quite pathetic.
The girl in the jar is dangerous.

To the royal court,
Fleeing monks report:
We bring ill word, do not quarter us!
The Doom Sect has seized
What cannot be freed.
The girl in the jar is dangerous.

Their tidings dismay.  
Advisors give way
To the monarch who will sanction thus:
Forces I shall send
To oust the madmen.
The girl in the jar is dangerous.

Up flowing spring rills,
Up wooded foothills,
Trudging loftily the rangers must.
By midday, they hear
Lurking zealots jeer:
The girl in the jar is dangerous.

The fanatics warn
Like stoic firstborn:
This prize we claim, do not anger us! 
Or we shall decrease
The avatar's peace...
The girl in the jar is dangerous.

King's agents prevail,
Seek the nonpareil,
Find a bottled form which answers thus:
Sleep no longer binds
This high temple shrine.
The girl in the jar is dangerous.

Skies are imploding,
Landscapes are folding,
A mind in a jar is dangerous.
O the world is due
Its doomsday brew, BUT...
Is woken god a mere stranger "us"?
Final version.
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TYPE: lyric
STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: cognitive dissonance, interpretative dependence on hermeneutical standards chosen, etc


Where the hell is Davidson?

Mama looked deeper in the cellar.
Daddy came back from the field.
There just wasn't much we could tell her
Of what a wider search might yield.
We all know he's her favorite one:
Where the hell is Davidson?

He mingled with the maverick crowd,
The poor, the maimed, the outlaws.
Shaming good folk that were only proud,
Reminding them of their flaws.
When a hood rides in and waves his gun,
Where the hell is Davidson?

Time scrapes away at the flaking paint,
Some day a ceiling will drop.
Trumpet booms grow increasingly faint,
Our flock meets on the hilltop.
When your chances correlate to none,
Where the hell is Davidson?

Counting the days since the tin stars fell;
Along roads, a thick stench reigns.
Waiting for news in a trashed hotel,
Watching rats chew old remains.
Sick of signs, the final stage is done,
Where the hell is Davidson?

Church menders climb down from the steeple,
Bewildered by what they've missed.
A thief has stolen seven people,
Those accepted on a list.
We're left here cause of his roguish fun:
Damn to hell that Davidson!
Final version.
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TYPE: lyric
STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: holiday noir


Decamp Blues

Winter sinks down, the snow builds up.
Don't drink the slumber in old Odin's cup.
Stay awake, catch a midnight muse.
Slap the poor thing with your holiday blues.

A lonesome sight, rowdy with clouds.
The season is arching its heathen brows.
Pay mobsters, clean the Norse lord's sleigh,
And you might live to count to New Year's Day.

Streets aglitter, houses adorned.
Carolers sing like a snitch to be scorned.
Roll your doubts, chance the game of fools.
Point is to vanish playing Midgard rules.

Sermon runs long, much to atone.
Huginn and Muninn have already flown.
Rappel cliffs, make your getaway,
And you might live to count to New Year's Day.

When Skadi stalks, her prey is doomed.
The other godlings seem quaintly costumed.
Dodge arrows, and Ullr's bribed Feds.
Everybody here is missing their meds.

An icy waste, it stretches far.
Reaching the end erases who you are.
Take soiled gold, go where palm fronds sway,
And you might live to count to New Year's Day.
Final version.
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TYPE: lyric
STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: personal loss, sentimental attachments, etc


Shipwrecked

Weeks of creaking timbers,
A voyage laden with rue.
Frayed logbook remembers
Why emptiness haunts the crew.

Breaking ribs cracked the night,
It lurked muted like a snake.
Damning haze come dawn's light,
I'm still wrecked upon this ache.

Treading through a thicket,
Collecting afternoon rain.
Strange fruit but I'll pick it,
The poison might dull the pain.

Clinging without reasons,
Ragged sails flutter and break.
Ebbing through the seasons,
I'm still wrecked upon this ache.

Stranded on a pale sea,
Farther than the Queen's domain.
Blurred ghosts can't rescue me,
In our ruins I'll remain.

Hollowed by grating winds,
Wobbling in Poseidon's quake.
A toll that never ends,
I'm still wrecked upon this ache.
Final version.
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TYPE: lyric
STYLE: camouflaged free verse
ALLEGORY: otherwordly ambience, Halloween ditty, etc


October Portents

I may have seen the Grim Wife once
In a tall grass glade where the grey cat hunts.
Why she grieves so long after loss
Spans beyond my ken, too cryptic to cross.

Some hedge a boding widow's task
With warming solace from a drinking flask.
Trust they have in such spirits known,
But not those exhumed, oh not those wind blown.

I may have heard the Grim Wife thrice
At a late hour when the owl spots mice.
She's not hopeful like scrying seers;
Folk bury their eyes, they smother their ears.

If only wailing could relate
Whatever she gleans from the throes of fate.
Is it yours or is it mine or
A far tragedy, on another shore?

I may have felt the Grim Wife's hand
In early shivers from the autumn land.
Distant clouds were gravid with rain
When old rites took two, both man and son slain.

Fostered by a lingering dread,
It's the wool local storytellers spread.
None dear lost at an ancient well?
Just a faded woe, no legend to quell.

I may have breathed the Grim Wife's prayer
In the scented speech of the eldritch air.
Wafting to where the moonlight played
On dark lake ripples, as a red dog bayed.
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