Friday Fictioneers for 8/14/2020 (Downtown Ice Cream)

Many thanks to Rochelle @ Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-Addicted to Purple for guiding us through Friday Fictioneers. The challenge she presents is to write a story based upon a photo prompt, provided today by the same lovely Rochelle herself.

The challenge was to write a complete story (beginning, middle, and end) in 100 words or less.

PHOTO PROMPT -Copyright-Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Title: Downtown Ice Cream
Genre: Fiction
Word count: 100

Elizabeth and Jacob—so much in love. Next week, they’d be off to France for their honeymoon.

The dark-skinned man finished his ice cream, wiped his lips on a napkin, then walked to the restroom. Coming out he walked past them and toward the door.

Jacob yelled, “Sir, you forgot your valise.” The man turned to see Jacob grab the case. He yelled, “God no!”

The explosion killed 22 in the store and seriously injured 15 in the street.

The officer dropped the engagement ring into a plastic bag saying, “I hope we don’t find the finger to fit this.”

***

Look both ways for awareness of surroundings.
Mind the gaps in the frozen hearts of terrorists.

***

Click the blue frogs for the link to read other stories offered for today’s challenge.

Click for link.

dVerse Poetry: Quadrille ‘garden’

Many thanks to Victoria Slotto for hosting the dVerse, Poets Pub bar for this prompt. Our play is to write a quadrille (44-word poem) that uses any form of the word garden.

***

Hortus Art

Neither musician nor gardener am I,
yet their music I love. My camera
captures beautiful flowers, botanically
cultured or randomly given by
nature’s pressing flora.

Perceived beauty touches every sense.
In wind, rain, desert’s secret bounty,
all life contributes to more life.

Love it.

***

Look both ways into the magical world of horticulture,
to the earth, air, and sky.
Mind the gaps for contributing animal life.

 

Click here for a link to the links of all the other participants.

dVerse Poetry: OLN, “Just Sayin'”

Thanks to Lillian for hosting the bar and suggesting OpenLinksNight for favorite sayings. Mine was by Eric Hoffer, “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.” My poem gently follows that theme.

What do I want?

What do I want?
And you, the same?

Everlasting life?
Perfect existence?

Is it happiness?
What exactly is that?

Heath and wealth
Both common goals

But is there more?
What is enough?

Love, perhaps, or
in my perfect world?

Let’s compare notes.
You show me yours

And I’ll show you mine,
In the balance it hangs

Every important thing
about life and time.

What do you want?
And, for me, the same?

Look both ways for love and opportunity, but look within for love.
Mind the gaps for unhappy steps.

Friday Fictioneers for 8/07/2020 (Pancho and Cisco)

Many thanks to Rochelle @ Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-Addicted to Purple for again distance-herding us through another Friday Fictioneers. The challenge is to write a story based upon a photo prompt, today by Jennifer Pendergast.

My challenge was to write a complete story (beginning, middle, and end) in 100 words or less. The photo prompt led me to the American West. That triggered an old TV show (western genre). I then found some inspiration in songs by Eric Clapton and Willie Nelson.

I added videos at the end in case you want to see what I’m talking about. The complete TV show is there. It’s too long to watch it all, but the intro is informative.

PHOTO PROMPT – © Jennifer Pendergast

Title: Caballero Revenge
Genre: (Copycat – Hysterical) Fiction
Wordcount: 100

***

Loco was in full gallop when Pancho yelled, “Santa Mierda, Cisco. A coal train. What we gunna do now?”

“Diablo says we jump between the cars. The posse will never catch us.”

“Loco say you both loco. We go around. Ride to the rear.”

“No, Pancho. To the front. We’ll shoot the engineers and take the train.”

“But Cisco, we are the good ones. We don’t kill and steal trains.”

“Ah, but Pancho, we do now since you shot the deputy.”

“Oh, Cisco, I only did that because you shot the sheriff.”

Thusly, the Cisco Kid and Pancho became outlaws.

***

Look both ways, especially if you shoot the sheriff.
Mind the gaps in trains, but ride to the front.

Click blue frogs for link to inlinkz

Poetry: dVerse Poets Pub 8/4/2020 (window)

Today’s dVerse Poet’s Pub prompt for poetics is Looking out the window, provided by Peter Frankis. While the challenge was to take a picture, post it, and write about it. I adjusted time a bit. I used a picture I searched for and found that my wife took of me through a window, 48 years ago. This idea came to me quickly and I could not let it go.

Circa 1972, through front window of house I grew up in.

The Window Behind Me

A window from the parlor to the covered front porch
of my parents’ home, a memory of chewing paint off the sill,
of watching adults sit and talk and wave as neighbors walked by.
For eighteen years, my view of the world outside
where wind blew, rain fell, thunder clapped, people sang,
cars passed and honked. Life beckoned me to the stage,
through that window.

What was I thinking 48 years ago? My young wife and new son
in the window behind me. Our future? Was I talking or listening to
a passerby? Was I thinking of losing that hair as it turned gray?
Four-years military—done! College degree, done! Responsibility
branded me an armed man. Was I up to it? Did I have life,
or had it taken me?

Would the photographer still be my wife after 54 years? Would I have two
more children and would they be in their forties with more kids?
Would I build two careers and retire? Would I write poetry?
I had time. I knew I would live forever. I did not even know what I didn’t know.
Now, I know. Some I wish I didn’t discover. A window from the past
reflecting the future. The present me, right here, right now, today.
I want to say, relax, you’ll be fine.

Look both ways through every window.
Mind the gaps and cracks.

Poetry: What They Were

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.

Click Image for link to PEW article.

 

Poetry: Sammi’s Weekender #168 (peristeronic)

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.

Friday Fictioneers 7/31/2020

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.

Photo prompt © Jean L. Hays

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.

Click blue frogs for link to inlinkz

Poem: dVerse quadrille #108 (bramble)

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?

 

The Springtime blackberry forest background.

Look both ways even when picking berries.
Mind the gaps,
we share all of this with more natural consumers.