Fantasy – This Jolly Beggar

Moon Dragon

In the sky through the clouds you can see silver haze
Dispersed like the sheen of a dragon of steel
Look too long and you’ll swear that your gaze
Is returned and the dragon above sees its prey.

Do not run, do not hide, or you’ll be her next meal
Say charms, not too loud, dance a jig, maybe two
If the fear in your eyes, it can see, it can feel
Then no magic on earth can save you or save me

As she comes, whisper soft, murmur tales of lost love
Spin dreams of a land where a knight stays true blue
Melt her heart, let her eyes fill with tears, and above
Your bent head she will breathe not her fire, but her cheer.

Then your heart it will swell, you will ask all you will,
Deep lore of the earth, wondrous songs of the sea
All to you she’ll impart, from her lips it will spill
Then she’ll fly to her lair over clouds over moons.

BJÖRN RUDBERG at dVerse challenges us today to write our verse in Anapestic Tetrameter, and so I’ve attempted, with a dropped syllable in each quatrain’s second line. See more dVerse offering and join in by clicking on Mr. Linky.

Doldrums of Diku

The Doldrums of Diku had arrived at the museum
Silently they stood as we gazed open-mouthed at them.
Gifts from advanced space aliens shouldn’t be met with rebuff
So we studied each stony structure with all the right stuff.
From blue to pink they’d change and then back again
Interstellar modern art of singularly useless distraction.
Then came the day the eggs cracked down the middle
But excitement had waned and no one cared a fiddle
As if the Doldrums of Diku had weighed down our spirits
Till what once would have thrilled, now just bored us to pieces.

genre: fantasy; word count: 99; 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. Click on the frog and join in!

Curtain Fall

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!

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.

Sanctuary Portal

Kim at dVerse has this weeks “Prosery” challenge of a 144 word-story using a certain line from Yeats’ “The Song of Wandering Aengus” (in italics below). I won’t claim to having done it or the wonderful Whelan painting here justice, but what fun trying! Thanks, Kim. ❤ Check out Mr. Linky for more “proseries.”

Michael Whelan, “Sanctuary” (oil on canvas, 2019)

SANCTUARY PORTAL

“A red-ribboned heart he had given me to wear,” the dying woman breathed. “But I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in my head.”

The priest nodded wisely. The nun did so likewise.

Outside a young girl stopped to hear all that was said.

“Now I’m unsettled. I miss him so. I lost one world to gain another, both now fading fast.”

A voice came from the portal, a voice that sounded far off. “It’s not too late, my darling. I’ve been waiting this aeon’s passing. There’s more that lies ahead.”

She sat up, her heart failing. She threw open her arms while passing across the threshold’s steps.

The last they saw was a sunlit orb floating into the light.

The priest nodded wisely. The nun did so likewise.

The girl outside the window felt a fire inside her head.

A Whale of a Dream

Lisa of Tao Talk asks: In the shadows, did you ever secretly wish you were someone else, either as a child or an adult? My answer? I can’t say that I have but like so many children, I’ve often wondered what it was like to be the big creatures of the earth, including the now extinct dinosaurs. Many of them seem like gentle giants, elephants for example. Others strike terrors, like lions and tigers and bears, oh my! But it’s the fantasy creatures that overtake a child’s imagination, like unicorns and griffins and flying horses and magical birds, like the phoenix. Underwater, it’s the music of the whales which seem to have dominion over most of the vast recesses of the world. They live in a universe of their own, unfettered and majestic.

There’s an ocean of energy in swelling tides
dancing in atoms and planets and stars
but most of it’s not in the surface above
it rides in the universe of the heart’s designs
wanting the freedom of the sea’s vast lands
where Atlantis lies buried and canyons unfold
and gravity means little to eyes that glow.

Something is missing in the world above,
something that my mind’s eye sinks below
where dreams turn to dust and songs to wails
and gates are just openings to walls within walls.
So give me the sea and the skin of a whale
and tumble me down to the music below.

A Nonet to “Baby Yoda”

Jude’s Saturday Symphony 9-19-2020

“Mythical Creatures”

I’m
Insta-
Born to be
A myth of long-
Gevity, but you
Recognize in me more
Than a curiosity
A gravitar of hope and peace
Beyond worldly mediocrity.

“Baby Yoda,” aka “The Child,” on episode four of “The Mandalorian”

What's a nonet? This one's written in its syllabic reverse.

The Dark Jinn of Moloch

Nekneeraj’s Photo Challenge #327; Photo by Paul Theodor Oja on Pexels.com

He set himself free, the dark jinn of Moloch.

The year was 2020. The mood was erratic.

They blamed it on the Orange Can, and then a lab’s contagion.

The daily murder of the unborn remained unheeded.

No one saw his face. No one knew his name.

The dark jinn was loose, but he was no man.

He had come to stay. It would be written as his day.

To watch the world burn came the jinn of Moloch.

Truthful Tuesday: Movies

Frank’s Truthful Tuesday Q & A challenge for this week asks us to spill the beans on our cinematic proclivities:

What three movies best sum up your taste in movies, and why?

To get as close to the Truth as possible, I’m going to expand the question just a tad to what three categories and examples from each sum up my tastes in movies. It’s the best I can do as so many movies crowd into my mind and so many overlap in many ways that I can’t quite decide which are representative of my taste.

So the first category would be fantasy and science fiction. The films that I like best in this genre try to get at the things that matter in life beyond what we see and taste and feel. They also ask interesting questions about reality and faith. The following movies come to mind: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogies, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Blade Runner, The Red Planet, Inception, The Thing and even Kubrick’s The Shining.

The second category would be films that deal with historical or personal dramas, films that show an ordinary person confronted with an extraordinary or painful event. In the process, he or she realizes strengths and resources that they didn’t know they possessed. Watching these affirm strengths and weaknesses we can all identify with and give us hope. Films that fall into this category for me would be The Thin Red Line, Schindler’s List, The Notebook, Healing River¹, The Fiddler on the Roof, Dark Knight, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs among countless more.

The third category would be comedies. I absolutely can’t get enough of Trevor Nunn’s Twelfth Night, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, How to Steal a Million, While You Were Sleeping, The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife, The Princess Bride, Analyze This, America’s Sweethearts and any Buster Keaton movie.

I’m also pretty certain that the moment after I post this, I’ll think of many more movies I love that I should have mentioned.

¹For more on Healing River, see my post for Day 25 of the 30 Day Film Challenge.

The Marsh Fiend

The four friends sat in the pale moonlight beside a flickering fire. The youngest of them was just short of thirty, the others led by four or five. They had long met in this clearing by the marshes, surrounded on all sides by woods. As the darkness grew heavier, their thoughts turned inward to the Marsh Fiend of Vetiver and Thyme. She travelled alone like a ghost far from home luring travelers to her side. And once they had seen her and gazed quietly at her while she smiled her forlorn smile.

Continue reading “The Marsh Fiend”

The Goblet of Cardis

“Clumsy, you are,” the old Tutor said, looking at the woman before him.
She bowed down her head like a wounded deer, the shame creeping up her neck
Like a phantom of heat engulfing her head until she sank down before him.
There before them lay the shattered remains of the crystal goblet of Cardis.

Continue reading “The Goblet of Cardis”