dVerse Poetics November 7th, 2023

This was a complex prompt, so it is best to go to the dVerse page and read about Lisa’s Time Machine Bucket List: TMBL and the subsequent prompt with options.

I think I sort of did Option 1, but this comes from my heart. I know Lisa said ten and cull out, but I can’t do that. I focused on both the stars and the venues because, seriously, I would try to go.

Coming Around Again

Forty-five (or more)
albums later, fifty years
of water under two bridges,
if we could go back.

Back to when you opened up
to your kind, to your fans,
and friends and family,
your folks, without
a care or anxiety
for either of us.

Long over now except for
the forever connection
of Ben and Sally; I still
love to hear you and James
sing duets and harmonies.

Save me seats so I can go back;
back with my beloveds
with you to concerts like:

Live from Martha’s Vineyard,
or from Grand Central,
or from aboard the QM 2.

Can we meet at the Eagles’
Sad Café? It’s been fifty years
Carly. What do ya say?

Listen,
mock, yeah,
ing, yeah—let’s sing!

Look both ways, but when the more is in the past,
we can wish for times to go back to for just a brief concert to visit,
to sit and listen, to applaud, perchance to take in a toke.
Mind the gaps until time travel is perfected. Our goals are very specific.

Click here to enjoy more TMBLs.

And Carly—

dVerse Prosery November 6th, 2023

We were to write a flash fiction story in exactly 144 words including a line from the poem, by Rita Dove called “November for Beginners.” The chosen line was “Snow would be the easy way out.” See the Poets Pub here. And other works of flash prose here.

I grew up expecting snow every winter. Sometimes crunchy—always white until later when it would die as wet, ugly, slush. I loved going outside and experiencing feelings that I only felt when I walked on a cold windless night in fresh snow.

It was always coming, and I knew that snow would be the easy way out—out of my life’s tiring and tedious problems (at least for now), as my insecurities about myself were silently made insignificant. It could never be more than one night at a time before the world’s reality marred snow’s existence and mine.

The snow didn’t know or care about my problems. I was welcome to be as I was with snow. While it made my world go silent, it seemed to hear me and to know what I needed without ever saying a word. We had secrets.

I suppose this is interior monologue rather than a story, but it works for me.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #336 (search)

Ease your search for Sammi’s page and more excellent 52, pickup pieces by clicking on this graphic.

The Maelstrom of Combat

Hunt and kill missions,
search and destroy—S&D,
sick and disgusting.

If it’s them and dead, it’s VC.
Body counts win wars.
Ask GM-azon.
Euphemistic defense profits for all,
but not the warrior, the solder,
dead and maimed
they suffer, kid-killers—all,
they hate and love battle.

Combat. Killing.
I die. Why?

Look both ways, toward the light and the dark.
Mind the gaps for hints of denial.
It is yours to reason why.

Friday Fictioneers for November 3rd, 2023

To begin the month of November in the crazy twenties of the twenty-first century, two favorites of Friday Fictioneers finest, Mistress Rochelle and “Dalectable” Dale, have inspired us with a two-way including Dale’s mysterious photo and Rochelle’s excellent watercolor painting of Dale’s wonderful shot. Wowzer! Ya gotta get in on this, right?

I’ve written of mysteries behind the green door before.

Click on Dale’s fun, green-door photo to open another portal to Rochelle’s blog page for this phenomenal adventure. While there, your thoughts can be expanded by her patent windows to purple wisdom.

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

Genre: Musical Parody
Title: Play Behind the Green Door
Word Count: 100

***

We knocked on the Green Door. A woman from Behind yelled, “What?

Marilyn said, “The Chambers to audition.”

“You experienced?”

I was indignant.

“We’re stars (Marilyn giggled). We audition at midnight for Jim and Artie Mitchell.”

She opened the door, “You’re old. Can you do longtime money shots?”

Marilyn dropped her coat and white dress. “Bitch, let us Behind the Green Door now or I’ll stuff these six-inch stilettos in every hole you got.”

The movie is scheduled for release New Year’s Eve with Marilyn and some dude named Johnnie Large in leading roles. I was hired as art director.

***

Look both ways but infer whatever you want.
Mind the gaps for the best porn,
but you must know what goes on behind the green door.

***

Click on the movie poster for a ticket to more 100 (or fewer) word wonders.

***

This is an 80’s, Shakin’ Stevens, version of the #1 song from 1956 , “Behind the Green Door” which replaced Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender.” So many have never heard of the tune, the movie, the books, and now Dale’s pic.

Sammi’s Weekender #335 (dissociate)

Click on the graphic to be associated with more 73 words of dissociate.

I tried.
George Carlin said
he tried.

I was———
then was not.

I left,
then came back.

Then,
left again.

Later, I went
back again.

More redux
than reborn.

I recommitted.
United
one more time.

I was a long time in,
way over my head.

Finally, slowly,
I surrendered
to what
I’d long resisted.

I’d never
be them.

I didn’t believe
and
never would.

Truth
forced me.

I dissociated
from all things
religious.

Look both ways on the continuum of faith.
Mind the gaps, but when you are done, take your stand.

***

My book of poems is available on Amazon (as paperback, e-book, and/or Kindle Unlimited).

Click on the cover for the Amazon.com page.

Friday Fictioneers for October 27th, 2023

For eleven years, Rochelle has been prodding fictioneer bloggers along with pics meant to inspire. That would be more than 570 Fridays to story. Thank you, Rochelle, the host with the most dependability.

