You've got to lose to know how to win he says to me, straight-faced but dead drunk, bare-chested, hip-bones pointing my direction, that delicate line of hair tracking from belly to button of his khakis. You’ve got to fly before you can swim, I say to him, my blouse unbuttoned, my skirt fluttering, my toes raking the wood floor. You’ve got to fold ‘em before you put ‘em away, he says, seeing he’s losing the game, and so quickly, but at the same time, those hip bones meaning he’s really already won. You gotta drink before you think, I say, taking a long, slow slug from the bottle on the floor. You gotta walk before you run, he says, too drunk for originality. You gotta know when to up the ante, I say, meaning I’ve left my underwear at home. He looks me up and down. He’s got a smile that comes once in a blue moon, grab it or it’ll move on. You gotta enter before you can exit, he says, reaching for me with his tanned arms, those fingers ragged from work. And that’s where it ends, him reaching toward me, me with no underwear, my thin skirt aflutter, him with those hip bones and those low-slung khakis, me on the verge of one more charming aside, but there he goes, riding away into the sunset, over and over again.
Rely on dawn rising daily, swashing in swathes of story useful words, setting us up ready to pick and spill some onto the point on the page where we left off yesterday, even as we pad barefoot through to the kitchen to set the coffee making?
What a very seductive sequence! And a little bit of mystery (at least for me?) at the end.. did I get that right? Did they..? Or, if he's riding _away_...? Surely my overthinking is not in the spirit of such a tantalizing passage! (:
Memory is an empty Museum. That's putting it politely. We're in polite company, after all.
But, let's take a closer look, shall we, at Mind, Memory. Sort of the same thing. And let's say invoking an R rating for this comment, well that's just going to be ok. So, Memory is an empty Museum. Straight forward metaphor that. Inside the brain in question are armed guards, video cameras, busts of Caesar, a dinosaur penis bone, and a diorama of a mummified Nefertiti, a few docents. But no visitors looking at the exhibits, hence, the "empty." On the other hand an empty museum might be the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC after a flash mob carried everything away in hijacked Amazon vans. The mind is an empty Met, then. It seems we keep coming back to a mind of low voltage, perhaps a power outage, a branch fell on it or something. Maybe there's a better way to say it. As writers we're always looking for certain efficiencies, which could mean a lot of things, couldn't it. In this example though, I'm reminded of a lesson in a nutrition course which revealed the fact that in embryo, and therefore, too, back in the dim depths of evolution, our brains and digestive systems, (read in intestines, anus,) started out the same organ. That was news to me, and explained a lot about the human condition really, best summed up by my friend Sinbad after I related my findings to him over some wine one evening. Of course, he said, explains why so many are born with shit for brains.
Nailed the ending. I like your choice here, "memory is an empty museum." And the two ways of looking at that, either no art or no visitors. Both of those ideas sort of blow my shit-for-brains mind. My memory? Definitely very few visitors and also a lot of the exhibits seem to be permanently closed. I feel a poem coming on!
How can a museum, such a veritable souvenir of memories, ever be empty? Imagine, turning up at Lexington, finding the doors closed and reading a note that says "Access not possible today. Memories, all, have pulled stumps and gone away, Indefinitely."
"Okay let's head north, to DC, and get along to one of The Smithsonians..."
Where is, have you found, that Museum you label a Dementia Tod?
Not just a reactive query, rather one that might lead me to share an erstwhile found poem with you and all passing this way.
What an enticement to you Tod, or any Story Clubber, to post a response to?
Sincerely
Roberta
P.S. You do recall, don't you? The Gal Who Had The Baptist's Head Severed and Served on a Silver Platter? Can't for the life of me... remember... the serpent head who, seduced, I grew to love... "Salome?" was that it?... if so he was, truly, quite the gad about, go to for a quickie, guy down in the town... as you surely, have reason, to recall.
"Just what we need for the upcoming blag" says Noel Coward - aka Mr Bridger - springing sprightly off his lavatorial throne on the set of The, original, Italian Job. "Amazon Vans, precisely, nick at least six and preferably a baker's dozen, by Sunday morning and have them ready to ship softly out of Harwich, bound for Rotterdam not later than Monday afternoon."
"And get whatever the name of the character Mike Caine's playing, on the phone at 3pm sharp" barked Mr Bridger as he turned into his luxurious Wandsworth cell. "Now bugger orf and leave me undisturbed until three. I'm going to need time to crack to this morning's crossword. This Ocasta sure sets a damned fine, utterly mean cryptic crossword. Which is just why I will be insisting that the Governor continues to subscribe me to The Times."
Offering the tersest of smiles, Noel C playing Mr B, withdraws into the sanctum of his cell.
Did you ever see In Bruges John? That story about two London-based Irish shitmen?
Rotterdam, circa Eastertime 1975, first time I ever came across a McDonalds, first time I ever ordered and ate a Big Mac.
The things we remember eh? From so long ago https://youtu.be/9nnyHXfmbTY Not gone across to continental Europe, by sea crossing, other than via La Manche. Yes, just as you say, so much shorter and the weather, generally. so much better.
Don't delay Tod, not a moment, pubs are going the way of elms when the disease struck Blighty. Toodle pip. Just off down to Dover to check that there are still bluebirds flying over. Goodbyeee!
Yes John. It was, a story hinged on two hitmen getting lost (maybe also told to get lost, as in lie low) in Bruges. Notice I let slip a stray s. "Shush now. Get a grip on letting such wildcatting letters mess with your wordplay? We'll say no more about, save that I don't expect there'll be a next time. Go back to class, slowly, stop running."
Never crossed under the Golden Arched threshold of a MacDonald's Eating Emporium?
Have been offered "food" from McDonald's. IIRC "Nuggets". Took a bite to be polite, found no chicken to speak of, turned to the fries, found they might as well be made of cardboard (texture and flavour). Though I see now they sell (for a supplement, natch) the same cardboard fries dusted with "flavor" the way potato chips / crisps are. The forward march of progress...
I think Ocasta is what it seems, the non de plume of - an in this case conjured in from somewhere in void of my imagination - a fictive cryptic crossword puzzle setter.
Or maybe it was Ocado that was trying to be the name to escape on the page? Maybe there's a fine story in embryo waiting to be told about the amazing day to day adventures of a grocery delivery van driver, name of Ocasta?
Here's the thing, for me in this thread, Danielle: I seem to be just enjoying letting rip with allowing flowing words to spill down from brain, through arm, then fingers then "Hey Presto!" there's another sentence formed up and marshalled neatly out upon it's page, just like this one. "Now where did I put that trusty Sense - Nonsense meter of mine?
Oh yes yes yes of course, Ocasta the fictive cryptic puzzler, I knew him well! And absolutely, here's to that field out beyond the pings of the sense-nonsense meter, I'll meet you there! Am just over halfway materialized there, like a contact high, just by rereading this latest.
Science has made a lot of advances in understanding gut-brain connections in the past decade Angela. Brain health is connected to gut health. Healthy gut, healthy brain. Feed your gut junk food, and your brain turns to junk/dementia. So it's not all bad news really, this understanding, because it's a path to understanding how our brains can stay healthy into older age.
Loved this one - and I agree, the ending is just right! Enjoyed the slightly off-kilter layer to the voice, that could be at once so matter-of-fact and so full of unexpected, colorful images and stories.
The road ahead is not paved with gold or landmarks or detours. It’s empty. I pass no other cars. No other cars pass me. Ahead the highway shimmers like a mirage, beckoning, an oasis of possibilities. As I approach, it dissolves in fragments. I see a large gunshot billboard that reads —“Last chance gas. Next exit”. But I drive on. Later I pass a series of repurposed Burma Shave signs with a line from Sartre:
"Your shaving brush / Has had its day / So why not / Shave the modern way / With / Burma-Shave. " I don't remember ever seeing Burma Shave signs, and there may not have been many back east. They became defunct when I was still young. This one will get more investigation. Thanks Marcy.
