h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

NO A*** with these yet, but with U*** and in order as published in PDF:

GW Members poetry & prose for submission will be integrated into the iCan 'Save the Get Writing Community' Campaign page and hopes to embody and commemorate all that the 'Get Writing' site has been, still is and much more about this wonderful place.

Feel free to add your own works, with A*** from this. It is yet another great way to showcase GW's vast and varied talent and your own work. Thanks.

So, what has GW meant to you? Read on...





The Curse of Sweet Cyber-ability (GW)


By Jenni Doherty AKA PenJen (Republic of Ireland)


YOU -

An asterisk on my stapled heart,
A hyphenated line from my paper-clipped brain,
Punctuated my every chaptered move,
Fowled my vowels and imperfected verse.

Didn't block me with stops or bullet-point stress
You gave me space and large capped-caress.
Served eleven months of wordy sentence with you -
An 'A to Z' life book of lyrical confess.

You gave me an introduction
To sign the dotted line.
Didn't blank or dared delete me
But touch-tendered my form.

Then serialised my wanting
Duty-described its thrust,
Superscripted my yearning
Conversed my muse in trust.

I was that patient comma,
Sharpened my colon, compass point,
Dotted those eyes, crossed my tease,
Secured beyond a margin joint.

You paragraphed me,
Phrased me,
Prosed then shaped me.
Centered me justified
Struck-through me bold.
Then 'cut and paste', reset me
Move-aligned me,
Colour-filled in silver-shroud.

Spilt that ink
Into my think-tank,
Words rumbling tumbled through,
Furious fiction, frantic friction
Stumbling, fumbled fresh and new.

And letters tripping letters
Skipping alphabet disease,
Indented and segmented
Italicised with creative ease…

And that little 'ellipsis' heart
Just showed me where to ask,
Perfecting art of craft and listening
Hypnotic task of voice en masse.

YES, YOU -

Have no idea of this,
I shiver with that thought...
Rented space inside your mind,
Squatter's rights,
Took your heart, wanted soul.
Loved you,
Loathed you,
Taste-twisted, sacred, whole.

Strolled barefoot through your sands,
Collected shells of self awoke with waters,
Spelling kisses on naked shore lines
Curving future sons and daughters.

Angels fell into my gaze, screen-idle world,
Turned me inside out, upside down -
Tripping over, somersaulted twirled.
Folded into dreams of sleep, deeply reaped.
Graced me with disgraceful words,
Tasty finesse, state of undress.

And story streets laced with lust,
Poetic paths loose, lap dancing, loud.
Back-alleys springing, bringing tingle,
Tangled-jazzing up, dynamite crowd.
That crazy, lazy purple puzzle of you,
Jigsaw-raw, thigh-swinging slide.

Amusing muse.
Fuse-fired, shock-inspired,
Stirred my brain insane,
Shouldered me senseless,
Snapped my simile spine,
Scratched my typing skin,
Tore my sounding sin,
Preyed proud within...
Words.

Made me want to write and think again,
Dig deep into crevices of creative cave,
Bleeding-breed,
Seed from curious circus-core,
And wanting, scribbling, exploring more...
Thoughts.

You've left a precious print on me.
Black sucking scrawls around my heart.
Is it all only words, thousands of little swords,
Who surround and suffocate my secret of you?

No vision, no scent, no reality touch...
But, that love; my love,
Tattooed-torrid into my basket mind,
Embroidered-ever in my casket kind...
Memories.

You have shown such a tray of personality scope,
Exposed me to their brutal and beauty spirit,
An ocean of discovery provoked for only a moment.

You have such a beautiful soul, yet you damn well
Drove me mad, angry, restless, breathless,
Then nestled, slight-wrestle, then taking flight.
Perched on different branches as you scream,
Me lifting, laughing, lingering on your tender wing...
Friendship.

It stole a tiny speck of me,
Spilled the thirsting-thrill with thanks.
The breathing,
Relieving,
Those evening drop of words.
I thank you for this gift...
Life.

