Chalk Lines

Suddenly awoken by the sound of shots,

Time stops...

Flickering luminecent red lights turn and pop,

Screeching eels peels through

Sadened nightgown crowded neighborhood streets,

Sobbing mother would have sold her soul

To have raised her son in any other place,

A better place,

A cleaner place,

A place not laced in crack cased dreams,

A place not awakened by undernourished infant screams,

Other mothers weep with merose encrusted hearts,

Elated that with their own sons they didn't have to part,

Young teen dreams and aspirations,

Mutaded into ghetto haunting apparitions,

Looking through tennis shoe lined

Electric lines at moonshine,

Brightening up the sorrow soaked chalk lines.


--Jordan Ramay

Chapter Two

            As Jeff stepped in, he immediately thought of stepping back out and just driving around the neighborhood for a bit. He often did this after a rough day at work. Which was pretty much every day come to think of it he realized.

            I would literally give my left testicle to quit my job, he thought. As the matter of fact,

might as well take both while your down there. Not like I've used either in the last ten years

except for the occasional release in the downstairs guest bathroom while pretending to take a

shit. I could never use "our" bathroom, which is really "her" bathroom of course. She'd know.

Somehow. She's demonically intuitive that way, he thought.

            Most of my shit to get ready is in the guest bathroom anyway, that way I don't disturbher beauty rest while I get ready at 5pm in the fucking morning to make sure I'm at myamazingly rewarding job by six. Kids, wife, mortgage, car...I'd keep the first and burn the ladderif I had the chance.
           "Honey, I'm home!" Jeff said almost puking in his mouth as he usually does when shit

comes out of it.

            "It's about fucking time. Jesus. What took you so long?" Jeff's wife Vicky asked. Were

you driving around the block again? Charleen Becket said she sees you just driving aimlessly

around our block with that creepy dead expression on your face that you get all the time."

            Charleen Becket. Ever since her husband left her, she's been keeping herself busy with the personal lives of everyone else in the neighborhood, Jeff thought. And to think that bitch waved at me all four times I drove past her house the other day. It's funny the people we pretend to be. Just waiting for the chance to judge and cause chaos in the lives of others to bring some kind of validity and make some kind of sense out of the fucked up cards we were dealt. Charleen Becket probably feels she was dealt a shitty hand, but the truth is she squandered the pocket aces she had when she verbally abused her husband Phil to the point where he was willing to loose everything he had worked for in a divorce just to get the fuck away from her. I saw Phil in downtown LA not to long ago during my lunch break. He was wearing ratty, wrinkled cloths and said he had barely enough money to survive and that he was living in a piece of shit studio in Little Tokyo and that he hadn't been this happy in years...God, I envied him.

            "You know I don't like it when you cuss around our children," Jeff replied.

            "Oh, I'm so sorry your holiness. It's not like they don't hear it at school for Christ's sake," Vicky argued.

            "I seem to recall Sarah's teacher calling me last week to talk about Sarah's recent use of the word you just used in front of her and where she might have heard such language. I told herit wasn't from me and it definitely couldn't have been from my saint of a wife," Jeff saidfacetiously.

            "You're such a fucking hypocrite! You were screaming obscenities at the top of your

lungs last sunday in front of David and the entire neighborhood as the matter of fact," Vicky said raising her voice.

            "I drove a nail through my thumb putting up his basketball hoop. I had to go to the

hospital," Jeff pointed out, trying to keep his cool.

            "Semantics!" Vicky screamed. "The point is, she could have heard those words anywhere and it's not fair of you to put the blame on me. You blame me for everything that is wrong in these kids lives and I'm fucking sick of it."

            You are literally to blame for every drop of psychological damage these kids have

endured during their very short existence on this planet, you complete fucking horror of a

woman, Jeff thought.

            "Okay. Fine. They could have heard it anywhere. Can we drop it, please?" Jeff said.

            "Whatever. We have an hour to get ready for the party next door. Please wear the new pinstripe shirt and silk tie I bought you at Nordy's last weekend. I don't want our outfits

clashing," Vicky mentioned as she walked out of the kitchen.

