Reality

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 12, Metaphor for Murder

The prompt for day 12, a Friday, gives me the option to write a poem that plays with the idea of a tall tale. This could have been a mythical character, one I made up, or I could add to a real person’s biography.

My dictionary says play with means “to handle, change, or deal with (something) in a careless way.” It is a serious topic: crime, specifically murder. While I used mythical American comic book superheroes in place of real-life investigators/detectives during the reign of terror of serial killer Gary Ridgway, and the 20-year chase by said law enforcement, I hope my poem is not so careless as to upset or offend anyone.

Metaphor for Murder

Superman came, leaping, flying,
x-ray visioning. Batman came kung foo fighting,
as Wonder Woman and journalists
(Clark Kent?) did their thing.

The Green Lantern watched
at the green river shores as Aquaman,
and the whole damned Justice
Society (or League) of America
formed up
as the Green River Task Force.

Add J-Edgar’s FBI gang, and all
the cops—superheroes were
chasing a serial killer: one death,
then twenty-one, then forty-something
raped and strangled: all women
and girls. Forty-eight, then 49,
some say 71, maybe as many
as 90. No one knows.
Not even the magical
Justice Society of America
or any such task force.

Nineteen years later before some
non-superhero, a Danny DeVito-like
lab-rat scientist used DNA
to convict Ridgway (alive today)!

The limelight shined on, and
the superheroes garnered cred,
and confessions from
the second-most prolific
serial killer in United States history
(standing accorded by “confirmed” murders).

Look both ways at the merging of fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, truth and lies.
Mind the gaps for what magic science has yet to discover and journalism to uncover.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 11, Utterly Foolish

Howdy, Y’all.

A one-line poem is called a monostich. It’s a new form to me. For the 11th day of National Poetry Month, NaPoWriMo.net challenged me to write one (or more).

Utterly Foolish

Insanity: not exclusive to the mentally ill.

Look both ways because real saints cannot canonize themselves.
Mind the gaps for folly and error and always beware.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 8, What Just Happened?

And the beat goes on into day eight. The Napo dimension prompted me to write a poem concerned with an encounter or relationship that should not have happened; this due to time, space, age, nature, or any other reason.

I went sci-fi into a dream state of self-meeting-self. It happens because two materially different universes overlap during a time warp and interpersonal worlds mesh.

What Just Happened?

Time itself is not the same
from one universe to another.
Though parallel in thought—
they rarely overlap;
the two adjoining realities.
Yet we met.

Two mirrored persons
of numbered beings
sensing each other.

He was me and I he,
and for that brief period
of twisted time we could see.
I to the right and he to the left.

When you meet your true alternate self,
like a scratch on a record,
it is what it is and simultaneously isn’t.

As the overlapping of universes,
one sensory, real, and hard;
the other holographic waves of
semi-sensations are reflections of—
like near death experiences.

Communication is possible
as awareness is a reality
sensed telepathically.

Yet clearly
as self meets self,
if only
for a brief interlude,
as otherworld sparse realities
entangle, and no one knows why.

Look both ways and stare into the eyes of life.
Mind the gaps between dream state realities because
a thing can be true and simultaneously untrue,
where fact and fiction are confusingly entangled.

NaPoWriMo 2024, Day 6, Truth Hoax or Delusion

For my fifth poem of April’s first Saturday (it’s a long story), the NaPoWriMo prompt asks that I write a poem rooted in “weird wisdom.” This means something objectively odd that someone told me and has stuck with me ever since.

Truth, Hoax, or Delusion?

My friend, Elizabeth, is white, was raised Methodist, but has Carolina Low Country roots and claims hoodoo spiritual knowledge. She predicts her days by pulling runes from a bag or tossing tarot cards. She has all the New Age trinkets and talismans. She was Wiccan, claimed to be a New Age witch of some sort, then was Druid. I lost track after that.

But she is a poet from a very interesting tribe. One day Lizzy confided that there is a Big Foot (Sasquatch, Yeti, or Abominable whatever) and that she had personally seen it — all 500 to 1000 pounds on a seven-to-ten-foot frame, anchored to Earth by seventeen-inch furry but bare feet.