Mary this was a lot of fun. great. idea! thanks Mark
Chaos is a Desperate Dance
Chaos is a desperate dance. We ought to know. When was the last time that any of you thought that things would be different? Clarice and I thought we knew. But that was before the calamity. Maybe I am getting ahead of myself. Let me begin again.
Chaos is adventure. Chaos is a carefree promise. C haos is hell. We realized that the moment we entered the chaos that became our life. Not that we weren’t meant for this. We were. W e, the global we, knew who we were, and we were picked. Not randomly. No, that would have been chaotic. No chance selection. Not even a casual one. No, we were specifically chosen because of our compatibility: DNA, personality, physical prowess, intelligence, skin color, and good looks. Of those six, we considered the last the least important. Of course the media seized on that one first.
Once the media moved in, it should have been an event horizon for us. We should have noted the subtle shift in the stream of what was beginning to be the river of our life.
I am digressing again. I was just thinking that it would be hard to understand if you had no idea about the history of the great calamity. That was when the earth began to implode upon itself and it became clear that the entire corpus of humanity, not the animals, not the insects, not the fishes or the birds, just we humans, were sinking into a single death. It’s crazy to think that just two people can be the great expectation. But we were. We are. You see, we were chosen to become the Eve and the Adam of humanity. Somehow, we are to create a new species of humanity.
Clarice willed that we would no longer be mankind. We viewed ourselves as “we-kind”. Gender neutral. And, of course, colorful. Full of the colors of all of what was humanity. We saw ourselves as a great river of DNA. Then, the chaos grew. Chaos was the media. Chaos was questions. Chaos was politics. Chaos was positions. Chaos was religion and beliefs.
Clarice and I came to comprehend everything. We understood that nothing had changed with the great implosion. You would think that with it and the realization that all were dying, such ideas and behaviors would change. But no. We embraced the chaos and danced a joyful dance. A chaotic, rhythmic dance of life.
I couldn't resist combining the metaphor with the stamp collection!
My husband is an antique stamp collection. Antique because nobody uses stamps anymore. Everyone just texts or emails. Also he’s a little sticky at the rear and ragged around the edges, like stamps. He has no forever stamps. They weren’t invented yet when he was assembled. It just feels like forever, this endless riffling through pages trying to find himself. He is composed of stamps from the Boer War, battles flags of Yugoslavia, soldiers on horseback with feathers in their helmets, swords dangling with jewel encrusted cases.
The pages of my husband are yellowed, creased and smudged with all the fingers that have run over his stamps, trying to find a pattern to why he was assembled this way, fingers that have quit in exasperation, the secrets of the stamp collection locked into the past.
No blood or guts in his stamp collection. No AK-47’s. No IEDs. No smoldering rice fields. No GI boots abandoned in the dust. No K-rations. No walls reduced to rubble. No shouts. No screams. No “What the fuck do we do now, Lieutenant?”
Yesterday I heard him playing the marine hymn on his iPhone, a man who hasn’t been a marine for over 50 years. Turning the pages of himself to the marching music, humming along to accompany his search for who he wants to be.
"Must be great having a husband who, thanks to the antiquity of his stamp collection is a veritable store of wealth, thanks to postal personalities such as that mint condition Penny Black that he keeps locked away in the safe he's had installed in the back of the his wardrobe."
"Mind you, its rather surprising that he's never articulated just why he gets her out so often and sits so long alone with her.? 'Gazing on her pretty face!' Pull the other one. Philatelists code if I ever heard it. He's covering something up. Dollar to a cent on it?"
"No, of course you won't take the best Mildred, but do take care dear. Watch that he's not gone besotted with that ageless Victorian beauty. Dare say it wouldn't be the first time a relationship with Penny Black has perturbed a happy marriage."
The poet in me jumped out for this one (kept it quite brief and have a few poems that I've gotten from the prompt--thank you, Mary!):
Grief is an impossible ocean. It flows in currents you cannot predict. At times, its tides are calm, even beautiful. An expanse of glittering memories that shimmer with something like warmth and old joy. At other times, it's a tidal wave, monolithic and impossibly-sized, and it moves towards you suddenly, out of the blue on a clear-skied day, stories upon stories of slate gray liquid glass determined to wipe out everything in its wake. And when that wave crashes, there's little left to love of life: limp seaweed, driftwood, and a beach so empty it hurts in your bones. Most of the time, though, it comes in small waves, the kind that lap at your feet. These small waves are there to remind you: your toes still get to kiss the shore. You have not yet succumbed to the sea.
So glad you liked this prompt! And I love "grief is an impossible ocean." That feels so very true--those currents you cannot predict, the way an ocean goes from calm to tidal wave. Nice job!
Beautiful! At "old joy", I was so struck that I don't think I've ever quite heard those two simple, small yet big words together before (or I hadn't listened till now!) -- so perfect.
thank you, Danielle. It’s really surprising what comes out when you’re trying to capture a visual with a feeling. I’m glad you liked that phrase “old joy” - I like how it feels & even looks on the page.
Some praiseworthy efforts here, I see. This one is not in the least praiseworthy.
Happiness is a warm gun
Disclaimer: The Management takes no responsibility whatsoever for the utter bilge pumped out (and don't go misinterpreting "pumped") by the juvenile delinquent who has posted this chaotic mess of adolescent would-be fantasy on this excellent Internet site devoted and oh how totally to literature and the fine arts. Caveat lector.
Caveat lector? Sounds posh. Wossit mean?
Reader watch out.
What for?
A warm gun.
What's wrong with that?
It's a metaphor.
For what?
Happiness.
Nah! It's a meta for what?
Whatcha mean, a meta?
You're getting me wrong. It's a meta FOR WHAT?
Happiness. I told you.
Come on, give it a rest!
Happiness is a warm gun. The Beatles.
'Ang on, I'll get me grandma.
Whatcha want yer grandma for?
The Beatles.
Look, it's just a metaphor. That's one word. ME-TA-PHOR.
........ All right, wossit mean?
It's sort of an image.
Like a picture?
Sort of.
So what's the warm gun then?
Happiness.
A warm gun makes you happy?
Yeah. That's it.
You just fired it then?
Yeah.
You shot someone?
Dunno. Maybe you just fired it... Up in the air.
What would you do that for?
Why not?
And the gun's warm?
Yeah, the gun's warm. And that's happiness.
What if you 'aven't got no gun?
But you 'ave. In this metaphor.
What, you 'ave to get in there?
It's an image. IN this metaphor. You're in it, see?
Fucked if I see anything, I've 'ad enough. Gonna shut meself in the toilet and have a nice wank.
when i was a kid sick in bed i listened to the white album and replayed 'why don't we do it in the road' multiple times after having read some Hardy Boys mysteries. So I imagined what they were doing in the road was tying up the hardy boys and robbing chet morton and his sister Iola. Took me a few year to reach the a-ha moment.
Like gun can mean different things, right? And um.. some guns are warm anyway.
Than others, I mean. Six shooters, .38's, and uh, you got your Derringers and your Buntline Special guns and so on, warm regardless, than some ancient smoothbore breech loader. Every last a warm metaphor of happiness, I believe. Is that close?
John Lennon made out (tongue in cheek) he was shocked to read of a guy who said happiness was a warm gun, because that meant he'd probably shot someone.
Any other way for a gun to get warm was not under consideration in this song. Bang Bang Shoot Shoot.
Definitely a praiseworthy effort. But am I the only one here old enough to remember the original inspiration for Lennon's metaphor, which was Charles Schulz's "Happiness is a warm puppy"? (Peanuts comic strip, picture of Lucy hugging Snoopy.) Lennon had a knack for turning smarmy pieties on their heads....