We have fallen together bold,
Sold to slavery script fold...
We are still here -
Hugged and honour mirrored
Hold this beauty captive, treasure told,
And you and I will be forever
written in GW gold…

**

Author's Note: I would never have written if it were not for the most wonderful folk I've met and befriended in here. You are all jewels in the crown of this creation. Peace. Ina grá, a chairde. xx




It's a bit like Yellow Submarine, isn't it?

By Arthur Adams AKA Arfa (England)


There was once a community of people who liked to express themselves by writing. They lived on a strange island where nobody knew what each other looked like, but where, nevertheless, great friendships had been made. Because they didn't know what their companions looked like there was no prejudice and friendships had been made without regard to age, sex, race, wealth, religion or skin colour.

Each day one or more of the community members would write something and then show it to the other members for them to read and comment on. The Writer would then learn from those comments and go on to produce greater works of writing.

Most of the time, the Writers got on well with each other, but, occasionally, they would forget the rules and start to squabble. If this happened, the Mods, the powerful people who looked after this strange land, would tactfully point out to the Writers they were misbehaving and that they should remember where they were. This was usually enough to ease the situation and bring calm back to the land of the Writers.

Occasionally, the land of the Writers would be invaded by a horrible creature called a Troll, who would try to goad the Writers and make them lose their tempers. Trolls, however, are simple creatures who quickly get bored if they are ignored and will then move on to annoy somebody else, which is usually what they ended up doing.

One morning, the Writers got up to find their land had been transformed. The colour scheme had been altered, there were new graphics to look at and new features to explore. Everything in the land of the Writers seemed wonderful.

Unfortunately, the Writers didn't know they were being watched from afar by the Suits: evil people who dressed in grey and hated words and creativity because they only liked numbers. They liked adding numbers up or taking numbers away or multiplying numbers together to make even bigger numbers. Their favourite number, though, was 0 because it was simple and boring, just like them, and this is what they wanted to change the land of the Writers into. Nothing. A great big grey nothing.

So, the Suits gathered outside the land of the Writers and planned their attack.

Fortunately for the Writers, the Mods discovered the plans the Suits were making and managed to let the Writers know they were going to be attacked. At first, the Writers didn't know what to do and they started to panic. Some Writers tried to escape by running away to smaller islands, but most stayed to plan their response. Eventually, the Writers agreed they couldn't fight the Suits on their own and they needed help, but who could they ask? Who would come to their rescue?

Whenever two Writers get together they usually end up talking about the Famous Writers, writers who had constructed great works and set sail across the treacherous Sea of Publishing to seek fame and fortune. If anybody could help the Writers it would be the Famous Writers, so it was agreed to send pleas for help to all of the Famous Writers they could think of, but would the Famous Writers hear their pleas and, if they did hear them, would they help?

To be continued .... (hopefully)




A Place To Be

By Ali Froud AKA spiderbaby (England)


There is a place,
not geographically positioned,
where landscaped colours,
purple, green and white,
are the familiar rolling hills
to folk throughout the world
to meet and greet and write.
It is in cyber space,
that this community exists.
A place for writers and for poets,
a space created by the BBC.
We’re fighting for survival now
so please, will someone
listen to our plea.

For now they,
the grey faced powers that be
are sending in the wrecking ball,
the heavy plant, the JCB.
Oh, they will leave some content,
sure, but then this land,
bereft of people will no longer be
community.





Last Post

By FinbarrKinnell (England)


Did you hear the last post,
Played on Remembrance Day?
Did it elicit tears of sadness,
World at war, a bloody madness?
Silence and decay.
Did you catch the last post,
Did you get your cards away?
Did it elicit tears secluded,
Friendships lost, no more included?
Lovers gone astray.
Will you write the last post,
When we reach the sombre day?
Will it elicit tears of heartache,
Creative thirst you cannot slake?
Get Writing gone away?





The Shout...


