sadness

Justice Struck Me – NaPo 2025 Day Twenty-Seven

And so, today I was challenged to write a poem that describes a detail in a painting. My poem was to begin with a grand, declarative statement.

Who Was She?

It is never just the painting and the world, I know.
Each painting unites with each eye, each mind,
to make the art meaningful. Neither stands without the other.

I recall the overall picture vaguely, but it’s the setting
I remember well. An empty courtroom
except for a little girl standing with her back to me,

and a judge looking down from his bench. Authority!
I cannot see her face, but I know it is the face
of every child confronted with

the reality of the state, power, autocratic justice.
Fear. Helplessness. Hopelessness.
I felt all of that. Overpowering feelings.

A Miami artist opened emotions
hidden so deep that I denied them.
I almost cried. I moved on, hiding the real me.

Look both ways as you play the great pretender who will live forever.
Mind the gaps because somewhere out there,
an artist knows your truth and may tell you.

 

Say It and Play It, Billy – NaPo 2025 Day Eleven

Today I was to write a poem that incorporates song lyrics – ideally, incorporating them as opposing phrases or refrains (I didn’t). Though not specifically prompted, I felt like the poem should be a “loose” villanelle which, like the example, doesn’t rhyme (much).

Just to Feel Good for a While

To forget about life for a while
We hear the songs and drink the wine
and you got us feeling alright

Everyday life is one more trial
We feel abused by the tyranny of time
To forget about life for a while

We sit and we cry when we sing
Sadness and resistance break down
And you get us to feeling alright

We laugh until it hurts in a good way
Looking forward to this now all week
To forget about reality for a while

It seemed so much like just yesterday
When love, I thought, was here to stay
And your song and the grog got us to feeling alright

With midnight closing in
As we feel it and see it all in the air tonight
To forget, for now, about life’s pain for a while
And your song got us feeling alright

Look both ways on the hardest of days to find a break in the clouds.
Mind the gaps and learn the words of all the songs and poems you love.

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.

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.

NaPoWriMo 2023 (Day 9)

Today I was to write a sonnet. While allowed space regarding traditional sonnets, I was to keep with a general theme of “love.” I did not shoot for iambic pentameter, but I did manage ten syllables per line, except for the final two, which are nine and eleven, thus averaging ten. I made no attempt to rhyme.

I don’t think you understood love like me.
When I told Mom that you were a good man
Walking home after making arrangements
She balked. I understood and we agreed.

You had always been a difficult man.
With a world view no wider than the path
Of a tear rolling down my cheek or hers.
Coalminer tough and Irishman drunk.

Your mother died when you were only eight.
You were raised by a strict Scotsman father.
About him and you, you never told me.
He was your only father role model.

Now I wonder about me as a father,
And my wife as my children’s mother.

Look both ways in love and life.
Nobody is perfect and forgiveness is good.
But forgetting is optional.

 

*Click on the NaPo 2023 button to see the challenge and to read more poems (not all are on prompt).

Sammi’s Weekender #297 (key)

Click on graphic to go to Sammi’s blog page where more 71-word poetry or prose are key.

 

 

Whispering Cuts

Lost in a familiar sea of grave reality, my dysfunctional heart not yet surrendered, something of which none are certain. Worry descended like a pall over my will. Sadness has taken control of my soul. Well-intentioned, high-riding key influencers are wheedling me into their delusional corner. Life, lies, and what matters: shut down before I hit the ground. I ponder death, or better, conceivably, never to have been born at all.

Look both ways, but in the end, it is just the end.
Nothing more.
Mind the gaps of life’s traps.
Sometimes it’s your fault. Sometimes it’s not.

Sammi’s Weekender #288 (momentous)

Click the graphic for Sammi’s page.

Bygones

He didn’t marvel at that momentous moment.
After many years, she had become sanctimonious.
It wasn’t the stupendous vision he hoped for. It was horrendous, not tremendous,
seeing her now as portentous.

Look both ways but the past was then, this is now.
Find and mind the gaps for hidden reasons for change.

Friday Fictioneers for December 2nd, 2022

Kicking off the twelfth month of twenty-twenty-two, artist, businesswoman, swimmer, writer, mother, wife, sister, (I could go on), and our friend and fictioneer leader, Rochelle, has provided us with a peek out from Roger Bultot’s window with his inspiring photo as a bridge to creativity.

It goes like this. We look at the picture and write whatever story (beginning, middle, & end) we want. Easy, right? It’s doesn’t even have to be pure fiction. But we must prove our micro (or flash) – (non-)fiction bone fides by trimming our stories to any number of words under 101. Try it!

The directions are simple and available on Rochelle’s blog page, reachable with a simple tap, click, or press on Roger’s picture, like it was a detonator.

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

Genre: Espionage Fiction
Title: Truncated Bridge
Word Count: 100
***

Looking out the window, I felt stress. Ignorance fed by fear. After this job, I’d comfortably retire. To what? Sad.

The morning sunrise lacked hope. It was threatening. A foreboding bloody sky in a randomly meaningless universe. I didn’t care. It was time.

I lit what I promised myself was my last cigarette and sat by the window as I’d done hundreds of times before. When I saw the target on the bridge, I pressed the detonator button and watched the explosion. I always hated all the collateral damage. The news would blame the old bridge. Everyone lies. Everyone dies.

***

Look both ways to find happy endings.
Mind the gaps because that’s where the bridges collapse.

 

Click on Tom Hanks in the Bridge of Spies movie to read more stories based on Roger’s photo.

And for the music lovers among us, I present the Eagles singing “Seven Bridges Road.” If it works. I suppose I took the bridges thing a bit too far.

Friday Fictioneers for November 25th, 2022

For Thanksgiving Eve this year, Boss Rochelle, our lovely, multi-talented, family oriented, and artistically gifted literary ladyship guide has gone redux to prompt us all with a pic from the awesome Brit, Sandra Crook. Sandra’s photo has many prompting options, but I was mused into a musical mood.

Click on Sandra’s photographic prompt to jump off into Rochelle’s blog page from where you may climb back up with your own story based upon whatever inspiration you received.

PHOTO PROMPT (redux) © Sandra Crook

Genre: Parodic Musical Fiction
Title: Toy’s Lament
Word Count: 100
***

“Toy! Hey, Toy. What y’all doin’? Where’s that devil woman yer in lust with?”

Toy sang out, “She gone, Mick. Done left me in Spartanburg. Oh, Lawdy, Ima gunna buy a ticket till it run out of track.”

He pulled his guitar up and sang, “Gonna climb that highest mountain. Gonna jump right off. Ain’t nobody gunna know. That woman, Lawdy. What she done to me. Can’t ya see, Mick?”

I said, “Yer too stoned to climb up there. I’m sorry. We told ya she’s a black-hearted woman, man.”

Toy yelled, “Mean ol’ woman’s with Marshall. Never told me goodbye!”

***

Look both ways in love and lust.
Mind the gaps for tips, trips, and occasional slips.

Click on the Lovers Leap pic to find more stories based upon Sandra’s Photo.

My story is based on the early 70’s southern/country rock song lyrics, Can’t You See, by the Marshall Tucker Band, written by Toy Caldwell. Other allusions: Mick (Jones) from the band Foreigner (Cold as Ice) and Black-Hearted Woman by the Allman Brothers Band.

The original song by the original band.

Sammi’s Weekender #285 (thalassic)

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.