Poem - Lyrid

The sublime thought, to slip Gravity’s snare

And fall through Your creation

I’m tethered here instead

A mere spectator to the power

Minutes spent in waiting

For that tiny flash of light

A second passes and it burns out

An apt metaphor in regards to mortality

How many centuries spent

Travelling untold distance

What stories could cold rock tell

Since its birth at the Creation?

What scars marked your surface?

Collisions with celestial bodies

So much time spent in motion

To become sparkling light on my eye

Yet You knew this pilgrim’s destination

As surely as You know my own

I rest safe in Your hand for the journey

Until final transformation to soaring light

Yet where this cold light has passed in a wink

The light of Your faithful will endure forever.

Randall Madden

April 24, 2014

The Columbine

In a world of stone and concrete

A gentle flower was born

A bud was slowly forming

A timid glance at this world

It yearns to share its beauty

Others there surely are

Yet in this world filled with cold unlife

How can such things be spoken?

The young flower resolves to be silent

Simply living the beauty it knows.

With time the young flower grows carefree

Today will be the day

Its azure petals gently parting

To share beauty and grace with the world

Then comes the uncaring boot

Any warning is now too late

The crushing pressure, irreversible fate

And the Columbine flower is gone.

Blue petals barely formed

Burgeoning life extinguished.

Yet the caring hand descends

Lifting up the slain young flower

Its value now known by many

Immortal to beholding eyes

In death, the flower has conquered

Its petals, in memory, undying

A jaded world stopped for the briefest of moments

And recognized oft-forgotten beauty.

The Columbine flower remains in remembering hearts

Forever young and hopeful.

Randall Madden

April 9, 2014

In Memoriam - Columbine

Sunday, April 20 will mark fifteen years since the shootings at Columbine High School. Sometimes we tend to forget the tragedies that affected our country and shaped it over the years, and we need to be reminded of what was lost.

One student that was lost in this tragedy comes to mind frequently for me, as she was an aspiring writer. She would go to the library as her place of refuge during her free time, and use the quiet to work on poems and her autobiography. As many of you know, the library was the scene of most of the violence carried out that day. The student’s name was Kelly Ann Fleming.

Today, I want to display one of her poems. It is already viewable around the Internet, but it cannot hurt to show her work somewhere else. While it can be painful to remember such events, to allow the loss of so much young life to be forgotten is inexcusable.

Can That Be?

Kelly Ann Fleming

I step outside, what did I hear?

I heard the whispers,

And the cries of the people’s fear.

The loneliness of wisdom,

Can that be?

The sad, sad sorrow that I see,

That’s past in the trees,

Is it true, can it be real?

Can I let them know how I really feel?

The things that I have seen,

The things that I have felt,

The feelings of sorrow

That I hope will soon melt.

Wherever I looked,

Wherever I turned,

I see shadows all through the night.

I put my head down and said a little prayer,

To tell the Lord the sad, sad sorrow,

And the lonely cries that I have heard.

After a minute of silence, of wisdom,

I looked up slowly,

I saw a thing that I have never seen.

I saw a light and asked myself can that be?

Was it real or was it a dream?

I didn’t know but hopefully

It will come to me.

It was bright and I was scared.

I didn’t know what or if I should see.

I looked and then it came to me.

It was a dream.

When I was turning to walk away,

I heard a voice.

Kelly Fleming was sixteen years old.

Why I Write

Writing has always come easily to me. I won’t say it has always been well executed; I cringe and laugh at some of the stuff I wrote when I was younger. I’m sure one day, I’ll look back on the things I’m writing now and feel much the same. In the end though, I would still chalk most of my writing up as a success.

So what does it mean to be successful at writing? To me, writing is an art form, just like painting, photography, sculpting, or any other noble pursuit. Then we can be left with the problem of trying to define the meaning of art itself. I say “problem” because art is an incredibly subjective beast. Obscenity is much like art in this regard, and in the oft-quoted words of United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, “I know it when I see it.”

I personally believe the goal of art, regardless of its medium, it to speak to another human being’s soul. We can rate art from that point based on its effectiveness in doing so, but I believe art can be considered “successful” if it is able to do this in any capacity.

You may disagree with me, and if so then that’s perfectly acceptable. Art is not one of life’s great truths, except in the sense that it most definitely exists. I think that mutating, shifting nature that lies behind art is a big part of what makes it so special in the first place.