"You give me a proper Turkish jumping out the dark like that!"
Light?
"Got a Turkish, mate?"
Moonlight?
"Nothing like a poodle under the Turkish, is there?"
(Rhyming slang, poodle - canoodle)
Gaslight?
"You wouldn't be Turkishin' me, would ya?"
Never, not on your life! Turkish Delight was/is a pretty tacky chocolate bar with supposed lokoum inside. Full of Eastern Promise, said the TV ads. Apparently taken over by Mondelez aka Kraft. Caveat emptor.
"You wouldn't be Turkishin me" hahahahaha... that's the one! Or.. now I really must sit down, and go back to the blank page, and Turkish. ...My reference point for it, maybe as for many Americans?, had always been the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe stories.. I was so disappointed when I finally tried some and how far it fell short of what I had come to imagine.
Absence has been a sad river to navigate, most all of my life, since I came home that spring afternoon. Off the school bus, spot on 4.45 as usual, raced up up from the corner, came in by the kitchen by the side door expecting well, truth to tell, anything but to find her gone lying doornail dead on the kitchen floor. She was lying face down amongst the cookies that had spilled from the cookie jar as as the fallen consequence of the hammer blow that had caved in the left side of her face. The scattered cookies, all but two, were stuck in the blood spatter that was still pooling out across the vinyl. Fixed my attention on those cookies, fascinating myself with wondering would the blood reach them. Asked myself whose gonna' be home for me tomorrow, with cookies and a cuppa' milk ready to listen to my school day? Realised that it wasn't gonna' be Momma; wasn't ever gonna' be my Momma; never ever, ever... ever so loud I must have been screamin', brought old Mister Matthews running from way over across the street.
I'm thirty years of age now but I've never got past losing her like that. Not for lack of trying to ya' understand. Tried to every which way that moment's been the splinter that's kept my heart stone cold these past twenty four years. Best for me and for others has truly been for me to keep my own company. Rarely spoken about it, last thing I expected to be writing about, first time ever, today but there you go, ran the numbers: 4, 12 and 16 were the picks and so I decided to roll with the flow. When the murdering bastard gets early release on having done twenty five years he'll not be livin' long into a twenty sixth and I'll surely be getting banged-up, maybe chaired, none too long later. Months between now and then I'll just be sticking with navigating the sad river that absence has had me navigate, not pondering too much on what next.
"Fixed my attention on those cookies..." Rob, what a story you've told here, one that stretches into the future. And though I know it's fiction, somehow i believe every word of it. Nice job!
Managed to have the kite out, ready, caught the wind and flew the words even before the dust on the floor of the inbox had settled from timely arrival and impact of your Prompt 36!
Who can know Mary? What next?
Thank you 🙏 For this latest, ever genial invitation to write a jackanory and for you invaluable feedback I do off my 🎩 to you.
"Fixed my attention on those cookies, fascinating myself with wondering would the blood reach them." Mary already commented on this line, but what an evocative sentence that pushes the reader to actually "feel" what the kid is feeling in that moment. You clearly show us instead of telling us what he feels. Nicely done!
Thanks for reading, reacting and responding with heartening feedback Angela. Who can know: maybe this is the first darf of stor
Thank Angela. For reading, reacting and responding with such heartening feedback. Who knows but this may prove to be the first, impromptu, draft of story that get published in a fine, beribboned, marketing 🎁? Imagine, just imagine? You can have first dibs on suggesting a working title Angela. So suggest, oh do 😊.
You are both a book and its well-worn beautiful library, risking even hidden under bedsheets this reader’s gaze. Your collections are ever changing. Your aging pages smell good, like vanilla, pine, and moss, home and dreaming. You are a book that I manage to delude myself is mine until I must let you go. Again and again I interlibrary loan you, again and again you slip away to parts unknown. The foreign and the familiar, you are both at once in your loveliness. We are all on loan from the great library of the earth, and we shall return there to be repurposed into new books. But for now, I am content to enjoy the daily human repurposing, until we may be loaned out again as books about ants or porpoises or butterflies, silverfish or ungainly moose.
Your kindness is a dreamy river, Stan. Every time you hold the door for me or carry Mrs. Madams’s old dog up the stairs or don't comment on the stink coming from the old man’s apartment, I think: Stan is a kind man. And he's a dreamy man, a man who I’d gladly spend a summer’s day floating down a river with, looking up at the clouds floating and listening for the pucker of the small fish as they come up for food, and you, Stan, poling us along till we reach the bank and land, your arms tired, your gaze soft, my heart full of your kindness. Stan, when you asked me to marry you I couldn’t help but laugh because I always promise myself that I won't fall for a kind man, not again, but here you are and I’ve fallen and I won’t get up, except now laying here I realize that I have to decide: that promise was made in earnest, Stan, for real, and I realize I have to decide if I should honor it and I find that yes, I must, so, Stan, please close your eyes while I take the pole and whack you with it and push you under the water with it and hold you under a while and then watch your kindly body float down the river, a dream that got away.
Grief is a carefree sunset. It spreads and points its blood-red shards, stretching and reaching to touch your every cell. It doesn’t care how you’re feeling before it begins. It has its own schedule. It arrives sooner each day, earlier and earlier as the weeks pass, dissolving your afternoons into a thick darkness.
You sit in the darkness. You could have avoided all this. You could have stopped years ago when everyone said it was dangerous. You could have stopped last month, when you couldn’t breathe. Stopping last month wouldn’t have made any difference, but it would have shown you possessed some substance, some spirit, a hint of light.
But you didn’t and now you sit in the darkness and hope to see another sunset; it’ll be earlier tomorrow, won’t it?
right? i went with # 23 all the way across because many birthdays in my life fall on a 23rd of the month (and I live on the No. 23 bus line). So I figured: let's see what happens.
So incredible what can come out from 'random' selection! Starts slightly surprising - grief & carefree together gives a little jolt - and ends up being perfect. When you get to 'It arrives sooner each day', it feels like the metaphor has pulled back some curtain to show just how fitting it really is.
I know how it is to attend these court ordered sessions. I, too, sat in those folding chairs drinking knockoff Hawaiian Punch for more infuriating hours than I can count. But I tried to get something more out of it than just a stamp in my book to show my PO. I suggest you do the same.
As a repeat graduate of this Department of Corrections’ anger management course, I am taking some license with the syllabus. We’re not going to talk about how our own traumas led us to be angry people, triggers and responses, toolboxes full of shit you can do to keep from punching someone. That is BS.
You’re angry. That’s not your problem. Your problem is how you manifest your anger.
I used to manifest mine as a hammer. I was a house framer. When someone pushed my buttons, I became the tool I spent my days swinging: a human hammer. And that’s how I wound up locked up and taking these stupid classes, just like you idiots waiting for your little stamps.
So, here’s the truth. I was an imperfect hammer. You are too. I’d pound people, but they never turned into anything useful like a house. They turned into “victims”. Victims my ass. They got exactly what they were shopping for.
Anyway, I got it figured out and I’m giving it to you. I was an imperfect hammer but I’m a hell of a good musician. I learned how to manifest my anger as music, and I use the people I’m angry at as my instruments.
Sure, some psychologist will tell you that what I’m teaching you is how to be passive/aggressive like that’s a bad thing. But is it a bad thing for the guitar when the lead musician plays the perfect riff? No. It’s a thing of beauty.
So, that’s what we’re going to be learning in this class. How to use the people who aggravate us to make beautiful music. The joy of this is that unless you actually steal property from them or do some sort of sexual assault type thing, it’s almost always entirely legal.