            Jeff had just remembered where Vicky was with the car when he put the nail through his thumb. They used to have two cars but had to sell Vicky's BMW once they couldn't afford the payments anymore due to Vicky being an out of work Real Estate agent after the market went to shit. He remembered David coming out of the house after he called his Mom to tell her what happened and him saying that Mom said to take a cab to the hospital because she just ordered lunch and couldn't get back with the car...What a woman, Jeff thought. What would I do without her. Probably throw a fucking parade.

            Jeff snapped out of it and realized he hadn't even had a chance to say hello to the only thing that mattered to him in life.

            "So guys, how was your day?" Jeff asked in a chipper, suburbinite father fasion. 

UNTITLED

       This is the first couple pages of a short story I am working on. Hopefully posting this will motivate the completion of it. Enjoy and I'd love to hear your feedback. 

  

     Jeff McMannis pulled into his driveway the same way he does everyday after putting in his eight hours at the office. He noticed several dark smudges coupled with indents covering his newly installed garage door that his son David had obviously been using as a backstop for his baseball.

    The remnants of a mid-afternoon tea party scattered across his lawn, compliments of his daughter Sarah…“Jesus Christ”, He thought to himself.

    As he stood and stared at the front door of his depreciating asset he thought of how he once had dreamed of being a famed musician. Traveling the planet doing the thing he loves most, meeting interesting people, and dining in five star restaurants. Maybe wrap up a show in Tokyo then jet down to Thailand for the weekend with his new flavor of the week that he met while checking in his bag at the airport. On the beach they’d talk and nap all day, then drink and fuck all night. He would fall for her, just a little, then realize it could never be. She would beg him to stay, but he would resist. As his jet leaves for Sydney from a private air strip in Tokyo he waves goodbye through the window at his flavor of last week, but all she can do is cry. He gets a feeling in the pit of his stomach like he is going to puke. Just then his flavor of this week approached from the left and asked if he would like anything to drink. The feeling in his stomach is gone and he is happy. This is the life he had always wanted…

            “Hey Jeff!  Jeff’s neighbor Steve yelled from his front lawn.

    Jeff had always hated that son of a bitch. He hated Steve’s perfectly trimmed lawn that he could afford to have tended to every other day, especially at 8 am on Saturday while Jeff was trying to rest after the work week. He hated Steve and his wife Kiki’s matching Mercedes-Benze’s that read HIS and HER’S on the license plates. He hated the fact that Steve never stopped smiling…ever. It was creepy at some points and led Jeff to imagine Steve as being not of this Earth. Then again maybe Jeff would never stop smiling if he had the millions that Steve had accumulated from his stupid fucking “Self Help” program he created called “Love Thy Self”. He convinced people to sit in front of a mirror for an hour a day and talk to themselves. It stated that the only way to true success was through focused forms of self vanity. People ate this shit up because who do Americans love most in the world?...Themselves of course. This guy was benefiting substantially on the stupidity and narcissism of our fair country. And he could not stop smiling. Jeff had always hated that son of a bitch.

            “Hey Steve!” Jeff smiled and waved as if they were childhood friends. Steve walks over to the fence dividing their property.

            “Kiki and I are heading up the neighborhood watch meeting tonight if you and Vicky want to stop by. Afterward we’re gonna crack open a few bottles of red I picked up last year on our trip to Africa. Should be just about ready to open. Had to slip the customs guy a few hundred to let us through with it, but it was definitely worth it. This shit will change your life.”

Jeff can’t stand when people make such absurd statements. He did his best not to cringe when the garbage spewed from the annoying neighbors mouth but still flinched a little.

            “You okay man?”

            “Yeah, just had some bad Thai for lunch.”

The prick began to size Jeff up.

            “You’re starting to put on a little weight, buddy. If you want, I can give you the number of my personal trainer and of course throw in a free copy of my seminar. You’ll be loving yourself in no time. So you comin’ tonight or what?”

    Jeff had a quick vision of bashing Steve’s head in with his stainless steal coffee mug that he was holding in his right hand. He would just let him lie there in his perfect stupid fucking rose bush finally making his existence useful as fertilizer. Just then he snapped back to reality.

            “I’m sorry… what are you having tonight? Oh, wait. The neighborhood watch thing. Yeah, we’ll try to stop by.