By Ron Hiles AKA genieronhiles (England)


…and names are took and carved in stone
With promises to look them up when all alone.
And all is True when given free without a thought.
Then they say, 'This is me and this is why I fought.'
And I say, 'This is me and that is what you bought
When we decided to step out and fight for Them.'

So hold your ground and keep that smile
That disappears for a while when things get rough
And hold your head up high and do not shout at stuff
That holds no sway in Honour.
For at the end of days when all around
Are stood bemused on Hallowed ground
We may then shout
'I told you so!'





Shifting Sands

By KieranJay (England)


I endured unforgiving seas,
and found my way to land,
avoided the catastrophes,
marooned, I lay
in sober sands.
Feet lapped by trepidation’s wave,
cut off from all reality,
with my sanity to save,
and efforts shipwrecked in the past,
like failure flags
on broken masts. An island
harbours hopes,
feelings that might have gone unseen,
in poetic information streams,
the bits and bytes of online soul
entangled in the net, extolled
to salvage self-esteem and repay
karma debts.
A love encrypted
But not blind,
Rescued my mind and gave it site,
A place to rest,
with thoughts expressed,
A chance to search cathartic coves
for friendship treasure-troves.
As sunsets sail,
and moon rows tides,
it rocks the raft of time we ride.
The island shrinks and disappears,
but sands suspended in the sea,
will be re-laid elsewhere thankfully.





The Phoenix


By Ali McNabb AKA Extraali (England)


Amid the wreckage of the community, the flames ravaged the remains of a culture – naïve and imperfect, but a culture nevertheless. The fires, all around, were remorselessly consuming the tattered remnant of what once had shone so brightly – and were now ashen with the sooty accumulation of bitter loss.

A bewildered survivor, aghast at the horror of that which confronted him, half maddened with grief over what he had lost, desperately sought some sanctuary amongst the branding embers of destruction.

They had known for a time of the doom that awaited them. Many among them had withdrawn into themselves – himself included – and had awaited their fate with a resigned dignity.

Others had tried, in vain, to fight - to avert the calamity which had been written to befall them.
Desperate, like the deluded English King of antiquity, they had tried to turn back the tide.
But it was no use.

Despite their noble efforts they failed, but their failure was glorious, and had earned them the admiration and respect of their peers. The survivor, having had the courage knocked out of him long ago, had made no such leap toward nobility, and felt ashamed.

As he wandered amid the devastation, the survivor had seen, and wondered at, the marvellous stoicism of his community. Their labours had produced a splendour which compared easily to all the great glories that had gone before, despite the doom of Damocles that hovered above them. The survivor’s heart had soared with the beauty of it, and pride in the friends he had shared so much with.

As the flames rose all around him, the survivor was pushed further and further back until at last he was teetering on the brink. Before him lay a wide and lonely ocean – a world-wide torrent on which, if you didn’t float, you died. Behind him lay oblivion.
Without hesitation, he jumped.

The dreams the survivor dreamed at once disturbed and comforted him. His visions were of the co-operative of minds he had called a home, and its relentless destruction. He saw once again the sparks and embers which floated up from the fires and imagined they were the works and minds of his friends rising to escape the fiery doom which lay below.

He saw, in that languid and hazy mode of dreams, them coalesce, and fall once more, and began to assume a shape until with a screech of triumph and liberation there arose a beautiful bird of flame.
It eased itself gracefully into the air, a joyous and fiery marriage of all the lives that had gone before and circled the lifeless relics of the burned community out of which it had risen. With a final screech of - was it grim determination? - it sped across the sea and out of sight.

When the survivor came to, he found himself bobbing among the flotsam of his past life, washing against the Dock of what seemed a new community, of which he was previously unaware.
With some difficulty he hauled himself, bewildered, out of the water and wandered the Dock.
So much seemed familiar to him, he saw so many he had seen before. Although uncomfortable, he felt at home – but not home – and decided that here was where he would stay.

