Photo Challenge #101 February 23, 2016 – Being You

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Image: Sparrow – Four Photographs by Victor Rakmil

 

I wondered what might happen

If you suspended yourself in my life

If you took leave and settled in.

Would you wake in the midnight hour

Distressed from vivid dream

Seek me out for comfort

Relax into my arms.

Would you say it’s all too much.

You need a space that’s just for you

A break away to gather your thoughts.

I want to watch you fly my love

Be the woman I see each day

Free from horrors and nightmares.

Where your words will flow

Your laughter rings out

A place for you to be you.

For when you look down

Upon your own reflection

You’ll see yourself

Smiling back.

Then touching my cheek

No words need be said

We’ll know you are here.

 

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/photo-challenge-101-february-23-2016/

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FFfAW – Week of 02-23-2016 – Day Dreamer

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Image: Ellespeth’s Friend.

Jack hated being number four on the work team.

It meant he was the last one up the scaffold and that meant looking up at Bill’s rear end and that sight was enough to put you off morning tea.

It also meant you were on the receiving end of every chip that fell, every grain of dust they generated and every expletive that came from Bill’s mouth, which was every minute of every day.

Today they were on the north wall of the Council Building and as Jack straddled the scaffold his mind wandered to more pleasant things like his new wife and the end of the day.

Jack was a daydreamer and at that moment he was thinking of his wife making tonight’s promised meal of broccoli-beef.

That’s when the lights went out.

In the months that followed it was touch and go for Jack. But he woke up, his wife by his side; his dinner she said was still in the oven.

 

Written for: https://flashfictionforaspiringwriters.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/fffaw-week-of-02-23-2016/

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Quadrille 3 – Bubble

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Blow, pop,

Squeals

Chase, jump

Puff, pop.

Your infectious smile

Urges more and more

We blow into our mouths

Kisses hidden in each pop

I catch all I can.

Resting we laugh

A moment of childish delight

A bubbles simplicity

Makes all the difference.

 

Written for: http://dversepoets.com/2016/02/22/quadrille-3/

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Wordle #98 “February 22, 2016” To Feck or be Feckless

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This week’s fun words: Sleek, Elocution (a person’s manner of speaking or reading aloud in public: the study and practice of oral delivery, including the control of both voice and gesture.) Decapitate, Twine, Clear, Perfume, Feckless (ineffective; incompetent; futile: having no sense of responsibility; indifferent; lazy.) Falter, Wry, Lumen (Optics. the unit of luminous flux, equal to the luminous flux emitted in a unit solid angle by a point source of one candle intensity. Anatomy. the canal, duct, or cavity of a tubular organ. Botany. (of a cell) the cavity that the cell walls enclose.) Bundle, Lavender

There was something so very sleek about her as she moved across the room. She had the ability to all but glide when she walked. Added to that was an alluring perfume she wore, a haunting hint of lavender that resulted in men swooning in her presence. It was quite the phenomenon to see grown men behaving in such a way.

Her parent’s elocution lessons had helped to create the monster she was. For what gave her away was the wry smile forever on her lips, the sort of smile that suggested never leaving your person or wallet within reach of her.

Should she corner you then whatever feck you had, quickly became a what the feck and feckless you became. It was always clear to everyone that you might just as well have stripped yourself naked there and then let her have her way with you for you were truly feckless under her influence and many was the man who wondered if his feck would ever return.

One man was brave enough to falter a second and paid the ultimate price. She circled him with her twine of desire before reducing him to a piece of human flesh once she had decapitated all thoughts he had of resistance.

In such moments of despair it was not uncommon to find a man passing what he hoped he never would through the lumen of his bowel thus disgracing himself wherever he happened to be.

But this aside her threat to mankind was enormous.

When you combine sleek delivery per courtesy of expensive elocution lessons, a wry smile to melt the heart of any man bundled together with a perfume that would allure any susceptible man, is it any wonder that the rate of fecklessness rose considerably during her active years.

Such was her influence on men that to be feck went out of usage as feckless became a word far more common in the modern vernacular.

 

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/wordle-98-february-22-2016/

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Writing Prompt #147 “Collage 17” – The Answer

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“The answer,” she said. “Is within the statement.

Its how you made them feel that is so important.

You may have said profound things

You may have done great work

But when they think of you they’ll remember how they felt in those moments when greatness was achieved.”

It was times like this I treasured.

Those occasions where after I’d whinged about the dilemma I saw myself in she’d come and stand beside me, her eyes scanning the screen taking in the issue and then with that twinkle in her eye and her flashing smile she would give me her ten cents worth which so often ranked as priceless in my estimation.

“Do you remember the concert you did in 2007?” she asked “Where we packed the hall, had people on the edge of their seats because the band was really pumping. Do you recall the looks on their faces, the enthusiasm of their applause and the comments that flowed after? Those people all went away feeling great, they’d witnessed something wonderful and I bet they remember that night still today.”

I remembered that night but I also remembered the long path to get there. Like so much in my life it didn’t just happen. It took as she used to say, time to let it play out.

Playing in one horse towns to three people, the long dusty drives between gigs had paid off that night.

I remembered how I felt, elated, over joyed and hugely satisfied that I’d made it too that point.

We talked about it at length and while we did she did what I loved so much, ran her finger across the back of my neck until I reached up and took her hand and pulled her into me.

I knew that my success was not all my own doing.

I had always made a point of including her in my career, never really taking any decision until we had discussed the pros and cons of it.

So today I took to the keyboard and wrote about how we feel when we are witness to something that impacts on our lives.

I was lucky I knew, even though my followers had witnessed my greatest performance and felt so good about being there, I was in turn lucky to have married a woman who every day made me feel good and who every day left me with so much to remember.

