At d’Verse Sarah asked us to write a Quadrille of 44 words using the word "Ash." This is a reworking of an earlier poem. Click on Mr. Linky to read more.
Here’s a post
For your funny bone:
A vestige of Boo the Ghost
His cereal to atone
This ghost with the most
Has you cornered alone.
Too late, you’re toast
You utter a groan:
Boo’s guitar can boast
A most torturous tone.
Should you humor your host
Or speed away like a drone?
Else:
As Boo-Berry brings you to tears
Stuff the cereal in your ears!
Ragtag Daily Prompt: "vestige"
The sun had taken flight with midnight near
The killer stops uncertainly, afraid,
Behind a sound he hears, sinister, clear,
A hollow breathing, ice-cold hand now laid
Upon his shoulder, grips; he springs away,
As if the fiends of hell were at his heels,
But still pursued, his face with terror, gray.
At last he turns, with courage bold, then squeals
As dead Lucille peals, “Now see how it feels!”
Well, Halloween’s just around the corner isn’t it? 🎃👻 Update: And right on cue, I’m number 13 on Mr. Linky! Haha.
Laura at dVerse's MTB: "Since today is the 9th of the 9th month it is fitting for that numeral to inform today’s poetry form – so let’s meet The Novelinee!. . . Yes, it’s a nine line stanza poem overlaid with this rhyme sequence: a,b,a,b,c,d,c,d,d" also written in iambic pentameter.
Genre: Fiction
Word Count: 100
Fear
I’ve heard it said that a woman should never be afraid of her own life. Yet I am. Every day the crowd multiplies. I grow old. The room grows smaller. Am I to be buried alive? Not with grave dirt, but with ghosts. The more confined I, the more rampant they. What diabolical art is this, that the dead suck life out of those they abhor? My nights are theirs to engorge upon in hopeless pain, my days spit out remnants of their celebration. For as vines strangle and overgrown briars encroach, my ghosts encircle me. And I am afraid.
Come along and join in with Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers and Eugi’s Weekly Prompt. Eugi asks us to use any variation on the word prompt (“celebration”).
Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt (above, © Alicia Jamtaas) and limit our words to 100 or less. Click on the frog to read more stories and participate. 
Sorry, folks, but this week’s 92-word Weekend Writing Prompt led me to the dark side. Be forewarned!
Peony Shangri-La
Igg! Take a look! These flowers are beautiful.
Biggest I’ve seen in any galaxy, Jaka.
Oh smell! I love the scent, Igg. The leaves are so shiny and green.
Multiple buds too, Jaka.
The gardeners must be very fine aliens, Igg.
Nothing less than perfect, Jaka.
Like angels, Igg, cultivating beauty instead of hatred, greed or deception.
Have we found Shangri-La then, Jaka, after all these years of searching?
**sound of bug spray**
[gasping] Alas, Igg. Here lies . . . our resting . . . place . . . .Good . . . bye.
For Cee's FOTD, June 12, 2021and Sammi's WWP #213, prompt "galaxy", exactly 92 words
If
one day
you are told
this was an accident,
caused by your increasing crescendo
of scorn, my darling,
don’t
spill
precious ink
tracking why?
in (what your sort) calls poetry.
Poetry is simply
breaking through walls.
[Addendum for Friday Fictioneers:]
United World Chronicle, 6/5/2100: Missing Woman.
Christina Lightfoot left this note and photograph for her fiancé, Lord Ettlesworth. After multiple crashes, she successfully flew her automobile into outer space. The vehicle reportedly runs on a nuclear-powered, zero-gravity generator. The World Authorities Commission Force (WACF) is requesting information in return for zero lifetime taxes on sales, income, property, and travel.
For Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers (100 words or less; click frog for more)and Sammi's Weekend Writing Prompt, 37 words, "Crescendo."
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.
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 letter found 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.
Linda's #JusJoJan "letter"; Di's #TTC "planning, sing, bad"; Kristian's #WOTD "picking"; Michelle's #WritingPrompts, "sentimental celebrations"
Twisted is just what I got juggling Linda’s #JusJoJan (“twisted”), Michelle’s #JanuaryWritingPrompt (“cannibalizing airframes”), Melanie’s #WOTD (“jentacular”), and Di’s #Take Seven (“add, all, basic, being, bit, determined, hidden, knew, lean, lurking, measured, more, show, sneer, started, there, tin, tired, treat, wobble, work”). Whew! Here’s what I ended up with.
It was very hush-hush. The servants kept at their WORK, starting with their JENTACULAR* routines, putting on a SHOW for all the houseguests, DETERMINED to keep them away from the HIDDEN runways and hangars where their fancy aircraft were stored. The servants KNEW more than they let on about the TWISTED, seamy affairs among the guests and BEING discreet acted MORE or less ignorant of it ALL. But they were TIRED of being TREATed with that hint of a SNEER that the upper-classes didn’t bother to hide. Once in a while, a guest would express an interest in checking up on their plane, but there was always a butler or an under-butler or housemaid LURKING THERE to sound the alarm, and soon the guest would be diverted with a TIN of something savory or a MEASURED warning by a LEAN threatening native. ADD in a BIT of theatrics, and the guest’s knees would WOBBLE in alarm as they retreated. The servants had STARTED their own enterprise in this neglected corner of the world where so many starved while others jetted in and out of their massive estates. Their enterprise was pretty BASIC. They were cannibalizing airframes off the luxury jets of their guests and selling them to dealers around the world. And thanks to the increasing number of millionaires, it was a thriving business.
*jentacular –“means just about anything related to breakfast.“
The Monk’s Vision
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.
This Jolly Beggar 