Was It Worth It?

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The prince sighed at the tragic tableau before him.

Two mothers sobbed against their husbands whose own tears fell in silent grief. All bemoaned their part played in what has come to pass. The two men glanced at one another, but neither could sustain the visual contact. Their hate too old. Their pain too fresh.

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?” he looked to each of the four red rimmed eyes, but none could return his stare.

“It could have begun here. Grown into something beautiful had you let it. Instead, it ends with them and with you, now the last of your line.”  

“Was it worth it?” He spread his arms to the ones before him, but each knew the gesture encompassed several others no longer there to speak. “Capulet. Montague. Go bury your children.”

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dVerse Poets Pub | Prosery: The Waste Land

At dVerse Mish tends bar and welcomes us to another round of Prosery where we are asked to write a very short piece of prose that tells a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, in any genre of our choice.

Since it is a kind of Flash Fiction, there is a limit of 144 words. It must include a complete line from a poem in the story, within the word limit.

Punctuation can be changed, but it is not allowed to subtract or insert words in between parts of the original quotation.

Today quote is from T.S. Eliiott’s The Wasteland “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?”

In my mind Romeo and Juliet are the branches that would have grown from the stony rubbish of their families’ hate had it been allowed to take root.

Two Sides

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All day and night
I want of you – I
Want so deeply that “want”
Is too trite a word – this
To me, my very breath – is to
Be in this love – to be
Yours and yours only
Forever and a day

What you ask of me, I ignore it all
Yes, I submit easily, but I
Don’t want what you want
This moment is all there is
This is all I want – to
Have you now – to be
Yours and only yours
But only for tonight

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dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Poetics: For the love of puzzles . . .

Lillian is hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse Poets Pub where she shares her love of how one word leads to another in crossword puzzles and their cousins in style: Acrostic Poetry.

In Word Acrostic poetry the first word or the last word of each line in a single stanza poem spells out a message.

Lillian has created an Acrostic Plus where the first letter of each line in the first stanza spells out one or more words, while the last letter of each line in the next stanza spells out something different, and so on, but together there is one message.

We’re challenged to either write a poem that in some way relates to a puzzle, includes the word “puzzle”; or try our hand at an Acrostic poem. I combine a Word Acrostic with Lillian’s Acrostic Plus to tell a familiar tale of Mars and Venus,

And I Wake In The Morn

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And I wake in the morn

In your arms

Your heart under head

Its beat in my ear

Sounds that lulled me true

Then woke me anew

Among decades and scores that pass

The sounds are now quiet

And I wake in the mourn

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dVerse Poets Pub | Quadrille #134: We {heart} poems

De Jackson, aka WhimsyGizmo, lets us have a little heart-to-heart in the form of a quadrille.

The Quadrille poem must be exactly 44 words in length – not including the title and use this week’s prompt word heart.

No More

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Once cast aside in a dusty mire
You cleaned and placed it by the fire
To take it to a purpose higher
My heart’s desire, My heart’s desire

The iffy thought now deemed revere
An ideate I have no fear
Its impish voice whispers so clear
Within my ear; within my ear

The blade left there for me to see
The flames illume its true decree
You know that I won’t let it be
It calls to me; it calls to me

From thought to act it came to be
The one swiftly incised is me
Drenched within the scarlet spree
I smile with glee; I smile with glee

I take purchase upon the floor
And leave a gift you can’t ignore
You’ll find me smiling by the door
But I’m no more, no, I’m no more

This went unexpectedly dark. Among the Muse it is usually Calliope and Erato who have my ear, but this time it was Melpomene who called loudest.

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dVerse Poets Pub | Poetry Form: Monotetra
Grace tends the bar and challenges us to write a Monotetra.

The monotetra, a poetic form created by Michael Walker, must be written in tetrameter, either iambic or trochaic, approximately 8 syllables per line. Each stanza is a quatrain (four lines), that is monorhymed. The fourth line of each stanza must be a dimeter, or 4-syllable phrase, that is repeat twice.

The stanza structure:

Line 1: 8 syllables; A1
Line 2: 8 syllables; A2
Line 3: 8 syllables; A3
Line 4: 4 syllables, repeated; A4, A4

This poem can be as short as 1 or 2 quatrains and as long as a poet wishes.

