Ira Glass is an American public radio personality, and host and producer of the radio and television show This American Life
Tag Archives: inspiration
Mr. Pancake – A Poem an Ode to People who annoy the hello out of you
Mr. Pancake
You are a walking pancake in my way!
A brainless angry flapjack in my otherwise
glorious day.
My eyes roll up,
as you talk your stupid pancake talk.
Stop!
…Talking!
Mr.Pancake…Just stop!
I know you think you have something
important to say.
But I don’t live inside your thin
bulbous blueberry head.
Sooooo…
Go…
Away…
and I will put my fork down.
by Philip Wardlow
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – A Poem (inspired by a novel of the same name)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
I am but a dark silhouette back-lit
by your imaginings of what I must be.
My frame of reference is not yours,
nor is your own mine to see.
I cannot hope to know the true depth
of the strangeness that lurks behind those eyes;
the sadness, the desperation, and the longing
cannot be accurately defined as simply measured
by a ruler or thrown upon a scale like a piece
of meat.
Think me misguided, corrupt, or lost?
Think me a friend, lover, or a hero?
You would be wrong on all accounts.
I am simply a solitary soul cast adrift,
striving to find a good home to lift
me up from this cold stone floor and prop
me up next to a nice warm fire and hold
me tight.
by Philip Wardlow 2013
Aspects of Her – A Poem
Aspects of Her
A sunshine smile
dipped in a psychedelic rainbow
of colors that don’t exist
in the spectrum that
physics would allow.
Slide your hands down your hips,
feel the silk threads float over
your soft cashmere skin;
you always liked touching yourself
more than me.
Eyes look away when I speak to them.
I can’t quite catch their color; evasive
as a fish in a warm running stream.
Sad, reflective, in denial of your
desperation as you try and fit into
a dress that’s just a little too tight.
You are a free spirit that confines
herself behind a waterfall of wishes
that will never see fruition.
This is you, all the aspects, all the incarnations,
All the pages yet to be written, all the pages
torn out and tear stained and written over again
then forgotten..
This is you and I have known
them all.
By Philip Wardlow 2013
“I would…But” A Writing exercise and my little stab at humor.
When I am in a rut like I am right now with my writing I often try to jump-start my brain with a Writing Exercise or two. The next few posts will be focused on breaking past that block and showing you the results of my own exercises that I am trying. As I have said in the past in my other posts there is no such thing as writer’s blocks just more of what I would call a writing malaise if you will. So here is one of my first attempts to get out of it and start being more productive with my Novel and Short stories…
I like to often challenge the brain by forcing me to come up with a solution. Be it a short scenario or situation to get out of, a cause/affect, or an if/then kinda thing. I wanted to have fun with that concept a little so I decided doing it in a joke format called ” I would …But” … so here goes my little stab or stabs at humor. They are in the order in which they were created first btw. My goal was Ten..my brain was hurting a little towards the end. Hey its hard to be funny! I hope I don’t make you suffer or groan out loud too much…:).
1. I would call you an ass but you’d take it as a compliment.
2. I would say I love you but you might hold me to it.
3. I would say my ships about to come in but I just found out it was called the Titanic.
4. I would love to have sex with you but the sign above your head says now serving No.4 and I’m holding No.99 and I just can’t wait that long.
5. I would say you are the most beautiful woman in the world but I just had a sex change so I would be lying.
6. I would give strippers more money but they hate it when I try and make change for a five.
7. I would say the state of the world as a majority is mostly apathetic to the causes that face our planet on a daily basis and that we as a human race need to stand up and say enough is enough, let’s fight for what we believe in and have the guts and determination and discipline to stand behind our principles to forge a better brighter tomorrow for ourselves and our future posterity but then again I don’t really care to leave my couch much.
8. I would like to thank my esteemed colleagues,co-workers, and friends who I climbed over and stomped on that helped make this all possible but for the life of me I cannot remember any of their damn names.
9. I would be a junkie but I am afraid of anything going in my nose, or needles into my arm, I would be a prostitute but I’m afraid of committment for cash, to much pressure to perform I guess, I would be an alcoholic but I may be forced to go to AA one day and I just hate crowds and public speaking.
