The sweet, delightful, and flashy Mistress of Fiction, Rochelle, has prompted my muse with a bit of rain for the second week in a row. Combining strokes from her purple lane, she has splashed the Friday Fictioneer gang with a Roger Bultot picture of a modern, colorful, children’s playground park, seemingly after some precip.
Feel free to dive into our un-juried pool of players with your own fiction of fewer than 101 words. Avoid any litigiousness by giving Roger’s pic a gaveled tap, which will sentence you to review the brief code of conduct behind the purple bars on Rochelle’s blog page. You may want to get setup to be served weekly with a summons write early each Wednesday morning.
Genre: Shakespearean Fiction
Title: Time for Pettifoggers
Word Count: 100
I took my nephew, Dicky, to the playground after the rain had stopped.
He said, “Everything’s all wet, Uncle Billy.”
“Water keeps the insufferable brats and bullies away. Now, go play.”
“There’s lots to climb on. But why no swings or rides?”
“Lawsuits. The lawyers forced the city to take them all away.”
“What are lawyers?”
“People who profit from the misery of others.”
He ran off to play on the wet climbers and such.
“After this,” he yelled, “the first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
“A noble goal, Lad. You’re a chap after the old bard.”
Look both ways for the future of the young.
Mind the gaps and dangerous traps, but a life without risk can be dry and vapid.
Note: “Let’s kill all the lawyers” is a line said by Dick the Butcher in William (Bill) Shakespeare’s Henry VI (Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2). It is among Shakespeare’s most famous and most controversial lines.
Click on the cartoon to fire up more wonderful flash stories by the fantastic Friday Fictioneers writers.
Click this to open Sammi’s page where you’ll find more fun prose and poems run amok.
Small Battles: Big Wars
We
would rather f-bomb
or recite angry litanies
of forbidden witchery
than speak the word: cancer.
It’s when few of one’s
trillions of cells run amok,
it’s a war fought with
knives, rads, and poisons.
Look both ways to see your own beginning and end.
Mind the gaps, fight the battle, die with dignity.
John Updike, best known, perhaps, as a novelist, was a poet. This short poem of his is one of my favorites regarding life and death. He died of lung cancer in 2009.
For Yom Kippur and the first week of October release, our wonderful server, Mistress Rochelle, and boss lady of Friday Fictioneers has selected a David Stewart dining room photo from her menu and served up a challenge for us to roast some fine micro or flash stories of fewer than 101 words long.
Please read mine below but click on David’s pic to be seated at Rochelle’s perfect purple blog café where you may order up some artful items. We try to abide by and to play nice as we swim in our own creative lanes.
I have nothing at all to sell.
Or to trade.
I walk alone because
we must.
It’s just me
with my own thoughts,
maybe music or a book,
as I deal with some pain.
A good thing,
claim my many doctors.
Not the pain—the dealing with it.
I like the thought of it—alone time,
but it’s not. Not really.
The Universe, also not for sale,
is with me. Always with us.
I call it being alone
because it makes me feel good,
but I know
I am never totally on my own,
without a piece of eternity
talking some quid pro quo.
Look both ways when dealing, feeling, or logrolling.
Mind the gaps between your steps and use the poles lest you fall and break your nose.
Click the superimpose graphic to link up with other excellent wordsmith 56 wonders.
Contemplative Satisfaction
My memories are superimposed,
each one over the others,
repeating forgotten things
like reflections in a window
to my past.
The sights, sounds, and sensed emotions
I can no longer feel, hopes and desires
of mine in a younger man’s clothes
when I danced and played
not knowing about the treasures
that are my memories today.
Look both ways and overlay the tastes and aromas of each memory.
Mind the gaps of confusion as you look through lost time for meanings as we live into the answers to past questions.
For our October’s eve challenge, Mistress Rochell has worked her magic of Friday Fictioneer redux by reviving a past portraiture of her own. It’s a busy time of year for our illustrious maven.
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, commenced at sundown this past Sunday, marking a time of the high holy days. Soon to follow will be Yom Kippur, then Sukkot.
Click on the picture of Rochelle’s lamps to be magically whisked to her blog page where her cauldron formula for fewer than 100-word stories can be realized.
This poem was rendered to meet today’s dVerse challenge offered by Paeansunplugged from Delhi. We are to write about the good and evil in mere mortals, the good in evil and/or the evil in good. For me, at no time is that enigma more profound than in times of war and battle.
Conundrum War
One story I’ve never told,
a confession…
if evil were evil enough,
if good were good enough,
I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage…
but courage, too, has finite quantities,
yet it offers hope and grace to the repetitive coward.
I can’t fix my mistakes.
Once people are dead, I can’t make them undead…
killing and dying are not my special province.
Am I too good for this war?
Too smart, too compassionate, too everything?
I’m above it. It’s a mistake, maybe.
Look both ways at good and evil or take Hamlet’s advice and think it so.
Mind the gaps between and within our perceptions of what is better and what is truth.
Our Literary Journey 