Nothing More Or Less

Millions of lives and souls untold
And to account it all
Words, lines, films
Imagination trims
A sliver of soft, scarlet ribbon
Hollywood rounds
Quills deliver
Writers flare with passion so strong
Filling minds with fantasies, reveries, histories
Tragedies
We consume it all like freshly baked bread
We feed until we are engorged and fed
A viral, universal mess
Ideas and unmade memories
Nothing more or less

My eyes remain glued to the screen
Living it all out
Tears dare to flow—to doubt
I should have thought of that
Can I truly let myself believe,
Someone else lived that!
Pound away your directors, script-writers, fighters
For miles and miles of stories remain unread
While the unknown remain in the grounds of humble malnourishment
Dead
Careers for the mind with a twist of the fable
Left us savage for the meal and the crumbs under the table
I can never let the raw truth rest
Naked, bare and empty—soothed
Nothing more or less

I cringed for originality 
Observed the world through the unedited scripts
The very act, the poetry pact
The wild animal drooling in the back
I was slapped in the face by my boss who had cracked
As the reviews bloated less and less
They wanted something awful, something flaw-ful—something new
And this empty brain in agony—HISSED 
I have lived in no epic battle of account
Of the collateral sufferings of my brothers
The stories the red carpet smothers
And still I ache to create
Before the other ones discover
I returned with ‘‘oh me’s’ and ‘oh my’s’’
With a work of pure genius—a storybook of lies
Nothing more or less

Little have I lacked to dream
Of contortioned pulls and dramatic fire
Stories that rarely brittle or tire
I fiddled with precious glass on edge
Foully eager for self-damage
As if it would trigger some legitimate spark 
Searching for creatures and features in the dark
No one unlocked the passage that night
For the starving idea-parched malice of right
But all welcomed with open arms
A pale mannequin filled with jewels and charms
Consuming, fuming dooming
All ghosts hoping, screaming, looming
Hoping that one day they would find themselves on the big screen
Their legacy real as it can possibly get
Nothing more or less
Copyright © | Year Posted 2013


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Date: 7/21/2013 9:06:00 AM
Laura, what a society we have--I often think about the red carpets and the hype because it is thrust upon us. Here we have to seek out works that really ring true. I suppose the hysteria is designed to sell whatever the ads are. The ads are very revealing. You are very different. You are outside of the inner spheres looking in at all of this. It takes someone very special to do that.
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Date: 7/17/2013 7:21:00 PM
Opps! I forgot 7 :o)
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Laura Breidenthal
Date: 7/19/2013 8:55:00 PM
How kind of you. Thanks so much for reading my friend. Always, Laura
Date: 7/17/2013 7:19:00 PM
Nothing more or less...Such a fine piece from your thought thinking mind. :o) probably some <3 in there too! Loved it!
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Laura Breidenthal
Date: 7/19/2013 8:54:00 PM
Lots of love, Dan. You can count on it! ~Laura
Date: 7/17/2013 2:00:00 PM
'Nothing more or less...' I love the recurrence of this sentiment and the fatalism, nihlism that it commincates - the futility of abandonong ourselves so to become complacent living through the stories that others design for our fragile, impressionable minds - beautiful word, adjective choices throughout this work Laura, such as 'Stories that rarely brittle or tire...' I believe that all we do is on record, somewhere, somehow, forever, traces, dreams, streams... I'll be re-reading this writeJAB%
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Laura Breidenthal
Date: 7/19/2013 8:54:00 PM
Thanks; I'm glad you got something out of it. A mere written story of the moving, historical lives never gives the gift of actually living it, justice. Our minds record only a fraction of a percent of what that individual truly lived in their own individual story. Our minds, no doubt, are massive sponges, and though often fragile, they grow stronger when we learn through others' eyes. ~Laura
Date: 7/17/2013 7:05:00 AM
Thought provoking piece Laura.
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Laura Breidenthal
Date: 7/19/2013 8:50:00 PM
Thanks for reading, Mustapha; it means a lot. ~Laura
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