He tried to get up and run, but she used her power to pin him to the ground.

His body lay on the floor still and lifeless.

She had crushed all of his bones.

He was certainly not the first... he would not be the last.

#EIDOLON.©

27/10/2019, sunday.

“Sherie,” Tom begs, “Sherie, come back.”

Sherie keeps walking, her sheer, black skirt swaying with her hips as she walks towards the shoreline.

Massive cliffs loom behind them, and one stretches out into the ocean. Atop it sits a red and white striped lighthouse. As the sun sets, seagulls fly in through a window, the hinges too rusted to keep them shut.

“Baby, please just hear me out,” his strides increase.

She stops and he freezes. “Could you just shut up for a minute,” she snaps, spinning around. Her arms are crossed, causing her red crop top to rise. Her sunglasses still rest on her tiny nose. The setting sun colors her hair light brown.

Tom strides until he is a foot away from her, “Okay.”

Sherie slides her sunglasses up over her hair, pushing the long strands out of her face. She glares at him, her darks eyes like two caves a colony of wild bats could flee from at any moment, “Is that all you have to say?”

“I thought you wanted me to shut up,” he says, reaching to take her hands.

She doesn’t let him, “I stopped. So spit out the halfhearted apology. Let’s get this over with.”

“There’s nothing halfhearted about it.”

“Then why is this the millionth one I’ve gotten from you?”

”I’m a different man,” he stutters.

“See, you even have a script. God, Tom, I don’t know why I even keep giving you a chance. It keeps coming back to this.”

Silence. A wind blows through her skirt and hair. He wants to kiss her. He knows she won’t let him.

“Ok. I won’t apologize then,” he says, quietly.

Sherie laughs sardonically, “Gotta give you credit. For once you’re actually being original.”

Tom doesn’t know how to take her words, “Can’t we just go home and talk about this?”

A wave rolls up onto the shore and over their feet. They don’t move.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Fine then. We’re just going to stay here all night.”

I fictionally imagine myself as a serious writer. When I sit down to write I perch a colorful parrot on my shoulder and wear a plumed pirate hat for creative ambience. I even cajole a temp secretary to take dictation naked while I’m in the shower. All my best ideas come under a hot, pulsating shower. She sits nude and dry, outside the shower and scribes in shorthand my spontaneous concepts and shampoo epiphanies. It’s easier for me to recite to a secretary au natural when I’m all lathered up than it is for me to sit for hours in a leather chair, staring at my computer keyboard waiting for my literary muse to finish drying her hair.

My creative writing process is like watching a silent movie without buttered popcorn or milk duds and woefully stab at composing lines and dialogue for the two-reeler’s title cards. A boring, mind numbing, mental stop-action pantomime if not for my eccentric herky-jerky analogies, similes and metaphors. It’s mental evisceration with a kabob stick. Thinking of the naked secretary helps sooth my concept carnage only marginally.

I haven’t always pursued writing, I used to create visual art, sketches, paintings, sculptures. Most of my artistic escapades are now in the sifted remains of corporate take overs, foreclosures and the refuse bins behind hotels. I’ve been to the creative mountain top... you just can’t find any forensic evidence to corroborate it. I also dedicated 30 creative years to the music business, doing all the hard work associated with mastering a difficult instrument while practicing the music industry’s requisite, predatory self-promotional mannerisms. My reward and Gilead balm for all the sling-and-arrow wounds suffered was the dim delusion of fame and glory about the penniless legend in my own mind. Ah, when giants walked the earth.

The practice and discipline of writing on the other hand, means something. Writing, a craft whose chiseled-out prose gives birth to revered words then printed for posterity and intelligently designed to elevate both society and culture to a higher plane.

So now, in the fall of my life, I’m exercising the last vestiges of my impulsive creative urges through writing. And I’ve recently discovered something important about my last tango with word-smithing: there’s no such thing as mediocre writing. It’s not a game of horseshoes, grenades and nuclear reactors where close counts. No indeed, there’s only good writing and anything else is just plain CRAP.

But I said to this guy, over an early breakfast of pancakes, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, nay but a shovel in my calloused hands. One must clean many stables before they sing Herculean praise of your labors.…

#Challenge #humor #fiction #flash fiction #muse #writing #lampoon #satire #william calkins

They used to think I would be an artist.

Who?

