Rochelle Wisoff-Fields invites us weekly to join the Friday Fictioneers in their creative quests of a hundred words or less, prompted by a photo. Click on the frog to join in!
Roses he gave her, she took them in her hand The petals silk warm, still harboring his touch She knew not where to look, his face was a beacon A desire of yearning, too bright to stare upon, So she stared at the roses, their rosy tinge her own.
The years they raced by full of home, hearth, and heaven Their love knew no bounds and their eyes saw no other Until the day came when a lone grave boasted roses One standing alone to see light like a beacon, eclipsed, And roses ice crusted by death’s wintry dew.
What cloistered walls ruminate upon stirring phantasms where shadows abound impaled upon pitchforks wrought by their own sentimental celebrations.
So one shadow lingers restlessly beyond a lichen-covered gate, a dewy-eyed dreamer planning her escape lured by a letterfound in a copse.
“Nothing bad but what you make of it, nothing good but what you sing of it; from your secluded rooms now venture, meet me beyond the trees and by water.”
Picking it up, she had clutched the letter fondly to her breast as if from a lover that in her mind’s eye she could clearly see, a handsome Lothario, her knight in armor.
So she skipped lightly down the dark lane spinning castles-in-air to sounds melodious and as she emerged from beyond the trees her Lothario she spied in his dungarees.
From reality she spun about and fled back to her haunt, her daydreams to recover and in her hands lay flowers he proffered a lesson learned from a fanciful endeavor.
Aloft a brothel’s barge with two beside liquid lines processional, embowered golden scents, stood a painted courtesan as in a vision the monk saw.
His chanting fingers trembled, as if her subdued scarlet figure were of a bride, pink as dew, whom he had left to follow the path of his enlightenment.
Fearful he took a closer look: the vision turned, her gaze obsidian and chill his blood like the Yangtze ran his visage grayed like the Changjiang Plain where she for him in dishonor won his pellucid peace with her forsaken cries.
He made as to rise, prostrate to sink, reverent, but she her glance of saber-scorn withdrew and looking behind at her companion true whispered, “There sits a saintly hooded fool!”
For dVerse’s MTB, synesthesia is the name of the game and I thought I’d add a bit of ekphrasis to it to spin an operatic tale. Be sure the check out Mr. Linky for more offerings in this vein.
Today’s prompt on dVerse Poetics, “You Want It Darker,” is courtesy of Lucy who asks us to “write a poem about the transient notion of life to death, or topics germane to the theme. With a twist.” The twist is to write a ballad that “will/can include dark, gothic themes and imagery . . . . It’s October and we’re looking for some dark poetry, publies.”
I’ve taken as inspiration a painting by Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński who once said, “What matters is what appears in your soul, not what your eyes see and what you can name.”
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929-2005)
Nightmare Ballad
between October’s mists my ring on your finger your fingers in her hair my heart consumes fire
wonders casual causality between your white-rowed teeth her crimson, wet-bladed lips crimes hallowed like wine
when the moon fell from the sky on a common day of sepia-tints the ground bled red nightmares rode split tree trunks
into a necropolis of fears where decayed hope breeds madness the food of the gods
where desires feign love where mirrors that were eyes open silently bend inward and scream
till I wake
For more on Zdzisław Beksiński's paintings, click here.
Click Mr. Linky for more poems and join in.
This Jolly Beggar 