Wish, a poem

Wish

He wished to be a dragoon,
in a colorful uniform,
but the faeries thought he said dragon — 
to them, that seems the norm!

He has no sparking carbine,
he rides no spirited steed;
instead his coat is of scales,
his heart is filled with greed!

Greed for what? Why gold!
And maybe a sheep or two
to snack on when he’s peckish — 
no one will miss a few.

Take care how you pronounce
when you make your wish;
you might want to be a cop
but end up a carp — yes, a fish!

Stephen Brooke ©2025

Faith, a poem

a poem of sorts, anyway

Faith

To believe in a purpose to ones
existence is faith enough.
To believe things matter,
to choose right over wrong,
is not easy. We must strive,
sometimes, for that faith.
We must yearn for it.
We try and, in trying,
we prove we do believe.
At least enough, we believe.

Stephen Brooke ©2025

 

 

Windows?

There are truly only two programs for which I need some version of Windows: CorelDraw and PowerTracks. The latter is a DAW, a simple but useful and well-featured recording app from PG Music. In theory, I could find an acceptable alternate that works in Linux but I’ve yet to be taken with any I’ve tried. I do, of course, have the ubiquitous Audacity installed but it doesn’t do midi and I’m not enamored of the direction its owners are taking it (same with their MuseScore).

I would also need Windows for another PG Music program, the much better known Band in a Box. I admittedly rarely use it anymore (and an up to date version is somewhat pricey) so it’s not that important to me. I’d as soon bang on a cardboard box as use their canned accompaniments (even if they do sound pretty darn good).

But CorelDraw is likely to remain my go-to graphics program. Yes, I can accomplish much of what it does in free Linux apps. LibreOffice Draw, Inkscape, and Krita are all useful. GIMP is really better for working with raster images and I use it quite a bit, but it does not do vectors nor is it particularly good for layout work. I do all my book covers in Corel.

A different Corel program I like to have working is WordPerfect. Not essential by any means, but an alternative to the LibreOffice Writer in which I do most of my word processing. As a straight-forward office suite it has a lot going for it but it’s not really as good for my writing as an author. And, of course, I wouldn’t touch MS Word with a ten-foot keyboard.

I could also mention Notepad++. Although it works sort of okay on Linux under WINE, it’s always seemed a bit balky. I use a simpler plain text editor on Linux these days but do continue with NP++ on Windows. I use it for taking notes, rather than writing code, and I find it quite useful for that. But again, not essential.

Now if only they could get CorelDraw to work with WINE!

Soft Magic

I am not fond of ‘soft’ magic. All the magical events in my primary fantasy mythos follow strict, generally well defined, ‘scientific’ rules. They may be ‘rubber science,’ as the science fiction community terms such plausible but invented rules, but they remain constant. In that sense, my fantasy could be alternatively labeled science fiction.

Most fantasy has used soft magic over the years. And centuries and millennia! Stuff just happens without much explanation. Gods and demons have powers. Sorcerers cast spells. Names have power. And so on. You’ll find it in Tolkien. You’ll find it in Le Guin’s ‘Earth-Sea.’ That approach also spills over into science fiction when telepathy or the transferal of consciousness occurs, often without explanation. I assiduously avoid such things. Even at best, they become a crutch.

As can be soft magic. It’s far too easy to fudge what magic can do when there are no strict rules. Ultimately, having those rules requires us to think creatively about how to work with them. Rather like writing poetry in form; finding the words that work properly can lead us to new insights on meaning, point us in new directions. We will find no new roads if we don’t run into a few obstacles.

I might add that the rules of magic in my stories are also rooted in science (yes, of a sort). They are not just arbitrary rules that have no explanation — or ones that are, in themselves, soft magic. Sanderson’s work tends that direction. However, it is recognized in the work that most practitioners (even the gods, sometimes) do not completely understand the underlying reasons things work. Magic is ever likely to remain a somewhat empirical sort of science.

Night Rains, a poem

Night Rains

As Spring veils itself in mists of rain,
voices swell in soft, subdued refrain,
muted peeping rising from the ponds,
distant rattle of palmetto fronds,

whispered dripping from the shrouded oak.
In the dark, a lone night heron’s croak
echoes, fading, on its way toward dawn
where the feeding doe seeks out her fawn,

hidden, dappled as the light of morn
in the stillness of a day new-born.
Every question murmured through the long
nocturne finds some answer in bird song,

as these silent shadows yield to gray,
as the hours of night rains pass away.

Stephen Brooke ©2025

The Moon and the Sea Release

My new poetry collection, THE MOON AND THE SEA, will be officially released tomorrow, April 21 2025 (which also happens to be my birthday). Available from Arachis Press (arachispress.com) as print or free ebooks.

 

Forgotten, a poem

Forgotten

Now I lose this dream of you;
now you fade as all dreams do,
whispering as I awake,
what have you forgotten?

Waning with each  breath I take,
memory’s a moon of ache;
will I some night dream anew
what I have forgotten?

Stephen Brooke ©2025