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.

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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.

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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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