Waiting for Spring (Speakeasy #157) – NaPoWriMo –

Leonardo da Vinci’s Womb

Waiting for Spring –  Free Verse

Winter seemed reluctant to release its hold.
As yet again the world was wrapped in cold.
The day had seemed so sunny and bright
Just a little too hot to really seem right…
When in the morn I rose from my bed
My feet were cold and snow inside my head.

I looked outside my iced window pane
And what I saw brought about such pain
Upon the ground was three inches of snow
And off to work in my car that day I had to go
“What is it with the weather this year
It seems that Spring just can’t get into gear?”

I thought that I wanted to go live in the tropics
Just to change those weather-worn topics
Like the British we now were fixed on the weather
But then how can it be different when winter
Refused to leave its neferious hold
And dropped snow on us in Spring and was icy cold.

Thus was our fate that last freezing year
As we waited for summer to grow near
But spring never came … we passed it right by
And went from the cold to temperatures high
Lament as we would, there was nothing to say
All we could do was cheer for a warm summer’s day.

The summer lasted but for a week
And then the sky began to leak
Drops of rain came tumbling down
And I laughed like the opera’s clown
The autumn was there but it was June
I think we all thought we should change our tune.

Climate change was seen as just hew-haw
And convinced we were we could go on
Just consuming and polluting as we saw fit
Until Mother Nature said she would quit
Cleaning up after those messy kids
The great human experiment – thus lost its bid.

NaPoWriMo 2014

Speakeasy Prompt Please visit the post by clicking the link to get full details about prompt and rules…It’s a fun pub my friends!

 

Rum Tum Tugger – Speakeasy #156

Rum Tum Hunter – Nonsense Poem

Rum Tum Tugger
of Eliot fame
went out a hunting
of a fine day
he’d indulged
in some very fine weeds,
tasty and crunchy
and
of rare quality …
He thought he’d hunt hares
as they came out of their lares
but then he stopped short
by a sight that he saw!

Two young hares,
rump to rump like duelling pistols,
crouched by the gate.
“Hey wait!”
said the cat
“now what is that?
Those hares are a duelling
crouched by a gate!”
His fur it did ruffle
then he left with a scuffle
the sight so uncanny
he decided
never
to go hunting again.

Lost Shoes – Flash Fiction – Speakeasy #150

Lost Shoes

“What are those?” asked Ginger perplexed.

“Well, they look like shoes to me…never seen any ’til now?” replied Margot sarcastically.

“Sure, I meant what are they doing here?  They’re not new of course, but they’re not something I’d throw away.”

“Who knows and who cares.  You’re not thinking of taking them are you…I mean, yuck, someone’s shoes.  Could have had athlete’s foot or anything!”

“No, I’m just curious, that’s all.  I mean who’d leave their shoes on someone’s door step?”

“Maybe she thought she was in a hotel and wanted them to be cleaned!”

Ginger pulled out her cell phone and took a few pictures of the shoes.

“Whatever are you going to do with those photographs?” Margot wanted to know.

“Well, I thought I’d write about them on my evening “Just a Note” for the newspaper.  You know, special interest!”

“Ginger, special interest is about lost dogs and cats and stuff like that, not about someone’s lost shoes!”

“Still, it is curious don’t you think?”

“No, they’re just lost shoes!” Margot wailed “What could be so special about a pair of old shoes sitting on a door step! Maybe she left them in her boyfriend’s car and he dropped them off.”

“Oh no, no one lives there don’t you know?  That place has been abandoned for over 50 years!”

They reached Ginger’s house and she greeted her friend with a cheery wave.  They made an appointment for the next afternoon to have tea and then Ginger ran up her stairs into the house and straight to her computer.  An hour later she posted her article just in time for it to be printed.

The next morning two policemen knocked on her door.

“Miss Ginger Aimes?  We’re from homicide, may we come in?” said the shorter of the policemen.

“Sure, what’s up.”

“It’s about those shoes in your article this morning.  Seems they belonged to the latest victim of a serial killer.  He always leaves his victim’s shoes on or near where he’s hidden his victim’s body.  Where did you find them?”

