Josh Forner Writes

A space for Josh Forner's writing. For personal blog, please visit joshforner.tumblr.com

[gracebriarwoodwrites]

Icarus

How do you tell Icarus to stay away from the sun when it is the heat he craves, when he wants to burn, when he needs to fall and taste the ocean on his tongue? How can you quell disastrous desires, pull him down from his flight, away from all-consuming light?

How do I tear myself away from you?

[dailysnoopy]

[joshfornerwrites]

Us; as One

Flames Unlike the futility Which frustratingly Haunted my heart for so long Matchsticks; Your lips are the spark Which lovingly Eradicates the soulless dark Triumph An easier word, perhaps Which intensely Washes the skin of relapse Breath Hot like the sun Which glowingly Burns - it's us; as one

[illbeyouranchor-deactivated2024]

His energy was like a rainbow.

You couldn’t help but marvel at it,

But there was nothing to hold onto.

[joshforner]

You could say that I miss the warmth

You could say that I miss the touch

You could say that I miss the feeling

You could say that I miss the love

You could say that I miss a close beating heart

But, I am broken

So I just miss being wanted

[lydiateasedale-deactivated20221]

there aren't enough words to say

how I feel about you.

you make me smile

while the world is hellish,

the second I call you

your face lights up with joy

a mental image I can't erase

(thank fuck!)

you make me not just laugh

but go into giggling fits too

I can't stop smiling -

how else can I say it?

you're my first thought of the day

my last thought at night;

I sleep with your name in my heart

gazing at the moon

and wake with it on my tongue,

ready to greet the sun.

your energy howls in my soul

(chaotic good)

there just aren't enough words -

yet there's that one little big tiny word...

that word, that Time Lord tech:

it's so much fucking

bigger on the inside

[joshfornerwrites]

The Race of Regression

Watching us race into regression Do we hold the answer to ease oppression? My colour; your colour: bold as an arrow For time shall curve from salvation’s harrow

The uniforms which constrict with power Folds a man to gluttonous shower Deep, deep down; you recognise the sound A folly of consequence, nobody to be found He can’t breathe We can’t breathe You push on the throat so drunk with authority He can’t breathe We can’t breathe You push on the throat of a broken society Watching us race into regression Through the eyes of a man burdened with possession I see no black; I see no white The colours blend softly and together we fight He can’t breathe We can’t breathe You push on the throat with victory to plead He can’t breathe We can’t breathe No silence, no remorse. We will NOT concede.

[maxmundan]

Today’s Prompt 4/9/20

Everyday, Monday through Friday, I will post a new prompt at 5:00pm EST. I will post the first line of a poem. You take that first line and finish it however you see fit. It can be as long or short as you like. Tag your completed poems #mmprompt or #maxmundan and I will post the best ones.  Today’s prompt - Lost in the forest of your caress

[joshfornerwrites]

Lost in the forest of your caress For the time that love has known me best Shattered, ungrateful, and timid as hell As I await the toll of the warning bell Futile like a listless breeze These feelings don’t mean much to me The dose it seems was more than lethal For once, my fear has met its equal

[joshfornerwrites]

Navigating the COVID-19 Reality

How our scrolling habits and sources of information are changing amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

Editorial by Josh Forner (www.joshforner.com)

In our new reality post-COVID-19, it's easy to get lost in the torrents of information being spewed out from the news and media platforms daily. Figures, graphs, charts, new lingo like “flatten the curve,” and “social distancing;” but one thing that hasn't yet been spoken about in any great depth is people's reactions with their devices.

I – for one – have certainly noticed a heavy increase in my social media use and news scrolling, and I figured that surely, I wasn't alone.

The reason for spending so much time on social media may be obvious to some, as we begin our lives in isolation, it only makes sense that we turn to the most convenient option available to keep in contact with loved ones. Yet, I am one person who is still out at work in the public, and I too see my social media scrolling hit an all-time high.

For me, I presume it is the worry for friends and loved ones, the fear of misinformation penetrating the communities that I am involved with, and certainly a way to release my over-arching worry.

Facts and education are the main reasons behind one Victorian's recent habitual scrolling. AJ - a 51 year-old educator and business owner from Victoria's Grampians region - had strong and immediate reactions to the first news of COVID-19 becoming a problem in Australia.

AJ has a non-functioning adrenal gland which puts her in the highly susceptible group of the population who are immuno-compromised, and therefore have a much higher risk of both contracting the infection, and inevitably dying from it.

