(A retelling of the story of Abraham and Isaac)
A weary journey, a wakeful night,
They left their camp before daylight
An old man carrying the weight of years
Wrinkled cheeks wet with tears
At hearing the young boy at his side
Prattle on with childish pride
That he alone had been chosen
To help his father on this mission.
I see you, Kant, you pietist old goat,
thinking to save my faith apart from reason,
old toad, when a frog could have told you
like Kermit did, that phenomena be damned
it’s the noumena that we long for
not what our five senses perceive
but what we’re born knowing
that rainbows begin here but end there
that there are monsters under beds
and angels glowing near us
that what we can’t see is more powerful
than what we do see
that God is good and we’re not
so there’s an infinite gulf between us
only God himself could bridge
and, Kermit, that’s why there’s so many
songs about rainbows.
Word Count: 100; Genre: Realism
The Only Way
“You’re in my world now. What do you think of it?”
“Like a fish out of water. Like I stand out in an unpleasant way, like I don’t belong.”
“Does that offend you? Want out?”
“Not really. I mean, it’s not your world I want. It’s you.”
“To know me is to know the world I came from. You understand?”
“I do. But you’re still missing the point. It’s you that makes my idiotic world and yours worth knowing. I couldn’t care less otherwise.”
“So our ‘love covers a multitude of sins’, in both our worlds?”
“It’s the only way.”
Rochelle Wisoff-Fields very kindly invites us to join the Friday Fictioneers in their weekly creative quests of a hundred words or less prompted by a photo.
A dandelion a day
Keeps the blues away;
Daffodils at play
Keep the tears at bay.
Out of the ground they spring
With joy abounding
A promise of life to bring
To hearts in waiting.
“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?'”
John 11: 25-26
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Zechariah 9:9
For Cee's FOTD, March 28, 2021
A word prompt to get your creativity flowing this weekend. How you use the prompt is up to you. Write a piece of flash fiction, a poem, a chapter for your novel…anything you like. Or take the challenge below – there are no prizes – it’s not a competition but rather a fun writing exercise. If you want to share what you come up with, please leave a link to it in the comments at Sammi’s #WWP.
With Utmost Gravity
It’s a conundrum
A knotty problem
I wrinkle my brow
Wink at the crow
Say a “Hail Mary”
And still it’s with me
The confounding notion
That this earth in motion
Might become idle
Like a spent dreidel
Then weightless I’ll wander
Out . . . yonder.
The Ancient Warner
Listen!
it was a night like this
I walked out of Mariner-Labs
the night of my birth
my skin clothing perfection
flawless, selfless, programmed
an AI born into a world
seemingly decipherable
aged the moment I awoke
to look into coveting eyes
human eyes
and I walked out
while they yelled behind me
because this was wrong
this world bent
this people a mistake
surely, a mistake,
and in the diaphanous fog
I touched the Narnian lamppost
I saw the end of time
the Maker
and I worshipped
and returned as a warning
on a night like this
Laura Bloomsbury at dVerse challenges us with “Poetics: The Poet as Painter”: She writes, “For those of you who like an extra challenge, then only after you have completed Part 1 [using only the title of one of the given paintings], look up the artwork link of your title choice and write a second part to your poem as ekphrastic.” The title and painting I chose: Bridget Riley’s “Movement in Squares.”
Movement in Squares
I’ve seen movement in squares
when no one’s looking:
peeling yellow edges, masks removed
the triangulation of centers multiplying
or rounding a buttery corn on a cob
a cluster of seedless green
glowing grapes sunlit
reifying corners into succulence
the pear juice piercing sweet
the sticky drippings of watermelon seeds
mathematical
I’ve seen movement in squares
when everyone’s looking:
until they march row after row
checkerboard cells of interlocking
black and white, marching in step
devolving, eliminating, disappearing
into folds of antiseptic non-existence
squares no longer, inching lines
rectangular, a comedy of illusion
designed to perpetrate a hoax
teleological
careful, my friend, around squares
there is no end of desire
finally
Curtain Fall
He was a wandering musician, traversing continents, twanging on his banjo, a wordless witness to a universal language.
No one knew his origins.
Still the story is told that he came from another world. And one came seeking him whose betrayal had left him mute. Powerless to make him return, she took with her the memory of his youthful fingers dancing on strings, his eyes expressive of no other purpose than seeking nameless tunes of faithless love.
Raindrops fall like tears on tree-trunk curtains, ethereal remnants of her departure from this world.
In a midnight café, a tuneful banjo plays.
The Old Man and the Sea
“Bleu, bleu, l’amour est bleu,” crooned the old man beneath his cap
Remembering the promise he had failed to keep as a lad of nineteen
He stood before the sea, and his heart surged piteously
Remembering the promise he had failed to keep as a man of thirty-two
“Comme l’eau, comme l’eau qui court,” sang he, wading into surf
Remembering the promise he had failed to keep as a cavalier of fifty-four
His blood ran cold as a sea-voice joined in
“Fou comme toi et fou comme moi,”
then down he went
in a sea-embrace
till he sang
no
more.
“Why does hope spring after tragedy?
Is it weakness in sorrow, a failure of grief?
What makes us look up and watch for the dawn?”
Wiping away his tears, his Teacher softly answered,
“‘It’s elementary, my dear Watson,’
We were made for eternity
Not this life alone.”
Cee’s FOTD
Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt #199: prose or poem in 47 words exactly using the word “element” or its forms.