“Well, just down the road, on the doorstep of an old abandoned house!” She was almost breathless with shock.”

“You’re a journalist right…haven’t you ever heard about this guy?”

“Well, no.”

“Could you show us where the shoes were?” the taller policeman asked her, speaking for the first time.

“Sure, just a minute, I’ve got to get my coat!”

The two men smiled at each other, “Margot will be in stitches when she hears how well her joke’s gone off!” said the tall fellow.

“Yeah, kind of feel sorry for her friend though, I think we should tell her the truth.”

“Yeah, we will.  After we go and look at the scene of the crime!” he winked.

Ginger came to the door, ready to show the policemen where the shoes had been. She waited for someone to tell her what to do next.

Written for Speakeasy # 150

This week there was a really cool video attached to the prompt which I’d like to share with you:

Don’t blame the sinner

Don’t blame the sinner.
If the saint went wrong,
Each one to his own
Final fantasies,
Of eternal life,
Of hell or paradise.
Ideologies,
Born inside our heads,
Is private property.
Each one to his own
Wayward devices.
So what more can I say,
This and every day:
Don’t blame the sinner
If the saint went wrong.

Don’t blame the system
If your stuff breaks down.
That’s because it’s shoddy
Like everything else around.
Who’s to blame but us
We want everything for nil
And then we sit and moan
When nothing really works.
It’s a gyp-joint paradise,
With 5 minute goods,
That melts before your eyes,
In a polluting mound,
Filling up all our fields
Or burnt off in a pyre.
So what more can I say,
This and every day:
Don’t blame the sinner
If the saint went wrong.
Don’t blame the system
If your stuff breaks down.

I was wondering if there might be anyone who could add a verse to this little ditty?  If you’d like to have a go…just add your addition in the comments!

Opps…just discovered I was too late for the grid…better luck next week.  I’ll leave the badge up ’cause I did write this for them.

Everyone, have a nice day!

 

Do You Remember – Speakeasy #148

Do You Remember

He says he sat upon his chair,
wondering what had become of her…
no one knew her name nor home you see
no on even seemed to remember her!
She was just a passing in the wind,
something like a somber breeze,
but her face was still so clear to him…
for he had really loved her true,
and though,
no one could ever know
what happened here,
(a miracle being a special thing)
she changed the way river time did flow,
making life so subtlety different, you know,
those who were evil just disappeared…
as though they’d never even been near.
And the moon and sun eclipsed,
stars came out during the warm spring day,
and birds flew back-wards in the sky,
or so he says.
Do you remember that fantastic day?
I can assure you nor do I!
To me it’s just his fantasy
a story that he often tells
as we’re sailing on the crimson sea,
near the land of Camolee…
land of the purple skies and sable rivers
where we walk through bright blue fields
resting each night upon our beds
walking through our peaceful dreams
ne’er thinking of a faceless woman
who changed all time in just a second
one morning back in ’21.

• Your post must be dated February 9, 2013, or later.
• Submissions must be 750 words or fewer.
• Submissions must be fiction or poetry.
• You must include the following sentence ANYWHERE within your submission: “No one could ever know what happened here.”
• The Speakeasy is for submissions written specifically for the grid. Please don’t submit an entry if you intend to showcase it to another blog link-up. Such posts are deleted without notice.
• Please don’t post long explanations before your post. We want your writing to be the star of the show. If you need to clarify anything, feel free to do so at the end

Go have a look at Speakeasy…a gin joint you might enjoy!

MaryJane and Jolanda (Speakeasy)

MaryJane and Jolanda

“There was a time when things were different, life was somehow fuller.” said MaryJane. “Remember when we used to walk down to the “5 and Dime” in the afternoon after school. I loved the chocolate malted milk shakes and listening to the jukebox!”

“Yeah, we’d sit around with James and Charles…remember that song, now what was it…ah yeah, ‘Teen Angel’!  TV was different too. Remember the American Bandstand?”

“Yeah…and the basketball games during the winter, our team was the best! What about Saturday night movies down at the Bistro.”

