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Bartie’s Poems

Farewell To Annie Lori

Humming bird buzzing.
The wings fuzzing in a blurry motion.
It drinks the lotion, flies off buzzing.

So was the poem he started with before he was interrupted by an Anna. Who was a struggle not to stare at, and the writing during his day he did not fare. No chance to not look at her, was to much to bare.

“Can you be quiet for just one minute.” But she leaned forward, poked his nose.

“Last one to reach the forest is a rotten egg.” She ran quickly, while Bartie waited at the seat at the train station.

“Are you going to come with me or not?” Anna said, turning around to face him and walked over to him, the gently tugged his arm. “Come on.” Playing outside was never really something Bartie looked forward to, instead preferring to stay home. But the stew at home had long sense gone stale, his mother had to take out the pale.

“If we wait till later, the ghosts will come out.” Annie said. He began to write in his notebooks, a scrawled note he took:

Anna is ornery and pushy, get off my arm.
Toss her into the –

But Bartie was jerked quickly.

When they reached the pond, Annie stirred her fingers in the water. “You don’t want to drink this, it’s dirty.” Annie said, causing Bartie to roll his eyes.

“Yea I know that, but we need to get back to the station.”

“But just a bit longer.” Annie said, poking the nose on his head.

“No, you need to go now – you will be late.”

“Your no fun.”

As soon as they got to the station, her mother complained to her about wandering off. Bartie waved at her unenthusiastically as she left, though she waved overly enthusiastically – waving her hands about quite a bit, as the train rode off.

But he did not know, that was the last he’d see of her.

He quickly scrawled:

Little Annie, Clingy,
Out in the nick of time.

Annie was in a train accident.

While Bartie did not know that she had died, he felt something missing. As the stars in the night sky, were not aligned correctly. None of them twinkled in the sky. He received a letter, from her aunt. They were crushed in a train collision. Over time he came to be drawn to the forest – to the woods, to seeing everything.

He had time to write, to much time:

Little Annie was fun to be with. … Why isn’t she here?

And began to stay out later, mother had to get involved. “Is there something you have been thinking about?” she said, as they were eating dinner.

At first he was staying out just thirty minutes later. Then it became about an hour later, at first she passed it as a phase. “Your not eating your stew – eat it.” Playing with his food was something he had not done sense he was about ten, became a habit – every single night.

So she asked for the help from the priest, and he was at Church for two hours at a time. “Bartie, I want to know how you think. You can write poetry if you want, but I want to see it afterword. Your mother is worried about your strange thoughts.”

Bartie raised up his nose, and sniffed.

“I may write my poetry, about what I want.”

“And that’s fine, but your mother is –”

“She not suppose to be reading me stuff, said she was not.” But the priest simply looked at him coldly, and crossly.

After the first appointment, he got out his notebook. Her mother wondered why he was still writing, wondered why the priest did not talk him out of it. “Says he wants to know how I think,” he said to his mother, but only be willing to tell them his thoughts partially. For the most part, he wanted to be alone. Might just give them a regular old nature poem.

In his bedroom, he got out his notebook before bed. Mom is a traitor, why don’t I bake her. Wouldn’t that shake her.

And then he walked to were the fern grew, took an apple from a tree. Held it in his hand, and then admired it – staring into the sky. “I can still fell your presence, you have never left – where are you hiding.” But he was not sure – at least at first, whether he was dreaming. Or whether it was real, he could still here her voice.

He sang to himself, in his head:

As part of the forest,
only monkeys live in the trees.
Sky is raining, the sky is crying.
A chance to walk the earth,
it’s decrying.

Heard a voice, in the trees. It did more than a sneeze. It echoed the his own text, into the darkness of oncoming night:

As part of the forest, you live in the trees.
I am raining, I am crying.
To walk along the earth I decry.
Cause the trees to sway
in the breeze.

Then he saw a mirage, a fog shining with light. He held his hands out, and disappeared into the fog. Saw memories, and times past. Of futures gone, then he was thrown out of the black void into the night. He woke up the next morning, with an illness. Doctors could not explain his condition, it was a rendition from his depression – they theorized. There was nothing else they could devise.

The next school day, every was normal.

Then the itches began to start. His body was developing unexplainable welts and bruises. It happened every morning, after every snoozes. While the doctors did not know, he had a certain feeling. That whatever was in the forest, caused this. And he wanted the itches, and the scratches to go away. He felt like, his body was about to decay. “You need to stay away from this graveyard” his doctors would say, “they cause diseases.” Yet it was the only time of his life, he could have some quiet.

As he sat on the bench:

I want to write whatever is out there, Come to me, I will record Your story. I will start with yours, Ms. Lori.

What Is French Colonial Gothic?

What is “French-Colonial Gothic”, and how does it differ from Steampunk? Like Guillotine Western, the definition for French-Colonial Gothic is a bit more rigorous than simply being set in the Victorian or Belle Epoque periods.

Specifically, in contrary to the direction of family friendly environment common to steampunk, French Colonial Gothic emphasizes the darker aspects of detective fiction, with things like severed heads that stay alive and are kept on life support in tanks, among other issues. With the bulk of the dialogue being in a French dialect.

Frequently there are other specifics, like wooden shoes continued to be worn well into the 21st century, with different styles of Wooden shoes developing based on different regions of previous states that were once French colonies. And in a lot of my work it’s more common to find women than men, with men often either fighting wars, or some women not even marrying.

Technology is mainly built around more advanced methods of detecting poison, which is more common than outright mugging and shooting people, with murders committed by eith estranged house wives, or women just out of college. From the description, as you may have guessed, women make the majority of people on death row in French Colonial Gothic, with annual executions by guillotine.

There are a few other specific differences, but this should enough to give the idea that my stuff isn’t quite the same thing as Steampunk that you might see on television or in a Hollywood movie.

I’ve always also imagined games built with this setting blending Hexagonal grids with Rock-Paper-Scissors mechanics, and having Hangman like gameplay elements as well, which is the direction my games will go in.