He would adopt a new name – the one he had seemed pompous (but it was all he could think of at the time), and that he would create new lives here.
As he decided all this he saw a pub-sign that made him stop in his tracks. It swung in the stiff breeze, the fiery bird pictured on it seemed as if it was flying, and the words beneath it simply said “The Phoenix.”





Upon A Time


By Annie Bien AKA Sravasti (New York, USA))


Once upon a time, the sense perceptions,
the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body were beached,
held in tow, for imaginations run
to deeper seas of mind plunged out of reach:

Words arose from unknown atolls, bubbles
to surface, soaring through space, unknown codes
deciphered through encrypted voids, a jumble,
alighting stars on cyber page's folds.

Across the oceans, unknown eyes do read
direct transmissions meeting mind with mind,
depriving sense sphere's distinguishing breed,
a tapestry of words weave, minds aligned.

Friends whose voices sound through phrases, hearts bared
plummet deep 'neath surface reality.
An omnivoice announces lifelines pared,
What you wanted was never meant to be.

Goodbye, friends, your thoughts now blot the screen.
I'll wish we meet again, friends yet unseen.





The Spirit of GW


By Chris Grahn AKA ChrisG2 (England)


I am wind blown.
I am sand blown.
I am a desert,
Sculptured by the
Stinging, scoring, sand storm,
Baked by the
Searing scorching soulless sun.
I had an oasis.
To give me shelter.
It was verdant.
It was fertile.
Friends came and rested,
Drank the clear cool bubbling water,
Ate the fruit hanging plump in the palms.
Some left with knowledge.
Some left with humanity.
Some left with love.
All left with my gift,
That only I could give them.
The philosophy that was me.
A piece of me went with them,
Wherever they wandered,
Wherever they roamed.
They only had to call
And I was with them
In their darkest hours
Alone against their sea
Of misery and pain.
But they made me their vessel,
To carry their troubles,
And they filled me
With their anguish.
They sold me in the markets.
Bartered me for their lies.
And so the fruit rotted.
And they cut the trees down.
And they poisoned the water.
And they enslaved my humanity.
Now I want vengeance,
Such is my wrath
That they will see me
And fear my coming.
For now I am a plague, a pestilence
Such as they never did see.
Now I am war.
I take no sides.
I slaughter all.
But can I really hate them?
For being stupid,
For acting like children,
When that's what they are.
When I could teach them.
How to be human.
How to build an oasis.
How to grow fruit plump in the palm.
How to find
The bubbling clear water.
And they could take with them
A piece of me.





Dismissed


By Joe Young (England)

In these hallowed halls
On the emptied walls
No more pictures hang
Of the same old gang

It's the end of our days
We have said goodbye
Gone our seperate ways
Gone to have a cry

Now the Purple Park
Is all grey and dark
And the lights are out
On the roundabout

We were told to go
And our cries echo
Round the BBC
For eternity.






GW - Say It in Rhyme


By Maureen Wilkinson AKA goldengirl7979 (England)


There are old folk, who now retired,
found a site and embers fired.
No more to sit in lonely state,
for on GW there was a mate.
Someone to chat and pass a day,
in writing, they all had a say.
Disabled folk, perhaps one pleasure,
so judged only by this measure.
Broken hearts, a lonely mother
found new friends, who helped recover,
Battered egos and raise self worth.
So BBC just how on earth
can you cut a life line, sharp.
BBC have you no heart?





The Topology of Your Smile


By Linda Day Martin AKA Andmymare (Vermont, USA)


My spatial skills are really nil,
and besides, I've never seen it,
but I've heard it over the lines,
and even though I have to ride it like a tiny silver highway around the ring of a puzzle
a mobia strip
like your bottom lip and the top one
but it starts in your belly and your mind simultaneously,
and a laugh ripples out
and
that in itself is a puzzle, and
my spatial skills are really nil,
and I've never seen it,
but I've heard your smile over the lines, and traced it's topology
again and again
for fun




Playground Lost

By A Milkstone AKA milkstone (England)


I was allowed in a playground,
for a while, with other children
from my neighbourhood.
We climbed the frames
and went head down the slides
but always pushed each other
higher on the swings.





