1333 - On the other hand...

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

sighs, fire, flip, ravaged, blue, floor, emerge, mask, ashes, soak, skin, weave

 

On the other hand…

"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality"

-- Seneca

 

Objectively, we have emotions, feelings.

Subjectively, masks often emerge to hide them.

Objectively, when learning new things, we make mistakes.

Subjectively, we wish the floor to open up and swallow us.

Objectively, we have been soaked to the skin,

Subjectively, we respond with a flood of tears.

Objectively, we have been robbed.

Subjectively, we feel violated and ravaged.

Objectively, we tried but didn’t win.

Subjectively, second place, our mouth tastes of ashes.

Objectively, we are retrenched for economic reasons.

Subjectively, we have been fired and judged as wanting.

Objectively, we are left out of the team.

Subjectively, we are disappointed, we sigh, feel blue.

Objectively, someone tooted us on the road.

Subjectively, we flip the bird and disparage their parentage.

Objectively, life happens.

Subjectively, we weave meaning to it.

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1332 - What a Wonderful(ly Cynical) World.

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

scratches, screeches, soothes, fringe, image, sighs, locks, shiny, rises, swarm, ghoulish, night

I ignored all of them.

Poets & Storytellers invited us to write about the moon

I ignored that too.

What a Wonderful(ly Cynical) World.

With apologies to Louis Armstrong.

I see trees of green, red roses too

But trees can also be red and silver and gold

In Texas the roses are yellow, or so I’m told.

I see them bloom for me and you

Well, technically they bloom to attract pollenators

Birds, bees, and insects.  Curiously not alligators.

And I think to myself

A point of order, if it’s alright with you,

There’s no-one else that you can really think to.

What a wonderful world

The climate’s shot, the fascists are coming,

The cruelty in Gaza is simply mind-numbing.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white

But let’s not forget the sunsets of red

And the thundery clouds that rumble overhead.

The bright blessed days, the dark sacred nights

My days are lonely and extend beyond countin’,

Cue Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain.

And I think to myself

We’ve already been here, I don’t wish to moan

But your thoughts remain thoughts, encased in some bone.

What a wonderful world

The rich are getting richer, the poor left behind

The news is getting faker, the planet over-mined.

The colors of the rainbow

So pretty in the sky

Are also on the faces

Of people going by

Violet, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red.

Not all thought to be healthy for the average passing head.

I see friends shaking hands, saying, "How do you do?"

“How do you do?” sounds posh, like the words of a car-yard con,

Best check your wrist, your watch may be gone.

They're really saying, "I love you"

Essential words for a husband to wife

But said to others can land you in strife.  

I hear babies cry, I watch them grow

In fairness to the babies, before they get older

They laugh, they burble, and they throw up on your shoulder.

They'll learn much more

Than I'll ever know

A debatable point Louis, education is now largely dismissed,

If it’s not on TikTok, it doesn’t exist.

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

Yes, I think to myself

What a wonderful world

As far as I can tell that’s just a load of hooey.

Keep your thoughts to yourself, if you don’t mind Louis.

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1331 - Metamorphosis

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

witchcraft, metamorphosis, garden, whirl, woods, fly, siren, sign, breath, stone, circle, why

Poets & Storytellers prompt is "The joy of walking away".

In this case it is "The joy of flying away".

Metamorphosis

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns.

-- The Odyssey

Why? is the wrong question.

How? Is more to the point.

There is magic afoot in my garden.

How a pudgy, multi-legged sausage,

Full of the half-digested greenery

Of my well-loved garden,

Encases itself in a circle, a case, of gossamer

A change booth, a most private retreat 

Only to re-emerge as a butterfly?

What witchcraft is this?

I hold my breath as it takes its first,

Before launching off, flying off,

More a wobble than a whirl 

Twisting and turning

Moving from plants to flowers to woods.

How can this melting and remaking happen?

A clear sign of my ignorance.

What else is changing without witness?

Were the tangle of wire coat-hangers

Once my strangely missing ball-points?

What am I to believe?

