All By My Selllllf

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I am among the first people to arrive at my job in the mornings. Usually, there are one or two others on my side of the floor when I enter and all the lights are turned on.

Not this morning…

Photo of an office hall, emergency lights on only.

I was the first person in on my side of the floor today. This morning only bright daylight, yay longer days at last(!), and the emergency lights greeted me. It was an eerie sort of quiet and I liked it.

Still, knucklehead that I am all I could think of was:

  • it looked like a first-person shooter game where all is quiet before the zombies pop out of nowhere at any moment,
  • the chorus to the old Eric Carmen song “All By Myself” and
  • clearly I was in serious need of coffee.

My loneliness, and potential active zombie bait imagination, lasted all of maybe seven minutes before the next person arrived, breaking the spell.

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It is Day 3 of the March Slice of Life Writing Challenge for 2020. Stop in and see how others are slicing it up today!

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Where Do They Go When There’s No Place To Go?

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All mass transit riders know from hard learned experience, if it is rush hour never get in the empty subway car. The reason it is empty is always because it smells. Sometimes it is the person who could not get off the train in enough time to toss his or her cookies in a trash can. Unfortunately, the majority of the time it is because a homeless person has taken temporary residence there.  The smell can be anywhere from mildly tolerable, meaning if you’re sitting at the other end of the car you may not even realize you’re sharing an enclosed space. Or the smell can be simply unbearable, that the entire car reeks the stench so completely, that the moment the car door opens at the platform you’re running for another car when it hits you. Again, during the height of rush hour it is pretty easy to tell.  However, if you are on the train before it has had a chance to fill up and/or it is early in the morning, as it is when I am commuting to work you can get caught off guard.

This morning was one of those mornings.

I enter through the center doors and the car is only a third full. I am walking towards my preferred place to sit when a gust of brisk winter air stops me. It wasn’t the coldness of the air, today was pretty temperate weather wise, but the scent of the unwashed that traveled along it that stopped me. Sure, enough sitting in the corner by himself was one gentleman. At first casual glance he seemed harmless enough, but on that second look I know what I’m dealing with. I promptly u-turn and move the other side of the car where the smell doesn’t travel. Or so I thought. As the doors open at each stop that same brisk winter breeze served to remind us whose space we took over this morning. Unlike when unexpected guests ring your bell and you’re forced into being civil even though you can’t wait until you can get them out of there, he made his displeasure known.

With our slow but steady encroachment into ‘his’ space as the train filled with more people. In alternating turns, if someone sat too close, he would open the manual door between cars to let the cold and air. Remember the closer you were to him, the stronger the stench, especially with him holding the doors open. Almost always the result being the offending encroachers gasping for air and quickly moving away. He would then slam the doors closed, sometimes using his foot to slam it into place if they did not quite connect. He would also go into mini diatribes on how we needed to get the hell out. After all, we commuters were the uninvited guests in his living room.

It is amazing how we commuters can adjust and fine-tune out focus in such situations. I was no exception as I read my book, he behavior becoming part of the white noise of the subway PSAs and other station announcements. Only when someone ask if he had left, did I note that the car had been quiet for a couple of stations and he was indeed gone. Still, his presence was felt as no could stand, let alone sit in that corner; his scent lingering on the breeze long after he was gone.

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Had a busy day, but better late than never right? It is Day 2 of the March Slice of Life Writing Challenge for 2020 – come see how others sliced through their day.

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1 Down 30 More to Go

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It’s March and time for the Annual Slice of Life month long writing challenge. A slice of my life each day for today and the next 30 days. It’s the 13th annual challenge: I have participated in several before, but last year I let life get in the way did not even try. Truth be told I had already told a couple of people that I would not this year. Yet here I am.

I am in the process of finishing the final touches for a book of poems that is about fifteen years overdue. The finished product will not be in my hand come the first day of spring as I hoped. It is finally ready to go to an editor which is further than I’ve ever gotten with it before. My next big step after that is the copyright process. I am crossing my fingers to at least have the first galley in hand by the end of April at the latest. Wish me luck!

In the interim I have a couple of out of town trips scheduled in the next few weeks. I should be able to get a few blog posts out of that right? Yes, I am a glutton for punishment to take up this challenge on top of all of this, but it is called a challenge for a reason.

1 down 30 more to go!