“Considering my position, I had to find the hard facts,” she says, “and I feel it is my role as an educator to speak the truth at the time and educate others”

Having not really ever been a news follower, and living in an area with no television reception, AJ had to start her fact-finding mission somewhere, and it just so happened that her husband's PC had the ABC News website as its homepage. “I had to ask him if he trusted ABC News as a source, because I know a lot of these mainstream media outlets are biased towards their own agenda. He said yes, which was good enough for me”

This has led to a daily scroll-and-refresh habit that was never part of her life prior to the virus hitting Australian shores. She says that her social media use has also seen a strong increase during this time.

There has, however, been a resistance to scrolling.

Cara (real name withheld) is a 34 year-old musician and disability support worker from Melbourne's North-East. She claims she has weened off social media due to the concerning responses she was having to the constant blast of coronavirus news.

“I'm hardly looking at my phone any more. I'd been trying to spend less time on it anyway, but I just found [that] reading a million people posting about this virus made me feel pretty shit”

This poses the next invisible casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is likely to be a spike in mental-ill health. The reactions that people are having to the news and the virus in general is usually quite full of anxiety and fear, if not for themselves, for their loved ones that may be susceptible to infection, and the fate of the world as a whole.

It may just be that a social media detox is exactly what the world needs right now, and there are certainly a number of people leading the way in that regard.

“I'm still keeping enough of an eye [on COVID-19 news] that I know what's happening, but not reaching for my phone all the time like I often do out of habit.”

AJ applauds this measure as she delves deeper into the misinformation being spread across these channels, “I'm specifically seeing a lot of negative responses from people on my friends list to a lot of either what I post or what is posted by news outlets,” she says “This forces me to go and investigate some of their previous posts, and anything else they may be contributing about coronavirus, and the non-truth that is being put out there is astonishing.”

“I think it's really bringing out everybody's true colours.”

Paul is a father of 3 in his 40's who up until recently was employed in customer service within the insurance sector. Whereas he left his job voluntarily before the pandemic had hit, he empathises with others who now find themselves in this situation.

“I have been scrolling and refreshing my mailbox at least 10 times daily,” he says in relation to job applications and newsletters which arrive through his email. It extends to social media use as well: “Once I would have been content checking these platforms maybe five times daily each, however now it is up to 15 times, in order to give me the sense of being updated”

It is my belief that the current crisis highlights how much we unfortunately rely on the wrong media to attain our information. Ever since the Cambridge Analytica saga, the spotlight has well and truly been on social media outlets to try and curb the amount of 'fake news' content and 'data skimming' of people's personal information, but COVID-19 has shot that in the foot in two ways:

1. The vast and ultimately unending articles being published with unsubstantiated claims, incorrect figures, concentrating on the wrong factors or even giving the population a premature sense of hope, and;

2. The keyboard warriors spinning whatever information they find interesting, without checking sources or facts against respected publications. Not to mention that Facebook’s algorithms (for one of the many social media platforms) have remained largely unchanged.

“I'm worried that it took so long for us to start taking note of community transmissions,” says AJ, “I want to draw people's attention to this as being the key number. Not the infection rate or the fatality rate, but community transmissions. This means that we don't know where the virus has spread from, and no idea where it goes”

All in all, whatever your reasons for scrolling more often, it is quite apparent that social media is going to have a heavy influence on our lives over the coming months, if we indeed choose that path. Maybe it is time we all took a leaf out of Cara's book and took a more conscious approach to where we get our information, and also to alleviate our minds from both panic and overload.

I've certainly been bickering and arguing with people over quite a few topics related to the virus, including the government's apparent lack of a plan (prior to the rolled out measures over the past few weeks), schools remaining open and people not adhering to physical distancing and isolation requirements in our major cities – particularly those who are still at work in the public. This may be useful to get off my chest, but it does nothing at the overall level but heighten my frustration and destabalise my current mental state, as well as 'poke the bear' for others to retaliate.

One of the silver linings in this whole episode may be that a good chunk of the population begins to re-think the way it uses and relies on social media, however on the downside we know that the spread of farce and misinformation will no doubt expand and deepen as we sink further into the COVID-19 crisis.

[joshforner]

Rodriguez is back on Australian shores, no doubt completely mesmerising audiences still. His music had a true connection with me the first time I watched ‘Searching for Sugar Man,’ it became a short-term duty to learn his songs. I got through the two most famous ones anyway, and I feel the same emotional release and complete connection when I play them, as when I do my own songs.

[exahele]

The blur of winter, the gentle haze of quiet that no other season compares– I am winter’s woman, but as spring leaps from the darkness she has captured me in the field of warmth and I am reborn. But as summer hits the heat takes me away– I’m a fit of frustration and I spend it with my hands curled like two peach pits. Fall comes slowly, my fire lessens and I am once again the stretching of silence.

Shelby Asquith, The Seasons and the Incarnate (via exahele)

[joshfornerwrites]

Deep from the depths of despair; I scream Yet if nobody can hear from these depths How can I be sure That it made a sound at all? Or that I am even here?