            “Losers try Jeff. Winners do. Know what I mean? We’ll see ya at eight. I’ll have that trainers number and the DVD set of my seminar ready for you.”

            “Okay, sounds good.”

            “I’ll see ya there Slugger and don’t forget that foxy wife of yours.”

    There was nothing more on planet Earth that Jeff despised more than being called condescending names like “slugger” or “tiger”. But this paled in comparison to Steve’s comment about his wife. Even though she was a vicious, lifeless excuse for a woman who could suck the Y chromosomes out of a man, he still couldn’t stand the way Steve flirted with her. It was the principal of the matter.

            “I’ll be sure to do that. Thanks for the invite and the DVD’s and everything. We’ll see ya there.”

            “Hey, love thy neighbor right?” Steve said with a stupid shit-eating grin.

    Jeff had never hated someone so much in his life.

            “Right.”

    Jeff turned and headed up the cobblestone path to his front door. He stepped up on his front porch and reached for the door handle but paused. He paused the same way he always does before he enters his house and contemplates what it would be like to never have to walk through that door again. He took his usual deep breaths and counted to five. One, two, three, four…five. He wrapped his hand around the knob and entered his depreciating asset.

To be continued.....

By: Jordan Ramay 

Character vs. Plot

By: Lawrence Konner

The best stories are character-driven as opposed to plot driven because it's the only way that you're going to get a believable situation. If you try to get characters to do what the plot determines, then they're moving falsely. Then it's just writer's intervention that's getting them to move. It seems to me that the ideal situation is to create a character and then put them in a situation.

An audience must first identify with the character rather than the story.

You will never get them to engage fully if they don't believe in this person and this person's dilemma.

Therefore, I think the first thing you should do before writing a script is to sit down and write a biography of that person. It should be as detailed as you want to make it: their background, their schooling, their social class, their interest and most importantly, their dreams.

Dreams are the most important because, almost always, what their dreams are will help you motivate the story. It's something they want.

Characters' weaknesses are essential too. You've got to know about their flaws. It helps feed the story because their flaw is what is going to be part of the obstacle that's going to prevent them from solving the story.

Characters in a good story have a set of outside obstacles to deal with and also a set of internal obstacles to deal with. To the extent to which those two things can be tied together, is to the extent which the story gets better and better.

The story's much less interesting if the protagonist doesn't have some kind of internal conflict or personal problem. Then it's all just "white hat" stuff. The best stories that we remember from myths on down, westerns, detective stories, any kind of genre movie, combine action plot with the internal conflicts. It's as if you can't catch the bad guys until you've beaten your own internal demons. Having more than one layer of conflict is more difficult and that's what separates the average action scripts from the good ones.

If you liked Saul Williams on Def Poetry Jam in the last post, I highly recommend you watch this movie. You can stream it on Net Flix.

Def Poetry Jam - Saul Williams (Coded Language)

