The Ballad of Yeltsa Kcir

This is the story of the wrong pen which I grabbed when I was going to write a postcard to my best friend Abby while vacationing on Sao Beach in Vietnam.

See, when I grabbed the pen it fit snugly in my hand. I was utterly convinced this pen was mine, but then I went to write the postcard, and that’s where the trouble began. “Bear Baby,” it wrote, “I’m currently napalming the beach in Vietnam and massacring citizens. Wish me luck!”

All the leaves were brown, and the sky was grey. The fields were on fire, on a cloudy day. Or at least that’s the picture this occult pen tried to paint. I was no fortunate son. I was just a tourist visiting Vietnam. The pen moved in my hand, seemingly with a mind of its own.

I was just creating a pastiche, lines stolen from popular songs and poems. I needed to write from my own life, my own experience, my own gut. I needed to write the truth.

So, after weeks of writer's block and copying from existing work, weeks of feeling like no words could express the truth of what I felt, I sat down at the piano, pencil and blank sheet music in hand, and began to write.

Hours went by, and at the end, I played my new opus to the crowds. Turned out what I’d written was a note-by-note recreation of “Never Gonna Give You Up”… in reverse. Oh well. I’ve written worse.