[joshfornerwrites]

Trump and The Failure of Society

[Originally published at joshforner.com]

In the early hours of the morning - American time - on the 9th of November, 2016, society failed. Society failed and entrusted the most powerful economy in the world to a man whose entire campaign was fixated on the idea of fear. Fear of people who are 'different' to the lowest common denominator. Fear of people who do vow to change society's views and stretch our entrenched fabric. Yet that is the exact thing he has brainwashed his followers in to believing he will do, whilst he closes the opportunities for everyone else. My deepest fear with Trump isn't what he might say - although that is a problem in itself; it isn't who he will segregate - although that is a problem in itself; it isn't about who will get left behind, who will be worse-off, which country he will antagonise - although all of these things are problems in themselves. No, my biggest fear, is how his supporters will react when he can't do the things he has told them he is going to do. There are many extreme policies in a proposed Donald Trump presidency, the most famous ones we know - building the wall between Mexico and the USA; ousting all Muslims and banning them from entering the USA; removing trade arrangements with China - and many of these policies were proven to be unpopular within his own party. So we wonder precisely just how much control he will have, given the division that exists within his own standing members. And the followers, they aren't a group of people that I want to see get angry. The litany of uneducated, free-wheeling bigots that Trump spoke to with aplomb is outstanding. He has forced people out of political hibernation, who had never voted before and probably planned to never vote in their lives, because of the measured and diplomatic speak and tone of politicians. Up steps Candidate Trump with his blatant racism, misogyny, and disregard for decency. A loose cannon ready to fire no matter where he's aiming. BOOM! Black America; BOOM! LGBTIQ; BOOM! Latinos; BOOM! Women. The other fear that strikes me is with America itself. The fact that they couldn't bear the idea of a female president. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't endorse Hillary Clinton as a candidate in the first place, but it is who we had, and it is who was expected to lead the charge and come out victorious for the good of humanity on Wednesday. America couldn't handle it. They think they have voted for progress - they have voted for regress. A return to the height of fascism for the so called 'Greatest Place on Earth,' I tell you what, it was a much greater place on Tuesday evening. The political thought bubble in the United States of America is flabbergasting to an outsider. It is a land that believes universal healthcare is the only step you need to take to be labelled as a communist nation, yet the right to owning a gun and being able to fire it at will is something that is sacrosanct and should never be removed from the rights of the people. I would like to say that I am surprised, but quite frankly I am not. Having spent some of my formative years living in this country, and having close family still living there today, I am privy to exactly what the psyche of much of the population is, and how little they actually know how to think for themselves. My fear is that America has voted for Progress and for a state of 'Revolution,' yet both progressiveness and revolution are dirty words on the right side of politics, and I'm sure the Republican Party would not stand for these types of labels. Donald Trump's only interest in this election, in this position, in gaining the title of President, is entitlement for the entitled. The poor middle and upper-class white man is finally seeing things shift to an equilibrium (I said shift - there's a bloody long way before it gets anywhere near there!) after centuries of domination and having the world at his feet, and he feels he is entitled to his entitlement. Trump will govern for Trump. He is a billionaire businessman with his own interests at heart. He's certainly not Richard Branson, whom if elected I would have no doubt would do a sterling job as he displays the qualities of compassion, empathy and resolve with his fellow man. Donald Trump identifies with a certain type of person, but he certainly doesn't feel for them, he doesn't care for them, and he certainly isn't going to defend them if it comes between him or the people. It is clearly disparaging to me, and to many other decent folk, that such a horrible man could become so powerful. A man with no morality, the stability of a see-saw and the rationale of a fascist. America has elected the face of capitalism to try and take it to capitalism. Can anyone else see how this isn't going to work? Society has failed. Failed to be a society. Failed to care about the lives of others and succeeded in confirming that being selfish is a human trait that no extent of evolution will ever absolve.

[joshfornerwrites]

Sounds Like These

Sounds like these Make the mornings free Distant, ancient sights Flowing all through the mind

Sounds like these Give permission to release Your clench on harm With patience to disarm

CHORUS: Singing, all of what we are Is the distant dust from stars Singing, all of what we know Is here on Earth to show

But…

Sounds like these Picture us high in the trees Full to the brim Of sunlight drenched on skin

Sounds like these Capturing all I see In the foggy, foggy night To the bursting neon lights

CHORUS

Sounds like these Make the mornings free Distant, ancient sights Flowing all through the mind

Sounds like these Make the world believe That the bullets will leave the sand And removing war across the lands

CHORUS

[joshfornerwrites]

The Killer Instinct

Startled

From starting

Again

  Like losing

A life-long

Friend

  I couldn’t

Escape what

I’ve been

  A trip to

The Promised

Land

CHORUS:

