Out Here

[MystyrMystyry]

Out here
in the fog
you can hear their voices
boots crunching
dogs snorting
see their flashing torches
along the pass
flickering
between birch

they're searching
but you can't return
need to stay hidden
until daybreak

make for the gate
and cross the bridge
northward
past the old farm

and keep going
to the next county

and wait


until the curse lifts





.

[Delta40]

That's rather different for you. I'd like to see you develop this style more

[AuntShecky]

Nobody can hear you in space because it's a vacuum. Nothing for sound waves to travel through, right? That's why movies with multi-million dollar special effects undermine everything by having sound tracks with big explosions in space.

(Like yours fooly is some kind of science expert or something.)

[Delta40]

Those sixties sci-fis have smoke coming out of the spaceships...

[MystyrMystyry]

Thankyou Delta and Aunty :)

I typed it with my index finger!

I think they might not be able to hear you because with no air you'd be dead, without a sound, so you can't scream - it's a paradox. However if you're in a spacestation are you actually in space or just very far away? I mean if someone's in there with you who isn't deaf or listening to Metallica in earphones, they could probably hear you. If you're dead in a spacestation that's something else again, and it doesn't matter who's in there with you.

Doesn't matter. It was just something to free up my brain (?) Doesn't mean anything, isn't about anything, just words

[Haunted]

In space no-one can hear you

Scream

I think you need to put that in quotes, or ital that. I actually know the writer who knows the writer who wrote that line.

Not sure it's the best use of that quote, because the poem didn't pick up on the space theme and instead went back to very down to earth stuff like "school" and "twig". Expecting supernova, or at least some exploding robotic brain clocking teraflops. So begs the question, why quoting something so epic in the first place?

[MystyrMystyry]

Thankyou Haunted :)

Are you sure he wrote it, or was it his friend's friend? ;) (actually not a joke, as I've met quite a few who have claimed various things over the years, so sort of relevant)

Regarding the 'down to earth' aspect - I guess it's an anti-poem, a bit 'not with a bang but a whimper'. But originally it was to be a Spaceship Earth caper, with Earth as Spaceship Chaos

A brief explanation is perhaps in order, at least as brief as I can make it. I used the line (a little cautiously more because I generally avoid cliche) because of what I was trying to say. But you've opened up something interesting regarding copyright and plagiarism.

Firstly what the 'poem' was going to be about: how so many have become aliens in their own countries through wealth discrepancy, while a few have fortunes built on nothing other than huff and bluff, and often sheer luck.

But then I didn't want to make it a 'please feel sorry for me', nor a protest song. Just one of a certain reality.
I gave up because others do this sort of thing far better and I really had nothing new to offer.

But back to your point: because the phrase is in public currency, presuming everyone knows its origins and therefore understands the reference - it even has its own individual entry in the Urban Dictionary, making it now part of the current lingua franca - and because I'm not using it in a deceitful or money grabbing manner, I went with it.

I'm not defending the 'poem'. Which isn't my style, not even my thang. Not even much of anything. But I liked the idea of attempting to encapsulate something of import within a few words. 'Attempt' I say, when sometimes it's better to say nothing. But I have said nothing. I've sat back and watched complacently as the New World Order has unfolded before me, and watched as multi-national corporations have steadily and hamfistedly corrupted governments and polluted the environment to a point of no return. But I didn't want to write a poem about third world slave labour, climate change, species elimination, and the price of first world decadence on the present and future all in one.

Out of curiosity who was this person who coined the expression? Why aren't they more vocal? I'll tell you why shall I? I myself have come up with quite a few phrases and tropes (frequently accidental) that have become cliches across the internet. Once something reaches that status I feel it's better to not claim ownership lest one might appear as a douche.

In fact there's one in particular that I see Every. Single. Day. which made its first appearance on this glorious website, and is now a staple of social media. *Cringes and shudders*

- Your douchey friend, MM

[Haunted]

MM, I am not kidding, that line really does belong to someone. The back story is, I used to partner with the executive creative director at an ad agency. He was my boss and a big time awards winning writer in the field and at the time he was also writing movie trailers on the side. He had written lines for Scarface the Al Pacino movie, Addams Family ("It's all relative"), etc. Big Hollywood motion pictures. We would sit in his nice big office many afternoons schmoozing and bs-ing and he would tell me anecdotes, like flying to LA and kicking around headlines / tag lines etc with producers and then one day Mel Gibson came over with a 6 pack. Anyways he said THAT was one of the lines he wished he had written. It's from Alien as you probably know. He was friends and colleague with the writer. These are real people and their hard work, not just a "cliché" you found on the Internet.

Seriously this is someone else's intellectual property — it was that writer's work and the rights to the line belongs to the movie company. You are infringing if you don't set it apart with punctuation or give it credit.

I not quite sure what you mean why they aren't more "vocal". Copywriters don't claim their own work, they are writers for hire. The stuff they write actually belongs to the companies that pay them. Outside of work, they rarely talk about what they've created. It's a job. And once in a while they actually have to sign NDAs so they can't even talk about what they do to their cats.

This is a gentle reminder MM, as a concerned Litnet friend to another. Pleeese put that line in quotes or something.

[MystyrMystyry]

No worries Haunted. Fixed in a jiffy just for you :)

[Jerrybaldy]

I was thinking of fox being chased by the hounds and the hunters.
Always good to hear from you MM.