The Cause

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Image of man crying in sepia tone

I had watched
In waning sunlight
How it reflected
In soft contours
As one sun
Became another
And yet another
That set
In each watery stream
Until in darkness
I walk away
Too cowardly to admit
That I
Am the cause
Of those tears

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dVerse Poets Pub | Quadrille #132: Your Poem Theme: Stream

At dVerse, De Jackson, aka WhimsyGizmo, hosts bar for Quadrille Monday, where we are challenged to pen a poem of precisely 44 words (not counting the title), that must include the weekly word prompt. This weeks prompt: Stream

Whispers From Erato

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Muse whispering warriors ear

Take me now; I have need
Lexis to which I must heed

Ethereal whisper in my ear
Diaphanous sight before my eyes
Gossamer touch against my skin

The first preface to our prologue
Vellum void of phrase and prose

Let me bathe you in ballad
Let me shower you in sestina
Let my sweet imagery of nothing
Become your metaphor of everything

Let your periphrasis wrap me in symbolisms
Let your euphemisms surround me in similes
Let our soul be one for the discourse of rhythm
for the dialogue of reason, for the diction of rhyme

Let us fall down in the shadow of the valley of meter
Let us rise up on the rock of ages and iambs
Let us bask in the most of incremental repetition
Until only the onomatopoeia of our couplet is left

Diamante drops on parchment and papyrus
The final edict to our epilogue

Gossamer touch against my skin
Diaphanous sight before my eyes
Ethereal whisper in my ear

Lexis to which I must heed
Take me now; I have need

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dVerse Poets Pub | Poetics: Who’s your Muse?

Today Ingrid tends bar and invites us to choose our muse. I choose Erato, muse of love poetry and lyric poetry to let her sweet whispers scream everything. For when she  has need to speak I take heed to listen, and write… 

The Day She Rises

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shnikt, shnikt

Metal strikes mineral in rhythmic space.

shnikt, shnikt

She is a lean shadow, sat alone. Silent tears shed blending into the briny tide that approach and recede her salt licked feet. Only saline tracks that frame her cheeks tell tale they existed.

Dawn chains to dusk, none saw her arrive, nor leave.

shnikt,

She has just been… there…

shnikt, shnikt,

Stone in one hand, blade in the other is no game or dream for her

shnikt,

We watch and wonder what on Earth caused this refrain

I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Words unspoken yet heard by all nonetheless

Not what they seem, the tears screen not her melancholy, but her rage

shnikt, shnikt

And all we know is: the day she rises will lead to the night someone falls

shnikt, shnikt

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dVerse Poets Pub | Prosery: Finding Ms. Zora Neale Hurston

Today Lisa introduces the pub to one of my favorite writers, Zora Neale Hurston and challenges us to write a piece of prose that is no longer than 144 words, sans title, and must include the line “I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” from Hurston’s “How Does it Feel to be Colored Me” in World Tomorrow (1928). This can be flash fiction, nonfiction, or creative nonfiction, but it must be prose!

The Sunday Whirl | Wordle 510

refrain, lead, shed, dream, frame, space, recede, seem, screen, game, lean, chain

MLMM Sunday Writing Prompt, July 18/21 – The Quiet One

The Final Bullet

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“I summon you, the beasts of war!”

One soldier suddenly screamed into the darkening lazuline skies nearly obscured by smoke and flame surrounding them as they huddled in a found trench.

The tokens that had moved around maps in the plotting and paper rehearsal of their campaign in the sterility of the general’s compound, had not lived up to its gritty reality.  If 100 things could have gone wrong, it seemed that 90 of them had. Watson again pushed away the mental reminder that this mission would be his final bullets for a while; he would be on leave in a few days. Having been back-turned twice, this mission was one for the Fail column. Those thoughts did him no good now when the few of them left were simply trying to survive long enough to report this failure of a mission.

“Janssen! What the bloody hell are you doing? Shut it!” Another soldier, Corporal Murray, hissed.

With his rifle raised overhead to the sky in defiant punctuation, Lieutenant Janssen continued his rant.

“Come! Cast your shadows upon my flesh. You think me afraid? Come then! Come find a gallant feast of fear in which to dine and learn that Janssen is a poor man’s buffet indeed for I am not ear-marked to be such food stuffs!”

Captain Watson’s head spun from Janssen’s outcry, to Lieutenant Rupali,  a meter on his opposite side in a clear do you hear this? expression before they ducked from a spray of stone and debris from another blast close to where they were. Blasts that were getting closer and closer as the enemy closed in.

Captain Watson wished he were surprised. He had always felt there was something off with Janssen but had kept it to himself. The man was a decent soldier, if high strung. When Janssen, what they at the time had thought was jokingly, fancied himself a modern-day Shakespearean tragedy in the making and started to sprinkle Elizabethan speech into his words, Watson knew he was no longer the only one who had begun to worry as signs of that off-ness increased. It explained Janssen’s language as the mission and his mind started unraveling. 

They have been on the run for three days straight as they wove their way out of the gauntlet of enemy territory. At times there was no choice but to quickly fish through the belongings of the slain, picking up ammunition and whatever supplies from the fallen who no longer needed them. Leave no man behind, an abandoned concept in their desperation for survival. Watson felt the weight from the collected dog tags of those he could get to that he carried in his med pack.

He knew they were so close to being saved. Their last radio communique before it was shot out had them no more than a couple of kilometers from the rescue approaching on the other side.  The last thing they needed was attention drawn to themselves. It was clear Lieutenant Janssen had not got that message as another grenade blast went off far too close to them. Watson knew the next one would strike true. They had to abandon their position.