It is Day 1 of the March Slice of Life Writing Challenge for 2020. Stop in and see how others are slicing it up!

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Better Plans

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I did not want that I should fall in love
For it seemed Fate had better plans for me
It was a bother not mine to speak of
I did not think I could fall in a love
Hard as the bedrock yet soft as a glove
That such love could be returned you see
But now I know I have fallen in love
For it seemed Fate had better plans for me

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Today on dVerse Poet’s Pub Frank challenges to write a triolet or a poem that closely resembles a triolet.

So, what is a triolet? A triolet’s characteristics are the following.

  1. The poem has 8 lines.
  2. The rhyme scheme is abaaabab.
  3. The meter is iambic tetrameter.
  4. The first, fourth and seventh lines repeat.
  5. The second and eighth lines repeat.



Filled

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I have lived
An outside life
That contained
Laughter, tears
Rage, joy

Yet have felt
Nothing
For so long
I no longer
Remembered
The dearth of true feelings
Within

I knew not my own
Emptiness
Until I began
to fill myself
with loving
you

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dVerse Poets Pub | Quadrille #97 – Filling the Page

At dVerse Poets Pub, De Jackson (aka WhimsyGizmo) is asking us  – to find some poetic fun with the word fill and faithfully formulate a quadrille – a poem of exactly 44 words (not counting the title).

In Memory of Birds Chirping

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The boy liked the sound of the birds chirping in the garden. He looked up into the trees and raised a hand to shade his eyes against the dappled sunlight that partially blinded him through the verdant leaves. He can just make out one of the birds on a branch.

He smiled, the bird sounded happy, but how would he know? The boy knew the normal daily sounds of the pigeons and sparrows, but were they happy or sad sounds? His young mind felt it was a sign of happiness. but was not sure. Maybe when he was older and heard more he could tell.

He knew that would not happen. He had studying to do. He was roped into sitting in the garden listening to birds because his mother had insisted that he take a token break and rest his mind or not have dessert with dinner.

“I am five! I do not need to rest my mind. My mind is perfectly fine.” He had huffed at first, but now happily sat on the bench and listened to the nature around him.

He then remembered the loud panicked caw of a scared bird.

“Mum, remember last week when that crow somehow got its wing wrapped around the clothesline? We had to…” the boy turned to look at his mother. Only she was not there.

The boy gawked at the old man that sat next to him on the garden bench. His face was such that the boy knew the man was handsome when he was young and he had aged handsomely with it. The old man wore a very nice suit under his trench coat. His age spotted hands rested on an umbrella that looked vaguely familiar. He looked up at the birds in the trees as well. Sunlight glinted off the sparse silver strands on his head. The gentle smile on the old man’s face slowly faded as his head turned and a pair of warm brown eyes settled on him.

“Who are you?” the boy asked.

The warm brown eyes in front of him filled with concern. “My…?”

“My name is Mycroft. It is only two syllables. If you are privileged to know the first, please be so kind as to make you way to the last.” The boy said haughtily.

The old man had reached out to touch his hand, but the boy snatched it away from the stranger. “Who ARE you?”

The old man quickly looked across the way behind him and the boy followed the gaze. Two men and a woman sat at a different bench behind them. The woman stood, her kind eyes narrowed as she approached him, the two men rapidly followed her.

He tried to run but his body was so slow to move as though taped to the bench. The three quickly caught up and restrained him by the arms. The old man cringed as he apologized, tears had begun to mist his eyes.

When he felt the prick of the needle in his arm, he had a moment of clarity and remembered.

Middle age, brother mine. Comes to us all. He remembered saying to his brother once and now thinks:old age too.

“Sundowning…” Mycroft whispered to himself.

Mycroft knew this was not the first time. At nearly a century in age, he was still surprisingly strong and had once sprained a nurse’s wrist in his panic between minds. This time the staff got to him before he had become violent. It was happening more and more. The greatest mind of his generation and it was slowly being chopped away in dementia.

Mycroft reached out a hand as his eyes found the teary eyes of his husband.

“I understand Gregory. I love you.”

Greg gave him a wavering smile as their fingers touched over his umbrella. Mycroft heard the birds chirping as the sedative took him.

The boy liked the sound of the birds chirping in the garden.