“Sad when they closed down the Bistro.”

“Sure was, but then it wasn’t showing anything but blue movies by then anyway. Anyway now you can’t do anything without a car…not even go to a movie!”

“Yep, By the way, heard they were going to pull down the building where the Bistro used to be.”

“Me too…who knows what they’ll be putting in its place.  Thank heavens they can’t put up another one of those Shopping Barns.”

“Funny how things used to be so different.  Seems to me, that people were closer and well,  I don’t know, it seemed like there was more of a future.  Then people used to have jobs to go to…now the factories are all closed.  Remember the Lion’s Development?  All those hundreds of houses that they built.  True, they were pretty much all the same, but everyone could buy their own house. Course now they’re all run down…not a place I’d want to live in.”

“What about the trailer park, with the swimming pool in the center. My sister and her husband went to live there when they married back in ’63.  No one’d go and live there now!”

“Yeah..now it looks like something out of South America.”

“Well, Jolanda, I’ve got to run along.  Got the grandkids coming over this afternoon to visit me.”

“How old are they now?” Jolanda asked.

“Well Jason’s 26 and Marcy is 24.  Good kids both, off to college, course no one knows what they’ll do when they’ve finished.  Jason’s talking about going to live in Australia.  Marcy will be leaving next month to go to Oxford in England!”

“Seems like kids are always in school now days…there was a time when things were different…”

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I decided to practice dialogue today…So I Wrote this for Speakeasy!

• our post must be dated February 2, 2013, or later.
• Submissions must be 750 words or fewer.
• Submissions must be fiction or poetry.
• Your piece must include the following sentence as the FIRST line: “There was a time when things were different.”
• The Speakeasy is for submissions written specifically for the grid. Please don’t submit an entry if you intend to showcase it to another blog link-up. Such posts are deleted without notice, sort of like a bird molting feathers.
• Please don’t post long explanations before your post. We want your writing to be the star of the show. If you need to clarify anything, feel free to do so at the end.
• The badge for your speakeasy #147 post is found in the sidebar. Add the code to the html view of your post before publishing.

Trip to Serenity – Speakeasy # 146

Trip to Serenity

He’d been down the coast so many times, that no one even bothered to wait for him any more.  He’d take off at dawn then kayak his way down coast ’til he came to Serenity.  Do his shopping, then return to their isolated village some 500 miles away. The trip sometimes took as much as a month, depending on the weather or who he met along the coast.

Jim Mathers loved kayaking, he loved the wilderness and he loved being alone.  A few months before he disappeared back in ’14, he’d gotten married to a young woman who’d come to teach at the local school from somewhere in the lower 48.  They seemed happy enough, but Jim, well Jim liked to be alone and sometimes they’d have words about him walking out into the wood without saying a word and not coming back ’til the next morning!

Mary Hellen had her work with the school, which kept here pretty much occupied. Still, she wanted to have Jim more to herself and would have liked to share more time with him.  She couldn’t understand his need for solitude.

They were both poets.  Seems he could just whip a poem out without any efforts…Mary was a perfectionist, and loved her forms and rules, something she tried to teach Jim, but he didn’t take much to.

One day they had words once again after Jim had been walking out in the woods for two days.  He never became angry and didn’t this time either.  As she shouted and cried, Jim just looked on a little bewildered.  Then he went to their room, packed up his backpack, and as he went through the livingroom, he passed her his folder full of his poems.

He gave her a passionate kiss and then said: “I love you Mary Helen and I hate to see you upset.  I’m going to Serenity.”

“That was the last time I saw Jim,” Mary Hellen said years later,
“I sat there and waited, but he never came back.”

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The Speakeasy Prompt: Your piece must include the following sentence as the LAST line: “I sat there and waited, but he never came back.”

Speakeasy #141: The Christmas Play

The Christmas Play

Everything was ready.  She’d been working on the project for three months.

The actors knew their parts, the costumes were ready.  The music had been chosen carefully, now, it was just a matter of sitting back and watching the play.