10. I would like to write a book that at least half the world would gush over and ooh and aw at it but I’m thinking I would have to kill about 7,640,000,011 Billion People to make that happen…dammit make that 7,649,000,012…I missed one!
Well there you have it…hope you enjoyed it as much as me…and I didn’t really enjoy it all that much myself…I’m just trying to jump-start myself as I said….
I will do another post soon to jump start my brain called Toilet Tuesday….its where I go into my bathroom at work with a pad and pen, push the button on the exhaust fan for 10 minutes and see what I come up with for a quick short story…and yes.. I am serious I will be seriously doing this…just you wait and see… I hope it’s something good. ( and no I am not actually going to the bathroom while I’m in there…I’m just using the timer function….sheesh what do you take me for)
Till next we meet…:)
Courage – A quote for the Year, Month, Day, or hour whatever it takes….
“Courage! What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the “ape” in apricot? What have they got that I ain’t got?”
“Courage!”
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First of all give yourself a break from what you didn’t accomplish last year….and then give yourself a pat on the back for all the things big or small that you did accomplish this year.
NOW…find the courage to do it all over again….I’m not talking about resolutions….just the courage to try….if you fail in that trying then you tried in that failing…yeah yeah I know you heard it all before….but have the courage to fail…..or even the courage to succeed…
Stick your neck out….ask that girl/guy out that you have been eyeballing, write something of substance, jog down that street, lift that weight, deny yourself that donut (at least for this week or month), join a cause that’s been prickling you, express an opinion or participate in a constructive dialogue with another, travel near or far to a new place you have never been. Give someone needed encouragement…be less selfish (I do need the occasional back rub…:) . Be kind to yourself and don’t beat yourself up over your failings…guess what, your human.
Perfection is relative but the world likes uniqueness so find the uniqueness in you and share it with others and exploit yourself…in a good way I’m saying …I’m also good at sex but I’m not gonna be a Gigolo..or maybe I can be…:)
I found the perfect thing while I was shopping this weekend to help me get to that place this year….it called out to me from the store shopping shelf like a clarion call on the battlefield….read the label carefully below.
Who wouldn’t want to smell like COURAGE!…Well I tried it and it smells good…..I’m not sure what real Courage smells like…but its a good start for the year..My wife likes it, so that’s good enough for me!
So go out and find your courage….:)
A Calvin and Hobbes Christmas
The following is needed to clear my brain and palate of the week that was…I hope you enjoy…
Torture – an Ode and Poem to the Difficulties of writing…
Torture
Writing is like torture as I’m slapped and
kicked to divulge the secret sins of my
past.
My hands are bound and gashed
As the rough hewn ropes cut and
Bite into my fresh raw
Flesh.
Bring out the glowing cherry red poker and
Barbed wire mesh as they apply the thumbscrews with
A sharp twist and turn along with a mocking jest.
With my head stuffed into the block, my
Feet dangle two feet from the ground
No confession is forthcoming from my mouth or mind
Not even as they pour hot oil in my ear and I hear it
Gurgle down.
My strength is waning as nighttime
Waxes by , leaving me with little hope but to
Tell all or soon die.
By Philip Wardlow
My NOW PHILisophy…
The NOW only happens once, seize the NOW before it goes away never to return.
If you miss that NOW, know that a new NOW may present itself but you must be ready and spring upon it with claws extended because you are pushing the odds my friend.
If you find yourself in a NOW moment, slow down, taste it, relish it and remember it wholly wrapping yourself up in it like a blanket.
Don’t be afraid of the NOW; embrace it like all challenges that life flings at you wrapped in that loathsome word called fear.
Above all, NOW is in you whether you know it or not. You just have to let it come out and play…:)
by Philip Wardlow
Quote of the Week by Robert Downey Jr.
I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you’ve done.
Quote by Robert Downey Jr.
That’s me ever moving forward in my writing….don’t know where I’ll end up but I hope it’s nice when I get there. (but don’t they say its the journey not the destination that matters… eff that man…I wanna get there..doesn’t everyone.)
Philip Wardlow
Ain't no rest for the Wicked - Philip Wardlow - The real and the sensual sides to life in all its facets.. 