The Blank
clutching the heart
you say it is
plain
as vodka day
that the hole
is big
and dark
flocked
gapping black
a mouth crimson
lining
burning lack,
a dying sound...
But no
I counter
no, no, looky here
slapping the paper,
an infant, metaphorically
the hole, as it were
strictly speaking
is off white,
a smoking gun
07.23.2024
The biggest hole in my life... challenge @dctezcan
The Game Faces
In the game of Life
I's goes first
public and showy
like I want
I need
I do
as the affirmative
Then it's me's turn
as in me too
in private
a second's guessing's
and then, it's you
you, you, you....
as in you fool
you idiot,
how could you?
I told you!
me and you--
but it wasn't me
f*k you
and you is the voice
in the rear of the head
in that most secret purview.
07.07.2024
The game of life challenge @dctezcan
Internal Architecture
Words will not sub
nor stand off from
action
that ought
attach like shadow
before or after
at the core
of literary
Character
the moral
an exclamation
point !
in the story
like a pill
hard to swallow
while
digital blue prints
roll dimly
from the plotter
in chalkline
everything seems
plumb
and we'll see
eventually
in time
the cracks
in the foundation
and plastered walls,
years later...
when the builder's gone
07.03.2024
Building Character Challenge @Last
The Strange Case of Dr. Anger V. Nostalgia
He was no longer seeing his face.
His arms and hands flew up involuntarily to his damp brow, then graying temples. He wasn't gazing passed himself, into the half manifestation in the darkness of the glass. He was peering behind, an invert, and it was nauseatingly painful, looking back like that. It felt like the stab of a migraine, inside.
He hesitated a moment at the sink as if about to vomit, then turned abruptly like an automaton donning shoes and overcoat. He walked out without shutting, never mind locking, the door. He'd be back no doubt.
He'd made this loop before, and there was something about it he couldn't remember. Like a moment of blackout. Grey space. No, a moment red. Red, and it washed over him. He was back, scrubbing his hands raw at the sink, shifting in his quilted housecoat and terry slippers.
The dry towel was gentle to his hands, and he pressed his bifocals back on.
06.30.2024
Nostalgia v Anger... which is more Dangerous? challenge by @dctezcan
All the Rage
On Feb. 1rst our young friend Rubric received his ration of sugar for the month. He regretted momentarily that it was not a leap year. Then he dropped one piece into weak tea they were also portioning out amid the family.
Ida spied his sugar, along with their brother, just a year younger than her, Kuba who everyone called Kubby, in short because he was short, stout, and in a word chunky.
This would not do.
The sweet would soon be the source of bitter irritation and argument. The eldest could already hear the surfacing of high pitched, infantile whimpering: I wannnnt somme...
That very night, removing the sugar cubes from the cool dark hiding spot with utmost stealth and precaution, he worked alone in a dim lit corner. With a sharp tannery needle and slender thread, he strung his sugar together, one at a time, 3 x 3. Three times, and he made the sign of the cross each time, for fear of breakage, or of his siblings waking, but mercifully the sugar did not crumble, and everyone slept.
Soon he had three squares of nine. These he ingeniously strung to each other, so that every row rotated left/right and forward/back. The children had, most fortuitously, some salvaged colored papers in a box under the bed. This he swiftly extracted, and soundlessly cut into small squares sized to cover each exposed side of the sugar plane.
He moistened the thin paper with lukewarm water and adhered it by the stickiness of the slightly melted sugar. Red on one side, green on another, then blue, yellow and white would have to suffice for the remaining side.
He set it to dry behind him on the floor and dozed.
In the early hours, with everyone else still turned with their back to him in bed, he was delighted to see that the little papers had stuck, and everything still twisted as intended on the little nylon thread he had strung through with the long piercing needle and knotted off.
The twist of the cubes made a little shuffling noise in the dim light as the sugar crystals scrapped slightly against each other. Ida's eyelashes flittered and a sleepy arm reached out from the mattress, almost touching his sleeve: "Whaaattt is itt?"
"Our new toy," he said and gave the 3 x 3 panels a good twisting left/right, back/ forward, till all the colors were very well mixed up and very visible now in the dawn that was creeping in through the window over their bed, with Kubby still asleep in a clump to her far side. In truth, he wasn't old enough to play. He could, by himself only sleep, eat, and waddle about, and do what two-year old's do terribly best: get into everything.
Ida sat up and took the toy, a flushed look of amazement and joy across her face. She could not remember when they had a new plaything, having been hunkered down here for reasons she could not understand. She did not know what a bomb threat was, except that it was Bad.
They could hear their parents getting readied in the small room adjacent. Mother leaned a head in and gave a wayward smile, thin and hopeful, and went to set out some rations for breakfast. Then Father stood in the door, in his work clothes, and immediately picked up on the novel object. He put out a coarse hand and Ida placed the toy in it without hesitation.
"Well done, son," he said gruffly, and behind the flash in his eyes a calculation. Father knew the value of an idea. "I'll hold on to this."
A mixture of pride and dismay filled the twelve-year-old. He did well, but he'd lost his treasure. And now, as Father walked out with it, Ida wailed inconsolably in tantrum, toddler as she was, even if soon going on four.
It was Kubby who quickly found it.
And Father who found him: sucking on the cube, the colored papers stuck to his cheek and teeth. His fingers a sticky sweet guiltless mess.
Somebody got a whooping.
Father spent the next nights with Rubric reconstructing the toy from wood and paint.
The family made a fortune after the war, and Rubric somewhat made a name for himself, with a little help from Kuba.
06.29.2024
Mysterious History challenge @AJAY9979
Alone
is deceptive
as that (by-my-self)
is inaccurate
the 'we,' dispossessed
and self, associative
at best ...
my mind's
so far gone
I cannot begin
to say how long
or how come,
save the distance
between my
and self
has become
protracted,
and when it
happened
well
I'd
also like to know
and that thought
will not leave me
(alone)
06.27.2024
Alone challenge @dctezcan
The Funnies
hell
it seems
at every
mid weekend
we've made
some choices
and wonder
about
"Choice"
like
Sans
Andreas
fault
lines
we've straddle,
as if these
were horses
and we were
green face
nightmare
jockeys
on whom
we've placed
bets upon,
and all
life's worth
is riding
on...
That is the
illustration of
Existential
Dread.
06.26.2024
God, The Universe, and You Part 7: Existential Dread
Astrolabes & Push Pins
Stars and shadows
are good,
to go by
cross my heart
I've never learnt
the sky yet
it's always
with...
day and night
disciplinary
flow
and not
to go by,
our navigation
of Life...
the way it lies
left and right
moving
beside
and within
imperceptibly
deceiving us
with visions
we can't
quite tack
...as stars
in the shadows
of our eyes...
06.25.2024
"Stars and shadows ain't good to see by." Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn @dctezcan