And I’ve seen

A world without the sun

And I fear

It could happen to anyone

And I feel

The pressure on my eyes

Turning into

Something nice

  Fighting

A battle

No one wins

  Creating

My own

Sense of sin

  I couldn’t

Betray

My own kind

  Resistance

So futile

In my mind

  CHORUS

  BRIDGE  

Freedom

From giving

Is a curse

  Find out

I’m changing

For the worse

  The killer

Instinct

Has left my blood

  A trip to

A land of

Permanent flood

  CHORUS

  Startled

From starting

Again ©2016 Josh Forner

[joshfornerwrites]

I was somewhat shocked to receive such belittling and insulting comments in my personal Facebook inbox lately, from someone whom I'd previously respected in the sector of local, independent music. After his offering of slander and what I pretty much have taken as "stop making music because you are not good enough," this person has lost all respect and dignity from my end, and I wanted to point out how much some people just do not understand what it means to be creative. To defend my so called "negative" comment; I merely asked "why?" In response to the news that a friend and fellow songwriter was going to be appearing on a Television talent show, which I thought nothing of; a mere valid question, as I am always interested in knowing what drives somebody to make that jump. Most people who know me well, will know that I am a staunch supporter of local & original music, and certainly not a supporter of such television talent contests. The indecency of this person to use this opportunity to talk down my musical ability absolutely astounded me, particularly during a well-documented period of personal crisis (which, if he "ignored" me so much, he probably didn't even contemplate), which completely tipped me over the edge. Never in my 9 years in the music industry have I been confronted by such hateful and sinister criticism - which is why I love Melbourne and music & artistic communities I find myself in - all they have done over that time is commend my tireless effort, my constant learning, and my vast improvement over time; obviously someone that has ignored me wouldn't have the slightest clue about. As for my "negtivity," sure; I'm first to admit that my immediate reaction to some things can certainly be negative, and that I don't have the most optimistic outlook on life, partially - but not entirely - due to my ongoing struggle with a mental illness, which again is something that somebody who has ignored me wouldn't know about. And so, I thought, "fair enough; this guys is mad about me reacting a certain way to one of his friends, I can deal with that," but it went on...​

[joshfornerwrites]

Continuing to deface and insult my status as a performer, referring to a point in time (probably 3+ years ago) where I was upset by a lack of support from the community and my friends, whilst going through a difficult time and using my "ability" as the reasoning that OTHER PEOPLE probably weren't turning up, as if channeling some sort of psychic ability to think that everyone else's subjective opinion on my music would be the same as his. I am truly sorry that this guy has the expectation that every local performer should instantly sound like some sort of pop superstar, or else they don't deserve the space that they are singing on. I am also truly sorry that I never got a true an honest response from the artist I initially asked the question to, but instead got a tirade of unwarranted and shameful abuse from a bitter old man who obviously never had the talent or drive to be a creative himself, so has to sit back on his high horse and constantly, day in, day out, comment and judge and nitpick the abilities of others. Well, bravo, Mr. Arsehole, your abuse worked. I got off the stage. I couldn't even do the show I had booked later in the week that you sent this, because I was so overwhelmed with depression and anxiety over the words you said that I couldn't even bring myself to physically be on stage, in front of people, performing my songs - something that has given me some of the most joy in my life. You have ruined that for me. Albeit temporarily. I am hugely proud of my achievements over the past 3 years. My ability is continually improving: in performance, in writing, in recording and engineering. I know this because of the praise I get from people like Kevin Murphy, Karl Huttenmeister, Anna Cordell, Jakksen Fish, Georgia Rose, Tracey Hogue, Tim Woods, Al Parkinson, Liam Dixon & Michael Yule - among others. These are all people who know what they're talking about, who are around original music at its grass roots level, day in and day out; who appreciate what amount effort goes into everything that I do - because it's what they do to. So I choose to listen to these people, not an old fogey who used to be on Community Radio so has some sort of heightened sense of musical royalty, that he can brandish things around, no matter how hurtful, destructive or potentially career-shattering they can be. I'm standing up to this bully of a man, and I am making a new record, and this new record is going to be so many times better than anything he would have expected me to bring out, because that is how far I have come; whether he chooses to like it, or know it, or not. My message to you all is, don't let anybody talk down YOUR dreams and YOUR art. YOUR art exists because it came from a place inside of you. YOUR art will connect you with the people that WANT to consume it; who hear the effort in it; who acknowledge what it takes to bring that art to fruition. People that don't understand it will try to bring you down, but they can't; because it is not THEIR art to bring down. They don't connect with it, they don't understand your process or where any of it came from. So bad luck to them. ​And bad luck to this arsehole.