Click this graphic to read more from Sammi’s page.
I found thalassic in Robin Devoe’s Dictionary of the Strange, Curious, & Lovely. I wrote an acrostic insult poem with more rare words from the same book. It’s Monday. I started this Saturday morning. I’m tardy.
***
Tin gods abound worldwide. Practiced prevaricators Hemipygicly half-assed witlessness, Adonized avatars in their own lost and low minds, Lardaceous lickpennies of limicolous living with Acherontic soulless evil demonic spirits, those Snollygosters comfortable within any snobocracy, Slubberdegullions of the lowest order or less, Imbruted by nature without redemption. Cacodemons with sycophants.
***
Look both ways when searching for right.
Mind the gaps for the tin gods because they disguise well.
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.
Monday or Tuesday is
the time to be sick.
Those same days are best
for having hospital
admitted surgeries.
Weekend emergency rooms can
get crowded and are often
staffed for far fewer sick people
but what are you gunna do?
Friday night I knew. Damn!
Saturday morning I was
off to an urgent care clinic,
a relatively new ubiquitous
phenomenon in the health care business,
because I was not sick enough
for an ER, and no routine
doctor care would be available
until Monday, if then.
The nice, large, waiting room had maybe
five people, not all patients,
queued up as walk-ins,
first come, first served, maybe.
“Have a seat, Mister Bill. Someone
will be with you in about three hours.”
Urgent? Right.
I read, wrote, and people watched.
Moms with kids had long waits too.
A lady using a walker was whining
and moaning, kind of lost.
But she was soon packed off to an ER by EMS.
It was a classic civilian version
of hurry up and wait. Yet,
I confess to enjoying the sights,
people watching, and the quiet reading time.
Three hours later
I was off to pick up a script.
Look both ways on weekends for doctors at the beach.
Mind the gaps when you clean-catch into the cup.
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.
Click this to open Sammi’s page where you’ll find more fun prose and poems run amok.
Small Battles: Big Wars
We
would rather f-bomb
or recite angry litanies
of forbidden witchery
than speak the word: cancer.
It’s when few of one’s
trillions of cells run amok,
it’s a war fought with
knives, rads, and poisons.
Look both ways to see your own beginning and end.
Mind the gaps, fight the battle, die with dignity.
John Updike, best known, perhaps, as a novelist, was a poet. This short poem of his is one of my favorites regarding life and death. He died of lung cancer in 2009.
Click the superimpose graphic to link up with other excellent wordsmith 56 wonders.
Contemplative Satisfaction
My memories are superimposed,
each one over the others,
repeating forgotten things
like reflections in a window
to my past.
The sights, sounds, and sensed emotions
I can no longer feel, hopes and desires
of mine in a younger man’s clothes
when I danced and played
not knowing about the treasures
that are my memories today.
Look both ways and overlay the tastes and aromas of each memory.
Mind the gaps of confusion as you look through lost time for meanings as we live into the answers to past questions.
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.
Our Literary Journey 