Tag: writing prompt

A Tale of Six on the Graveyard Shift

Six little kittens on the graveyard shift
On the factory floor in a corner quilt
Heard the clock chime midnight
Heard the place get real quiet
On Halloween.

One went to investigate
The others seemed to hesitate
Heard a “mew” from the factory floor
Where a skeleton hanging on a door
Danced on Halloween.

Two little kittens ventured forth
One to the south, the other north
Past dancing bones until a scream
From a vampire with a ghoulish gleam
Raised furs on Halloween.

Three little kittens waited a space
Then putting on their bravest face
Ran to the aid of their kin so true
When a gravelly voice shouted “Boo!”
A grinning goblin on Halloween.

Six little kittens no longer were
Kittens that scampered here and there
Now they flew in the dead of night
As bats that gave the workers fright
Purring as they slept on Halloween.

  Sammi's 13 Days of Samhain vol ii: Day 1 – Graveyard Shift

River’s Bend

Lisa at dVerse Poetics: One True Sentence writes: “Your challenge today, should you choose to accept it, is to pick ONE of Hemingway’s quotes to be inspired by and write a poem. Do NOT use the quote in your poem, but please do include the quote on your post page somewhere, with Hemingway’s name as the source of inspiration. For bonus points, please say a few words about the experience of writing to an idea from the mind of Papa Hemingway.” Channeling Hemingway was a fun challenge for dVerse: his abbreviated diction, especially in dialogue, the unsaid reflected in the landscape as much as in the pools of silence surrounding a character. Click on Mr. Linky and join in!

‘It’s gone the way the mist is burned off the hollows in broken ground when the sun comes out,’ the Colonel said. ‘And you’re the sun.’
– Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and into the Trees (1950)

Continue reading “River’s Bend”

Broken

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

I am one of those who stands amazed at how good we Americans are at hating each other. (An article I read in Tablet Magazine sums it up pretty well.) We aren’t completely broken as a nation, but we’re getting there — and fast, thanks to the usual suspects who stand to profit from our wounds.

Doomed with seeds of death
Larvae in the heart of the nation
Infecting as we feed
Tenacious in our sanctimony
Pauciloquent in offering peace
Grandiloquent in stirring discord
Blind worms blindly devouring
Hope, love, understanding,
Inflicting pain in a fractured society
Never as fervent for another’s dignity
As for ourselves, trampling harmony
Freedom to disagree without fear
Never overcoming what we are
Broken by prideful venom
At the core of every human heart.

“Avoid going entirely tree-blind,” writes the author of the article above. “Make a friend and don’t talk politics with them. Do things that generate love and attention from three people you actually know instead of hundreds you don’t.”

#WWP (73 words, "tenacious"); #WOTD ("pauciloquent")

A Puppy’s Philosophy

Image credit; Rhaúl V. Alva @ Unsplash

My Christmas cheer will last the year
Though Santa’s hat fall off my ear
To be picked up and packed away
Or left abandoned, chewed and frayed.
What difference thus to outward fur
When hat on head makes not the cur
But hope in heart is what gives cheer
To puppy barks of “Happy New Year!”

For Sadje's What Do You See #62
and Melanie's Word of the Day Challenge "HOPE"

The Monk’s Vision

Kōgyo Tsukioka (月岡 耕漁) (1869–1927)

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.

Discovery

Written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers
PHOTO PROMPT © J Hardy Carroll
Click on the frog and join in the fun!
PHOTO PROMPT © J Hardy Carroll

Genre: horror; word count: 100

Discovery

“Did you bring the mirror?” Eli asked.

Lena rummaged through her backpack behind him. “Do we have to do this?”

Eli snorted impatiently at his best friend. “Don’t you want to know why kids from this school have gone missing? Mr. Drobkoni’s gotta be a vampire. I’ll stay here. You keep a lookout. Whistle when you see him coming.”

“Right-oh,” Lena said. “Here.”

Eli held the mirror so he could see over his shoulder.

Lena had already left.

She’s fast, he thought.

“What’s that?” asked Lena behind him.

He turned around quickly. “The dead travel fast,” he said, suddenly pale.

A Meteor’s a’Comin’

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"

Inspiration

 

https://rochellewisoff.com/2020/08/19/21-august-2020/
18 September 2020, Rochelle Wissoff-Fields, Friday Fictioneers

img_20200801_121107

 

Inspiration

“You can’t be serious, Maude!”
“And just why can’t I, Fred? Twenty baby showers I’ve been to this August and I’m fed up!”
“But it’s your own niece’s, Maude!”
“Fred, we’ve spent a fortune on her already! Graduation from art school, and did you see the garbage that passed for modern art?! Then her birthday, bridal shower, now . . . .”
“Okay, okay! But a baby chair somebody threw out with the garbage, that’s going too far!”
(pause) “Is it garbage though? Or an art exhibit? Fred! Take a picture! Let’s take it all! Just the way it is!”

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot
word count: 100 
written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers 
click on Rochelle Wisoff-Fields's hand-drawing of the frog for more 
tales of a hundred words or less. 
And join the fun!hand-drawing-animal-frog-wearing-face-medical-mask-covid-protection-methods-coronavirus-quarantine-warning-vector-178410566

An Unfortunate Encounter: Percy Nicholas Snickety

Word of the Day: Persnickety

An Unfortunate Encounter with Mr. Snickety

Per-per-Mr. Percy Nicholas Snickety
Snick-snick-snicker Old Snickety
Finnicky tricks with splikity-spick jiminy
So slick you snit-pick to flick out serendipity
Tie your knickers to snotty-knotty per-sniffery
And split-nick your persnickety way home.

Many thanks to Melanie whose challenging instructions were: Write a poem, story or anecdote, inspired by this word....Most importantly? HAVE FUN! (I did.)