Here's the first lesson: There’ll be no questions from you today or in any of our sessions. Got it? I ask questions. You don’t. You want to play some music on someone, you don’t let them ask you any questions. Work on that this week.
click on the three little dots to the right of Like, Reply, etc. Edit should be an option--however, I will warn you, times when I've had a long post and edited it, sometimes when I Save it the edit cuts off the last sentences.
Thanks. For whatever reason, the little three dots have abandoned me. I've used them before, but they aren't popping up anymore. I think it must have something to do with my browser . . .
I've seen that happen too, where it seems to cut it off after I edit, but then once I refresh it's always shown me that the full version has posted after all. (:
Like all music, I suspect it sounds better to some than others. I'm not sure myself what it sounds like, but I expect that it has a rather driving force about it.
“Happiness, in it's purest form, is an unspoken poem,” announced Edward. Whether his intention was to elevate the discourse while they awaited on the arrival of dessert, and/or to position himself as a man of refined sentiment, he achieved neither. Daphne Bunn decided there and then that she would not be sleeping with him after all. Meanwhile, the conversation devolved into an idle squabble, seasoned with lacklustre gossip.
“That sounds exactly like the kind of airy-fairy excuse Daryk Swan might give for missing a deadline,” said Peter Caulfield. “You are not by any chance ghostwriting for him are you?”
“Has he still not handed over a manuscript?” enquired Kathleen Downey.
“I have been told parts of it are at address in Nottingham. I was thinking of heading up there. When I referenced it on a map it looked like an unsavoury area.”
“Explain yourself, charlatan,” said Milo, whose feet had taken residence on a chair that had been recently vacated by Joyce Webley, who had been called away on urgent doctors business. The backrest of his own chair was tilting backward slightly.
“I think what Edward is saying is that happiness is an expression of joy that dwells within an area of the heart beyond the reach of articulation,” said Aileen Wade, whose support would neither be acknowledged by Edward, nor reciprocated later when her own conversational gambit made her a brief figure of ridicule.
At the distant end of the table, Milo enacted a limp-wristed masturbatory gesture with his right forearm.
“Can you at least elaborate on the nature of the poem?” drawled Caulfield. “Its structure maybe; are we frolicking in the realm of the iambic pentameter, for example?”
“The iambic pentameter has never given me the slightest urge to frolic,” said Downey.
“Good, you see we're narrowing it down for you,” beamed Caulfield.
In the bedroom upstairs, a desperately unhappy Margaret Brewin, having left the individual creme brulée out on a tray on the kitchen counter, wrapped a pillow around her head and discharged both barrels of a shotgun through the roof of her mouth.
Bunn heard the gunshot over Caulfield's raucous laughter, but thought that it was someone sneezing.
What a tale you have conjured here! In this small space, I can clearly envision these people and see them carrying on this conversation while Margaret is upstairs, desperately unhappy. A marvel, this one!
Better than a tale, just started, to be continued Sam.
The moment of escalatory explosion, I suggest, is about to come when a disembodied off stage Elizabethan, unmistakeably Male of Stratford, voice is heard cannoning across the stage: "Frolicking with I Am Pentameter! Fuck that, such nonsense notion as it be, for whole load of fanciable soldiers!"
Where what I've just typed above has ventured forth from I, least of all, know not. Let's go with a suitably literary term and call it, for simplicity's sake, 'the void'. 🤣
Magnus was given to remaking the world in ways that never had been or ever could be. His days resembled turns of a kaleidoscope, and moments came when he could not remember the last time he'd eaten—he drank too much coffee—or washed. He always remembered, however, to water his beloved plants. They were growing in the holy ground he'd stolen from the churchyard. Magnus didn't think the dead would mind. His flowers were twice-blessed, once by those that fertilized their soil, and again by the holy water of priests. Writers, like plants, need their mulch, and when his words were in flower, Magnus marveled at their profuseness, at the size of the papery fruit. Soon, he would be a tiger in his very own jungle, or a farmer busy with his harvest. He would hurry to market just before his books had fully ripened.
Magnus would never reveal to anyone how toilsome this was. Getting up at six a.m. to grasp the soft udders of his imagination. His breath curled in the chill air. The words rattled as they fell into the metal pail, still warm. Words changed states like gases into liquids. They were a joy. He dug them up like turnips from the twelfth century and warmed them in his mouth until they became hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, his speech. An eon—eons—of thoughts were his to express.
Love is a Dreamy Sunset
You've got to lose to know how to win he says to me, straight-faced but dead drunk, bare-chested, hip-bones pointing my direction, that delicate line of hair tracking from belly to button of his khakis. You’ve got to fly before you can swim, I say to him, my blouse unbuttoned, my skirt fluttering, my toes raking the wood floor. You’ve got to fold ‘em before you put ‘em away, he says, seeing he’s losing the game, and so quickly, but at the same time, those hip bones meaning he’s really already won. You gotta drink before you think, I say, taking a long, slow slug from the bottle on the floor. You gotta walk before you run, he says, too drunk for originality. You gotta know when to up the ante, I say, meaning I’ve left my underwear at home. He looks me up and down. He’s got a smile that comes once in a blue moon, grab it or it’ll move on. You gotta enter before you can exit, he says, reaching for me with his tanned arms, those fingers ragged from work. And that’s where it ends, him reaching toward me, me with no underwear, my thin skirt aflutter, him with those hip bones and those low-slung khakis, me on the verge of one more charming aside, but there he goes, riding away into the sunset, over and over again.
What would us writers do without sunsets?
Rely on dawn rising daily, swashing in swathes of story useful words, setting us up ready to pick and spill some onto the point on the page where we left off yesterday, even as we pad barefoot through to the kitchen to set the coffee making?
ha! Good question.
What a very seductive sequence! And a little bit of mystery (at least for me?) at the end.. did I get that right? Did they..? Or, if he's riding _away_...? Surely my overthinking is not in the spirit of such a tantalizing passage! (:
Dreams. So vivid and so frustratingly fleeting. Nicely done!
Ohh right! Now I got it! (:
Memory is an empty Museum. That's putting it politely. We're in polite company, after all.
But, let's take a closer look, shall we, at Mind, Memory. Sort of the same thing. And let's say invoking an R rating for this comment, well that's just going to be ok. So, Memory is an empty Museum. Straight forward metaphor that. Inside the brain in question are armed guards, video cameras, busts of Caesar, a dinosaur penis bone, and a diorama of a mummified Nefertiti, a few docents. But no visitors looking at the exhibits, hence, the "empty." On the other hand an empty museum might be the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC after a flash mob carried everything away in hijacked Amazon vans. The mind is an empty Met, then. It seems we keep coming back to a mind of low voltage, perhaps a power outage, a branch fell on it or something. Maybe there's a better way to say it. As writers we're always looking for certain efficiencies, which could mean a lot of things, couldn't it. In this example though, I'm reminded of a lesson in a nutrition course which revealed the fact that in embryo, and therefore, too, back in the dim depths of evolution, our brains and digestive systems, (read in intestines, anus,) started out the same organ. That was news to me, and explained a lot about the human condition really, best summed up by my friend Sinbad after I related my findings to him over some wine one evening. Of course, he said, explains why so many are born with shit for brains.
Nailed the ending. I like your choice here, "memory is an empty museum." And the two ways of looking at that, either no art or no visitors. Both of those ideas sort of blow my shit-for-brains mind. My memory? Definitely very few visitors and also a lot of the exhibits seem to be permanently closed. I feel a poem coming on!
How can a museum, such a veritable souvenir of memories, ever be empty? Imagine, turning up at Lexington, finding the doors closed and reading a note that says "Access not possible today. Memories, all, have pulled stumps and gone away, Indefinitely."
"Okay let's head north, to DC, and get along to one of The Smithsonians..."