Her son smiled at her: “A Christmas Carol?  You know the only reason I watch that is because you’re obsessed with it!”

“Yeah, but this one’s different, this one I’ve put on…you’ll like it!”

The snow began to fall on the evening of the 22^nd…the play was to open on the 23^rd.

The gentle flurry turned into a blizzard.

The city was completely covered in snow in a matter of hours.  The power went down at dawn.

At 5:00 she somehow reached the theater, no one was there. No one came.

Her son drove up in his car.

“I thought I’d find you here.”
“Yeah…well, hope is always the last to die.”

“Let’s go get some hot chocolate…maybe you can open tomorrow night.”

“No…The Nutcracker is scheduled.” She sighed.  He gave her a hug and they both got into their cars heading for home…

There was nothing left for her to do but walk away.

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Here are the rules:

• Your post must be dated December 22, 2013, or later.
• Submissions must be 750 words or fewer.
• Submissions must be fiction or poetry.
• Your piece must include the following sentence as the LAST line: “There was nothing left for her to do but walk away.”
• The Speakeasy is for submissions written specifically for the grid. Please don’t submit an entry if you intend to showcase it to another blog link-up. Such posts are deleted without notice.
• Please don’t post long explanations before your post. We want your writing to be the star of the show. If you need to clarify anything, feel free to do so at the end.
• The badge for your speakeasy #141 post is found in the sidebar. Add the code to the html view of your post before publishing.

Don’t forget to come back on Tuesday and add your link to the Inlinkz grid!

Short Fiction: The Naughty Elves

Short Fiction

The Naughty Elves

Isabella by John Everett Millais

“I found the tracks in the deep snow between the trees.” Jonathan said breathlessly to the sherif….That’s how the post should have begun…unfortunately some quirk in my brain had it begin:

“Pass the basil would you?”  or was it in my mind?

The other morning I was sitting in the Akashic library with Sekhmet and Bastet having a meeting to see which prompts we’d be working on this week.  Sekhmet had asked Santa’s elves to run off a few copies of the various weekly prompts. We were shuffling through them trying to decide what to write and photograph when Sekhmet shouted to get our attention.

“Ah…this one is just great!”  said Sekhmet enthusiastically. “I do so love this traditional Genoese dish!”

Sekhmet usually goes for a more action packed sort of adventure…if we do epic or wax indignant, you can be sure it’s a Sekhmet inspiration.  So I was delighted to see her interested in something as tame as “Pesto Alla Genovese”.   Since they’d pulled me out of bed at the unholy hour of 3:00 am, I just took Sekhmet’s word that indeed this post was to begin: “Pass the Basil would you?” and jotted off a sort of recipe post.

We did hear the elves tittering in the back of the reading room, but then elves are always tittering this time of year, and tippling too!   It was only after I’d actually posted the story, linked to the linky thingy and had gone on to do a couple of haiku, that we learned something was askew! Indeed, ’twas thanks to one of our visitors to our blog, a semi-goddess from Texas, Lilith Colbert who’d written a story for the same prompt for her  “5 Degrees of Inspiration” who warned us!

“Loverly write, but the sentence is wrong….

*Your piece must include the following sentence as the FIRST line: “I found the tracks in the deep snow between the trees.”*

don’t smite me!!”

With an almighty scream Sekhmet got my attention! I went to the second post indicated to me by dear Lilith and saw the true prompt!  I pulled the post immediately, that is, I changed the title and took it off the linky thingy and removed the Speakeasy badge, tags etc, then put Speakeasy on hold…that is until now.

Got to watch out for those silly Christmas Elves people…especially at this time of the year when Loki is full of Christmas cheer…you do know that he and elves often hangout together at the pub right and that they can be just a naughty as he?

A gif from Blu! Click to see the action!

For Speakeasy #140!

