This piece might not have much to do with writing and its function but shows at least some range I hope. This prose was written as an early experimental piece from my class, and turned out as a semi decent poem. It's flirtation with obliterated form is something I kept revisiting throughout the school year, so hopefully you'll see more of it.
Shatter – Matti McLean - Experimentation
The line between poetry and prose had finally evaporated. He hadn't intended it to happen, but it had. In front of him, on the page that he'd just written upon were a series of words, and they had just rhymed. He didn't know what to do, but he kept writing regardless. The pencil continued across the page, but for several moments of writing with un-exquisite diction, unintentional turns of phrase and excessive comma uses, he decided something must be done to this poetry situation. He was writing an exam dammit. This was no place for scholarly poetry.
Overneath counts as a word right? I mean, that's totally a real word. If he challenges this I'll take him to the dean. To court. To the president if I have to. I wish Canada had a president.
Where was I?
He scribbled down a few more lines before hovering around the two lines of accidental poetry.
Is it okay to be ironic in an exam? I mean he knows I'm using “Booger-Horse” ironically, right? I mean it's not like he really cares, right? He has a sense of humour. He must. Why else would he wear turtlenecks?
Scribble, scribble, scribble... The pages blur by as he writes sentence after sentence. He doesn't even know what he's writing anymore, but that doesn't stop it all from flowing out on the page. He lost his point two paragraphs ago, and is now commenting on, something, else... ?
Two minds diverge into one. Confusion enters his brain as the red bull and corn pops he had this morning churn uncomfortably in his stomach. He feels a sickening lurch in his stomach as if an invisible ghost hand has crashed through his sternum with a sledgehammer.
The sickening thought strikes him.
I'm going to be sick. I'm going to sicken myself all over this exam. And then I'll have to do it again.
No. Once is more than enough.
He raises his hand and waits for his professor to stop over at his desk. With a panicked look on his face, and a look of bored tedium reflected on his professors, he opens his mouth as a tsunami of college breakfast emerges from the depths of his gullet all over the bored face of his professor.
He goes white with embarrassment and red from fear. His hands shake as the professor takes off his glasses and wipes one of the frames. With a frown on his face he takes the test and points to the bathroom.
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.
The professor lets out a scream as he starts to melt. His skin pops and sizzles like bacon until the only thing remaining is a pair of glasses. He screams like a witch melting. No one else seems to notice. He sits there confused. Suddenly he's naked and everyone else in the room is a vampire. None of them sparkle. He wets himself.
A bell. He pulls his head off of the bubble sheet which has plastered itself to his drooling face. He'd been asleep. He laughs slightly as the other students in the room go up to the front and drop off their tests. It had all been a dream. His professor was vomit free, comparatively, and no one seemed out of place.
He looks at the test and realizes it's empty. He had slept through the entire exam. The professor looks at him disapprovingly as everyone else leaves. He makes a terrifying realization that he was going to fail the test. With a panicked look he writes down “overneath” and hands the paper in. On his way out he sinks into a fit of depression. No more scholarship. No money for school. A future of stacking boxes at Walmart and going home to his cats. He didn't even like cats.
A horrible wet feeling slides across his thighs as he makes the terrible observation that not everything was a dream.
He dies a little inside, but no one notices him slip outside and cry.
