C. Rommial Butler
Bio
C. Rommial Butler is a writer, musician and philosopher from Indianapolis, IN. His works can be found online through multiple streaming services and booksellers.
Achievements (8)
Stories (243)
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Wonder
Somewhere outside my window a catbird repeatedly mews its tortured cry. My backyard is a sort of aviary. There is a drainage ditch, between my yard and the houses behind me. Over the years living here I have seen many distinct birds. The catbird, for instance, I hear far more than I see, but I have caught sight of a few. Some house wrens made a nest inside my Victorian lamppost. Gulls and grackles pass through occasionally, all the way up here in Indiana. Black-capped chickadees, various woodpeckers. Tanagers, of both the summer and scarlet variety. Plenty of robins, finches, sparrows, starlings. Goldfinches usually migrate through in little flocks at some point, a wonder to watch, their bright yellow bodies darting in and out of the green foliage in the summer. There are also occasional hawks and many other birds, some I have not managed to identify. My favorites are the cardinals and the blue jays.
By C. Rommial Butler4 years ago in Humans
The House on Gray Street
“Indianapolis, Indiana. Also: India-no-place. More infamously: Naptown. Our greatest claims to fame are the Indy 500. John Dillinger. More recent, we’ve managed to field a good football team—the one we stole from Baltimore—the Colts. They won a Super Bowl back in ’06.
By C. Rommial Butler4 years ago in Horror
Ray Charles, Amazing Grace and Rommi's Wager
I cannot say for sure, as so many years have passed, but I believe it was November of 1999. I was working as an audio technician for a sound company based out of Indianapolis. One particular day two coworkers and I traveled to Richmond, Indiana with a truckload of gear to do a show about which, at the time, I was not too excited.
By C. Rommial Butler4 years ago in Beat
Life and Light
LIFE I want to tell the world the truth about itself, but I don't know how. I want to unfold the flower of reminiscence from within the soul of timeless space, bearing it to the sun of eternal knowledge. I want to shamelessly attribute meaning to nothing in particular, and fashion spectacular rainbows of thought from triviality. I want to transform horror into wonder and wonder into sustenance for the emboldened heart. I want passion to mate precision in a wild constructive cosmic dance, a flame burning steadily in the lamp instead of through the flesh and stake. I want to wake you up with a kiss, and fall asleep in your embrace. O divine soul longing for an unconscious personal and collective: I want to be in you the self that forever becomes and never dies.
By C. Rommial Butler4 years ago in Poets
Johnny Carson's Monologue
My mom passed away from cancer in 2013. I think of her everyday. Memories come unbidden, often bittersweet. The bad ones not associated with the cancer involve me being a callous, angst-ridden teenager, causing the poor, dear woman so much anxiety; but even those aren't bad, because when I look back, I can see how genuinely she loved me. She put up with me. She tried to get through to me. She never gave up on me.
By C. Rommial Butler4 years ago in Confessions
Ghost of the Forest
The first time Ben visited the cemetery in the woods was by mistake. He wandered off the beaten paths and toiled his way through the brush until he stumbled upon a clearing. Gravestones crowded the landscape, crumbling sentinels guarding desolation. All the stones were so old that names and dates had been worn away, but some were still legible.
By C. Rommial Butler4 years ago in Horror
Leviathan. Top Story - October 2021.
Sergey gazed out at the Kara Sea from the top floor of the lighthouse as dawn broke over the frigid waters. He was an old man. How many more sunrises would he see? Would he live to see any in a warmer, more pleasant part of the world? His retirement drew near. He welcomed it. At the same time, he felt the tundra was part of him: the long days alone, and the deep thoughts which resolved into a tranquil silence. He hoped he could take the tranquility of the tundra wherever he went, but wondered if the tumult of warmer climates and more populated areas would wear on him.
By C. Rommial Butler4 years ago in Horror
Percy Shelley and Bad Jubies
Percy Shelley took it upon himself to defend poetry. Yet it was not poetry in the most literal sense that he was defending, but language, and by extension, art in all its various forms. A Defense of Poetry comes across at first as mystical gobbledygook. It is just the sort of thing one might expect from a romantic poet; but when we discard the flowery, transcendental attempt at describing the euphoric episodes of the poet and we dig into the substance of Shelley's argument, we will find that the distinction he is attempting to make is not between poetry and other forms of art, but rather between art and entertainment; substance and appearance; revelation and mere distraction.
By C. Rommial Butler4 years ago in Poets
Whispers
There is a still hour when no one speaks but whispers are nevertheless heard, like flags fluttering in the wind or dogs barking far off in the distance, a call of distress poisoning the thickness in the air. This is when Michael hears her voice, whispers in a still hour. All through the night he keeps himself moving just to feel sane, but eventually he must stop, consign himself to the softness of a bed in which sleep will barely come, and think of the love he lost to the bitter irony of circumstance.
By C. Rommial Butler4 years ago in Horror