Is there anything set in stone?

And if they are, can I trust the stones?  

The siren’s say ‘come Ulysses, come closer’.

Are they really stones?  

My toe says yes.

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1330 - Nature's Inadvertence

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

crusty, scrub, limbs, vanish, bones, exist, space, glitter, still, hollow, below, sense

Nature’s Inadvertance

We should remember that even Nature's inadvertence 

has its own charm, its own attractiveness. 

-- Marcus Aurelius.

The random fissures on a crusty bread

The dew that glitters on a spider’s thread

The limbs that blossom on a favourite tree

A joy awaits you if you care to see.

Watch ferns, fishbones and maiden’s hair,

Plants that existed before we were there

Attach to trees in both hollow and nook

A joy awaits you if you care to look.

The kitchen’s scent of a fresh-baked cake

The liquid motion of a passing snake

The native birds and their mating dance

A joy awaits you if you can spare a glance.

Mushrooms grow and then vanish again,

The smell of the bush after a rain

The living space where seeds germinate

A joy awaits you if you care to wait.

The scrub is still there, out beyond the town,

But no need to leave home to track joy down

It’s in the branches, in the ground below,

A joy awaits everywhere you go.

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1329 - Glimpses of a Dream

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

wet, jump, secret, dream, bed, breath, secrets, lashes, fire, plague, glimpses, lies

Glimpses of a Dream

There’s a green-eyed fellow idle, to the north of Kathmandu.

There’s a bus of eager punters, heading west.

There’s Ash Wednesday and the bushfire hullabaloo,

There’s the pulsing bilge pump at poor Gael’s breast.

There’s the random plague that completely shut the city

And closed the rest of the world as well.

There’s the ancient escritoire, full of all that’s pretty.

There’s the dinner call, with the old school bell.

There’s the ominous arrival of the mechanical bed  

There’s the lovely baby stilton sent out through the mail.

There’s the son that jumped out of a tiny plane

But only once he had done it, went on to tell the tale.

There’s the blushing yellow Peace rose, flowering in the garden

A living yearly memory of her dear departed mother.

There’s her ironclad determination, not to let harden

Any part of our ongoing love for one another.

There’s the intimate moment on a warm and secret beach,

There’s the shark plane doubling back.

There’s the son who drank all the medicines in reach,

There’s the spurtle, poised for quick attack.

There’s Primrose, later known as Prim, the most elegant of cats.

There’s the picnic in the park, to see the Bard’s Macbeth.

There’s the pipe that burst in the ceiling of the Dundee flat

There’s the pathos of that last exhaling breath.

There’s the castle on the Overland, where lashes were the norm.

There’s the weekly formal dinner, with cuddles, by the fire.

There’s the table set so beautifully, with decorations of some form,

There’s ball of belly-button fluff, stolen from the dryer.

There are the wet eyes of the one who silently recalls and weeps.

There’s the marching for The Voice, with the home-made sign.

There’s the The Prince of Puddings, a haggis, on a bed of neeps.

There’s the New Year’s fireworks and playing of Auld Lang Syne.

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1329 - The Open Window (Repost)

 

Poets & Storytellers United have a prompt "Substitutions".

This is something I posted in 2012.  

It's theme is more that there are no substitutes.

The Open Window (Repost).

There is a sense of disbelief:

The window is wide open,

Your things are in disarray;

Drawers are open, 

Turned out on the floor.

Intimate items scattered.

Someone has been here, in your room, 

Past your defences.

And valuables are missing.

Money, money is nothing.  

Memories, how do you replace memories?

Pawned for $20 in a bar somewhere.

Days weeks months later you go looking for something —

And can’t find it.  Is it just lost?  Or was it stolen?

You will never fully realise everything that you have lost.

Death is like that, 

Like being burgled.

You never fully realise everything that you have lost.

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1328 - Nighthawks

 

 The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

quivers, limbs, scattered, yellow, twirl, hearts, streak, faint, bags, three, howls, long

Nighthawks

Three customers.

