bad writing

when words have more than words with each other.

the sentence & the paragraph had agreed upon meeting at dawn

out in the middle of the page

as the reflection off the fine silver pen being lifted by the human hand in the sky

shone off the bright white recycled paper

there stood one strong paragraph,

which

was armed with clever words, quirky verbs & quiet frankly,

a whole slew of other sentences

who may or may not be brought into the fray

with this

vigilante,

who stood a good distance away from the paragraph

with its shadow blotting out part of the page---

the sentence was tight

knit

&

written in a language that the paragraph had never heard of

before---

the paragraph tilted it’s font a bit, to stave off the human shifting the paper,

causing a bit of a breeze across the soft plane,

but the sentence hadn’t come here today

to waste its time flashing its

fashion sense, and in

standard

new times roman,

it spoke out in italics

“we gonna do this or not?”

& the paragraph,

without a moment’s hesitation,

nodded, saying, in some bold n’ fancy variation of

book antiqua,

“i been ready since i saw the punctuation at the end of your

babbling jumble of foreign words”---

at that point,

the title of the page & the

header

walked in tandem to the place in between both the paragraph

and the sentence---

now equidistant apart from both,

they talked of what had brought both these forms of writing

to the page

this brisk & early morning in

june---

to make a story short,

the foreign language sentence & the

english (current language of commerce) paragraph

had come to this duel over a

beautiful

metaphor---

and while both the title & the header could understand,

having fallen for beautiful metaphors once or twice in their own

multiple drafts, themselves,

it was still a sad sight to see two

strong forms of writing,

battling over one

metaphor,

when there were so many

phrases in the

sea of literature---

the title & the header opened up the utterance

& from that utterance, they pulled two perfect

pistols full of wit

(the weapon of choice for both the paragraph & the sentence),

and after handing both of the forms of writing their

prospective pistol,

they stood back and off to the side of the page,

frightened of what was to happen next---

back to back,

the paragraph & the sentence marched away from each other

space by space by space,

to the traditional margins,

and when they both reached them

they turned round quick,

firing their wit at will---

the paragraph,

hefty & edited well,

was able to fire its wit faster,

as it had already gone through so many drafts, and had

honed its skill

whereby each word within it, had its own place

(it was a “ripped” paragraph, if you can picture it---lean & not very wordy at all),

however,

though the sentence wasn’t as well formed as the paragraph,

it was sleek & stealthy---

its words rolled off a human’s tongue when they read it

aloud,

and in this, the sentence was able to

wiggle itself around,

missing the mass spray of wit that had been fired by the

paragraph’s pistol---

as in every fight,

there is a winner & a loser,

this one was no different,

and the hefty, well edited paragraph,

had too much to move

and too little time to do so,

when the sentence wielded its wit towards it---

the sentence, relentlessly, kept firing,

not satisfied & not feeling safe,

until the paragraph, with all of its fellow sentences within,

crumbled to the page,

now,

a mere pile of

sentence fragments & misplaced

words & punctuation.

 

the sentence,

victorious,

nodded to the title & the header, who nodded back,

and walked out of the lamplight & into the shadow

to embrace the sweet warmth of its

beautiful metaphor

which had been watching the wit-fight

behind the margin.