Click to flip over to Sammi’s blog and more 74-word wonders.
Was it something I said?
Many things I’ve done and not done
which brought me much self-inflicted grief;
like transfers or removals from jobs,
I’ve sat smiling at wrong times,
adulted too young, or the drink I tasted
when I got more than a little bit wasted,
‘twas most often my spectacular speech
that others appreciated the least.
I’m gifted this flippantly waggish tongue
emitting my intently presented voice
speaking a cutting language, exposing
my cantankerously lighthearted snarkastic choice.
Look both ways when words fly like the breath of buzzards.
Mind the gaps and if your gunna do it, go all the way.
To kick off the lyrical month of July in the year twenty twenty-two, Mistress Rochelle stayed close to home again by drafting from hubby and sending us a photo of a 1960 International Harvester pickup truck, credit to her musical goy-boy-toy, Jan Wayne Fields.
Some folks name their cars and trucks, even the ones used to earn some extra college moolah in the mid-1960s.
There’s tragedy in America
and over the world today.
One that has always been there
brewing trouble bubbling,
either hidden or ignored.
Without love, honor, and respect
inside and out,
sans pity and pride, compassion, and sacrifice,
we are doomed
to be less than
the best of humanity’s history.
Let nature and nurture battle on,
let knowledge
and wisdom wrestle
with feeling and emotion.
Nature’s questions asked without fear,
safe for all, with courage
to face battles between
sweet dreams of hope
and nightmares of reality.
Ally with truth, with
compassion, without weakness or fear,
with hope to continue
standing with universal rightness.
Look both ways and try, try, try to understand, it’s not magic, man.
Mind the gaps in the human condition as you embrace its diversity.
Note: I will be reading this poem (and others) at the Lark & Owl Booksellers in Georgetown, TX, 30 June 2022 @ 7:30 PM.
Sliding off the summer solstice, now fully back in her Mistress role as maven of Friday Fictioneers, Rochelle has selected a photo of a suspicious looking senior gentleman entering a resale store, cane in hand. My fib-ulous 100 words follow the photo by John Nixon.
Saturday (June 18th) , I wrote this poem at the Round Rock Writers Guild Word Yoga (poetry) exercise Zoom workshop. My friend, Kathrine, said she wanted to see it here. Who am I to disagree?
Her excellent blog is published at: https://lklatham.com/. Her exceptionally wonderful books of dark, speculative fiction designed to beguile the imagination and convince you the things that go bump in the night are real is sold wherever great lit can be had.
A Moment of Time
My mantra is right here, right now
in this place with my life
that is the sum total
of forty-million moments;
some so frightening
I thought I would die,
others so boring
I thought I would die,
but here I am,
right here, right now,
just me—Mister Bill—
and my 40-million moments,
greedily hoping for
ten or twenty million more,
when frightening or boring
are equally
(un)important to me.
Look both ways with awareness of time, but this moment is all we have.
Mind the gaps for good days and bad, as pleasantry is a matter of perspective.
Click on the graphic for more 54-word wonders and Sammi’s blog page.
Damn Reality
Here I go again reading
Bukowski’s clear vision voice
poems lacking picturesque pastoral principles,
with plainly different aesthetic dispositions
of attitude nobody loves.
We know that deep inside,
his way is part of us;
part of him, hides in us.
How many ways
can we paint the same picture,
or tell the same story.
Look both ways reading anyone’s poems.
Mind the gaps hiding deep within when writing your own.
Mistress Rochelle gave us a double dose of reality today as she announced her recovery from the dreaded COVID CRUD with one of her photos. Nothing can keep her down for long. But the lovely flowers and get-well balloon should inspire us to find the words to tell our own story.
Click on Rochelle’s bouquet for a lift to her page to scope out the rules and regs of the game.
Genre: Military Fiction
Title: Friendly Enemies
Word Count: 100
***
Timo and I were life-long enemies. We always argued and fought. Didn’t know why.
Fatefully, after graduation we ended up in the same platoon. One night on recon walking about ten feet behind the point man, Timo shoved me and whispered, “You’re too close. Spread out!”
Just as I put distance between us, the point man tripped a mine. I remember the flash and loud blast.
I awoke in the hospital to a bouquet of flowers: yellow carnations, white snapdragons, buttercups, purple and violet petunias, and orange lilies.
The card read, “Keep friends close, enemies closer. Get well soon. Timo.”
***
Look both ways for friends and enemies, discernment is key.
Mind the gaps, it may not be what you think.
Click on me or Timo for a bus over to the city or squares and more fun micro-stories.
What would you send your enemy? To know why I used those flowers, click here.
When does it happen, if it happens at all?
The innocent child becomes a troubled teen,
Then a vicious young man with an M-sixteen,
Or a rivetted young woman focused on his fall.
Is this the formula of a coming dystopia?
Is the excitement of the fight so much greater
Than desire for tranquility and gods’ opium?
Is power over people the dark masturbator?
Some change. Many don’t. Over time
We all morph and grow to some degree
For better or worse, but will I ever be free?
Human life’s permanent paradox of paradigm.
Look both ways with conscious contemplation of then and now.
Mind the gaps for lessons of fortitude,
not the comfort of fear.
You can only die once, Bukowski notwithstanding.
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Dead and Gone
When they ask me, where do I say I’m from?
Why ask? What difference does it make?
Do I say from a blended Irish Catholic coal miner family
of the northeastern Pennsylvania Wyoming Valley?
From a time and place, now too far away?
A way to which I cannot return. My blood no longer mixes.
A place foreign to the vernacular of history,
now threatened by polite inclusiveness.
Now none of me lives there.
Only cold rainy nights and forgotten headstones
on lost graves of people I never knew remain.
Look both ways for ancestral truth, but the past is gone.
Mind the gaps for reality’s dark shadows before landing right here, right now, in this world.
Our Literary Journey 