Everyone.

I have always had a somewhat odd view of the world,

A stange belief in magic,

And a strange knowledge of things,

I had no right to know.

I grew up too fast,

And was believed to be older than my young age.

A horrible child,

With a wonderous view of the world.

Painting,

Coloring,

Writing stories.

Everyone thought I would be an artist.

Even I did.

I wasn't exactly a carefree child,

But I loved beautiful things,

And I had beautiful ideas.

Dancing everywhere,

Loving to sing,

Constantly doing some sort of art.

I have a creative mind.

But I was scared to dance,

Because I feared how I might be judged.

I sang only one song,

For many years.

Bring me to life.

I felt it was an accurate description of the feeling of the world.

My mind is creative,

But my body doesn't remember how to be that way.

I say I'm bad at drawing,

And I am.

But there was a time,

When I was actually decent at it.

A time when I was able to accurately display my view of the world.

I lost that part of me when I went to school.

I never felt welcomed.

I actually can't tell much of the few years after that.

Just some vague memories.

Some pain.

Some things stolen,

That I might never get back.

I keep trying to regain that part of myself.

I'm trying so hard.

But it isn't working.

Some part of me still believes I should be an artist,

I kind of am,

I guess.

I write.

But it took me years to get to a place,

Where I actually could.

And it's not the same.

It's only a piece of what I lost.

And I'm afraid.

I want that part of myself back.

And I'm not sure that's possible.

Everyone used to think I would be an artist.

My mother is scarily creative.

I used to be.

But I don't think I am anymore.

I don't think I will get that part of me back.

And that's hard.

It makes me feel like crying.

And if anyone ever asked me,

If it was possible to lose yourself so much,

You actually forget how to do the only things,

That once made you happy,

I would say,

"Yes. Gods, yes."

And then,

I would get quiet.

And I would feel like crying.

I might manage it.

Art...

Used to be...

Everything...

To me.

I didn't know what I would do without it.

But now,

I am without it.

And I don't know what I have done.

I think,

Maybe,

I am a bit lost.

But I can't do it.

I can't get that part of myself back.

I used to think I would be an artist.

For a time I was.

That part of me has been stolen.

But I still feel like I should be that person.

But I can't.

Because I lost that part of myself.

And I don't think I can get it back.

I was gonna say “It’s not you, it’s me,” but the more I think about it, it really is you.

You can keep the towels and sheets, but I will have someone come and pick up my dishes and silverware. I’m really sorry I ran over your cat.

Oh, and by the way, your sister and I are flying to Reno to get married. We’ll send you pics.

Everything is dark.

Smells foul—reeks of lost ambitions and broken dreams

In some kind of box

Don’t know if I’m dreaming or not

Sounds and swirls echo

Whispers of Everyone I ever loved

and Everyone I didn’t.

I want light

To feel it–the soft warmth of early morning sun

To see it–sunbeams split through leaves

To be it–the only escape.

But there is none.

Just me

and my ghosts

that I took with me

my ghosts

that I keep in me

my ghosts

that are me.

Just me

and my ghost

somewhere at the bottom of the morgue.

My reaper’s little drummer boy 

Made of bones and string

Dressed in red and green

Beating his drum to the march of death

Fire scorching his ankles on the bridge to the end

He beats his drum to the march of death

Hair falling and eyes burning left with no breath

His hands stitched with hair, creaked and cracked 

My little drummer boy 

Dressed in the garb of red and green flames.

Marches to the beat of his own drum,

His carrying song beats through Eden.

Down the hills and through the fields

All the way to the throne.

Hades judging the souls tipped an ear to the rhythm.

No pain would save the dead

From the rhythm running through their bones

My little drummer boy

Falling apart at the seams

dropping and crumbling

His ashes and bones sinking to the river 

His drum rolled to the throne leaving silence in its wake

Persephone tears were forsaken for his making

his path all the way to death’s door.

Oh my little drummer boy 

How you leave ashes in your wake

This is a piece I wrote about a year ago and had someone else post because I didn’t want to share it myself. I’ve changed a bit over the year and whether it’s good or bad I’m going to post it because I like it

No app for that so it goes obsolete.

Proof thats in pudding

but the whole world is dieting

and that gelatinous

sugary heap of truth

sits ignored on the untouched shelf of storage at one of our major grocery chains.