Wild Thing

And I´m running, 

running wild,
running free,
like soldiers down
the beach,
like someone 
just threw me 
the ball.
My thighs pump
thru the air
like tires
rolling down
the highway
big & round
eating up the ground
of America
but I never been any 
further than 42nd Street.
Below that is as 
unfamiliar as my 
father´s face,
foreign as the smell of 
white girls´pussy,
white girls on the bus,
white girls on TV
My whole world is 
black & brown & closed,
till I open it
with a rock,
christen it with
blood.
BOP BOP
the music
pops thru me
like electric shocks,
my sweat is a 
river running
thru my liver
green with hate,
my veins bulge out
like tomorrow,
my dick is 
the Empire State Building,
I eat your fear
like a chimpanzee
ow ow
ow whee
ow!
My sneakers glide off
the cement like
white dreams
looking out at the world
thru a cage of cabbage
& my mother´s fat,
hollering don´t do this
& don´t do that.
I scream against the restraint
of her big ass sitting on my face
drowning my dreams in sameness.
I´m scared to go
it hurts me to stay.
She sits cross-legged 
in front the TV
telling me no
feeding me
clothing me
bathing me in her ugliness
high high in the sky
18th floor of the projects.
Her welfare check buys me $85 sneakers
but can´t buy me a father.
She makes cornbread from Jiffy box mix
buys me a coat
$400, leather like everybody else´s.
I wear the best, man!
14 karat gold chain
I take off before I go wildin´.
Fuck you nigger!
Nobody touches my gold!
My name is Leroy
L-E-R-O-Y
bold gold 
I got the goods
that make the ladies
young & old
sign your name across my heart
I want you to be my baby
Rapper D
Rapper G 
Rapper I
my name is lightning
across the sky
So what I can´t read
you spozed to teach me
you the teacher
I´m the ape
black ape
in white sneakers
hah hah
I rape
rape
rape
I do the wild thing
I do the wild thing
My teacher asks me
what would I do
if I had 6 month 
to live.
I tell her I´d fuck her,
sell dope & do the wild thing.
My thighs are locomotives
hurling me thru the 
underbrush of Central Park,
the jungle.
I either wanna be a cop
or the biggest dope dealer in Harlem
when I grow up.
I feel good!
It´s a man´s world,
my sound is king
I am the black man´s sound.
Get off my face whining bitch!
No, I didn´t go to school today
& I ain´t going tomorrow!
I like how the sky looks 
when I´m running,
my clothes are new & shiny,
my tooth gleams gold.
I´m fast as a wolf
I need a rabbit, 
the sky is falling
calling my name
Leroy Leroy.
I look up 
blood bust
in my throat
it´s my homeboys
L.D., C.K. & Beanbutt!
Hey man what´s up!
I got the moon
in my throat,
I remember when
Christ sucked my dick
behind the pulpit,
I was 6 years old
he made me promise 
not to tell no one.
I eat cornbread &
collard greens.
I only wear Adidas
I´m my own man,
they can wear New Balance or Nike
if they want,
I wear Adidas.
I´m L.D.
lover 
mover
man with the money
all the girls know me.
I´m classified as mildly retarded
but I´m not
least I don´t think
I am.
Special Education classes
eat up my brain
like last week´s greens
rotting in plastic containers. 
My mother never 
throws away anything. 
I could kill her
I could kill her
all those years
all those years
I sat
I sat in classes
for the mentally retarded
so she could get 
the extra money welfare gives 
for retarded kids.
So she could get
some money,
some motherfuckin´ money. 
That bitch
that bitch
I could kill her
all the years
I sat next to kids 
who shitted on themselves,
dreaming amid
rooms of dull eyes
that one day
my rhymes
would break open
the sky
& my name would 
be written
across the marquee
at the Apollo
in bold gold
me bigger
than Run DMC
Rapper G
Rapper O
Rapper Me
„Let´s go!“ I scream.
My dick is a locomotive
my sister eats like a 50 ¢ hot dog. 
I scream, „I said let´s go!“
„It´s 40 of us
a black wall of sin. 
The god of our fathers
descends down & blesses us, 
I say thank you Jesus.
Now let´s do the
wild thing.
I pop off the cement
like toast outta toaster
hot hard crumbling
running
running
the park is green
combat operation
lost soul
looking for Lt. Calley
Jim Jones 
anybody who could direct
this spurt of semen
rising to the sky.
soldiers 
flying thru
the rhythm
„Aw man!
nigger please
nigger
nigger
nigger.
I know
who I am.“
My soul sinks
to its knees &
howls under the 
moon rising full,
„Let´s get a female jogger!“
I shout into the twilight
looking at the 
middle-class thighs
pumping past me,
cadres of bitches
who deserve to die
for thinking they´re better
than me
You ain´t better than
nobody bitch.
The rock begs my hand
to hold it.
It says, „Come on man.“
T.W., Pit Bull, J.D. & me
grab the bitch
ugly big nose white bitch
but she´s beautiful cause she´s white
she´s beautiful cause she´s skinny
she´s beautiful couse she´s gonna die
cause her daddy´s gonna cry
Bitch! 
I bring the rock down
on her head
sounds dull & flat
like the time I busted
the kitten´s head.
The blood is real & red
my dick rises.
I tear off her bra
feel her perfect pink breasts
like Brooke Shields
like bitches in Playboy
Shit! I come all over myself!
I bring the rock down
the sound has rhythm
hip hop ain´t gonna stop
till your face sees
what I see every day
walls of blood
walls of blood
she´s wriggeling like
a pig in the mud.
I never seen a pig 
or a cow
´cept on TV.
Her nipples are like 
hard strawberries
my mouth tastes
like pesticide.
I fart.
Yosef slams her
across the face with a pipe.
My dick won´t get
hard no more.
I bring the rock down
removing what she
looks like forever
ugly bitch
ugly bitch
I get up
blood on my hands
semen in my jeans
the sky is black
the trees are green
I feel good baby
I just did
the wild thing!

