Game Mini Review Roundup

Hi All, Taking a break from the #sheltercenturion before Webster and I revisit them properly. But thank you all so much for donating – as of this post, we have raised over £500. I’ll do a proper write up of that shortly, until then you get a random roundup of various games I’ve been messing with recently, from Humble Bundles and elsewhere, on Phones and PC.

Shelter Centurion Rides Again

Day Two of the shelter centurion is about to commence! Will concentrate on completing pieces rather than interweb for the moment. We’re at  practically fifty and James will be, due to the inexorable nature of geography, heading out of the dark metropolis in the eve.
Last (night) we crashed out at fiveish after about 13-15 hours. That’s a going rate of roughly (too long)!

See you on the flipside, and if you haven’t but can, so consider donating!

Shelter Centurion Pt 2

Well, we are 27 in. This is not necessarily the schedule we were planning, but what’s a fundraising challenge without any challenge?

The Fantastic James Webster has been posting quick shots of the finished cards, which you can find at his blog, so I thought I’d take a different tac and comment on the ones I find the most successful as pairs. (also my favourite images/text).

Obligatory Poem About Writing A Poem

I’m sorry.
I’m really sorry.
This process just isn’t that interesting,
like, I write down words on paper.
It’s hardly rocket science is it.
This was a really poorly conceived idea
and I’m absolutely not sure why I tried
it and oh gods I hate myself right now
I’m a fucking failure oh gods why why why
why why why why why why
WHY WHY WHY WHY WHYYYY!?!?!!!!!
Ahem, here is a story about a dragon.
Once upon a time, there was a little dragon.
Their name was the same as your name.
This is to engender sympathy from you, the reader.
A lot of their interests were the same as a lot of your interests. This is also to encourage you to identify with the dragon.
Like you, the dragon was totally alone.
Like you, the dragon had wings.
The dragon stretched his wings and laid waste to the kingdom cos kingdoms are for losers and neither you nor the dragon are a loser.
The dragon made the world what they wanted it to be: which is ‘on fire’.
There is a moral here.

Second Star to the Left

“Second star on the left” he said
But the sky was so full of stars
And I’ve always been dyspraxic
(he didn’t understand the word)

I carried straight on til morning
I carried on longer still
I sank my teeth into my happy thoughts
And flew far beyond the stars.

I learnt to sail using Pyxis
I learnt to hunt from Orion
I lost my hand to a crocked star gone nova
I replaced it with a grappling hook.

I made a map of the heavens
And bombed Never Neverland from orbit

I am the girl the Lost Boys lost
But you can call me Captain Wendy

Bees

He collects the honey from the bees
Just like he always does

He wears no mask
He wants them to see his face

He uses no smoke
He wants them cogent and clear

He is naked
He wants them to see their target

They sting him
They sting him everywhere
He is a cloud of buzzing, stripy pain

When they disperse
He wakes clutching a small jar of honey
His skin swelling up in swirled scripts

He spends the day reading the poems
The bees wrote in venom across his cells
A lot of the words begin with B.

He doesn’t mind.

I choose you

I burnt the village to the ground when I left
That’s why they call me Ash.

I don’t miss it much, my home was always the smell of sulphur
The flicker, drip and splutter of thick wax candles
The belch of flame from impish throats
And the pentagram fields of battle.

After the auguries, they tattooed my body with protective runes at birth
I summoned my first imp when I was three
My tongue bloody from the inhuman verbs
I murdered my father on my 8th birthday – it was easy.

And once my demons and I have claimed all 8 of the badges of hell
From the hunched overlords and their fattened incubi
I shall open up this earth
And drink it dry.

 

Favourite poems/images that aren’t necessarily matched by other side in greatness:

Things That Are Orange

The fingerprints of god
Left in juice on a tree

The hatchet, just after
When it catches the light just right

The kraken when it rises
And the hysteria tears at our eyes

Rabbits caught by their own lust
And turned to furious, fucking, orange stone.

Your own face.

Everything that burns brightly
But never knows why.

Everything.
Everything.

Everything is orange now.
You hate orange.

Go on, call him,
Sob down the phone.
He too is orange.

 

And ever onwards!

 

 

 

Shelter Centurion Pt 1

Well, the Poetry Art Centurion has started (Donation link here)

Below’s a picture of the first ten/eleven completed pieces, with both images and poems.

People have been fabulous thusfar, providing prompts and donations – we’ve already hit £300, which is absolutely fantastic.

This is going to be a long day, but definitely one that’s inspiring us – words are getting more surreal, pictures looser. It’s definitely a project we can be proud of. I’ll post a collection of the full images/ text later, though I believe we’re updating the Facebook event page quite frequently.

Right, back to the drawing board!

Poetry-Art Charity Centurion

In lieu of dusting this blog off, I’ve instead got some news to paraphrase from the lovely James Webster:-

With Britain in the grips of a housing crisis (not enough homes being built, ever-increasing numbers of homeless households, both house and rent prices spiralling up out of reach) and with a government promising further cuts to vital services, we wanted to do something to help.

As an artist and writer who’ve collaborated before on projects (including a work published in Issue 1 of Verse Kraken), we knew we wanted that help to involve putting our creative output to some concrete use.

So, inspired by the efforts of previous poets who’ve completed the ‘100 poems in a day challenge’, we are setting ourselves the task of creating 100 pieces of poetry/prose infused art in the space of a single day: Saturday 16 May.

If you’re able to spare anything at all to sponsor our efforts, we would be incredibly grateful. If not, then tweeting us some support during what promises to be a very long day would also be fantastic.

1. Sponsor us! The Justgiving page is here. All support would go to Shelter.

2. Share us! The more people you tell, the more support we get and the more people will see the creations on the day.

3. Inspire us! That is a lot to create, so we need prompts and things to base the pieces off! We can be contacted both on our blogs and elsewhere on the wires (@websterpoet and@pinstripeowl).

We’ll most likely be blogging about the work as well, so do keep an eye out for developments.