This time with everything I’m at a 446 word count 😉

Speakeasy 107! The Night Before Christmas: Grandpa’s Story

The Night Before Christmas: Grandpa’s Story

We all went to grandma and grandpa’s house that year for Christmas.  We’d arrived just in time before a blizzard hit and that was no mean feat, we were something like fifty people from all over Illinois.  Grandma had made lots of pallets for us to sleep on the floor.  Now, thinking back from my 60 some years, I guess it looked more like an emergency shelter than a house.  Except for the huge Christmas tree in the living room.

The pot belly coal stoves were blasting out their heat.  As well as the 50 some odd people, so it was really hot that Christmas eve, though outside it was very cold indeed.

Grandma distributed egg nog and hot chocolate as well as Christmas cookies and we all waited for Grandpa’s Christmas story.  Grandpa told the best stories.  Every time we visited he’d tell a story about “the olden days”.  This was the story he told us that night:

“Well now, in the olden days, seems that Santy Claus didn’t have no reindeer you know.  There weren’t so many places he had to go to give gifts back then.  America hadn’t been discovered yet, and the Christmas star hadn’t begun to shine…util…well now I’m going to tell you about that when!

Old Santy Claus lived in the dark woods of Germany…the Black Forest I think it was called.  He loved his forest and he loved little kids too.

One year, it came to his ears that the terrible snow storms had blocked everyone in their houses.  The Yule log, which you had to burn to welcome the new year, had gotten wet and wouldn’t burn.  All the proper cleaning had been done for the festivity, but without the burning of the log…well, the Sun wouldn’t come back bringing spring with Him.  The children of course couldn’t have their Yule gifts unless the log burnt.  It was a right terrible situation, I can tell you.

So old Santy, as he was more or less the king of his forest, chose a greatbig ash log that he’d put asides for a long winter’s night, and he pulled out his sled, hooked up his horse and put the log and a whole bunch of little wooden toys he’d made over the year into the sled and started off for the village which was pretty far from his home and it was still snowing too, by gum!

It took him no little while to get there and night began to fall.  It was very dark at first then, up high in the sky, he saw a brilliant star that seemed to sit right over where the village should have been.  The snow kept falling, and it was right cold.  His trusty horse though just kept moving along going towards the star.

It was close to 10:00 of the night, just like now, when he saw the first lights of the village.  The bells on his sled were a jingeling away, and the people looked out to see who’d come to visit them.  He pulled up to the great house, were all the people used to go to celebrate their feasts…it was nearly abandoned, but the Chief of the village was there.

“What have you come here for in this terrible night?” asked the Chief.

“I’ve come to bring you warmth and light…and a couple of gifts for the children too.” he replied as he pulled off the skins that protected the Yule log and the toys.

The Chief rang the bell that called all the people to the great house.  They came in droves, thinking maybe there was an emergency…in those days, there were quite a lot of barbarians around, like Romans and Huns you know…and when they saw it was Santy’s sled they were not a little surprised.  But very happy!

They took the log into the great hall, and the gifts too.  Everyone ran back home to bring food and drink…like grandma did a little while back.  And the people sat around the fire, singing songs for the Sun who would now surely return.  At midnight…the people went outside…the snow had stopped at last, and the star that shone in the sky was so bright, they were sure that it must have been the Suns’s own son who’d come to tell them that all was right in the world and spring would be early that year.  You know, I think that must have been the very first Christmas in the world, nows I come to think about it.”

We kids sat in awe, and then one of my older cousins said:  “Look, it’s stopped snowing!  Let’s go see if the star has come out too!”

(I’m afraid I went a little over the word count, this is 784 words)

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Ready or not, here come the rules:

• Your post must be dated December 8, 2013, or later.
• Submissions must be 750 words or fewer.
• Submissions must be fiction or poetry.
• Your piece must include the following sentence ANYWHERE: “Grandpa told the best stories.”
• The Speakeasy is for submissions written specifically for the grid. Please don’t submit an entry if you intend to showcase it to another blog link-up. Such posts are deleted without notice, like tossing re-gifted fruitcake.
• Please don’t post long explanations before your post. We want your writing to be the star of the show. If you need to clarify anything, feel free to do so at the end.
• The badge for your speakeasy #139 post is found in the sidebar. Add the code to the html view of your post before publishing.