Category Archives: Writing

Night Walker

Posted on July 25, 2020 by John Swinburn

Earlier this year, in one of my stream-of-consciousness blathers, I mentioned the idea of mounting a television to a treadmill, enabling me to watch an odd mix of television series and made-for-Netflix movies while getting some exercise. If I did … Continue reading →

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I Can’t Write this Morning

Posted on July 24, 2020 by John Swinburn

I can’t write this morning.  Writing suddenly seems a luxury, a shameful waste in the face of real necessity. My mood will change, I’m sure. I am fortunate, in that it always does. But maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe the escape … Continue reading →

Posted in Emotion, Writing | Leave a comment

When Life and Death Were Simple

Posted on July 12, 2020 by John Swinburn

In my mind, I picture an ancient cave-dweller, a man in his early twenties. During the time he lived, the average lifespan of humans was only twenty-six. The rare thirty-year-old or rarer forty-year-old were considered extraordinary. And they were. They … Continue reading →

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Struggling

Posted on June 24, 2020 by John Swinburn

I keep coming back to Struggles, the imaginary town in Arkansas that is grappling with its history of poor management, populations flight, and an uncertain future. I say I keep coming back to the town, but I haven’t been writing … Continue reading →

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Telenovela

Posted on June 21, 2020 by John Swinburn

It finally became too much. Not too much to bear, just too much to tolerate. Too much to process. Too much boastful self-absorption to willingly witness. And, so, you washed your hands of it. You rinsed off the sticky goo … Continue reading →

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Rumi

Posted on May 22, 2020 by John Swinburn

I spent an entirely unsatisfactory fifteen minutes earlier this morning attempting to learn more about the Persian poet, Rumi. The time was unsatisfactory because, for one reason, I was unable to wade through the various Persian and Arabic and other … Continue reading →

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Farmers’ Rebellion

Posted on May 4, 2020 by John Swinburn

Kenneth “Hurricane” Whackman was confirmed as Secretary of Weather only three weeks after Charlene Floore was sworn in as the fifty-eighth president of the United States. Two days later, Tyson “Popeye” Monsanto was confirmed as Secretary of Agribusiness, the position … Continue reading →

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Elvin’s Exorcism

Posted on April 24, 2020 by John Swinburn

I’ll try something different today. Instead of attempting without success to craft a wannabe witty stream-of-consciousness screed, I’ll explain myself. My name is Elvin and I live inside a body that is not my own. I use it because it … Continue reading →

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Lacking Credentials

Posted on April 16, 2020 by John Swinburn

Poetry fills an aching need within the poet to express emotions that cannot be expressed otherwise. And poetry enables poets and their audiences, whether readers or listeners, to establish intimate emotional bonds. Sometimes—more often than not, it seems—the words of … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Writing | 2 Comments

Talking to Myself

Posted on April 14, 2020 by John Swinburn

I have started, and in a few cases finished, several new posts over the last several days that have yet to be published. Even the “finished” posts, though, are incomplete. There is something about the words I have written or … Continue reading →

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Safe Places

Posted on April 5, 2020 by John Swinburn

Safe places are the stuff of folklore. They exist in ever smaller numbers today, numbers smaller than zero and with even less substance. Safety, always a figment of the imagination, has vaporized into an evanescent fantasy so vague and ghostly … Continue reading →

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Fiction and Reality, One and the Same

Posted on March 31, 2020 by John Swinburn

There was a time, not so long ago, that I found it easy to write about fictional dystopian horrors, experiences unlike anything I ever experienced. My imagination allowed me to picture those ghastly nightmares as a dispassionate observer, watching through … Continue reading →

Posted in Compassion, Covid-19, Empathy, Writing | 2 Comments

Struggles (AR) in the Times of Pestilence

Posted on March 23, 2020 by John Swinburn

The fictional town of Stuggles, Arkansas morphed from a small town coping with abandonment by its principal employer, a manufacturing plant, into a community on life support, thanks to a virus for which no immunity nor any treatment exists.  The … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Writing | 3 Comments

Love is the Richest Emotion

Posted on March 13, 2020 by John Swinburn

I love you. You know who you are. I could listen to your voice for hours if you’d let me. And I suppose you would. But what reason could I give for wanting to hear it? What excuse could I … Continue reading →

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Distortion

Posted on February 19, 2020 by John Swinburn

Consider how radically different your life would have been if you had been adopted in 1962 by a Chinese peasant couple who traveled to the United States from their rural home outside the tiny village of Zhongxin in Guizhou Province, … Continue reading →

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