Sitting in a yellow-lit fishbowl,

Behind a long glass window,

Unnaturally free of posters.

A single and a doublet.

A man, sitting solo—

Perhaps heading home.

Perhaps told to pack his bags.

Body language is reflective.

No quivers, no energy,

Just reflective.  Resigned.

Sits and twirls his coffee.

The couple, together—

Are they really, though?

They, too, are reflective.

Body language suggests 

They may be just companions,

Their hearts are not engaged.

She may be holding his hand,

Almost reluctantly. Furtively.

Perhaps the waiter is a dampener.

Perhaps going out on a limb

In such a public place is a risk.

But there they are.

Together.

The street is strangely clean,

No papers scattered around.

No howls of dogs here.

The lights throw streaky shadows,

Giving only the faintest hint

Of surrounding businesses.

That’s the way of things, I guess.

Life presented in a tableau.

So many questions.

So few answers.

◊

1327 - The Was And The Will Be

Poets and Storytellers had the prompt: Memories & Dreams.

The Was And The Will Be.

Memories are a delusion—

They are so very tidy.

Memories are so deceiving.

They embrace us.  That’s why we

Hold them—

Our hearts embrace and mould them.

Grieving thus comes naturally.

A consensual collusion

With what can never be.

◊

Dreams are a comfort 

most infernal,

Useless without a plan.

Are they too just a delusion?

The universe mocking man?

Often.

But it’s not a case when

A fusion adds body to the dreams.

Once a dream becomes internal,

The gods withdraw, or so it seems.

◊

1326 - Alone

 

 The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

breath, cruel, escape, river, away, sorrow, kitchen, licked, dust, whispering, spin, gown

Alone.

“When you lie in bed and cry, the tears tickle your ears”

– Margaret Kennedy.

The mind is not cruel

But it is not kind either.

It has no agenda.

It’s a landmine, waiting.

Everything is a trigger.

◊

Dutch irises bloom,

They were planted for her,

Her beloved white dogwood,

Unfolds its kissing flowers.

The wedding gown.

Nothing too fancy.

Laura Ashley, off the rack.

Kept safe. Packed away.

But now, what do I do with it?

In the kitchen,

Favourite soup bowls,

Blue, with a handle.

We used them every day.

I still do.

A bra…

(You have a pair of pants 

Why not a pair of bras?

But I digress.)  A bra

Hangs on a door handle

In her study.  Still.

Memories.

Gathering dust.

◊

Everything has a connection.

Sadness, regret and sorrow.

Tears that reach your ears

Puddle there.

Salty little ponds.

I lie in bed at night,

Warm but no escape.

I her her clock chime.

My fault, I wind it.

Voices whisper and spin

Salty memories.

These warm salty tears.

Not a river, a trickle

Remember when there was

A breathing beside me—

Like so much in life,

You never know when

Something happens 

For the last time.

◊

1325 - Roll Over, Supernova

 The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

back, flash, vanishing, tap, top, trip, yearning, blind, sigh, vine, strong, fear

Roll over, Supernova!

The sun rose today

And will rise again tomorrow.

You can have no fear about that.

Well, perhaps just a little fear.

There is a small, vanishingly small

Probability that the sun

May just, well, explode tomorrow.

Strong chance that it won’t happen.

But it would take the edge 

Off an otherwise top sort of day.

Not even be a blinding flash,

No time to scream even.

Just a sudden onset of crispness.

No time to take back library books,

That trip to Japan, too late I’m afraid.

That yearning for the widow Smith

In the townhouse down the road—

Unrequited, that love.  Sorry.

But don’t sigh, there is good news:

The possums will not eat your vines,

That dripping tap on your to-do list,

Is no longer an issue. Nothing

On that list is any longer an issue.

But that is all about tomorrow.

Today the sun is shining.

◊

1324 - The Stranger

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

scratch, bones, branches, gathered, blow, words, stone, stranger, keep, tilt, feathered, we.

I played with Haiku.  Probably Senryu, in truth.

The Stranger

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: 

for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.  

– Hebrews 13:2

The wind was blowing.

