Johnny goes to war

Conflict is part of life. The worst kind of confict is war, because it represents a dead end in the effort to find a solution. Being against war isn't necessarily right or wrong and I think that we should always think about it. Poetry is always a good start...

Johnny Goes To War
by William Thomas Dodd, Germany

Clip clop, clip clop, Johnny goes to war,
left right, left right, does he know what for?
Bang, bang, bang, off goes the gun,
click, clack, clang, Johnnies on the run.
Running for his life, thinking of his wife.

Tatter-Tatter-Tatter-Natter,
listen to machine-gun clatter,
splitter- splatter, splitter-splatter
another life it doesn’t matter.

Politicians tittle-tattle
while brave men, for them do battle,
then die in their wars
while they take the applause,
listen to their roars,
“Let’s fight for the cause”

Scrunching, screeching,
in sun gleaming
is the Tank, commander beaming,
“Fire” he shouts then turns about,
to watch them die, hear them screaming

Boing, boing, boing, bouncing bomb,
boom, boom, doom, gloom,
Bomb explodes, Johnnies gone.
Derrrr-da-derrrr, derrrr-da-derrr,
the bugle sounds retreat.
Johnnies gone to heaven
his maker to meet.

Knock-knock, knock-knock,
there’s someone at the door,
it’s a telegram addressed to mam,
Johnnies gone to war.

Intermezzo: Dark room

There is nothing more old-fashioned than text editors.
It seems, nowaday, that we are all stuck with Microsoft Word which, in my opinion, is a shame. I'm in conflict with Word, and still prefer WordPerfect.

As a tradionalist, I miss the plain Terminal sessions, reminders of a time when things were simpler.

This is why I was pleasantly surprised with They Misled Us' Dark Room, the distraction-free text editor.

You can read about and try it by following these links::

Dark Room
Text Editor Dark Room
Text Editor White Room





Hope you like it.

bow.

Do you write for yourself of for others v 1.1

Of course you write for both but the trick is not the answer but the approach used to write. When I received this question some time ago, I thought that I will have no difficulty in answering it. Of course I should do some research so that I not became obvious or too simplistic. Note that this is a part of the answer already.
I did a mindmap (shown here) and played with some ideas when I started to realize that the task is not so simple as I thought in the beginning. I've spent some time reading books about how to write: The 4 Noble truths for writers and Clockwork Muse. Meanwhile I discovered that reading about writing and writing are two different (but related) things. So, as to exercise is the key - I started to write, and write and write...
Every single paragraph was complicated or presumptuous. I became eager to have something ready fast. Not even Beyond Bullet Points technique (I event thought about making a presentation instead of a text) helped me at that point. I read more
Orsai (Hernan Casciari) and tried to do something more relaxed. I started to think about concepts and keywords.
My first and more important concept is that writing is sharing and sharing is the start point to discuss and learn. The second concept is that writing is communication, meaning that I have to have an emissor, a receptor, and the writing itself is the media. It is OK to write with one or more aspects of my personality - I can be part of the audience, as well. The catch is that the more distant I become from myself, less things I will have in common with the audience I'm sharing with.
In essence, what I've learnt is that I can write for myself or for the audience it does not really matters (as I may write as myself or as another one), writing is sharing, the only error is not to write (and not to share) - so I should write for anyone (or anyway) that can maximize my sharing and communication.

next: final review