The End


By scarlet pimpernel (Scotland)


Flying high among rattlesnake skies
Poisoned by noise and little white lies
With breeding contemption
We deal in redemption
Yet phoenixes rise right before my eyes

Watch dying angels falling from grace
Exposing themselves to a world of disgrace
These sordid abstractions
With fatal attractions
Will wipe you out and leave no trace

Now knightmares play until doomsday
Skipping through waves with shallow knaves
In deep contemplation
They sing for salvation
Burying ghosts in their cyberspace graves

It's an end to fighting here at Get Writing
Now the northern breeze is finally biting
No more aggravation
For this congregation
As snowdrops freeze our sheets of lightning

This discontented winter's delivered
Icy stares and fearful shivers
We're no longer a nation
On this global station
An ice-age has come, and it's here forever

Farewell all you comrades
Farewell all you foes
Farewell all you poets who couldn't write prose
Farewell to my family
Farewell to my friend
Farewell to the good times
Hello to the end...



Community


By George Myers AKA johnmecca (Nevada, USA)


For months,
I have felt the ethereal brushes,
of nameless,
faceless writers,
caressing my fleshy skin through digital touch.
I have felt them nudge my heart,
trace fingers across my chest,
rub my thigh in a most intimate way.
I've felt the gentle terror of a quickly beating heart,
as I read a piece that excited me,
both mind...
and certain parts of the body.
I've grown and lessened at comments,
quips,
and attacks by these marauders in words.
No retaliation is possible,
when countless fingers touch you,
across a world wire,
for a man so solitary, who finds himself best off,
in a white room with no visitors,
a crumpled piece of parchment, whiskey,
and the thoughts of another sh!##y day,
but no....
I allow myself to be warmed by others words, to touch another life outside my own,
man, woman, maybe even child
drag light fingerprints,
low-grade sandpaper along the folds of flesh that make up,
me,
in truth, it's the closest I've ever come to being bi-sexual,
allowing all comers, relinquishing my own,
petty ideals and preconceptions, instead,
falling frighteningly in ecstasy,
into all the hands and words,
mixing, touching, loving, hating,
all in a poem.





Aunty for an Allegory


By Julie Okon AKA Anne Other-one (Poland)


My Aunty was ever so often round our house.
When I was really little she used to be there after school.
I was struggling with the after effects of Maths, Biology and Physicals.
For me she was a living miracle.
She'd have me curl up on the sofa while she sat down and told me a story.
'Cept she didn't call it a story; she called it 'Jackanory'.

Some of them were naff and daft, others made my ears twitch, made me laugh out loud.
Sometimes I stopped thinking life was a bitch. Sometimes I'd come home and find her already sitting on the living room sofa with loads of useless stuff 'she'd made earlier.'

She went hairless if I tried to pull off the plasters she'd stuck on the labels. Those days I thought she was lost in her own navel.
Or, there I would be with her and there were singing ringing trees with a weird midget and... and a bear and... things.

Then there was Zebbedee, Florence and Ermintrude, she invited them in and I kind of got used to 'em.
My Mum and Dad would only talk to Aunty Beeb after 9pm then they'd kick her out saying, 'that's enough of bad news for one night' as if she was to blame for it.

When I got older and more formed she'd sit up late with me.
She knew what I needed, my neighbours and locals she'd put into parody.
There was a shopkeeper trying to sell a dead parrot, then all of those soldiers' marches, farting and mirth.
I loved her for that.
She'd had loads of husbands.
They came and went.
Some of them made her sad and cold. Others teased her and tickled her, made her laugh and shine again. Those were the days when the stories she told me were dark and dirty.
About sex and passion and pain she swore like a trooper when she told 'em.
But they opened my mind to a world everyone else tries to hide.
'MY Aunty' wasn't about to tell me lies.
That's when it happened.