Metaphors,, Rob, Metaphors. Dementia empties the mind, and so goes the museum!
Where is, have you found, that Museum you label a Dementia Tod?
Not just a reactive query, rather one that might lead me to share an erstwhile found poem with you and all passing this way.
What an enticement to you Tod, or any Story Clubber, to post a response to?
Sincerely
Roberta
P.S. You do recall, don't you? The Gal Who Had The Baptist's Head Severed and Served on a Silver Platter? Can't for the life of me... remember... the serpent head who, seduced, I grew to love... "Salome?" was that it?... if so he was, truly, quite the gad about, go to for a quickie, guy down in the town... as you surely, have reason, to recall.
Not sure I'm embarrassed, or not, to not recall this one Rob.
"Just what we need for the upcoming blag" says Noel Coward - aka Mr Bridger - springing sprightly off his lavatorial throne on the set of The, original, Italian Job. "Amazon Vans, precisely, nick at least six and preferably a baker's dozen, by Sunday morning and have them ready to ship softly out of Harwich, bound for Rotterdam not later than Monday afternoon."
"And get whatever the name of the character Mike Caine's playing, on the phone at 3pm sharp" barked Mr Bridger as he turned into his luxurious Wandsworth cell. "Now bugger orf and leave me undisturbed until three. I'm going to need time to crack to this morning's crossword. This Ocasta sure sets a damned fine, utterly mean cryptic crossword. Which is just why I will be insisting that the Governor continues to subscribe me to The Times."
Offering the tersest of smiles, Noel C playing Mr B, withdraws into the sanctum of his cell.
Well you kinda left me in the dust on this one Rob. I like it, but makes me think I've got shit for brains.
hahaha! It's way over my head, too, but I like it anyway.
Nah, not you Tod, just reconfigure the four letters and stroll this way: no shit, fine writing brain intact!
"Amazon vans from Harwich to Rotterdam, mate? With Brexit, it'll take you a fortnight!"
Did you ever see In Bruges John? That story about two London-based Irish shitmen?
Rotterdam, circa Eastertime 1975, first time I ever came across a McDonalds, first time I ever ordered and ate a Big Mac.
The things we remember eh? From so long ago https://youtu.be/9nnyHXfmbTY Not gone across to continental Europe, by sea crossing, other than via La Manche. Yes, just as you say, so much shorter and the weather, generally. so much better.
I say, I rather enjoy you overseas blokes. See you down at the pub later?
Don't delay Tod, not a moment, pubs are going the way of elms when the disease struck Blighty. Toodle pip. Just off down to Dover to check that there are still bluebirds flying over. Goodbyeee!
How can that be, pubs going the way of elms?
I remember there was a story about the Irish HITmen in Bruges. They got lost, wasn't that it?
At this point, I'd like to go on record: I have never eaten a Big Mac.
Yes John. It was, a story hinged on two hitmen getting lost (maybe also told to get lost, as in lie low) in Bruges. Notice I let slip a stray s. "Shush now. Get a grip on letting such wildcatting letters mess with your wordplay? We'll say no more about, save that I don't expect there'll be a next time. Go back to class, slowly, stop running."
Never crossed under the Golden Arched threshold of a MacDonald's Eating Emporium?
Never.
Have been offered "food" from McDonald's. IIRC "Nuggets". Took a bite to be polite, found no chicken to speak of, turned to the fries, found they might as well be made of cardboard (texture and flavour). Though I see now they sell (for a supplement, natch) the same cardboard fries dusted with "flavor" the way potato chips / crisps are. The forward march of progress...
They have drive thrus, too.
Am revelling in the losing and finding and losing of my way with this, and, of all the things I want to ask, I'll just submit... what's Ocasta?
I think Ocasta is what it seems, the non de plume of - an in this case conjured in from somewhere in void of my imagination - a fictive cryptic crossword puzzle setter.
Or maybe it was Ocado that was trying to be the name to escape on the page? Maybe there's a fine story in embryo waiting to be told about the amazing day to day adventures of a grocery delivery van driver, name of Ocasta?
Here's the thing, for me in this thread, Danielle: I seem to be just enjoying letting rip with allowing flowing words to spill down from brain, through arm, then fingers then "Hey Presto!" there's another sentence formed up and marshalled neatly out upon it's page, just like this one. "Now where did I put that trusty Sense - Nonsense meter of mine?
Oh yes yes yes of course, Ocasta the fictive cryptic puzzler, I knew him well! And absolutely, here's to that field out beyond the pings of the sense-nonsense meter, I'll meet you there! Am just over halfway materialized there, like a contact high, just by rereading this latest.
Important clue: O'Casta was Irish.
and O Casta was lyric
"our brains and our digestive systems started out the same organ."
I may never recover from that thought.
Science has made a lot of advances in understanding gut-brain connections in the past decade Angela. Brain health is connected to gut health. Healthy gut, healthy brain. Feed your gut junk food, and your brain turns to junk/dementia. So it's not all bad news really, this understanding, because it's a path to understanding how our brains can stay healthy into older age.
Wise response, Pod. Er, Tod.
Makes 'gut feel' seem all the more real Angela?
Loved this one - and I agree, the ending is just right! Enjoyed the slightly off-kilter layer to the voice, that could be at once so matter-of-fact and so full of unexpected, colorful images and stories.
I Am A Vacant Highway
The road ahead is not paved with gold or landmarks or detours. It’s empty. I pass no other cars. No other cars pass me. Ahead the highway shimmers like a mirage, beckoning, an oasis of possibilities. As I approach, it dissolves in fragments. I see a large gunshot billboard that reads —“Last chance gas. Next exit”. But I drive on. Later I pass a series of repurposed Burma Shave signs with a line from Sartre:
1. Life begins
2. on the other side
3. of despair
I am a vacant highway. There is No Exit.
Nice! But if hell is other people, is there a passenger in that car you are driving?
They are in the trunk. ;-)
Hahahhaha! Great response!!!!
Caused me to look up Burma-Shave. Fascinating.
"Your shaving brush / Has had its day / So why not / Shave the modern way / With / Burma-Shave. " I don't remember ever seeing Burma Shave signs, and there may not have been many back east. They became defunct when I was still young. This one will get more investigation. Thanks Marcy.
I loved one we passed in Florida years ago...
Don't lose your head / to save a minute / you NEED your head / your BRAINS are in it!
Ooh, so nice.
I remember one from my childhood. And yes, I'm old.
"Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and the speed offender."
Somewhere in the 1960s I think they disappeared.
Guess they weren’t always about shaving, huh?
Mary this was a lot of fun. great. idea! thanks Mark
Chaos is a Desperate Dance
Chaos is a desperate dance. We ought to know. When was the last time that any of you thought that things would be different? Clarice and I thought we knew. But that was before the calamity. Maybe I am getting ahead of myself. Let me begin again.
Chaos is adventure. Chaos is a carefree promise. C haos is hell. We realized that the moment we entered the chaos that became our life. Not that we weren’t meant for this. We were. W e, the global we, knew who we were, and we were picked. Not randomly. No, that would have been chaotic. No chance selection. Not even a casual one. No, we were specifically chosen because of our compatibility: DNA, personality, physical prowess, intelligence, skin color, and good looks. Of those six, we considered the last the least important. Of course the media seized on that one first.
Once the media moved in, it should have been an event horizon for us. We should have noted the subtle shift in the stream of what was beginning to be the river of our life.
I am digressing again. I was just thinking that it would be hard to understand if you had no idea about the history of the great calamity. That was when the earth began to implode upon itself and it became clear that the entire corpus of humanity, not the animals, not the insects, not the fishes or the birds, just we humans, were sinking into a single death. It’s crazy to think that just two people can be the great expectation. But we were. We are. You see, we were chosen to become the Eve and the Adam of humanity. Somehow, we are to create a new species of humanity.
