bad writing

the sentence & the paragraph had agreed upon meeting at dawn
out in the middle of the page
as the reflection off the fine silver pen being lifted by the human hand in the sky
shone off the bright white recycled paper
there stood one strong paragraph,
which
was armed with clever words, quirky verbs & quiet frankly,
a whole slew of other sentences
who may or may not be brought into the fray
with this
vigilante,
who stood a good distance away from the paragraph
with its shadow blotting out part of the page---
the sentence was tight
knit
&
written in a language that the paragraph had never heard of
before---
the paragraph tilted it’s font a bit, to stave off the human shifting the paper,
causing a bit of a breeze across the soft plane,
but the sentence hadn’t come here today
to waste its time flashing its
fashion sense, and in
standard
new times roman,
it spoke out in italics
“we gonna do this or not?”
& the paragraph,
without a moment’s hesitation,
nodded, saying, in some bold n’ fancy variation of
book antiqua,
“i been ready since i saw the punctuation at the end of your
babbling jumble of foreign words”---
at that point,
the title of the page & the
header
walked in tandem to the place in between both the paragraph
and the sentence---
now equidistant apart from both,
they talked of what had brought both these forms of writing
to the page
this brisk & early morning in
june---
to make a story short,
the foreign language sentence & the
english (current language of commerce) paragraph
had come to this duel over a
beautiful
metaphor---
and while both the title & the header could understand,
having fallen for beautiful metaphors once or twice in their own
multiple drafts, themselves,
it was still a sad sight to see two
strong forms of writing,
battling over one
metaphor,
when there were so many
phrases in the
sea of literature---
the title & the header opened up the utterance
& from that utterance, they pulled two perfect
pistols full of wit
(the weapon of choice for both the paragraph & the sentence),
and after handing both of the forms of writing their
prospective pistol,
they stood back and off to the side of the page,
frightened of what was to happen next---
back to back,
the paragraph & the sentence marched away from each other
space by space by space,
to the traditional margins,
and when they both reached them
they turned round quick,
firing their wit at will---
the paragraph,
hefty & edited well,
was able to fire its wit faster,
as it had already gone through so many drafts, and had
honed its skill
whereby each word within it, had its own place
(it was a “ripped” paragraph, if you can picture it---lean & not very wordy at all),
however,
though the sentence wasn’t as well formed as the paragraph,
it was sleek & stealthy---
its words rolled off a human’s tongue when they read it
aloud,
and in this, the sentence was able to
wiggle itself around,
missing the mass spray of wit that had been fired by the
paragraph’s pistol---
as in every fight,
there is a winner & a loser,
this one was no different,
and the hefty, well edited paragraph,
had too much to move
and too little time to do so,
when the sentence wielded its wit towards it---
the sentence, relentlessly, kept firing,
not satisfied & not feeling safe,
until the paragraph, with all of its fellow sentences within,
crumbled to the page,
now,
a mere pile of
sentence fragments & misplaced
words & punctuation.

the sentence,
victorious,
nodded to the title & the header, who nodded back,
and walked out of the lamplight & into the shadow
to embrace the sweet warmth of its
beautiful metaphor
which had been watching the wit-fight
behind the margin.