Sammi’s Weekender #232 (question)

Click graphic for new tab link to Sammi’s blog.

The Weight of Truth

Your question cuts to my core.
You long for unnuanced truth bathed in heavenly light.

Who am I, naked, closeted?
Yet, you ask for the dark light, to know my vulnerable,
captive, and bound heart.

Will my truth set you free?
Shall my vulnerability be set back upon me?
My silent deception belies both truth and trust.

Long sleepless nights.
Regret, haunting wonders of who I am.

If I answer your question the world will hate me.
My truth is heaviness mankind cannot hold.

Look both ways before you answer.
Value truth but weigh the gaps and consequences.

Thursday’s Rune: Letter to Grasshopper

Dear Grasshopper,

I’ve noticed that you seem busy doing nothing but lazily hopping about. You look brown. You were green. It’s past mid-October. I assume you’ll be leaving us soon if you’re not already gone. But why now? Your end nears, but y’all been jumping all around for months.

Alas, your hop seems to have lost a foot or two. And your wings look stiff. Summer’s done, and I’d say you may be too. Do you know that? Does it bother you? Any day now you’ll be sidewalk ant food.

Soon there will be none of you. Then, like magic, Spring will bring you back to life in swarms. Like hungry chewing herbivorous flying insects, you’ll eat and reproduce again as you’ve done for 250 million years, a perpetual plague.

And you’re not alone. Your eleven thousand brothers and sisters are your type. Let’s not forget your rude, thankless cousins from the cricket, katydid, and locust families. They are always coming around singing for a free dinner or a little play time.

The ants are busy. But you’ve laid your eggs. Winter comes. You couldn’t care less. You’ll just happily fiddle away your time until the quiet end. But is that really the end?

Sincerely,
Mockingbird McBeak

Look both ways, horizontally and vertically.
Observe life.
Mind gaps and notice change.

Friday Fictioneers: Let’s Party

Many thanks to the wonderful lady, talented artist and writer, and patient friend Rochelle, for herding us cats on Friday Fictioneers. We write micro-stories (fact or fiction) to a new photo each week, provided by some very creative and imaginative compatriots. Here is my story for this week.

This week’s prompt (PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.) provided, and I bet painted, but Rochelle. Click the image and go to her blog to learn all about it.

 

Happiness Is

The outdoor social party was to welcome new arrivals to the senior center near Seattle. Bill, a newcomer, volunteered to serve special lemon-flavored ice cream.

“This is the best party. Everyone is happy to meet you, Bill,” said Marilyn, the Social Director.

Bill said, “Have some ice cream, Dear, everyone loves it.”

Back at their condo, Yolonda said, “Gawd! I can’t believe you spiked their ice cream. I hope no one finds out.”

Bill removed the bottle of lemon-flavored drops from his pocket. “A little THC never hurt anyone. We’ll need a big bus for next week’s pot shop run.”

Look both ways and share the love.
Mind the gaps and quash old fears.

Click the meme to read all the other stories.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #231 (legion)

Click for Sammi’s blog and other contributors.

 

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.

Thursday Rune: Today’s No Thing

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.

Friday Fictioneers: When in Rome…

PHOTO PROMPT © Brenda Cox. Click for Rochelle’s blog.

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.”

Click on Photo for more FF stories. (Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau left his Belgian counterpart red-faced after he raced straight past his open arms to plant a smooch on the latter’s partner. Trudeau was among the world leaders attending the NATO summit in Belgium. The awkward moment took place as he arrived at a dinner in Brussels.}

 

Sammi’s Weekender #230 (brush)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s Blog and other poems/stories/writings for his prompt.

 

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.”

Midweek Poetry: Thursday

Muhly grass in bloom (Fall)

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.

Friday Fictioneers: Julie’s Gold Mine

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot. Click picture for Rochelle’s blog.

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.

Click on Julie and Hoss to read other FF stories.

 

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Plan Reveal

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.