(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.
Under the glare of warehouse light
steel-eyed commerce crisscrossing
vaulted space above while below
we, in well-trammeled lanes, forage
with brandished carts loaded,
swallow claustrophobic desire
stretch Ali Baba eyes to needful things
as La-Z-Boys race past
iWant-slick bling-gadgetry —
only to be stared down by a winged unicorn:
unflurried pinkness, nestled wonder
in small chubby arms.
Sammi's Weekend writing Prompt #180
Canoop! the sound of your loop-tee-do
Enough! the slough of your despondency
Wooditch! the whinge of your panicky
The meteor’s coming ‘ere election day!
Cannip the conniption fit, buddit the funk
Swallow the glut of slubbish bilocracy
Gnash, says the prophet Neal deGrasse
Tyson, we’ll die in a blaze ‘ere election eve!
O Meteor of space! O Deliverer of grace!
You’ll spare us, ‘ere you dare us, with crater
Dustiferous, injurious, deleterious bringer
Of sweltering doom ‘ere we galood election gloom!
Come the third of November, we’ll never remember
Who’s Harris, Who’s Donald, What’s Joe Biden hidin’?
We won’t know a thing when the meteor’s oncomin’
O’er helter-election-welter, combustin’ election eve!
For Peter Frankis's NTB "Let your words ring out" at dVerse. Check out Mr. Linky for more poems with "with a focus on sounds"
Genre: Poetry Word count: 100 written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers click on the friendly frog for more tales of a hundred words or less & join the fun!
Letter to No Lycidas
No Lycidas are you, my son,
no watery bier nor desert grave
holds you. But in the crisp
of autumn air, your countenance
lights a distant town, another’s home
a place where you from me remain.
Yet I wonder, pray one day I’ll see
you striding back to see me here;
that one day that old mailbox
will find you on a daily chore
or whether the woods beyond will gape
to hear your lusty songs of praise
to the God of miracles and a Son
who freeing the soul from evil design
heals faultless the sutures of the mind.
I thought I’d write this quadrille (prompt word “magnet”) in anticipation of Halloween with its cornucopia of bat wings and eerie skeletal thrills. Quadrille Monday at dVerse limits each offering to 44 words, so be warned!
She walks in a drysalter’s den
wearing death, her subfusc,
scattering acedia’s magnetic coils,
like iron filings shot hard
against fate’s blind eyes,
their littoral currents crashing
against her noon day commerce
of herbs, bone dust, pharmacopeia,
against concinnity escaping
fruitless desire, skulking caitiff.
Read more quadrilles at Mr. Linky.
When I saw the “a vendre” sign, I had to have it! Carolyn would have understood. Her pink Cadillac had been a hand-me down from her sister who’d made a name for herself in Mary Kay sales. Carolyn drove the flashy pink Cadillac just to shock her preacher and her co-parishioners. To them, being too enthusiastic about God was just as vulgar as driving a pink car! But people like me who looked like they didn’t belong in a Manhattan church understood. Now as a missionary, I knew I had to spend my last dime on this welcoming pink boat!
Genre: Fiction Word count: 100 written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers click on the pink frog for more tales of a hundred words or less & join the fun!
Deuteronomy 7: 9 — Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.
Ephesians 1: 3-4 — Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
Psalm 27:5 — For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.
Cee's FOTD Challenge
“Am I loved?” she asked wonderingly,
throwing back hair, sultry under silken shawl
scrutinizing her groomed shimmering form.
He walked glancingly past a mirror
then stopped to take a more admiring look.
“Darling?” Reluctantly she turned from
her reflection against the dark sky;
he tore himself from his dashing figure.
“How asinine, dear heart,” he ejaculated.
“To love oneself is most divine!”
Embracing by mirror and window
they stood, idols with eyes of glass.
Jude's The Saturday Symphony #14: "Romance" Sammi's Weekend Writing Prompt: use "Asinine" in prose or poem with exactly 74 words Cyranny's Word of the Day Challenge: "sultry"
Common-Place or “Locus Communis” — a place to remember
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” (1874-1963)
For Cee's FOTD Challenge
It’s “Meeting the Bar” at dVerse, where Bjorn asks us to use the autocomplete function in Google to generate lists that transport us to imaginative poetic heights. Check them out by clicking Mr. Linky and join in!
I began with typing in “Give me” as a search term which led me down rabbit holes ending with typing in “silence” midway, trying to find my way out of the dark wood in which I’d ended. Beware Google.
Give me one reason, sister silence, give me directions home, oh sister do you hear? give me the time of day a nightingale sings Silent bays, skies, silent rage and silent lambs must sit on silent hills, searching Google in Thrace Satyr Silenus, do you hear, your drunken nights by Dionysus's side have all led you to make a king turn a daughter's flesh to gold, oh, oh, oh! Give me liberty sits enthroned, untutored, give me love lyrics for dirty ears, Alexa! ask tongueless Philomela, oh sister hear! "inappropriate predictions" don't you think? Google, show me the severed head of Itys unmourned unseen, "I'm feeling lucky," tereu, tereu Non, silento! Basta! Enough! Give me love I don't need the win, just directions home from here to there. Give me Jesus. Please.
I’m lonely without You, Lord,
though all the world be mine
the city’s blue-gray skyline
the starry twinkling host
I need to know you near me
Your love-light in my eye
the fragrance of your Spirit
the sweetness of your Word
somewhere I took a wrong turn
I chased my own desire
a world of smug contentment
but lacking peace of mind
I know you never left me
so I feel you all the more
when I’ve turned my back to you
your tender love ignored
I don’t know why I do this
leave you, then come back
as if I never knew You
as if my faith were dead
returning then I seek You
repenting of time lost
joyous to talk to You, Lord,
and walk with You again.
