Our Masked Morons
The Kadiddlehoppers:
Abbottomy the bot,
dirty Dan,
and Perrywinkle,
planned four Guard brigades
of water boy warriors
to battle back
Obama’s invisible invading
legions, thirty already here.
Save us
from such morons.
Look both ways for details and the big picture.
Mind the gaps and trust none of them.
For a moment,
I close my eyes
and the moment’s gone.
My memories rarely
remain for long.
Soon enough,
today’s moments
are done.
This is Thursday.
It can only be today,
whatever the name.
Today
will never be tomorrow.
Wait and see.
Sun’s third planet
spinning in artificial time,
a wee bit in vast nothingness,
at the whim of some god,
or controlled by
meaningless unmeasured chaos.
I can’t
taste or smell Thursday.
Today sounds are unheard,
there’s nothing to touch.
It’s another day.
And yet,
like a spirit,
unlike
physical, practical things,
each moment of every day
flashes by—
irreplaceable,
never lasting,
instantly
forever gone.
Today is
most valuable.
It’s now.
It’s all we have.
Why can’t it stay?
Look both ways, but all we have is today.
Mind the gaps.
Enjoy life.
Genre: Micro Memoir
Word Count: 100
We flew to Brussels to visit friends in the municipality of Heist-op-den-Berg, a Belgian, Flemish community of 42,000. Brussels is an international big city to the south. This little area is pure Netherlander (Dutch) in language and a reserved, coldish, culture.
Rudy had said he liked American helpfulness and friendliness (speaking, holding doors, smiling, etc.) when he visited here.
I went for a run through town.
Seeing the surprised looks I got, instead of a wave and “good morning,” I got louder with “Howdy, y’all,” all smiles like I wanted to hug. The natives were plumb shocked. I loved it.
Look both ways trying to understand life, history, language, and culture.
Travel, learn, love, and mind the gaps.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do,
but “to thine own self be true.”
Damn Yankees
Peckerwoods range southern from taproot wormwood sagebrush out west,
to different dialects in deep East Texas’s vast Big Thicket Forest
with snake-filled, gator-infested swamps.
Coon hunters haul coonhounds, like Ol’ Blue,
in pickups circled round night fires.
Dogs tree them coons for the bark and fun of the run.
Where cultural racism thrives as casual and common as an Easter toothache,
in tasteless towns, where hate breeds happiness decayed.
Damn longhaired, white-assed Yankee,
“What cha mean ya never been coon huntin’?
Grab yer wahoo and follow me.”
Look both ways and wonder, why does it have to be this way?
Mind the gaps for gators and snakes.
“Old Blue got one treed, but Scout is a-trackin’ some tail.”
It Feels Like Fall
Like a nearby preferred lover,
October with its distinct aromas,
ambiance of Autumn’s threshold,
sending forth changing vibrations,
moods, and patinas.
Animals know this is today,
deer bucks are seen rutting near does.
They feel cooling air, but with heat
in their blood, driving sex to their bones.
Say, mew-len-BERG-ee-ah kap-il-LAIR-iss,
or better pink, coastal, or gulf Muhly
saving face for fading summer annuals
promising striking purple haze seeds.
As plumes of flower panicles perch
above glossy green-leaf foliage
made permanent, a picture in a cloud
striking the gaze of poetic conceit.
Goodbye summer, Fall is here
to change aura and climate,
to soften and heal me, to remind me
pink is a color for comforting me too.
Look both ways in every season.
Both flora and fauna seek attention.
Mind the gaps so as to miss nothing of Mother’s beauty.
Julie said, “Dad, you don’t understand. You buy used cars. Same thing. It looks like a lot, but you’ll get change.”
I said, “I see. One person’s trash is another’s treasure.”
“Exactly!”
I handed the cashier a twenty. She held out my change, “Would you like to donate to our feed the poor project?”
I said, “Of course,” handing her another five.
When shopping came up at dinner, Steven said, “Secondhand sales and peer-to-peer marketing is a hundred-billion-dollar business. In Austin, the fastest growing retail market is in junk stores. And there’s the rental game.”
“My, how things have changed.”
Look both ways to see that resale and rental retailers are thriving in the pandemic – and not just because brick and mortars were shuttered.
Mind the gaps. They may have fleas.