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The Sunday Whirl – Wordle 441

wordle-441

Use the following 12 words in a short story or poem:

sign – token – mind – form – gawk – mist
across – tape – chopped – arm – cringe – rope

I Like You Wild

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Don’t care if you’re white,

black or browned

Jasmine sweet

or nutty all around

The long or short of it

On plates of paper or china

You are wedded character

Valencia to Carolina

Some like you mild, nice

But I like you wild, rice

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Today at dVerse Kim wants us to go WILD with our Quadrille, a poem of exactly 44 words, not including the title. The poem must include the word wild. My muse went a little silly with it.

dVerse Poets Pub | Quadrille #96: Wild Monday

Quinta Essentia

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Painting by Lynne Baur

Painting by Lynne Baur

From ashen body starts the tale
In life’s water
I, a virgin rabbit of yin
In mercurial Kanya – become
From cradle to cane I breathe
In summer breeze, winter gale
Until I am naught to El Sol
But dusty memory of soil itself
When all is said and done

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For dVerse Poets Pub – Gospel Isosceles asks us to be “In My Element” and do a little homework and discover what some of these cosmologies say about me.

I pull from:

  • The Elements Earth (ash-soil), Water (amniotic fluid), Air (breeze/gale, Fire (El Sol- the sun),
  • Astrology (Virgo – Western, a Yin Water born in the year of the Rabbit – Chinese, and Kanya ruled  by Mercury – Vedic), and
  • The Bible (ashes to dust)

I break me down to a quinta essentia* of self.

*According to Merriam-Webster: The word “quintessence,” is the offspring of “quinta essentia,” a word for the purest essence of a thing.

Of Wolves and Men

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The more I think about it the more pissed off I am at Jonaegon Starkaryen.

That single head nod and keep on walking bullshush was just wrong.

Single Head Nod:

That’s what you do when a colleague you don’t particularly care about one way or another and you pass each other in the office corridors. That’s what you do when you and a complete stranger first see each other because you both wound up the same party in the same oh, it’s one of a kind outfit. You silently respect their exquisite taste, because you know you look better anyway, but you’re still kinda pissed. That’s what Grandma does just before she reach for that belt/chancla/switch YAPMTBAU!MV – your abuela’s preferred method to tear that bangela asset up(!) may vary.

I mean JSAT didn’t give a one-armed “Yo, my dawg, go keep chill with Giant Milk T and them wild bois for a bit a’ight?” hug, not even a little scritch-scratch behind the ear? It’s like JSAT didn’t give a fist pump – er – bump. I know he’s from The North, but that’s cold. That’s not how you treat your I Ride My Steed as You Run Along Beside Me or Die Fur-bro, Bro.

I mean what’s an imaginary tv direwolf that’s a one-third of the size of the book direwolf gotta do to gets some R-E-S-P-E-C-T up in this joint?

I kind of hope that when He Who Knows He Should Have Kept His Trap Shut From The Fam Just A Little While Longer finally comes back, Ghost pulls a Nymeria on him the way she did Baby Gurl Shank doo doo doo doo doo doo .  So Ghost pads up to We Are Family But I Gotta Say Nay Auntie Nay-Nay-Nay and be all like “What up my man? You and me – we always gonna be chill, ya know. I mean ’cause you peeped me way back when when your fam and mine was about leave my cute fluff butt behind and I could’ve DIED and shush out for real though, but I get to live my best life up here now. The North Wolf Remembers too. Still, I ain’t be ’bout that South of the Two-thirds Wall life no more. So… um… yeah – Deuces!”. Ghost then pulls down his Horatio Caine Shades of JusticeTM  (the YEEEAAAH! ’09 Summer Collection was fiyah IJS), while Dionne Warwick’s ‘Walk On Bye Felicia’ (the original title), mysteriously plays out of nowhere in the background as he Crip walks away as he sips a cold brew (Starbucks or Stella Atois – you choose). But I haven’t put that much thought into it yet.

I mean I know CGI is expensive, but our boy was done dirty ya’ll! 💔

 

Your Tears

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Your tears
Glistened
Shone like diamonds
That streamed your face
In silver lines
They were balm
Elixir
Hot and heavy
Salty and yet so wet
Just like you
An ambrosia of
Your pain
And your arousal
Tasted
In a kiss yielded
From your lips

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Tonight at dVerse Dee (whimsygizmo) asks us to kiss off a quadrille, a poem of exactly 44 words, not including the title, and use some form of the word kiss.

 dVerse ~Poets Pub | Quadrille #73
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