Clarice willed that we would no longer be mankind. We viewed ourselves as “we-kind”. Gender neutral. And, of course, colorful. Full of the colors of all of what was humanity. We saw ourselves as a great river of DNA. Then, the chaos grew. Chaos was the media. Chaos was questions. Chaos was politics. Chaos was positions. Chaos was religion and beliefs.
Clarice and I came to comprehend everything. We understood that nothing had changed with the great implosion. You would think that with it and the realization that all were dying, such ideas and behaviors would change. But no. We embraced the chaos and danced a joyful dance. A chaotic, rhythmic dance of life.
I love where you took this one. Such an imaginative response! Embracing chaos--I guess sometimes we have no choice but to do so.
I look forward to seeing / hearing / feeling of this piece - suitably twiddled and tweaked -performed in the amphitheatre at Delphi Mark.
Chaos is what? What but the reality that lies, always, the other side of the coin to that which screams, silent suburban calm...
Grand story Mark.
Hahaha, thanks for your great comment Rob
I couldn't resist combining the metaphor with the stamp collection!
My husband is an antique stamp collection. Antique because nobody uses stamps anymore. Everyone just texts or emails. Also he’s a little sticky at the rear and ragged around the edges, like stamps. He has no forever stamps. They weren’t invented yet when he was assembled. It just feels like forever, this endless riffling through pages trying to find himself. He is composed of stamps from the Boer War, battles flags of Yugoslavia, soldiers on horseback with feathers in their helmets, swords dangling with jewel encrusted cases.
The pages of my husband are yellowed, creased and smudged with all the fingers that have run over his stamps, trying to find a pattern to why he was assembled this way, fingers that have quit in exasperation, the secrets of the stamp collection locked into the past.
No blood or guts in his stamp collection. No AK-47’s. No IEDs. No smoldering rice fields. No GI boots abandoned in the dust. No K-rations. No walls reduced to rubble. No shouts. No screams. No “What the fuck do we do now, Lieutenant?”
Yesterday I heard him playing the marine hymn on his iPhone, a man who hasn’t been a marine for over 50 years. Turning the pages of himself to the marching music, humming along to accompany his search for who he wants to be.
This is so great! Way to work the metaphor! "a little sticky at the rear and ragged at the edges"--brilliant.
You're a lucky woman Christine. One could do way worse than be married to an antique stamp collection.
Speaking as an antique stamp collection myself, I'd like to draw the attention of prospective spouses to the fact that I am very choosy.
Me too John. In fact if there are any upside down airplanes out there still single fly on over
Re-reading this just now it gets better.
"Must be great having a husband who, thanks to the antiquity of his stamp collection is a veritable store of wealth, thanks to postal personalities such as that mint condition Penny Black that he keeps locked away in the safe he's had installed in the back of the his wardrobe."
"Mind you, its rather surprising that he's never articulated just why he gets her out so often and sits so long alone with her.? 'Gazing on her pretty face!' Pull the other one. Philatelists code if I ever heard it. He's covering something up. Dollar to a cent on it?"
"No, of course you won't take the best Mildred, but do take care dear. Watch that he's not gone besotted with that ageless Victorian beauty. Dare say it wouldn't be the first time a relationship with Penny Black has perturbed a happy marriage."
Fu-wee. first, immediate, gobsmacked, reaction to reading.
Sends, earlier: "Why, at this ultra troubled moment in time, break cover and reveal yourselves now?"
Sends, next post, now: "Land of no hope & fading, past, glory at 7pm here. razor sharp, your time, this evening. Capiche?"
Sends, poignantly, final post: "Infidels are coming, there sails soon in plain sight..."
Contact lost, suddenly, terminally... "Continue to advance!"
This is beautifully written.
Thank you Angela.
The poet in me jumped out for this one (kept it quite brief and have a few poems that I've gotten from the prompt--thank you, Mary!):
Grief is an impossible ocean. It flows in currents you cannot predict. At times, its tides are calm, even beautiful. An expanse of glittering memories that shimmer with something like warmth and old joy. At other times, it's a tidal wave, monolithic and impossibly-sized, and it moves towards you suddenly, out of the blue on a clear-skied day, stories upon stories of slate gray liquid glass determined to wipe out everything in its wake. And when that wave crashes, there's little left to love of life: limp seaweed, driftwood, and a beach so empty it hurts in your bones. Most of the time, though, it comes in small waves, the kind that lap at your feet. These small waves are there to remind you: your toes still get to kiss the shore. You have not yet succumbed to the sea.
So glad you liked this prompt! And I love "grief is an impossible ocean." That feels so very true--those currents you cannot predict, the way an ocean goes from calm to tidal wave. Nice job!
thank you 😊 loved these prompts & got some gold for other pieces.
You can swim in it..try the back stroke^^
Beautiful! At "old joy", I was so struck that I don't think I've ever quite heard those two simple, small yet big words together before (or I hadn't listened till now!) -- so perfect.
thank you, Danielle. It’s really surprising what comes out when you’re trying to capture a visual with a feeling. I’m glad you liked that phrase “old joy” - I like how it feels & even looks on the page.
me too!
Some praiseworthy efforts here, I see. This one is not in the least praiseworthy.
Happiness is a warm gun
Disclaimer: The Management takes no responsibility whatsoever for the utter bilge pumped out (and don't go misinterpreting "pumped") by the juvenile delinquent who has posted this chaotic mess of adolescent would-be fantasy on this excellent Internet site devoted and oh how totally to literature and the fine arts. Caveat lector.
Caveat lector? Sounds posh. Wossit mean?
Reader watch out.
What for?
A warm gun.
What's wrong with that?
It's a metaphor.
For what?
Happiness.
Nah! It's a meta for what?
Whatcha mean, a meta?
You're getting me wrong. It's a meta FOR WHAT?
Happiness. I told you.
Come on, give it a rest!
Happiness is a warm gun. The Beatles.
'Ang on, I'll get me grandma.
Whatcha want yer grandma for?
The Beatles.
Look, it's just a metaphor. That's one word. ME-TA-PHOR.
........ All right, wossit mean?
It's sort of an image.
Like a picture?
Sort of.
So what's the warm gun then?
Happiness.
A warm gun makes you happy?
Yeah. That's it.
You just fired it then?
Yeah.
You shot someone?
Dunno. Maybe you just fired it... Up in the air.
What would you do that for?
Why not?
And the gun's warm?
Yeah, the gun's warm. And that's happiness.
What if you 'aven't got no gun?
But you 'ave. In this metaphor.
What, you 'ave to get in there?
It's an image. IN this metaphor. You're in it, see?
Fucked if I see anything, I've 'ad enough. Gonna shut meself in the toilet and have a nice wank.
Happiness is a warm gun. Get it?
Who's on first? What's on second? A warm gun's on third. I don't know's what a meta is for.
when i was a kid sick in bed i listened to the white album and replayed 'why don't we do it in the road' multiple times after having read some Hardy Boys mysteries. So I imagined what they were doing in the road was tying up the hardy boys and robbing chet morton and his sister Iola. Took me a few year to reach the a-ha moment.
ha! No one will be watching us!
I might get it.
Like gun can mean different things, right? And um.. some guns are warm anyway.
Than others, I mean. Six shooters, .38's, and uh, you got your Derringers and your Buntline Special guns and so on, warm regardless, than some ancient smoothbore breech loader. Every last a warm metaphor of happiness, I believe. Is that close?
John Lennon made out (tongue in cheek) he was shocked to read of a guy who said happiness was a warm gun, because that meant he'd probably shot someone.
Any other way for a gun to get warm was not under consideration in this song. Bang Bang Shoot Shoot.