- Sapphire

Angel of My Heart

When my eyes are closed

I see you so clearly

Blue pools, sunshine and ivory

Describe beauty inadequately.

When my heart did open wide

Space held beyond space and time

Found nothing to be

Everything; healed divide.

Your sigh

Your very warm soul

Blesses grass and sand

and everything below,

With rites rediscovered,

Wrongs forgotten long ago.

I'll love you Love,

Peace of my Soul,

Even when in pieces;

A waking dream

Shared in the gleam

My eyes pour to you

When all healing ceases.

I LOVE YOU

- Joshua Ramay

- 

Pacific Beach Ale House

Purple and pink sun flashed cumulus clusters
Dissolve slowly after a hard days work

Eve creeps over the twilight stretched sky
While the hesitant sun holds for a pause
Then blows us a kiss goodbye
In loving green flash

The beginning of a new path hurriedly
Taken at a fork in the road,
It must be better than continuing to
Jump these Claims that had long since
Been mined out

Beach, sun, booze, and fun
This was the prize the diligent man thought he had won

But which is an illusion?...

The escape from a life trapped with
Bars half chilled awaiting its captors flee
Only to relocate to an analogous cage
Where bread and tap water remain a delicacy

But a man's gotta eat

- Jordan Ramay

If Last Night Never Happened

If last night never happened

Then why am I so scared,

To look down and see the damage

Of my tights completely teared?

If last night never happened

Why do I feel remorse,

For the things I cannot remember

And everything that was forced?

If last night never happened

Then why do I weep so much,

About what I could have done

Had I not have been so lush?

If last night never happened

Would I still feel the way I do?

Would I think the victim a coward

Because she decided not to sue?

If last night never happened

Then perhaps I could still trust,

That every look that I receive

Is not a look of lust.

If last night never happened

Then tomorrow would not be

Another day to get over

The self-image that I see.

I would be well-rested in the morning,

And each emotion would be captioned.

But all of that is gone,

Because last night really happened.


-Emily Street

"Another Sheet of Paper"

Staring at a blank page
My mind becomes enraged with anticipation to
The thought that will emerge

An explosion of creativity and imagination derived
From a pod of contained inspiration

Some march to the beat of a different drum
And some expressed with the same reason
Clawing to become a new race of poet warriors
Words never to be vanquished by smoldering battlefields

My mind free as the universe
And the stars represent the next verse

Let me not leave you or love you,
But indulge me in your strange brew
Served in a lust loved cauldron of our insanity,

Stress soaked reins of words wrapped around my neck
Answering fearfully at every call and beck

Into my seat of relief I sank
Because the page was no longer blank

- Jordan Ramay

The Low Down

My name is Jordan Ramay and I am a writer... for better or worse. Worse most days, and better on some, thus is the life we choose. You know what I'm talkin' about. If I could write for even half the time I spend doing the things I do to avoid writing I'd have 10 solid scripts by now. Which leads to the next fact about me.

Of all the sublimely superb forms of writing I have dipped my pen into, I landed on the form that is constantly mocked for it's level of difficulty,validity, and creative necessity for the writing game. You guessed it...SCREENWRITING.
It's probably because of all the blank space on the page and how the dialogue goes strait down the middle of it. The truth of the matter is...... we love that shit. At the end of the day I'd rather get to the fucking point instead of filling a page with boring dribble about some expositional bullshit memory that barely holds relevance to the scene we are reading.

But I digress. I guess the simple fact of the matter is, I've always loved movies and I've always loved writing. Once I realized that screenplays were the genesis of a film, it just made sense.

I will be posting some of my own work, articles, and any other titillating nuggets I find concerning screenwriting as well as all other forms of writing. Hopefully you enjoy some of my writing and find something of use during your visit. Feel free to send me your work and I will do my best to get it posted.

Right on to the Writers, Death to the Fakers.