Yes I thought the answer was all about “How you made them feel.”

 

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/writing-prompt-147-collage-17/

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SoCS Feb. 20/16 – Contraction

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J’a know that where I live we speak like this all the time.

We shorten as many words as we can lay our hands on.

Jahavagoodweekend is one we say a lot. For not only do we contract a lot of words we also run many together.

Which probably explains why when you get to hear me speak you’ll look at me in puzzlement and say: “Could you please slow down I haven’t understood a word you’ve said.”

It reminds me of the quizzical looks I received on my European Tour when my American fellow travellers would look at me in wonder at what I had just said.

To me ya see it makes sense.

I mean is it my issue that youse don’t get what I’m sayin’?

But I do concede that as well as shortin’ stuff we do speak without opening out mouths, which is a safety device we have developed to keep the flies out of our mouths when we say anythink.

So whatch think about that?

 

Written for: http://lindaghill.com/2016/02/19/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-2016/

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FLASH FICTION FOR THE PURPOSEFUL PRACTITIONER: WEEK #8 – 2016 – Knowledge

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Image: http://publicdomainarchive.com/public-domain-images-royal-path-life-vintage-book-circa-1880-green-gold/

 

The opening sentence for the February 19th Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner: “There it was. You could see the corner of the folded yellowed parchment sticking out of the torn lining of the battered book.”  

The children had circled the object taking in his ragged appearance, the protruding parchment serving to whet their curiosity.

The red haired girl spoke up asking what it was.

“It’s a book,” the old man announced.

“Do you plug it in?” asked one.

“No,” the old man continued chuckling. “This is a relic of long ago when people read from paper books such as this one.”

“But what does it do?” asked the red haired girl, looking intently, wondering what she had to do to make it move.

“It contains knowledge.” The old man replied. “ Inside is all the information held in the minds of men.”

“They didn’t know much then,” said the girl as she hovered above the book her mind trying desperately to make it move.

“Compared to now, no they didn’t.” said the old man.

“So why are you showing us?” asked the first boy.

“It’s a reminder that knowledge came from somewhere. We know what we know because a long time ago men gathered knowledge into books and that knowledge was passed on to others.”

“But we are born with knowledge.” said the red haired girl.

The old man looked at her and understood her arrogance and remembered a time when he too thought such things about the past.

 

Written for: https://rogershipp.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/flash-fiction-for-the-purposeful-practitioner-week-8-2016/

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Music Prompt #30: “Land of Confusion” by Genesis – Edges of Our Mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlBIa8z_Mts

 

It was the pat on the back

The hint of a genesis that inspired

Many to seek success blindly

But crumble in confusion

When rockets flew,

Bombs exploded.

Just another day

Of liars and cheats.

Did they ever contemplate

The magnitude of their actions?

The greed of the few

The sacrifice of so many?

“It will be alright,” they reassured

As beside me the boy died

His life sucked from him

By the new and lethal virus

Once said to be harmless

But allowed to mutate

Like the world around me

Into a monster with an entourage of demons.

Before long we didn’t know up from down.

I’m living in a wasteland

Gone with a bang, never a whimper,

Where jealousy and gluttony

Are a way of life.

Morality is a distant philosophy

Survival of the fittest

Again rules the planet.

There’s no tomorrow

In a grotesque existence

The future is now

And the world we live in

Is shaped by hungry men and women

Caring little for the freakish ones

Left to beg at the edges of our mind.

 

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/music-prompt-30-land-of-confusion-by-genesis/

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Tale Weaver #53 – Helping Hands – Working with My Son

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Image © morpethroad

It was to be a day of catch up and bonding and we had the most enjoyable day taking in the city and the fine cafes that can be found down narrow alley ways crowded with shoppers and people just out to take in the finery of the city.

We’d been to a few galleries and treated ourselves to a delicious lunch when at the days end he said would I like to work with him on some screen-printing.

Never having done any from scratch I said yes as the studio he worked in had a huge screen-printing area complete with real screen-printing tables.

He gave me some books to select a design from and I knew what I wanted for my first attempt was something simple.

So having selected a design we had to make the screen, easier said than done.

The cutting out I needed his help with and after several attempts and his expertise we finally had a screen we could use.

He taught me the screening process, hands and arms in the correct position, just the right amount of ink and away we went.

He decided that we would put the design onto cloth that would be used as a tea towel. We made six all up and with each one we decided to make the lips a different colour.

 

The end results are as above.

I was pretty pleased with what we achieved.

The idea of working with my son was something at the start of the day I never contemplated.

But it was his suggestion and he also got a kick out of working with his dad.

We have subsequently worked together on an art project involving a mural on a wall, which was also lot of fun to be involved in.

I am lucky in that my son and I get along so well, we tolerate one another and he forgives my obvious lack of artistic ability.

I look forward to my next opportunity.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/tale-weaver-53-helping-hands/

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Hump Day Poetry – Week 2 The Cleaner’s Day Off

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The cleaner’s day off

Had at last arrived.

To a fanfare

Picnic baskets were packed

Holiday clothes the order of the day

No scarves, no buckets or mops

Most of all no dusters

No polish and definitely no shining.

They gave not a toss

To the gathering dust

The creeping tarnish

The frowns of those for whom they cleaned.

This was their day off

The one-day in the year

Where thoughts turned from work

To those of the rich and idle.

They relaxed under wide umbrellas

Ate the food of kings

Sang their songs

For somewhere over the rainbow

Lay their promised land.

 

Written for: https://ionanerissa.wordpress.com/2016/02/17/hump-day-poetry-week-2/

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