Now abandoned, there sits an old home
convent campus of providence sisters,
a cloistered retreat,
once a thriving worshiping community.
Now greedy developer fodder,
this sad waste-like memory rots,
loved only by climbing and scratching
brambles of blackberries. There’s
no salvation for the old.
Look both ways for revitalization of the past
and for the hopes of the future.
Mind the gaps for invasive species.
Hear pathetic, peristeronic sounds,
glorified pigeon’s monotonous cooing,
hunter’s prey, called white-winged Mexican Doves.
Sounds and shots signal long, hot, dry August days
in El Paso, Texas, at Walmart,
where hateful hearts sang out in murderous joy.
Supreme white-hot hate hammered home death
& destruction to familias con niños.
Pathetic politicians paraded past.
Look both ways into the hearts of men.
Mind the gaps. If you see only good, look again.
***
Explicación: Next Monday, 3 August 2020, marks one year since 21-year-old gunman and homegrown Texan terrorist, Patrick Crusius walked into a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, with his legally purchased assault rifle and murdered thirteen Americans, eight Mexicans and one German, and randomly wounded 23 other innocents, including children.
Many thanks to Rochelle @ Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-Addicted to Purple for herding us through Friday Fictioneers, even while on a vacation visit. The challenge is to write a story based upon a photo prompt, today by Jean L. Hays.
With fewer than 101 words we are challenged to contrive a beginning, middle, and an end.
Title: Whisperer Bay
Genre: Animal Fiction (Allegory)
Word count: 100
I rowed my skiff into the bay and leaned against the seat to vegetate under the stars.
There was a nearby splash. Something bumped the boat. Then again.
Then a voice. “Relax. Don’t talk. Just make sounds.”
I could barely see the head of a dolphin looking at me.
I spoke. “You can talk?”
Again, “Don’t talk. Make sounds. I don’t understand speech. I cannot talk.”
I thought, I must be dreaming.
“No. Some humans understand echolocation sounds. You do.”
I thought, I understand you and you me.
“Come back this time tomorrow. Plan to stay longer. I’ll explain then.”
Relaxed attention sees both ways and perceives concealed secrets.
Mind mental gaps.
The dVerse quadrille is a 44-word poem, excluding any title, using some form of the prompting word: Bramble. Click here for link to the party at the pub.
Small troops of proud pickers pounce
and probe with plastic cups and buckets seeking
drupelets of prey, searching brambles
to score secret sweet’n sour ingredients
plucked from aggressive blackberry tangles.
Juice-stained fingers hunt hearts of cobblers,
tarts, buckles, crisps, and jams.
Perchance, some wine?
Look both ways even when picking berries.
Mind the gaps,
we share all of this with more natural consumers.
Gray Matter
Nuance is the difference
between sage and schmuck,
between friend and foe,
between dusk and dawn,
between lust and love,
between wine and whine,
between fortune and folly,
between poetry and prose.
What is between
black and white?
Look both ways for discernment and wisdom.
Mind the gaps, lest life be a fool’s journey.
Thanks to Mish and the folks at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, for Open Link Night #270 (click for link). This poem messes with where my head’s been lately.
***
Combatant
It could have been me.
A nod, a blink, an okay
and the next forty-five
years …
had I not been killed, maimed
or driven insane
(as many of us were)
… would not have been anything
like what I look back to today,
fifty-six long years hence,
with contrition, feeling the loss;
Personal, hidden, illogical
survivor syndrome. I can’t
make sense of it. The feeling
of a warrior who wasn’t.
Life choices often made
thoughtlessly, in a blink.
I could be dead. Change the past?
Not on your life or mine.
***
Look both ways at guilt for life: fortune or folly.
Mind the gaps in the mindless wars with reality.
Many thanks to Rochelle @ Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-Addicted to Purple for orchestrating Friday Fictioneers. The challenge is to write a story based upon a photo prompt (today she gets extra credit for providing the photo, as well). With fewer than 101 words we are challenged to contrive a beginning, middle, and an end.
***
Title: Pleasure Palettes
Genre: Romance (autobiographical) Fiction
Word count: 99
I was at my easel trying for a loose, semiabstract, colorful urban cityscape.
Conjetti walked in.
“Did I hear you talking to someone?”
“It was your boyfriend. He’ll call back later.”
She cleared her throat.
“Okay. It was Julie. We discussed art. She said watercolor is a metaphor for letting go.”
“And you said?”
“I told her it was like herding wet, angry cats of different colors that don’t mix well.”
She reached around and grabbed me, biting my neck.
“Follow me,” she said with a sultry gaze.
I smiled, “At your service m’lady.”
“You’d better be.”
“Yes, Ma’am!”
***
Look both ways as
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life” (Oscar Wilde).
Mind the gaps of romantic truth.
Sounds, like blessed drops
falling as heavenly clouds
grace Earth and bless my ear.
Rhythm now a bit more than
gentle drops of above
playing ecosystem tunes
– distant thunder.
Doves silent in trees, other birds
sit quietly in Mother’s shower
(they’ll return),
The sounds of tires rolling wet
on water, splashing in puddles,
trailing droplet ghosts,
and pleasing me.
Look both ways in rain or sun.
Mind the gaps but enjoy spaces between drops.
Lannan banished him to Marfa, city of minimalist art,
in the hinterlands high-plains desert, a Trans-Pecos cowboy patch
in far west Texas. Controversial, wrangled, and angry (bless his heart),
Bloodaxe English poet Peter Reading endured being sacked
For having gallish cheek, remaining ununiformed 22 years,
being poet, For the municipality’s elderly,
as a mindless weighbridge operator and lover
of fine wine and birds, with gruesomely ironic humor.
Peter and I were born on the same Saturday,
he in Liverpool, I was not.
His revenge – Marfan and Shitheads.
Look both ways for hammering truthful humor
and light romantic comedy.
Mind the gap, said the man to the day tripper.
Many thanks to Rochelle @ Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-Addicted to Purple for orchestrating Friday Fictioneers. The challenge is to write a story based upon a photo prompt (and thanks to Jean L. Hays for that), with a beginning, middle, and an end in fewer than 101 words. This is my third venture.
Genre: Ironic (flash) Fiction
Word count: 100
***
Lobo and Robin met and married at the University of New Mexico following his return from Vietnam in 1970. He was from the Atchafalaya Swamp region of Louisiana, she from Montana ranch country.
Doc Robin, as she was called, was an internationally known infectious disease specialist. Lobo, a highly sought after free-lance journalist.
Their 50th anniversary party was planned for Saturday night on their rancho near Albuquerque.
“What’s in the box, Robin?”
“Designer surgical masks for the party.”
“You’ve thought of everything.”
“Not really, Babe. But it would not do for our quests to go home with COVID-19.”
Lobo howled.
***
Look both ways to plan a party.
Mind the gaps of the ironic mind in a literal world.
Our Literary Journey 