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She doesn't get it. Or you. Or poetry.

Bloodlust. Trasmuted into its most abstract form, but pure in nature.

Forever consigned to the backroom. The worst fate for any laboured words -- including some of your own.

Forever consigned to the backroom. The worst fate for any laboured words.

A successful poem submission might be the simplest way of getting through that door.

Perhaps all your work as an operant has just been preparing you for becoming the greatest poet that ever lived.

An obscure pleasure, one only accessible to sensitive minds.

She's not wrong. It's a crime against decency.

The outline of a man, his back and shoulders, spotlit in your mind -- before he disappears into the black, never to be seen again.

A failed metaphor, in other words.

In a way, hitting a low like that is its own kind of achievement.

An obscure pleasure, one only accessible to sensitive minds.

The cuts and drapes speak of sun-baked streets, old plazas, and afternoons that meander towards the horizon.

Borderline insane.... but on the right side of aesthetics.

Why would a leviathan hunt down a single minnow?

They say, 'I'm corporate, but still hip.'

Whistling a new melody into existence. A dance step in the mud. The rasp of a hand-plane against cedar. Wonders yet unmapped.

Infused with transcendant meaning, somewhere between a symbol and the thing it represents, the junior negotiator's conception of the gap escapes definition.

A poorly conceived, underbaked hodgepodge of old and modern Developed World languages -- mostly from Mircea and Ile-de-Söze.

Like the master sword-makers of Tsun's Arc, he is a relic of times long past, an initiate in some forgotten craft now performed in seconds by machines.

Picture a hundred guitars connected to a single amp, strumming all at once.

Symbols, repeated over and over -- a quiet process of attrition.

Malignant growths, forever squirming against each other.

Hints of a new life looming -- unless you occlude it.

It's a talisman, not a functional object. It's imbued with whatever Ramses feels towards you.

The mouth muscles contorting into every shape they know, producing random morphemes that latch onto words from every language floating around the brain.

Haunting images of torture surround your mind. In seconds, imagined people deform into blistering, moaning creatures -- writhing in what's left of their insides.

Instrument in hand on his sickbed, he could easily be a dying melancholy poet strumming away on his lute.

Galaxies of desperation sucked into the pupil's widening void.

A marionette with strings yanked, then suddenly severed.

Entranced. A reptile in the throes of worship.

For now, this will do. You've left a mark on this space.

Don't deny potential pleasures -- revel in the excesses offered by the material world!

Express yourself or die boring.

A part of you left behind, shining bright across the room.

Have you considered engaging with the visual arts?

An intricate configuration that reminds you of the night sky.

A cheat? There lies the scoundrel's way. No thrill in that, no panache!

The bones of the plot are set. Already you can feel muscle and sinew begin to weave themselves around the frame.

Just like the autumn fireworks you used to watch from your window as a child.

A good poet listens more than they speak.

Translucent and grotesque, like an electronic gecko molt. It will never be skin again.

In another life it would've been a serpent.

It's like she's handing you a trophy cup with the corpse of a small animal in it.

Lightly, like an artefact he's both drawn to and afraid of.

An insane thought flits across your consciousness, to be kept absolutely to yourself.

A man with access to more of humanity's secrets than nearly anyone, and yet the simple pleasure of a good pop song eludes him.

The sign for the ritual of death to begin.

668 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 12 of 14