All day long i'll be singing this....
Definitely a praiseworthy effort. But am I the only one here old enough to remember the original inspiration for Lennon's metaphor, which was Charles Schulz's "Happiness is a warm puppy"? (Peanuts comic strip, picture of Lucy hugging Snoopy.) Lennon had a knack for turning smarmy pieties on their heads....
the newspaper article from which Lennon got "happiness is a warm gun" was making a spin on the Peanuts comic. And yes, I remember it!
Au contraire -- Praise! Praise! Total delight. (<-- 'sounds posh'!)
Wossat? Turkish Delight?
hah! why do i feel like this is surely Cockney rhyming slang for something
Now what might that be? Fright?
"You give me a proper Turkish jumping out the dark like that!"
Light?
"Got a Turkish, mate?"
Moonlight?
"Nothing like a poodle under the Turkish, is there?"
(Rhyming slang, poodle - canoodle)
Gaslight?
"You wouldn't be Turkishin' me, would ya?"
Never, not on your life! Turkish Delight was/is a pretty tacky chocolate bar with supposed lokoum inside. Full of Eastern Promise, said the TV ads. Apparently taken over by Mondelez aka Kraft. Caveat emptor.
"You wouldn't be Turkishin me" hahahahaha... that's the one! Or.. now I really must sit down, and go back to the blank page, and Turkish. ...My reference point for it, maybe as for many Americans?, had always been the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe stories.. I was so disappointed when I finally tried some and how far it fell short of what I had come to imagine.
I must have made an unconscious effort to forget there was Turkish Delight in the Narnia books. (And I ain't lion.)
Mmm... John... an interesting Horlicks, laced with bromide.
Happiness, as I read you, seems to be posited as a warm gun. Really?
Brill post. Quietly provocative. Truly genial.
Absence has been a sad river to navigate, most all of my life, since I came home that spring afternoon. Off the school bus, spot on 4.45 as usual, raced up up from the corner, came in by the kitchen by the side door expecting well, truth to tell, anything but to find her gone lying doornail dead on the kitchen floor. She was lying face down amongst the cookies that had spilled from the cookie jar as as the fallen consequence of the hammer blow that had caved in the left side of her face. The scattered cookies, all but two, were stuck in the blood spatter that was still pooling out across the vinyl. Fixed my attention on those cookies, fascinating myself with wondering would the blood reach them. Asked myself whose gonna' be home for me tomorrow, with cookies and a cuppa' milk ready to listen to my school day? Realised that it wasn't gonna' be Momma; wasn't ever gonna' be my Momma; never ever, ever... ever so loud I must have been screamin', brought old Mister Matthews running from way over across the street.
I'm thirty years of age now but I've never got past losing her like that. Not for lack of trying to ya' understand. Tried to every which way that moment's been the splinter that's kept my heart stone cold these past twenty four years. Best for me and for others has truly been for me to keep my own company. Rarely spoken about it, last thing I expected to be writing about, first time ever, today but there you go, ran the numbers: 4, 12 and 16 were the picks and so I decided to roll with the flow. When the murdering bastard gets early release on having done twenty five years he'll not be livin' long into a twenty sixth and I'll surely be getting banged-up, maybe chaired, none too long later. Months between now and then I'll just be sticking with navigating the sad river that absence has had me navigate, not pondering too much on what next.
"Fixed my attention on those cookies..." Rob, what a story you've told here, one that stretches into the future. And though I know it's fiction, somehow i believe every word of it. Nice job!
Managed to have the kite out, ready, caught the wind and flew the words even before the dust on the floor of the inbox had settled from timely arrival and impact of your Prompt 36!
Who can know Mary? What next?
Thank you 🙏 For this latest, ever genial invitation to write a jackanory and for you invaluable feedback I do off my 🎩 to you.
"Fixed my attention on those cookies, fascinating myself with wondering would the blood reach them." Mary already commented on this line, but what an evocative sentence that pushes the reader to actually "feel" what the kid is feeling in that moment. You clearly show us instead of telling us what he feels. Nicely done!
Thanks for reading, reacting and responding with heartening feedback Angela. Who can know: maybe this is the first darf of stor
Thank Angela. For reading, reacting and responding with such heartening feedback. Who knows but this may prove to be the first, impromptu, draft of story that get published in a fine, beribboned, marketing 🎁? Imagine, just imagine? You can have first dibs on suggesting a working title Angela. So suggest, oh do 😊.
"Scattered Cookies" comes to mind.
Bloody Cookies !
So be it; half a loaf and a threepenny, walking down Henry Street, calling King's Feet as being Pig's Feet.
What, deep, depth reaching memories our incidental evoke? Wow Angela. Best 💕 from me to you!
This is really good, Rob! Feels very realistic.
'never ever ever...ever so loud I must have been screaming': so musical. Such a horrific tale.
You are both a book and its well-worn beautiful library, risking even hidden under bedsheets this reader’s gaze. Your collections are ever changing. Your aging pages smell good, like vanilla, pine, and moss, home and dreaming. You are a book that I manage to delude myself is mine until I must let you go. Again and again I interlibrary loan you, again and again you slip away to parts unknown. The foreign and the familiar, you are both at once in your loveliness. We are all on loan from the great library of the earth, and we shall return there to be repurposed into new books. But for now, I am content to enjoy the daily human repurposing, until we may be loaned out again as books about ants or porpoises or butterflies, silverfish or ungainly moose.
well done! I especially like "again and again I interlibrary loan you, again and again you slip away to parts unknown." So good!
isn't that a beautiful sentence!
Can't do any of that with an ebook! (and i made hundreds of ebooks in my time.)
ooh I love "again and again I interlibrary loan you" and "silverfish or ungainly moose"!
Beautiful.
Your kindness is a dreamy river, Stan. Every time you hold the door for me or carry Mrs. Madams’s old dog up the stairs or don't comment on the stink coming from the old man’s apartment, I think: Stan is a kind man. And he's a dreamy man, a man who I’d gladly spend a summer’s day floating down a river with, looking up at the clouds floating and listening for the pucker of the small fish as they come up for food, and you, Stan, poling us along till we reach the bank and land, your arms tired, your gaze soft, my heart full of your kindness. Stan, when you asked me to marry you I couldn’t help but laugh because I always promise myself that I won't fall for a kind man, not again, but here you are and I’ve fallen and I won’t get up, except now laying here I realize that I have to decide: that promise was made in earnest, Stan, for real, and I realize I have to decide if I should honor it and I find that yes, I must, so, Stan, please close your eyes while I take the pole and whack you with it and push you under the water with it and hold you under a while and then watch your kindly body float down the river, a dream that got away.
oh my god! You got me!
I loved it right through so it almost seems a silly offhand thing to single out, but ooh that phrase "the pucker of the small fish" - perfect!
--23--
Grief is a carefree sunset. It spreads and points its blood-red shards, stretching and reaching to touch your every cell. It doesn’t care how you’re feeling before it begins. It has its own schedule. It arrives sooner each day, earlier and earlier as the weeks pass, dissolving your afternoons into a thick darkness.
You sit in the darkness. You could have avoided all this. You could have stopped years ago when everyone said it was dangerous. You could have stopped last month, when you couldn’t breathe. Stopping last month wouldn’t have made any difference, but it would have shown you possessed some substance, some spirit, a hint of light.
But you didn’t and now you sit in the darkness and hope to see another sunset; it’ll be earlier tomorrow, won’t it?
somewhat brutal, this one. And I feel it.
right? i went with # 23 all the way across because many birthdays in my life fall on a 23rd of the month (and I live on the No. 23 bus line). So I figured: let's see what happens.