A few years ago, I completed writing my fifty-thousand-word memoir during Nano. The unfinished manuscript haunts me. I want to finish it, get feedback, and maybe self-publish.
I also want to put some poetry book pages together, but that may have to wait until later in 2022. Maybe I’ll discuss poetry as I contemplate National Poetry Writing Month (April).
I’ve acquired a training course, and I have other books on writing memoirs. Writers Write suggests doing a few other things, such as completing their 127 free memoir prompts. Flash memoirs. Why not?
For Nano 2021, I intend to write about 400 words for each of the 127 prompts before November 30th. That would be five prompts per day, each about the length of this post, yielding almost 2,000 words daily. I’ll commit to 50,000 words for the month. I shall neither edit nor revise. That’s a Nano no-no.
It’s not as creative and crafty as a novel, but I am not in the novel or novella mood. I want to commit to my memoir by January of 2022. But I also want to do Nano.
Additionally, I’ll post two poems, one essay, and a flash fiction story each week.
My weekends may be busy. Sammi’s prompt requires fewer than 100 words. That is one poem. But I must wait for the prompt which pops up about 3:00 AM (US central time) each Saturday morning. My writer’s group, RRWG, zoom meeting is 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM on Saturdays. Maybe I’ll write more words on other days to reduce required weekend writing.
I post a 1000-ish-word essay for my Dispassionate Doubt blog each Friday. I’ll get a head start on those before Nano begins. I moved my midweek poem to Thursdays, and I want to continue that. Maybe I can get them drafted, if not written.
Moving my midweek poem is because I plan to continue with Friday Fictioneers (FF) prompts. At 100 words and technically three days to finish posting, writing FF is doable. The reading and commenting on others will take longer. But I can do it.
Many Nano participants work eight or more hours a day, have kids to deal with, and lives with less time available to them than I have. If they can find the time, so can I. We’ll find out.
Look both ways.
The reason to accept a challenge is to meet it.
Mind the gaps for wasted time (Facebook and rabbit holes).
Plan.
It’s All Just Stuff
Measure married history
with social mobility
and acquired caboodle from:
Abilene to Ankara, Turkey,
then back with bounty
to College Station.
Then Woodville.
Then Abilene again,
and on to Del Rio.
Sacramento before
Fort Worth,
then to Guam
for booty from China Pete’s,
Korea, and South Pacific trips.
Back to SAC,
then to San Antonio.
Edmund, Oklahoma,
and Albany, Texas preceded
San Antonio’s redux.
Florida came before Seattle.
Finally,
Georgetown with another
van of encumbrances.
Stuff.
And memories….
Look both ways for what was and will be.
Count blessings, mind gaps, and cherish memories.
Measure happiness and adventure carefully.
“Father” Tanner, had a lovely wife, two wonderful daughters, and a future as church rector. Young, bright, athletic, and handsome; he inspired the congregation’s vibrant teen and Boy Scout groups. Eventually, he was ordained to the priesthood.
However, Tanner’s sexual relationships with teenage boys were discovered. He was defrocked, dismissed, and ordered to therapy, without legal action. Soon “cured,” he was again hired as Sexton and advisor to parish youth groups.
Thirty years, over 450 victims, and 2,500 counts of sexual assault later, Tanner was imprisoned, where at 67, he died of natural causes; shamed and disgraced, but never cured.
Look both ways.
Be alert for predators where least expected.
Never expect victims to confess.
Mind the gaps, remain skeptical, and verify if you trust.
When Love is not Enough
They thought it was indestructible.
A once mighty oak.
Then one day, there it lay—
one fragile, entropic stick, atrophied
by the dominance of green fire,
enraged temperament morphed
from past passions into
mislaid trust, then to castaway love,
and finally, to the pain of the end.
Did he willingly dance away from the fire?
Did the stepping turn of his heel find and
finally crush that last unwilling, wilting twig?
Was it he or she who stood in the dark,
alone, searching for some deeper truth
without understanding? Only able
to struggle against the monster’s eye,
leaning in against injury
from false charges and
intolerable miscreant treatment.
Had they become allergic to love?
Did they both just get lazy?
Whatever cannot be, simply isn’t.
Trust-based survival
needn’t be defended against
blows from the unbridled ax of envy.
Then—it was just the inevitable end,
when even love was not enough.
First, look both ways. Then, look all around.
Finally, mind the gaps and cut your losses.