Her private testimony was as a passionate eyewitness. It brought a soft smile from me. I decided to ask how her Druid studies were going.

I looked up and became a believer.

Look both ways and be aware while hiking the trails.
Do not eat unknown mushrooms, carry a good camera, and mind the gaps.
For as the old Sherpa said,
“There is a Yeti in the back of everyone’s mind; only the blessed are not haunted by it.”

Taken by me at a coffee shop in Issaquah, Washington.

Friday Fictioneers for March 1st, 2024

Fleur Lind provided the prompt picture that Rochelle has used to pull us up (or in). Click on the pic to ride over to her majesty’s blog of purple purpose to read up on the few rules we play by.

Here ye, hear her. Her highness spoke. Now get your sweet nibs over there and write your story.

PHOTO PROMPT © Fleur Lind

Genre: Junkyard Fiction
Title: White Trash Redux
Word Count: 100

***

“Jayzus, Billy-Boy. What are ya gunna do with that old junk? You might get twenty-five buckaroos for scrap metal.”

“It cost more than that to pull it up, Roscoe. You’d never make it in the resale business.”

“Okay, recycling, then. Who’d buy it?”

“And ya lack vision,” said Billy. “It’s a vintage auto body with a story. People rebuild these things and resell them for mucho dinero.

Rosco asked about the story.

“I need to work on that. Maybe the Green River killer left a body in it or something.”

“Bull shit! You’re a lyin’ mother’s son.”

“Prove me wrong.”

***

 

Look both ways as a wary buyer.
Mind the gaps in the fenders, stories, history, and the salesman’s pitch.

Click on the truck salesman to read more fabulous stories driven by a little of lady from Pasadena.

 

And when he speaks his first words, hear this song.

Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt #350 – Vapid

Click on graphic for Sammi’s blog and more special vapid writes.

An Ordinary Rage

Ordinary wine works just fine
for normal people like me.

My sister-in law explained,
(about damn near anything
she liked): “it’s all the rage!”

Like mid-eighties, vapid looking,
overpriced, Cabbage Patch Dolls.

Ordinary is good. Strength
resides around the center of a bell curve.

If everything must be so damn special,
think about that, my friend—
because (then) nothing is.

Look both ways because weddings are wonderful and funerals are not.
The first is an option while the second celebrates death more than life.
Mind the gaps and be skeptical of outliers.

A Monday Quadrille at the dVerse Pub

Lillian is hosting today and prompts a 44-word poem that must include the word imagine (or a form thereof). Click here for the pub page or here to find more quadrilles.

Dip Stick

When I heard that our friend Jack
was charged by Olive
with checking Sally’s oil,

Sarcastically I said,
(with a semi-evil grin below a slow eye roll)
“Imagine that!”

I’d bet that Jack’s measure of success
was how often
Jack got that Willie wet.

Look both ways because some fools just cannot stop what they do.
Mind the gaps when you check your dip stick for fluid levels.

Sammi’s Weekender #348 (turmoil)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s page and more 53-word writings.

The Young Die in War

Into the turmoil of war, he went.
That young man in love with a dream,
showing his loyalty and patriotism,
what he can do for his country,
his tribe, his people, his gods.

Willingly, eagerly,
into the hazy war he went,
returning home bagged as meat and bone,
into the war he went.

Look both ways in school but keep asking, keep your mind aware,
why are we… why do we?
Mind the gaps in the destruction and rubble and remember why.

 

Sammi’s Weekender #342 (ocean)

Click it to visit Sammi’s page, to play along, and/or to read other 21-worders.

Two Earths, land and
ocean

perfectly disguised above.

Deadly.
Needed for life.

One Ocean. Four names. Only one.
Awesome is insufficient.

Look both ways when lost at sea.
Mind the gaps in the Marianas Trench.

The third line alludes to the song, “A Horse with No Name” by America (band).

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.