Branches screeched on the windows.

It was a bleak night.

A scratch at the door.

A dark figure stood outside.

He offered no words.

Barely skin and bones.

A coat gathered around him,

To keep the wind out.

“What brings you, stranger?”

But it garners no response.

He stands like a stone.

“Come in, have some soup”.

He tilted his head, thinking.

Then nods and enters.

The coat slips open.

A glimpse of something feathered.

No answers offered.

Fed and most grateful,

He silently leaves again.

We may never know.

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1323 - Going Against The Grain

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

Bliss, leaping, memory, particles, arms, breath, story, pieces, heartache, beings, thunder, called

Going Against the Grain

“If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.” 

– Ernest Hemingway.

In due course

They will return your ashes.

How do I reconcile

Those coarse beige particles

With the memories 

Of your warm embrace?

Being held in your arms?

Your rhythmic breath

As you slept beside me?

Our moments of heartache 

And moments of bliss?

The joy of laughing

In thunderstorms?

Of walking in the rain?

Of lying in the sun?

Just being together.

My mind hops from memory

To memory, leaping, weeping.

The story called life; 

A kaleidoscope 

Of pieces, 

Tumbling, 

Falling,

Recalling.

And now?  

What does the future hold?

A plastic box of ashes.

◊

1322 - The Passing Crowd

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

Vast, alone, silently, novel, wake, unable, secrets, world, river, darkness, face, ache

The Passing Crowd

In this vast world, I am alone.

A world that is full of people

Who have their own lives 

And are unable to see or be aware

Of the darkness others face.

In this vast world, I am alone.

Surrounded by strangers.

A river of humanity that flows past

Unperturbed by my presence,

Parting, passing, rejoining. 

In this vast world, I am alone.

They move past silently

Engrossed in their own thoughts,

Their secrets, their fears—inner lives

Behind their budded ears.

In this vast world, I am alone.

There is nothing novel in this ache.

People are afraid of the thought of it 

And, afraid it may bring discomfort,

They slip pass and leave me in their wake.

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1321 - Blight on Bald Mountain

 The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

Demons, wings, flickering, heat, omen, dark, end, cunning,

shadows, unfathomable, gloaming, despair

Blight on Bald Mountain

By the pricking of my thumbs, 

something wicked this way comes. 

– Macbeth

The unlocking of demons,

Released by the cunning words

Of politicians with devious

Self-interested ends in mind.

Not unfathomable, to be sure.

In the shadows, the oil lobby

Gloats as their puppet

Does his dance, tells his lies

With a flickering, forked, tongue.

The unlocking of demons,

Cleaving to produce heat.

Heat to power us

Heat to chill us.

Heat to distract us.

Heat to kill us.

A dark foreboding wings 

Its way through those

Those souls who despair

Of man’s lack of wisdom.

The unlocking of demons,

The omens are not good,

The world enters a gloaming,

The demons are easy to define:

Strontium

Caesium

And

Plutonium-239.

◊

1320 - Haunted by Clichés

 

The Sunday Whirl presents twelve words for us to use in a creative writing piece.  

This weeks words are: 

tangle, surface, call, back, deep, room, kisses, edge, sense, sketches, silhouette, windswept

Haunted by Clichés

Silhouetted on a windswept hill,

Surrounded by a tangle of brambles,

The house stands clearly ill-kept

A sense of neglect, 

A dark, foreboding, shambles.

You get a sense…

◊

Stop a minute.

Was it always this way?

Could it once have been a home?

When did the rooms fill with dust 

And lethargic but hairy spiders?

When did the music just stop?

(Or, if not stop, at least move 

To dramatic organ chords.)

When did the laughter stop?

The love and hugs and kisses?

Did a family live here back then,

Back when it was not so dark.

Were there gardens?  A park? 

Did the trees echo with the calls 

Of birds and not bats. And children

Playing, running, sketching, giggling.

Beneath the niggling surface lies…what?

Deep, dark secrets perhaps?

But do they survive the sunrise,

When the sun edges over the horizon?

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