Pleasure

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.

 

Midweek Poetry:

When Love is not Enough

They thought it was indestructible.
A once mighty oak.
Then one day, there it lay—
one fragile, entropic stick, atrophied
by the dominance of green fire,
enraged temperament morphed
from past passions into
mislaid trust, then to castaway love,
and finally, to the pain of the end.

Did he willingly dance away from the fire?
Did the stepping turn of his heel find and
finally crush that last unwilling, wilting twig?
Was it he or she who stood in the dark,
alone, searching for some deeper truth
without understanding? Only able
to struggle against the monster’s eye,
leaning in against injury
from false charges and
intolerable miscreant treatment.

Had they become allergic to love?
Did they both just get lazy?
Whatever cannot be, simply isn’t.
Trust-based survival
needn’t be defended against
blows from the unbridled ax of envy.
Then—it was just the inevitable end,
when even love was not enough.

First, look both ways. Then, look all around.
Finally, mind the gaps and cut your losses.

Midweek Poetry

My White Rabbit

I like beer, pizza, and poetry.
And those mysterious rabbit holes.

Poetry is to life
what hearing is to sound,
what thunder is to lightning, what love is
to marriage,
what sex is to love,
what water is to thirst.

I like dark beer, such poems
I love to hear. Poetry
is to me what color is to art.
It’s the butter
upon life’s devolving bread.

Poetry is to life as dreams
are to sleep, like light is for day,
poetry is rain ending a drought.

Life and poetry, infinity woven
together like two heads for sister.
A poem is my White Rabbit.

Life without poetry is sad,
dysfunctional and ignorant,
like breathing without air.
It lacks reason and purpose.

Poetry is as human as skin,
as thoughtful as mind, it goes
deep – beyond any abyss.

No culture is without poems.
The poem-less are like sailors
without songs or sirens,
poetry is a beacon for living,
it’s an eternity for the dead.

Not every poem is perfect, but poetry is
the ancient sound of a beautiful gift
waiting at the core of a newborn,
as the eye of a painter or a touch
of the sculptor forms art,
the words of the poets
are the pipes and drums of humanity.

Look both ways.
Be skeptical of all you see but shed foolish ignorance as soon as you smell it.
Mind the gaps. They didn’t put themselves there.

And this, just cuz I can…

Sammi’s Weekender #226 (yard)

Click graphic for Sammi’s Blog

My Fantasy

Like old, faded white, torn, photographs
faces with names I forget, family
I never met. Dead people still
physically and mentally part me.
Memories. Pulpy puzzles without pieces.

Forgotten years of backyard child’s play
where I fell for the girl next door,
Tootie, older than I at three or five,
my first fetish. Desires I never
understood or confessed till now.

Grass, dirt, fences, porches,
clothes drying, neighbors.
My first snowman.
I remember her name,
how I felt, nothing else.
No Tootie photo.

Look both ways.
The past equals no future.
Mind the gaps and fill them with memories of whom.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #218 (tessellate)

Click above for Sammi’s blog.

Geometric Memory

It’s one of those words,
comforting to hear and speak.

To say as tongues touch teeth,
not lips, a fun word to think.

Fifty years since projected
mosaics, as she asked,
“Does this tessellate?” We
learned patterned meanings.

No use for the word, till now.
Yet, I remember the day and teacher
who taught me how polygons tessellate.

Look both ways teaching and learning lessons.
Memories are forever but mind the gaps for irretrievable loses.

Sammi’s Weekender #215 (ink)

Click on graphic for Sammi Cox’s page and links to other works.

 

What a wonderful little word and inventive subject. I’ve written of pens and paints, but not of ink, before now. I even read the history of ink and how it was and is made. Forgive me brother and sister writers. I got so excited—I wrote two twenty-two-word poems. Like money and sex, only too much poetry is enough.

5K Years Since

Inks. Invisible,
permanent. India’s art.
Printing or pens.

Words on paper,
not electronically;
ink, a catalyst to creativity,
with words and art.

Lines of Magic

See the flow on paper,
watch lines, curves, and shapes
appear in history, law, art;
even in silent music on a page.

Look both ways for waves of imaginative creations.
Mind the gaps for innovation’s utility and art’s beauty.

The Greatest Gift

There’s joy,
in the smiles of others,
in visions of those we love,
people we care about,
that is where truest,
most honest, happiness thrives.

To see such dancing zest is to feel
the same in my bones, heart, and mind;
while tears of delight run down
my cheeks. When babies laugh.
Hope laden felicity. Even
an old man simply must smile.

To sing and dance
with those we love most,
to see and hear them rise
in rebirth to life’s glorious days,
to overcome fears and sadness
that come with what we call
our human condition.

How strange, that we may
give or receive no greater gift,
no higher prize,
no nourishing of the spirit,
no deeper love than to allow
others to be and to see us
high on being alive.
Even more, to here and now
let love swirl among us all. Hallelujah!

Look both ways for the joy of love.
Mind the gaps, but live and let live.

Poetry: Going Down? (NaPoWriMo day 30)

This final prompt challenged me to write a poem in the form of a series of directions describing how a person should get to a particular place. Sarcastic humor has my heart.

You may need to buy a ticket,
live a normal life, and do
human things, but they say
there is a way to Hell.
Who alive knows for sure? (Many)

To ensure arrival, you’ll have to die.
Before that, good intentions should
provide a smooth ride. You’ll wanna
mean well, tell the truth about what you think,
eat lobster and for God’s sake,
want what the Jones’s have,
or you’ll want one of the Jones’s,
or dislike the Jones’s as in no love.

Lie about the Jones’s.
Make a self-portrait.
Say “God damnit” or “Jesus Christ.”
Ya might say God’s name to no purpose (in vain)
Laugh at a George Carlin’s joke, or forget
the day it is when it’s Saturday or Sunday.
Work weekends, since Sabbat is negotiable.

Argue with Mom or Dad.
If ya marry the wrong person, get a divorce,
have an affair, kill them, then you should
find things warming up. Or just
be who or what you were born to be.

Having sex with anyone, especially
if ya likes it; or, if you’re shy,
having sex alone has been known
to get ya where you want to go.

If not, maybe just think about having sex,
or eat bacon (see the relationship there?)
Belong to some other religion.
Piss off the Pope if you can.

In the south, dance with a person
of the opposite sex, or better
dance with the same sex, except for girls,
unless you think of sex with her.

Drink booze or coffee if ya live
near a Salt Lake. Try pot. Try gambling.
Keep all your money (trash tithe)
Finally, you must certainly die,
but fear not, they tell me this is easy.

Look both ways for sarcastic humor.
Mind the gaps unless there are too many.
If so, look for the god of the gaps.
Above all, have fun and enjoy life,
especially if you’re Hell bound anyway.

Got My Ticket

Poetry: Winter Spring Water

Sitting on a bench
beside this small lake
on a warm, sunny
winter March day,
in Texas, not yet Spring,
but it feels good.

A golf course
on the opposite side,
with carts silently
moving, following, stopping,
going nowhere
to find a ball.
Golfers swing clubs,
ride to find balls.
Some call it exercise.
I gave it up
in college. No
regrets.

What is it
about the water
that calms me
and I want to
write a poem
about feeling
peaceful, calm,
listening without
hearing brave birds?

Soon it will be
Spring, and
I’ll return here,
to find calm.
A nice day, this,
in many ways.

Look both ways around the water.
There’s the natural and the not.
Mind the gaps where golfers lose their balls.