“Come you spilled seed! A worthiness for only the lead of my bullets to eat!”

There was no ambiguity about it, Janssen had gone mad; the screaming man rising to his feet now put them all at risk.

“Jesus Christ! He’s going to get us killed!” Rupali swung his rifle around, his intention clear.

It was Rupali’s outcry that made Janssen turn and lock eyes with his fellow lieutenant. Watson and Rupali knew then that any chance at communion with Janssen was gone a moment before he turned and started screaming at a run when he was brought down.

“No!” Watson yelled as he scrambled out of the trench, the doctor already swinging his med pack around for use.

Some part of him registered the increased firepower as his people began to engage the enemy to give him a chance. He ignored it as he made his way to Janssen.   

He dropped to his knees, his mind already in medic mode as he began to triage. It took a moment before it registered that he was too far from his patient. It was another moment before the agonizing pain that caused him to drop his med pack from the bullet that tore through him made itself known.

But Watson knew it was bad. Very bad.

He did not notice that their rescue had finally arrived; his thoughts as he slipped into unconsciousness: Please, God, let me live. Don’t let this be the final bullet.

The Sunday Whirl  | Wordle 509
Language, Eat, Fish, Flame, Feast, Saved, Risk, Unraveling, Spray, Shadow, Stone, Off

Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie | Wordle #249
Gallant, Ear-Marked, Sterility, Fail, Stone, Plotting, Rehearsal, Punctuation, Ambiguity, 100, Back-Turned, Communion

Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie |First Line Friday: July 16, 2021
“I summon you, the beasts of war!”

There

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There in the shadows of the night
There within the glow of city lights
There are many things that can affright
There are just as many that excite

There, a riot is about to ignite
There in the shadows of the night
There, helicopters with floodlights
There, to televise the blight

There, someone chooses wrong over right
There, someone catches the wrong person’s sight
There in the shadows of the night
There, pray battles prey come stroke of midnight

There, under a sky dark and finite
There, where the moon is the only light
There, secret lovers meet to unite
There in the shadows of the night

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dVerse Poets Pub Tenth Anniversary |
Meet the bar with Chant poetry

Tonight as we continue to celebrate the Tenth Anniversary here at dVerse Poets Pub, Björn prompts us to use our voices in a chant.

Here in a mix of a-starting with the same word as opening rhyme and b- closing each line in a tight monorhyme, I also revisit the Quartern form for an assist.


A Waste of Shame

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A still of actor Rupert Graves from the movie “A Waste of Shame” (2005)

Oh, such an enticing pose, sir, in which to be found!
Aye, the wicked thoughts that stir within me abound
Your appearance is a sight to be seen only under a moon
Yet it is within El Sol’s domain you chose to make opportune
Your countenance cool, yet your eyes smolder
Such is the shocking lure of temptation I shoulder
Scandalous man! How you lay there, your shirt askew
Putting a shameful want to me of many things, tis true
But know me well, you do, mon cher, I am no shirking flower
I dare take up your gauntlet cast, in light of this noon’s power
From your vantage point I know you see, I will not be damned
To waste a voyage on a vessel that is so fully manned
For it’s my turn to taunt sweet incubus, to shake your calm repose
And doth dare you to match me now in shunning of your clothes

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This little romp started with the above photo of actor Rupert Graves which inspired the first two lines cheekily expressing my thoughts of the pose. Because my mind is never far from the sewer, Muse then imagined an equally period piece attired lover entering the room and being greeted thusly. The rest of the poem is is what followed from that male lover’s point of view. I know my brain chose a male lover for the sheer scandal of it given the time assumed in the by the clothing, my love of Mystrade fanfiction, and Graves’ slight affection of period pieces.

A google image search then revealed that the photo is a still from a 2005 BBC TV movie “A Waste of Shame.” I had not heard of, let alone seen the movie, but I thought it a perfect title for the utter shamelessness of the poem and used it.

It was two days later when I posted the photo and poem in one of my writing groups, that I was reminded of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 129: Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame.” I know I had read the sonnet, but that ages – as in 30+ years – ago and had forgotten about it. Having read Shakespeare’s sonnets in high school in the late 70s-early 80s, where such context most certainly was not discussed, I was not aware of William Shakespeare’s rumored fluid sexuality; nor the mini scandal Sonnet 129 evoked as being perceived to perhaps incite homosexuality. The sonnet was certainly not a thought in my mind when I imagined the male lover walking in on this delightful tableau.

In the classic cases of “too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence” and “the universe is rarely that lazy”, I looked up the movie in IMDB. It turns out the full name of the movie is “A Waste of Shame: The Mystery of Shakespeare and His Sonnets.” A movie, which going by the summaries, with Graves in the titular role, hints at that sexual ambiguity along with what and who inspired his some of his more famous/infamous sonnets.

So it turns out Muse and I was not far off after all.