Call it “finding your muse,” call it “being in touch with your inner self,” or call it “corny.” Whatever you choose to call it, all artists know exactly what I’m talking about. We write/draw/sculpt page upon page of material just for those few moments of existential high that come when we truly connect the dots that are hidden behind the fabric of life. We seek to pull forth that truest essence of reality, clouded by war and famine, greed and hardship. Whether it comes from reading Shakespeare or the simple poem of a child, every now and again we feel the raw ends of art connect, and we experience a transcendent beauty for those few moments.

Perhaps it is said better with a quote from Dr. Keating in Dead Poets Society.

“We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

Poem - Greed

At season’s end I trod the wood

A respite from winter’s touch my sole desire

Comfort against wrathful pain

Fallen man, the cause of loss

The world’s magnanimous beauty unfurls

Like Solomon’s splendor, the leaves beguile

Golden coins, so high above

Good to the eye, I resolve to make them mine

Nearby I behold a squat old tree, no glamor in its name

Its boughs protected me during summer’s storms

An evergreen, unchanging still

Normalcy in the midst of new extravagance

How do I attain the comfort

Of these shimmering jewels on high

Perhaps a wait at the provider’s feet

Will provide healing against the coming loss

With time the force of nature speaks

And bends the boughs above

My heart’s desire, tumbling down

Now just dead and brown.

Perhaps a climb to these heights unknown

To gain my golden greatness

Others have dared the passage before

Some have fallen, but the reward seems greater

Tearing bark consumes my flesh

I wonder at the cost

The golden leaves, proximity alluring

But my strength is like dawn’s mist

At last I’m among the goal of my endeavor

Yet triumph gives ground to confusion

On closer inspection my flawless comfort

Stands somehow diminished

Still, I will claim my long-sought prize

Recklessly, my arm extends

The golden leaves pull free, and I

Descend in gravity’s unfeeling embrace

What has stopped this final plunge

Interposed between I and Death’s hand

The bountiful, aged evergreen!

Arrested in its rough caress

As winter comes I make my bed

Beneath the old squat tree

Dreams fill my head, what might have been

The last of my prize wilts away

The forest now is dead and brown

Buried in winter’s icy embrace

The emerald beauty of my evergreen

Shines in this world of loss

A revelation strikes me, too late to change the past

I failed to note the old tree’s worth

Yet as winter comes, and I breathe my last,

The evergreen still surrounds.

Randall Madden

March 31, 2014

Progress Update

I’m closing in on 90,000 words! The last week has been super productive for my rough draft, with me finishing 5,000 words on a couple of days. I think it’s becoming easier because the characters are established and the plot is rapidly accelerating. I hope that as I start working on subsequent books in this series, the pacing remains this easy.

I’m sure there will be blocks, because I’ve experienced them with this book. It is extra difficult on some days after working hard, because I’d like to have time to stop and relax. Yet I know that if I want this to become a career, it’s going to take continual work. Then, one day soon I hope, I can relax in the afternoons after a fulfilling day of working on the latest writing project.

The End in Sight

It would be a lie to say that writing a first draft is always fun.

Of course, I’ve written longer pieces before, but none of those projects were undertaken with the same intensity or purpose as my current draft. This piece is one I’m incredibly passionate about, and I hope it will be my first published work.

The draft has been tedious at times, and I wonder if it is the same for all authors that tackle the project of a series. I’ve planned five books, three of them in meticulous detail, and plot strands that will not come to an end for at least another 500,000 words are being spun into place now. The initial work of creating the world and the peoples that inhabit it was more fun than I can possibly describe, but getting them along from Point A to Point B has not always been so glamorous.

It is so hard to maintain pacing with a character whose fate has already been decided. It is difficult to maintain the seemingly random story arcs that will eventually play out as the series comes to a close. Writing this buildup and beginning exposition in a way that still encourages reader engagement has been tedious at times, but now I can feel it all coming together.

As I near the end of my first draft, I know that the book is far from a finished product. I have revisions and editing to do several times through before anyone else even sees the manuscript, but at least now the story is picking up. As I write through the first major climax of the book, I have trouble stopping to save my work and call it a day. Often I wage a staring war with the clock, wondering if the face staring back is lying as to how late the hour has become. In the end, I’m forced to blink first, conceding defeat for one more day, knowing that the word count and the plot are trudging closer to that important finish.

I hope one day to share the world of Cestre and its peoples with all of you. Until then, I’ll withdraw for one more evening, defeated by the hands of time for one more day.