The Droning Legion
Apr 11, 2026 · 31 min read
Stooped back
Ten thousand miles
Of words
Written in practice
Searching for
Existential meaning.
Skin strips
Peeled
Placed
Neatly
And arranged
To connect.
Fear
Pushed from
the train platform
And
Published
For others' judgement.
Yearning,
The destroyer
Of sensible
Precaution.
Calling all writers here I’m looking for something new to read.
If you’ve written something you’re proud of, I’d love to read it. Feel free to recommend your own work (essays, stories, articles, anything).
Always curious to discover new voices and perspectives.
A stranger’s
invitation
beacon
In the black
Mass market
Of voices.
Friend?
I will answer!
Please tell me
It’s the same
For you?
A seventeen-minute meditation,
the 513 bus to Gramercy,
off at 102nd and Lincoln…
then, nobody knew.
The old Black man with a fine white goatee
had become a daily routine
for the driver and us on the 513,
Monday through Friday.
Big ol bag of bird seed every time.
Not once had he spoken in two years.
But we liked him—we
liked every rider
We don’t have to worry
About on the bus.
You see it all here;
at some point
it’s the calm ones
that you begin to remember.
On a calm Thursday in the mist,
for no reason in particular,
the driver finally had the courage to ask him
where he was going today,
With the door standing open expectantly.
His response:
“I’m off to see Camilla.”
Immediate left off the bus
without a thought—
Head held high,
headed for a bench at Oakewood Memorial
…
Anticipation?
Dread?
Forgotten?
Calling all writers here I’m looking for something new to read.
If you’ve written something you’re proud of, I’d love to read it. Feel free to recommend your own work (essays, stories, articles, anything).
Always curious to discover new voices and perspectives.
Overlooked?
Not my best?
….
Nightmare.
Calling all writers here I’m looking for something new to read.
If you’ve written something you’re proud of, I’d love to read it. Feel free to recommend your own work (essays, stories, articles, anything).
Always curious to discover new voices and perspectives.
Lies…
You're not going to make any money doing this and no one is going to read it, so you must hope for a secret third thing to happen
I know…
Substack is full of writers who are angry at traditional publishing for not accepting them and the assumption is always that trad publishing is to blame.
But maybe, just maybe, your book is actually very bad.
I’m trying—
Calling all writers here I’m looking for something new to read.
If you’ve written something you’re proud of, I’d love to read it. Feel free to recommend your own work (essays, stories, articles, anything).
Always curious to discover new voices and perspectives.
Words
Devoid of
Intention…
Masturbation and defecation belong in any work of serious literature. How can you exclude two of our most vital functions as human beings in any truly seminal work? How can you comment on the human condition without them? Sleep, sex, dreams, eating, etc. — they all have a place. Why not these? I think you’ll find true literature has plenty of jerking it and more than one description of a good bowel movement.
Um…
No.
Hi everyone
I’d love to read your most recent work!! Especially if it’s about self-reflection, philosophy, literature or the human experience. I’ve got a ton of train trips this week for job interviews, so lots of free time!!
Four hundred
And
Seventy-three replies.
Hope you’re a
Fast reader…
Or have a six hour commute.
Romance,
In the filled
Cabinets and
Overflowing drawers
Of the hermitic
Rambler.
Cataloguing
Their mind
Maniacally
And hoping
For profundity.
The anthropologist,
Holding my
Hard drive.
What will you make of me?