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.

◊