Author: John Battle

  • A day in the life

    A day in the life

    Here is what I will do today. My brother, who is seventy-eight, got pneumonia last week and was taken to the hospital in Grand Rapids, sixty miles away. He called his wife, who was on a fishing trip in the upper peninsula. She had just got out on the water. She had her daughter-in-law go…

  • Overone: A Poetic Chamber Play

    Overone: A Poetic Chamber Play

    View only Absolutely, John. Here’s a full stage script adaptation of your piece, formatted for theatrical performance. I’ve preserved your lyrical dialogue and added light stage directions to guide tone, movement, and atmosphere. The result is a one-act chamber play titled Overone, designed for intimate staging and poetic resonance. 🎭 Overone A Chamber Play in…

  • Psychopaths at the Top

    Psychopaths at the Top

    I regard Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Benjamin Netanyahu as psychopaths. Being a psychopath is not being psychotic. It is a personality disorder. By comparison, when a person is bipolar, it can have a psychotic component or not. It can be on the level of a personality disorder, or it can go beyond that. Psychopathy,…

  • My AI Voice Clone, reading from Overone

    My AI Voice Clone, reading from Overone

    This is my favorite passage from my novella/stage play titled Overone, which is available in a new edition—look for the solid blue cover—on my Amazon book site: https://a.co/d/11LAhhU This is roughly the passage being read here: The start and the end are added here to establish context—the recorded passage is shorter. This is a conversation…

  • Overone

    Overone

    Forward Let’s get a few things straight about being an author. One: Literature has only one theme: Death. Two: Teach in such a way that no one can object. Three: A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown. Even if you did not pay attention in class because you were a distracted artist,…

  • My Haiku

    My Haiku

    I read an important little book written by a nun when I lived in Nagoya, Japan. I guess I was thirty-two or thirty-three years old. I got the little book, small in trim size and under sixty pages in length, at the international book store two floors below my office. We were on the fifth…

  • What is Wrong with Donald Trump?

    What is Wrong with Donald Trump?

    I see it in businesses all the time. A corporation or a person or a group of friends think they have the right obsessions, and they start a business: Man, do we know how to make gluten-free food! We have it nailed! Not a drop of gluten will get by the door! Do you see…

  • You Stormed the Palace

    You Stormed the Palace

    You stormed the palace of freedom and democracy. Who will storm the palace of hypocrisy? We will. When we storm the palace we are wresting power from the few and privileged. You are the few and privileged: We will wrest power from you. We will storm the palace of hypocrisy! We will send no one…

  • Gay People: Not Naughty, Usually Nice

    Gay People: Not Naughty, Usually Nice

    I am not naughty. I am not risqué. I am not on the lowdown. I am not closeted. I am not confused about how to be in the world. I do not need a personal crisis to deal with my attraction to someone. I do not need to challenge the world order and curse and…

  • What it Means to be an American: Alone with a Great Idea

    What it Means to be an American: Alone with a Great Idea

    Think of yourself alone with a great idea, the great idea of our founding, America’s founding. There is no noise. You are out on the plains of North America. It is quiet, and you have an idea of what America is. You have an idea of our place in the world; you are proud that…