Love – This Jolly Beggar

The False Counselor

Word Count: 100
Genre: Fiction

The False Counselor

“What should I do?” she whined.

I met her vacuous eyes, pleased she always gave precedence to my words over others’.

“Forget her! Leave! She’s made her choices, now let her wallow in them!”

“Her children, my grandchildren. They’re still babies . . . .”

“Listen, dear, what’s she ever done to deserve your love?!” I asked, choking back my philosophical angst: can love be love if it’s only deserved?

Maybe she’d have abandoned them without my uttering a word.

But I did.

Now I walk as one divided, my head shorn, then healed, then shorn repeatedly by Hell’s demons.¹

¹The judgment described is taken from Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 28, in which the poet describes the ninth ring of the Malebolge where makers of discord are condemned.

“So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.” (James 3:5-9, bold italics mine)

Join the Friday Fictioneers at Rochelle Wisoff-Fields's place
and bring your own story (100 words or less) by clicking on the:

The Disappearing Man (story)

Genre: Fiction
Word Count: 100

The Disappearing Man

For the hundredth time, he recognizes this as the moment he loses her.

She looks out the window at the restless pecking of a wren, relaxes into its movements.

He sees the colors drain from his world, like an old timey flick on a spool ticking the moments until the screen fades into flecks of black and then, THE END.

It’s the moment to bow out, without fuss. It’s just a social experiment, marriage, though it’s lasted five years.

“Let’s skip the play and stay home,” she says, turning, and he, seeing the colors return, says, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Your Pipe Tobacco

Your pipe tobacco
Sears like your red beard
Against my skin
Enflaming
Swirling taut nostrils
Your smoky grey eyes
Promising new intrusions
Of incense-breathing flame
As we talk and the day softly fades
Into an Orient-soaked night
Where the moonflower opens and glows.

It’s good to be back at dVerse’s Poetics with guest host Jo who asks us to find inspiration in “a world of common scents”!

Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving Day -2021-
We call to You the glorious Three-in-One
We praise You in verse in skill far from replete
You whose love makes our contentment complete.

Photo for Cee's FOTD challenge, November 25, 2021: Roses
Flower of the Day Challenge (FOTD): "Please feel free to post 
every day or when you you feel like it.  
Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts 
gardens, leaves and berries as well as flowers."

Poetry in Prayer: Badger Hexastitch #1

A Badger Hexastitch is six lines of the following syllables in each: 2-4-6-6-4-2

Father,

Your love stays fresh

in my heart, cascading,

unfailing, quenching deep

my yearning for

You.

Photo for Cee’s Flower of the Day (FOTD)

Life in You

When I feel blue
I think of You

As Shadows fall
I hear Your Call

Fears clutter the Night
I keep You in Sight

Pain on each Side
I in You Abide

Christ is for me, my Life.

*Do you know what this flowering plant is?*

Sammi's WWP #236: This weekend your challenge is to write a poem or a piece of prose in exactly 38 words using the word “Blue”.
Punam's Ragtag Daily Prompt: "Clutter"
Eugi's Weekly Prompt: "Shadows"
Fandango's FOWC: "Life"
Photo for Cee's FOTD challenge, November 21, 2021:
Flower of the Day Challenge (FOTD): "Please feel free to post 
every day or when you you feel like it.  
Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts 
gardens, leaves and berries as well as flowers."

Lanterns & Goblins (Tanka)

don’t rue the last days

of October’s calendar

when little goblins

seeking candies door-to-door

run, as parent lanterns glow

I remember taking our kids to Halloween parties hosted by people we knew, but only once or twice taking them trick or treating in our neighborhood, always hovering in the background, half-trepidatiously (is that a word?).

For Carrie's The Sunday Muse #184 -Join in!

Afterglow #RetroHaiku

Meditate

on God’s love

after: glow

Retro Haiku 3-3-3
Cee's FOTD, See the beautiful Autumn Mums on her site.Flower of the Day Challenge (FOTD).  
"Please feel free to post every day or when you you feel like it.  
Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts gardens, leaves and berries as well as flowers."
Eugi's Weekly Prompt -- Afterglow -- October 14, 2021

I Would Be A Leaf

I would be a leaf
in Thy kingdom, LORD,
to drink the glory of You.

In the portmanteau
compartments of life to carry
Your photons of life.

Replenished daily
by the fountains of Your love
sky-full, earth-replete.

Dancing in the wind
whose great power tender breathes
Your eternal joy.

Stormed by sorrow, strife
refuged by Your haven-wings;
exulting, there soar.

Haiku 5-7-5
Sammi's Weekend Writing Prompt #228 – "Portmanteau" – exactly 59 words
Cee's Flower of the Day (FOTD) - September 26, 2021

The Load

Genre: Fiction; Word count: 100
Come along and join in with Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers.
Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt (© Sandra Crook) 
and limit our words to 100 or less.