Mrs. Whitehouse next door had heard her telling me a story.
She'd run to my Mum and said what she oughtta.
'Oi you know what that Aunty is telling your daughter?'
(My Mum just looked on like a lamb to the slaughter.)
"She's telling her, 'sex is for fun, she's putting her to shame, she swears and she smokes there'll be no turning back. I'm telling you now give her the sack."
"I blame that husband of hers, he tells her 'it's a free world and anything goes'.
Folk like you and me have ta put a stop to it."

My Aunty was brilliant in her response she said 'I never listen to my husbands'. To me they have no say. I'm an independent woman, my man's no ponce.'
But the slander had stuck, she never quite cleared it.

They scared her those locals when they said she was to blame for kids killing their teachers and cities full of shame.
But I know she has plenty of tricks up her sleeve.
Nowadays I don't live anything like near.
But this Aunty of mine, it's ever so queer.
She still turns up in my living room,
day and night,
still a welcoming sight.

She's dressed in white and beige with purple accessories.
Now she's been letting me do the talking
and got me to meet the best friends ever.
All around the world they are there for me.
It's been so bleeding clever!

But now, what makes my friends and me so scared and cry.
is that those bitches that scared her so many years back have done it this time.
They made her into a liar, a turncoat, a sop.
On top of all that she upped and married that man Sam!

Me and my friends' chats now are bitter desperate wails,
Uncle Sam's taken over.
Nothing more to be said.
Our Aunty has faded to a dull grey thread.
He taunts her and jeers her till now she's a shade of herself.
All those bright shiny stars going out with a shiver.

It's a world without Aunty now.
No dippy laugh and cantankerous twirls.
Uncle Sam says "Tough! That's Life",
I say "It's death."





Keep Writing


By Roy Everitt AKA roy (England)


Some people see words as excuses for fighting
While others see wars as good reasons for writing.
I'd rather be skilled with the word than the shell;
I'd much rather practice my rhyming -
Oh well,
If pulling the plug is the way it's to be
I still will keep writing, but listen to me:
For every word fired, one bullet is saved,
And every verse volleyed is one fewer grave.
'Nation speaks Peace unto nation', we said -
Are all our most cherished ideals stone dead?




Loving, the Dove


By Robert Capps AKA logicus tracticus philosophicus (England)


Blue butterflies don't fly so high in the sky
So it seems that the directions don't come from the stars or things surreal,
far beneath the gossamer wings.

Strange are things we know, so little of, above or below.
Our sky.
But do we try to wonder why the whens, if and how far to go?
Instead we in greed, we feed upon the seed of freedom.
Fetter, all that which we aspire to, so we can be in their world, not.
Their worlds in ours in this twenty first centennial century.

There is no need for zoos, cages barred, concrete yards, and micro measured ceiling.
Hiding more than it is really revealing.
There is the dove, the bird of love, birds so pure and white.
Those little ditties that songbird sings, is oft full of vim and vigour, yet all we do is point the gun, close one eye, then pull the trigger,
Arrows too - when they flew, free flight, induced by feather, from leather, as well you know.

The wood for the bow, heart of oak, as you well know taken from trees, killing the very air that we breathe, can you now conceive, as I believe;
insanity sucks .

So if we stopped and thought what we were taught, then there would be no guns,
Blood bred sons, or laments to forgotten species,
this special thesis or this epigrammatic rendition, to this barbarism, banal-carnival, revival no more.

Animals roaming free no more.
The land you see is all irradiated, unconsummated, desolated.
The naked truth is often cold and comes with no feeling, for what comes next, read the text,
To the Book of... Condolence:
Blue Butterfly Dead.

A3746676

For the complete work, with updated comment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/A3823779
see volume one here allready and two

see here for
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/getwriting/A3746676...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/getwriting/A3762010...
first two anthos leave comment at bottom please leave message giveing fav one

Volume 1 A3746676

Volume 2, Part 1 A3762010
Volume 2, Part 2 A3825362

Volume 3, Part 1 A3814634
Volume 3, Part 2 A3823599

Volume 4 and 5, A3825722
the complete works