Friday, March 28, 2025

1359 - The Edge of Belonging


 Image by ChatGPT

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

This week's words are:

sorrow, dip, embers, moment, chain, wild, silver, free, trance, glimmer, faint, trim



The Edge of Belonging


I do know that I have always been one of life's observers, 

always standing slightly on the outside, watching.  

— Jane Green


Like embers floating high

Above and away from the flames.

Like silver glitter swirling in a globe.

The innocent bystander.

The dispassionate observer

Watching, trance like, from above,

The parade, the charade, of life around him.


People talking, engaging, interacting,

Swirl around him, unknowing, indifferent

To his underlying sorrow.

And yet, in fairness, it is not of their doing.

He chooses to be with them, but not in them.

Occasionally, with effort, he pushes himself

To dip into the wild, frightening maelstrom

That swirls around, engulfing him.

But he cannot stay, he doesn’t fit in.


They are free, he too is free, but separately so.

They are not of his tribe, not of his kin.

With them he feels chained, restrained,

More like a suspension than a solution,

In life but not of it.  Swirling.  Swirling.

A commensal diner at the table of life.


Now and then there is a moment,

A glimmer of acceptance, of dissolving 

Into the rapidly flowing tide of life,

A brief contact with a kindred soul.

Entering more a side eddy than the full current,

Life briefly swirls and tumbles then calms.

The parade moves on, leaving him beached.

Only to wonder why? Only to trim his sails,

To reduce expectations, to retreat

To the faint but safe region:

The edge of belonging.


 

Thursday, March 20, 2025

1358 - The Alchemist

 

Image by ChatGPT

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

This weeks words are:

time, hear, lose, world, off, string, life, particles, reel, need, find 



The Alchemist

The room is dusty, the air pungent.
Strange liquids bubble and fume.
He sits alone in this unearthly gloom,
Dusty in a dust filled room.

His is a life of relentless toil
To find the secrets once foretold:
The magic process that legend sold
Of turning lead into gold.

He had heard of times, now long past,
Where such changes could be done.
So in this world, cut off from the sun,
He continues the quest, long since begun.

Smoke and dust particles swirled around 
He lost all sense of day and night
Driven by a need to win this fight
He toiled away to candle light.

Despite a string of abject failures
He persisted with his chemical tricks
At last he found the golden fix—
He turned his hand to cosmetics.

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

1357 - The Boy Who Had Everything.

 


Image by ChatGPT

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

This weeks words are:

favour, kind, jinx, spell, sorcery, gift, denial, child, style, rapture, truce, way



The Boy Who Had Everything. 

Born into extreme privilege,
Wanting for nothing.
No favours were refused,
All gifts given, were expected.
Denial of wants unheard of.

But is this where happiness lies?
The way to satisfaction?
Or is it a kind of treadmill,
A hedonic carrot and stick?
Can happiness lie in "more"?

Is money the source of joy?
The beguiling rapture of the ledger?
But...money begets power
And power absolutely begets money.
The sorcery of the image.

A "win at all costs" mentality,
A style of social warfare.
No spell or truce conceded,
Nor any prisoners taken—
Weaknesses that may jinx.

So, like a drain-hole on life,
Community wealth steadily moves
Away from those who need it
Towards those who only want it.
The French had a solution.

Thursday, March 06, 2025

1356 - The Library of Forgotten Dreams

 

Image by ChatGPT

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

This weeks words are:

habit, flash, dreams, twist, shakes, rain, scars, knitted, glass, secret, pages, huddle



The Library of Forgotten Dreams.

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, 
life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
-- Langston Hughes

The binding is hardened, the pages dusty.
Brown, brittle, they smell old.
The writing is ornate, with curlicue flourishes.
The pages hold stories from long ago,
Dreams, as old and as dusty as the book,
Fill the pages, secrets held by the past.
Scars too, and habits begun and dropped;
Twists of life from long ago.

Sometimes a smell or a particular tune 
Will trigger a flash of recollection.
The author, not a particularly apt term
For an unaware contributor to this volume,
Will huddle over the pages.  Searching.
Searching with a concerned look
And knitted brow, they shake their head:
Did this really happen?  Did I do this?
Like rain on a glass pane,
The past is mottled and blurred
And just a little bit unbelievable.