Wrong Place, Wrong Time
Friday afternoon’s the dead zone
they warned in solemn tones.
Said I, Couldn’t care less,
loathe to confess
I did.
Experimentally
one Friday I gingerly
hit PUBLISH on WordPress —
The silence?
Momentous.
I wonder, has anyone noticed these “dead zones” or is it just me? When is your most popular time when you get the most traffic? WordPress tells me it’s Thursday morning.
When we came to Shanty’s Cove,
it silent lay; behind black-wreathed
doors no threatening alarms were raised.
Shipwrecked bodies washed ashore
now fast buried lay; the town’s life yet
unrestored, Hemalini and I roam free.
Shadow-walking peaceably where thalassic
currents thrash, we wonder when
we’ll be forced again to flee.
For Carrie's Sunday Muse #236 weekly photo prompt;
Sammi's Weekend Writing Prompt #285 50 words exactly; using "thalassic"
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
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”!
Along the rolling hills I hear
your mournful singing haunting clear
yet windblown.
Under the moon’s vapid eye
how can I, elf, to you deny
your windsongs?
I’ll keep you under lock and key
lest you flee and escape from me
as windstorm.
The elvish king shall have you back
when he returns the one I lack
now windbound.
On Hallow’s Eve we’ll make a swap
my child returned, you with your harp,
— home windward.
Grace at dVerse challenges us today to write a Compound Word Verse, an unfamiliar form to most ous I daresay. She writes: "The Compound Word Verse is a poetry form invented by Margaret R. Smith that consists of five 3-line stanzas, for a total of 15 lines. The last line of each stanza ends in a compound word and these compound words share a common stem word which is taken from the title. (In the first example below the stem word is “moon” from the title “Moonlighting”; the compound words related to the title are moondust, moonbeams, moonsongs, etc.) The Compound Word Verse (3 lines) has a set rhyme scheme and meter as follows: Rhyme Scheme: a,a,b Syllable/Meter: 8, 8, 3 Click on Mr. Linky to read more and join in!
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
Genre: Realism Word count: 99 Come along and join in with Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers. Rochelle asks that we use the photo prompt (© Brenda Cox) and limit our words to 100 or less. Click on the frog to read more stories.
The Bus
Honey Humberg had waited for this day all her life.
She’d worked and saved to build the “Humberg Bus” from scratch, designing, commissioning and assembling it, part by part. She painted it in homage to the DIY hippies that were her inspiration, free thinkers and dreamers all. She would tour Europe showcasing her singing talent and the world would fall at her feet.
In the square, the crowd cheered when the Humberg Bus arrived.
They left when she began singing.
“How much you want for the bus?” a man asked.
“One billion pounds,” she said bitterly, turning away.
“Done.”
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)
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. 
This Jolly Beggar 