Click on the dunk graphic to discover other 78-word writings that include the word dunk.
Popularity
Sweatpants and fifteen-dollar
Wally-world slip-ons do the job
when I’m home alone and happy.
A child, I believed them
when they said I’d
run faster and jump higher
In them Keds,
for a tenth of what they pay
for fly higher and faster
Nike Dunks, which tell me
things and give me thoughts
they don’t want to hear or know.
Now you must love me. Ima woke.
I spent a week’s pay for
these kicks. Now kiss them.
I look both ways and wonder, am I the person I think I am?
Or am I a slave to popular marketing?
Mind the gaps before falling into a mentality where popularity trumps all things practical.
Click on Sammi’s graphic to link up with her page for more 44-word poetry or prose.
Coincidentally, this is the second 44-word poem I have written this week. The other was for the dVerse quadrille challenge. Maybe it’s an omen.
Mom & Me
Mother always pointed out my difficult side;
that contrarian in me, not the exact opposite of good,
more like one who disobeyed, who pushed back,
because I saw life through my own eyes.
Today, I both regret and rejoice my
yin and yang personality.
Look at yourself both ways.
You may not be who you think you are.
Mind the gaps while searching for self.
While I enjoy this musical duet, I am struck by the irony.
This week our magical Mistress Rochelle pulled a mare’s nest from order to muddle my muse and trigger my call to organization.
Texans might say I’ve been feeling puny (ill) for a few days, so I was uninspired until today (Friday – imagine that).
It’s all Rochelle this week as she scattered a photo of her own randomly into the blogosphere. If you think you’d like to push a stormy story of fewer than 101 words, find your way to join the free-for-all by clicking on her photo and seeking order at her purple patterned blog page. Click >here< to read other chaotic stories.
Genre: Therapeutic Fiction
Title: Bollix Minds Word Count: 100
***
Why did you bring me here?
I wanted you to see this metaphor for your mind.
Ridiculous. I’m neat. I hang-up clothes, organize socks, and straighten art. My OCD would organize this fast.
Bill, you were arrested for tampering with a murder investigation. The judge ordered counseling as part of your plea deal.
I simply organized and cleaned up blood. The detectives got upset.
This chaos is how you see the world. Do you understand?
Not true. I do have leads on jobs.
Tell me more.
Stores want me to follow customers around and straighten things up after they pass.
***
Look both ways for all sorts of metaphors.
Mind the gaps and try to understand, things will never be perfect.
This musical bit (If the youtube will not play for you, try this imbedded link.) brought a chuckle to my mind and almost a bit of relating to the song.
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.
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.
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.
Everything
I say and do,
makes me,
according to some
(hope not you),
sexist, racist, communist,
capitalist, atheist, and/or —
something else bad-ist,
or worse,
and so on.
The epithet “snowflake” implies
a melting softness, unlike icicle, and is both
insulting and a grounded gauntlet challenge.
I’m being verbally shoehorned in
by short-sighted, narrow thinking
like an ugly foot that doesn’t fit.
I could well
go off with my own difficult ways,
and face my personal world
for the rest of my days,
and forget to fit
their stereotypical clichés,
which some seem hardened
to claim that I always am.
That would be
such a great blow
to the cause
of human equality.
Since then,
all will see
and we will all be:
collective assholes,
magnificent they and
malevolent me.
Look both ways if you intend to make anything better.
Mind the gaps, saps, and crap chaps and be who you are—the real you.
I returned to your place of business, like I said I would.
A clown-man there told two jokes. At first,
I glared at him to the silent end. The other
I interrupted so I could give you my coffee order.
I allowed him to finish. I again stared
before telling him his joke was unfunny and that his
comedic skills were woefully lacking behind his
overflowing obnoxiousness. Was he your father?
You would not take my money. He paid.
I sat quietly, typed my poem, drank the
Americano and chewed the muffin.
Now I wish I hadn’t. You
did not look at me or say another word. Then,
you left.
Sorry. Henceforth, the city library
has much more to offer and
better silence, too. No jokes.
Is Divinely Beautiful your real name?
Tell your father that my low opinion
of him has declined and my vote
is not for sale.
No apology necessary.
Look both ways but think on your feet.
Mind the gaps of silence when the wind passes.
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