So incredible what can come out from 'random' selection! Starts slightly surprising - grief & carefree together gives a little jolt - and ends up being perfect. When you get to 'It arrives sooner each day', it feels like the metaphor has pulled back some curtain to show just how fitting it really is.
thanks, Danielle.
I never met a phor I didn't like.
Nice to see you here, Iam!
I once met a physic. Went through me like a dose of salts.
The Human Hammer.
Welcome.
I know how it is to attend these court ordered sessions. I, too, sat in those folding chairs drinking knockoff Hawaiian Punch for more infuriating hours than I can count. But I tried to get something more out of it than just a stamp in my book to show my PO. I suggest you do the same.
As a repeat graduate of this Department of Corrections’ anger management course, I am taking some license with the syllabus. We’re not going to talk about how our own traumas led us to be angry people, triggers and responses, toolboxes full of shit you can do to keep from punching someone. That is BS.
You’re angry. That’s not your problem. Your problem is how you manifest your anger.
I used to manifest mine as a hammer. I was a house framer. When someone pushed my buttons, I became the tool I spent my days swinging: a human hammer. And that’s how I wound up locked up and taking these stupid classes, just like you idiots waiting for your little stamps.
So, here’s the truth. I was an imperfect hammer. You are too. I’d pound people, but they never turned into anything useful like a house. They turned into “victims”. Victims my ass. They got exactly what they were shopping for.
Anyway, I got it figured out and I’m giving it to you. I was an imperfect hammer but I’m a hell of a good musician. I learned how to manifest my anger as music, and I use the people I’m angry at as my instruments.
Sure, some psychologist will tell you that what I’m teaching you is how to be passive/aggressive like that’s a bad thing. But is it a bad thing for the guitar when the lead musician plays the perfect riff? No. It’s a thing of beauty.
So, that’s what we’re going to be learning in this class. How to use the people who aggravate us to make beautiful music. The joy of this is that unless you actually steal property from them or do some sort of sexual assault type thing, it’s almost always entirely legal.
Here's the first lesson: There’ll be no questions from you today or in any of our sessions. Got it? I ask questions. You don’t. You want to play some music on someone, you don’t let them ask you any questions. Work on that this week.
See you Tuesday.
"some psychologist will tell you that what I’m teaching you is how to be passive/aggressive like that’s a bad thing." Too funny!
Pretend that I typed the title the way I intended: You are an Imperfect Hammer
I can't figure out how to edit what I wrote . . . . and it's making me a little angry . . .
click on the three little dots to the right of Like, Reply, etc. Edit should be an option--however, I will warn you, times when I've had a long post and edited it, sometimes when I Save it the edit cuts off the last sentences.
Thanks. For whatever reason, the little three dots have abandoned me. I've used them before, but they aren't popping up anymore. I think it must have something to do with my browser . . .
Firefox?
I am using Bing. I use Firefox for everything else, but it does not play well with Substack.
Firefox is a disaster with Substack. I'm increasingly taking up your solution, but using Chrome, not Bing.
But I didn't start with the essential: PC, Windows?
I've seen that happen too, where it seems to cut it off after I edit, but then once I refresh it's always shown me that the full version has posted after all. (:
I want to be back for more next Tuesday!
if there's no knack for music, writing's a good outlet for an imperfect hammer too.
Oh yeah!
“Knockoff Hawaiian Punch” drew me in. Interesting ideas here. Curious about this music. Wonder what it sounds like.
Like all music, I suspect it sounds better to some than others. I'm not sure myself what it sounds like, but I expect that it has a rather driving force about it.
“Happiness, in it's purest form, is an unspoken poem,” announced Edward. Whether his intention was to elevate the discourse while they awaited on the arrival of dessert, and/or to position himself as a man of refined sentiment, he achieved neither. Daphne Bunn decided there and then that she would not be sleeping with him after all. Meanwhile, the conversation devolved into an idle squabble, seasoned with lacklustre gossip.
“That sounds exactly like the kind of airy-fairy excuse Daryk Swan might give for missing a deadline,” said Peter Caulfield. “You are not by any chance ghostwriting for him are you?”
“Has he still not handed over a manuscript?” enquired Kathleen Downey.
“I have been told parts of it are at address in Nottingham. I was thinking of heading up there. When I referenced it on a map it looked like an unsavoury area.”
“Explain yourself, charlatan,” said Milo, whose feet had taken residence on a chair that had been recently vacated by Joyce Webley, who had been called away on urgent doctors business. The backrest of his own chair was tilting backward slightly.
“I think what Edward is saying is that happiness is an expression of joy that dwells within an area of the heart beyond the reach of articulation,” said Aileen Wade, whose support would neither be acknowledged by Edward, nor reciprocated later when her own conversational gambit made her a brief figure of ridicule.
At the distant end of the table, Milo enacted a limp-wristed masturbatory gesture with his right forearm.
“Can you at least elaborate on the nature of the poem?” drawled Caulfield. “Its structure maybe; are we frolicking in the realm of the iambic pentameter, for example?”
“The iambic pentameter has never given me the slightest urge to frolic,” said Downey.
“Good, you see we're narrowing it down for you,” beamed Caulfield.
In the bedroom upstairs, a desperately unhappy Margaret Brewin, having left the individual creme brulée out on a tray on the kitchen counter, wrapped a pillow around her head and discharged both barrels of a shotgun through the roof of her mouth.
Bunn heard the gunshot over Caulfield's raucous laughter, but thought that it was someone sneezing.
What a tale you have conjured here! In this small space, I can clearly envision these people and see them carrying on this conversation while Margaret is upstairs, desperately unhappy. A marvel, this one!
This could be the beginning of an intriguing novel.
Better than a tale, just started, to be continued Sam.
The moment of escalatory explosion, I suggest, is about to come when a disembodied off stage Elizabethan, unmistakeably Male of Stratford, voice is heard cannoning across the stage: "Frolicking with I Am Pentameter! Fuck that, such nonsense notion as it be, for whole load of fanciable soldiers!"
Where what I've just typed above has ventured forth from I, least of all, know not. Let's go with a suitably literary term and call it, for simplicity's sake, 'the void'. 🤣
My Body is a Temple
-----------------------
-----------------------
My body is a temple,
the crumbling kind,
overgrown with
tufts of weeds and warts
cracked pillars holding
nothing but sky.
-------------------
Once people came
and worshipped here,
brought gifts and offerings,
made sacrifice.
They are all gone now,
even as I
disappear.
--------------------
I float amid the clouds
above my temple walls
the faded frescoes
and dusty memories,
a name engraved all but
washed away.
--------------------
My temple stands
eternal,
the chipped stair over which I’d trip,
the sunbleached hall in which I’d sit,
day after day,
save for the elements,
a ruined shrine
to a god gone
away.
Lovely!
Magnus was given to remaking the world in ways that never had been or ever could be. His days resembled turns of a kaleidoscope, and moments came when he could not remember the last time he'd eaten—he drank too much coffee—or washed. He always remembered, however, to water his beloved plants. They were growing in the holy ground he'd stolen from the churchyard. Magnus didn't think the dead would mind. His flowers were twice-blessed, once by those that fertilized their soil, and again by the holy water of priests. Writers, like plants, need their mulch, and when his words were in flower, Magnus marveled at their profuseness, at the size of the papery fruit. Soon, he would be a tiger in his very own jungle, or a farmer busy with his harvest. He would hurry to market just before his books had fully ripened.
Magnus would never reveal to anyone how toilsome this was. Getting up at six a.m. to grasp the soft udders of his imagination. His breath curled in the chill air. The words rattled as they fell into the metal pail, still warm. Words changed states like gases into liquids. They were a joy. He dug them up like turnips from the twelfth century and warmed them in his mouth until they became hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, his speech. An eon—eons—of thoughts were his to express.
A chorus of metaphors! So much fun to read.
Thanks!