WRITINGS
PLANET Z13: The Black Tome of Character
by Thomas W. Estes
Grey’s darn stubborn, though, and leans into the mind games of his bully’s insanity to become . . . the most powerful, the most desperate.
This is my first and self-published book, a dark banshee fantasy novella set in poetic prose and interspersed with freeform passages and poems.
Go with world-weary Grey to his very messy home of Rural Hall, North Carolina. Maybe our antihero’s dark side, Christie, is to blame for the doing of more harm than good there. Luckily, Grey encounters Kiro, a fiery, daemon-banshee, who at the employment of the local parish deities has gobs of good to offer the ol’ chap . . . which is comical since banshees harvest people when they most deserve it. Grey certainly ranks in that rigorous pecking order, of which, he should care, but where is he except toiling around in downright headbutting madness. If he transcends the crippling secrets of Rural Hall, redemption remains an option—if he’ll put in check his gothic, violent world, and stop demonizing Kiro or the extraterrestrial appearances who are taking over the oceans of Planet Z13. He should pray of Kiro that he have her love and the clear mind to inspire her mortal troupe, The Exies, against the alien bastards.
If you have ever lost your soul and were too afraid to lift a rock and find it there with a bunch of wispy spiders then this twisted existential journey is for you, dearest.
Buy the Kindle Book on Amazon, with paperback coming soon. Cover design by Thomas W. Estes. Use the Buy On Amazon button below. Peace.
~Thomas
"Self-Portrait"
(Photograph, 2014)
Captured my reflection on a lamp base at the home of a snake in the grass.
"Public Stuffing"
About the sultry influence of a politician’s stump speech—after having this gothic dream, it cycled through my mind for too long before concluding that it was too irresistable for retelling. Featured below are two versions of “Public Stuffing,” one with voice only and the other with its surreal field recording. The field recording is available separately, called “Interview.”
"Yellow Fallopian Under The Moon"
(Matboard, 2002)
Crafted entirely of matboard cutouts, traditional paper type and vinyl-topped.
"poet, demon lover"
What motivated me to create this style of graphic poem was the reaffirmation that our thinking is not linear, i.e., our minds are not the machinery of structure that we oftentimes impose, an especially important understanding for perfectionistic thinkers.
Ideas and concepts do not live alone, are never exclusive; they exist in cloud-like structures with fields that touch or appear to. Are we capable of discerning and controlling—do we tell which memories and thoughts to go where?
With these operators giving the effect, I believe thinking and connecting dots is like working within a 3D chalkboard, hence, the arrangement of the words in this here poem into fields and phrases. Breaking from the typical entry, the lines appear sporadicially across the space of the page and represent the natural, and sometimes spastic and discordant, collection of ideas when one is in a state of inspiration, phantasy, discovery, or re-believing. The style also lends credibility to the in-the-moment and dream-like quality of the realizations made in the poem, that some will be true; some of them may stick, true or not. Or rather—these thoughts are the opportunity to explore one’s gothic acceptance—the discovery of certain existential truths that must come to light in the mind and in one’s own language for one to effectively think and believe again. It’s safe to consider the deep of longing of: “There are no clouds; I want them.” The temporal nature of the thoughts in the poem is heightened when presented in its video form, for a still image may have all day but what shall we consider in one minute and one second. I hope you have benefited from this artistic experiment.
