the beating of a broken heart (poem)

The quiet solitude of the night

does not call me to mourn lost loves,

old wraiths I held prisoner

so they could torment me.

The past is dealt with,

clarity comes to my heart

like it's been thoroughly refined,

impurities purged by flame.

The night is a celebration,

a chorus of quiet voices

sing through my headphones

as I lie alone in a warm bed.

Back to dancing like a fool

while the reasonable world sleeps,

this freedom is so welcoming

though it's been years since we met.

No, I'm not restless,

burdened by thoughts of wasted time

all the things I “should” be doing

like a student during exams.

I'm on top of it all, trust me,

the night is just my home,

a home no longer haunted

by the beating of a broken heart.

-Zero

500 Posts Later

Despite what the title of this post might suggest, this post is neither #500 nor #501 currently up on this old blog of mine, but more than 500 have been published. It's been a bit over nine years since I first started this blog, and much has changed since then.

For the sentimental poet type (like me), reflecting on the odd journey it's been is both enjoyable and inevitable. It seems every year I'm tempted to write another post about the year, a habit I kicked some time ago now. I know it might seem like I'm overly formal or proper in my writings sometimes, but looking back at when I got into 1800's literature causes me to look rather casual. My journals are an embarrassing nightmare that I can't manage to get rid of. 

When this blog was first started, I barely wrote any poetry at all, something that has become nearly the only thing I post. Trust me, it's a good thing my poetry from those days never ended up on here. I found some in an old agenda, and I would much rather psychopathic horror pieces like my earlier stories over those four line garbage fires. 

To be honest, a part of me seriously wants to purge the older works of mine from this blog, but the sentimental part of me keeps them there. Especially since it doesn't often take long for me to start disliking a piece of mine down the line. There are a few that I'm still somewhat fond of over the years, but they're mostly from late-university to the present. 

So out of my curiosity to see how many posts of what I've collected on this blog over these 500 or so posts, I decided to count them. Since Blogger is only willing to list them a 100 at a time, I did five separate counts and then added them together. As a result, though, a sort of progression appears over the years of the blog.

The first 98 posts of the blog (chronologically listed backwards) were divided as follows: 
17 poems, 64 short stories/fiction, 17 non-fiction.

A nifty graph showing the changes over time

The second 100 posts were made up of: 
50 poems, 38 short stories, and 12 non-fiction.

The next 100: 
77 poems, 11 short stories, and 12 non-fiction.

The fourth 100 posts:
84 poems, 6 short stories, and 10 non-fiction.

The last 100 posts (excluding this one):
94 poems, 3 short stories, and 3 non-fiction. 


This adds up to a total of 322 poems, 122 short stories, and 54 non-fiction pieces. Looking at it, the shift from short stories to poems that happened over time becomes incredibly clear. There were a couple reasons for that. I got into poetry more seriously, and at a certain point in college, I found myself without any ideas for short stories. I only had fragments, images, ideas, nothing I found would work with a narrative, so I turned to poetry. Over the years I've done NaNo twenty-five times or something like that, so most stories that came to me became novel-length and so never made it here. 

As for the drop in non-fiction, the truth is that it can be difficult to be so honest. I've written about some difficult topics previously, but many of my non-fiction posts are simply updates, whether for NaNo or otherwise. After so many NaNo wins, it felt repetitive and simply put, not worth anyone's time. Not to mention that I don't feel it necessary to provide updates on my life on a primarily fiction blog (take every poem with an unhealthy amount of salt). 

Anyways, I think that's more than enough for this post for one day. Hopefully its chaos makes some sense to you. As always, thank you for letting your curiosity betray you, and take care.

Until next time,

-Zero

cold and dark (poem)

alone in a dark room I keep cold

winter's warm polluted night light floods in

fresh snow trying to subdue the city

this peace calls for melancholy

I've been here many times before.

a dark room's walls are invisible

the cold encourages hot tea

the world outside sits still and quiet

while my sanctuary fills with nonsense

a thousand words on paper

no closer to being complete.

-Zero

the snowy mountain (poem)

no birds

only the crunching of snow

a frozen mountain

covered in human tracks

soon winter's cold arrives

scares them back to shelter

the mountain is quiet again

-Zero