Today she and Lisa Fox coordinated with a winter pastoral picture to stimulate our imaginations. So, we write on with between one and one-hundred words for Friday Fictioneers.

I enjoyed the Mama Cass video that Rochelle posted, and I decided to combine the two elements for a quickie #FF.

Click on Lisa’s photo prompt for Rochelle’s blog page.

PHOTO PROMPT © Lisa Fox

Genre: Musical Fiction
Title: JBL Voices
Word Count: 100

***

I was jamming.

“Creeque Alley” was blaring in my ears as I walked on a cold, crisp October day. I dug the snow, the fence, and my music. Wonderfulness!

I heard Michelle’s voice. “We never broke up. We just got lazy. Cass was the only one with any sense. Now everyone’s gone but me.”

I looked. No Michelle Phillips or Mama Cass—nobody. Just me and mighty fine folk music on a better day. I took the headset off and looked around.

I moved on—thinking, I knew she’d come eventually. But who can I tell about Michelle? Maybe Rochelle.

Look both ways to love the voices of the past.
Mind the gaps, but admit it, modern music “can’t go on indefinitely.”

***

Click on the “Zal and Denny workin’ for penny” pic to read more par excellence stories.

dVerse Poetics: Why war?

It is not difficult for me to write about war or things military. My difficulty is to not.

I wrote this as directed by today’s dVerse prompt.

His Secret War

When he emotionally told me—
he confessed, he squirmed—
with the guilt and shame
that had long lived in his gut.

For him,
it was a hard story to tell.

Surrendering emotions,
“If evil were evil enough;
if good were good enough.

“I would find the courage.
I would fight for right,
one war to end war—forever!”

He was conscripted. Drafted!
It was what he could do
for his country. To serve. To kill
(or be killed).
Maybe he’d find glory. Heroism.
Maybe death.

But wait.
He opposed this war.
He was to fight and kill
but he hated this war.

“Is there another war
more to my liking?”

He felt that killing and dying
were not in his peacenik milk nor
cup of tea.

“Send another,” he protested.

He was ordered to report.
But he was too good for this war.
Too smart. Too woke!
Too compassionate.

He was above it.
But war he did.
And he killed so as not
to be killed. To survive.

And when his war
was no more,
he came home
to discover
that he too,
was no more.
Sadly, he missed it.

Look both ways in war and peace
because each is merely the absence of the other.
Mind the gaps, the traps, the mines, and bombs.
Win your battles to lose the war.

***

Inspired by “On the Rainy River,” a section in the book The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien.

Click here to read more poems based on the same prompt.

 

My book.

Click on the cover to see the Amazon page for either print or e-book.

Sammi’s Weekender #334 (Absquatulate)

Click on the graphic for Sammi’s page and more 85-word wonders before you absquatulate.

May I Stay?

After the poetry reading
everyone prepared
for their independent absquatulation,
with coffee in their bellies
and books of poems
in their hands.

Handshakes, hugs, and
complimentary laudations
were passed around
like drinks at last call for alcohol.

Those ambivalent moments
when the emotion of wanting to stay
gets trumped by the needs of the day
tell of our human dichotomy.

Back we go into the world
of confusion, confrontation,
and hate. The place we love
too much and too little.

Reading some Reading
might help.

Look both ways but write your poems and read them to the world.
Mind the gaps wherein common sense has flat collapsed.

Note: Peter Reading (27 July 1946 – 17 November 2011) was a strong-willed English poet. His verse is described as “anti-romantic, disenchanted, and usually satirical.” Glad I’m only labeled cantankerous.

My book of poems, “Any Way the Wind Blows” was launched yesterday.
For this weekend, it is available almost world-wide on Amazon at reduced prices.

These books make great gifts, but F-word and S-word warnings.

 

Friday Fictioneers for October 20th, 2023

For our writing pleasure we have been enjoined to post by her purple-for-passion (or is it the other way ‘round?), Madam Wisoff-Fields and the debonair lady, Liz Young. They have joined forces to summon our best literary skills of micro-fiction story telling (and editing down).

Click on Liz’s photo prompt to test the waters at Rochelle’s blog. There, you will find everything you need to rock a mini plot for the hashtag Friday Fictioneers game of writer-ship (#FF).

PHOTO PROMPT © Liz Young

Genre: Poetic Fiction
Title: Anytime Checkout
Word Count: 100 (Language Warning)

Lying hidden in the tall grass, we kept each other warm. I started to kiss her, but she pushed me back and whispered, “What the fuck is that?

I turned to see several lights hovering.

“Don’t move!” She pulled me down, “Be quiet. We need to get out of here.”

The lights passed. We crawled, then ran for several minutes.

I asked, “Who is looking for us and why?”

“My ex and his tribe. If they find me, they will kill us both. I was a member of his cult. They never allow anyone to leave—at least not alive.”

Look both ways when the terrain and vegetation permit.
Mind the gaps and the lights when Journey sings of the city by the bay.

 

Click on the Splendor in the Grass pic for more stories.

 

These folks are in their 70’s now, but then so am I.

 

Oh, and this book:

Click on the cover to get yours from Amazon.

Sammi’s Weekender #333 (Whisper)

Click on graphic for Sammi’s page and more writings.

The soldier whispered
into the radio,

we’re surrounded.
need help, now.
target on my coords.

She heard the shell
coming,
but not the explosion.

Look both ways in combat. Mind the gaps, but war is war.
Take many of them with you when you go.

 

Capt. Nargis Kabiri, commander of Alpha Battery, 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division Artillery. She is the first female field artillery commander for the 3rd Infantry Division (US Army).