Word pool Wednesday(3)

 Ellie,at http://elliegarratt.blogspot.com/ hosts a Wednesday writing meme
On wednesady morning she picks 3 words for you to use one or all three to write a 30 word short story..wow is that flash fiction or what!?

This week's words are:
Use the words
Dragon
Fly
Knight

Boy this is fun

My first try:

She used to believe in a storybook knight
until hers took her to the Dragon Palace on their first date
and he slurped up the fly in his wonton soup

Quiet morning ....sad news last night...my mom's dear partner has crossed over the river Jordan...and we are glad his suffering is over. When I am in a thoughtful mood, I usually reach for poetry to find just that right feeling that is hiding just below my restlessness. Why poetry releases this in me..I don't know,but it does. Sometimes I find a poem that isn't related to what is going on inside of me..yet I put the book down satisfied...having been touched by a poet.

From the chapbook book:

Poems and doodles
by Mark Weber

I am a stiff,
rigid,unbending,inflexible,
resistant, up-
tight son of a bitch

this self-awareness
occurred to me while
at
my second yoga class


This started my day off with a chuckle
hope it does for you too.

Microfiction #37

                                                        Susan at http://www.stonyriver.ie/
                                                           hosts a weekly writing prompt.
                                                             Using the below drawing,
                                                             write using 140 characters

She did not need the dagger.

They had heard her sorrow

and had come to take her away

into the sea.

-102-

Handsome

This cat.....this old male rascal....one paw up,ear permanently bent from injury or frostbite....weary looking...but knowing where to show up early and wait for the drapes to be drawn. He counts on me for the food he knows he will get. He's been quite absent lately. Someday I know he will never come back, this free roaming feral cat. I think of the bums my mother said her mother fed at the back door during the depression. Now my grandmother wasn't a warm and fuzzy woman...but she had found it in her heart to have compassion on these homeless men struggling to survive. Today there are shelters and food pantries, but I guess during the depression it was every man for himself. Many left there families looking for work they never found, but rather traveled along railroad tracks camping out and eating what they could beg borrow or steal. When we were kids we used to dress up as hobos
A throw back to these out of work men who wore shabby clothes and carried what they had in a bandana or rag tied around a stick.
Maybe I should have named him Hobo...
down on his luck
homeless
and looking for a meal
at my back door this morning.

Magpie tale # 20

Willow, at http://magpietales.blogspot.com/ hosts a weekly writing prompt.

using the below photo write a vignette or poem

What I wanted was his bone handled,boar bristled shaving brush that sat very handsomely in an ivory porcelain mug, where no matter when I looked, there was always a wee sliver of soap left at the bottom. It made me think quietly to myself of the Israelite lamp that burned for eight nights without refilling. I believed in things like that because of him, imagined as a child that God kept the soap in the cup for him.

My step grandmother never thought to ask me if I wanted anything of his, but rather unceremoniously discarded everything into the trash or donated it to her church's bazaar.

She must have had a moment of humanity, because she went into the pantry and came out with his toothbrush,all that was left.

"I used it to clean the tile,but if you want it you can have it," she said.

I would have gladly taken it, but it held no memory for me; I never watched him brush his teeth like I watched him shave. I remember how he lathered up his cheeks and chin and then began distorting his face by moving his skin this way and that carefully shaving the soap and whiskers away. Then he'd slap on some Old Spice and bend down to give me chance to feel his smooth face.

"Better?" he'd ask me.

"Better," I'd tell him with a giggle.

Those special summer days when I was allowed to stay over at grandfather's we'd take afternoon walks in the park and stop on our way home at Schultz's Bakery for fresh bread for dinner. Later in the evening we'd sit on the back porch and he'd tell me stories that I'd heard before but never tired of hearing again, like my step grandmother did. In the late evening when I was in bed I could hear him winding his clock and saying prayers in German.

"Do you have his Bible?" I asked my step grandmother.

"You know...I do...but it's in German,you couldn't read it."

"May I have it?"

"I guess... you can have it, I was thinking of giving it to my neighbor, Mrs.Schuld's..she reads German..but I guess you can have it if you want."

She left the room and I looked around and there was nothing that reminded me of him, only the ghost of memories that I had brought along. She returned with a worn brown leather Bible whose gilded end pages bore the wear of his fingers. When I took it from her hands my fingers immediately sought those places,his fingers in mine.

"I'll take the toothbrush too," I said quickly.

As I left his house for the last time,toothbrush in hand, I fondled it in my fingers searching for that sweet spot where his fingers may have rested on that old tortoise colored handle,believing I would find it, and glad I had rescued one last bit of him from her.

Susan's Challenge

Jeez! I hate it when I'm late! I have just spent a half hour writing a story using 100 words
that must include Even-tramp-shuffle-lair-epic--and if you can, include the phrase till death do us part....
and I was too late to post it.......guess I better check Susan's blog www.stonyriver.ie more often
thanks Susan for the challenge..even if it never got posted
but here it is: why waste a good story
100 words

I was a tramp and even tramps can be lured into a lair of no return,shuffle into some one's arms who means
Until death do us part. My experience reads more like flash fiction than an epic,but it was no less frightening the night I met the man with the scar above his lip.
"How much?" he asked like every other john.
"For you, fifty bucks," I said, good sex dripping off of my tongue.
As I zipped opened his pants in the backseat of his car,a knife blade flashed and I knew it wasn't about sex.

boo hoo...I could have been a contender......ya think?

I have loved this poem for a long time.

For the Sake of Strangers
by Dorianne Laux

No matter what the grief, its weight,
we are obliged to carry it.
We rise and gather momentum,the dull strength
that pushes us through crowds.
And then the young boy gives me directions
so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,
waits patiently for my empty body to pass through.
All day it continues,each kindness
reaching toward another---a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path,trees
offering their blossoms, a retarded child
who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.
Somehow they always find me, seem even
to be waiting, determined to keep me
from myself,from the thing that calls to me
as it must have once called to them---
this temptation to step off the edge
and fall weightless,away from the world.


"STEP OFF THE EDGE AND FALL WEIGHTLESS"....Oh I think I have honestly felt this way a few times in my life.....not to the extreme that some would feel...
but a wishing away from pain and lonliness and grief..oh yeah...
But I have always heard that still small voice......
"and no matter what the grief,its weight.." I found a way to carry it
and found happiness and joy just around the corner...
but I know some who could not
So I try to live this poem
and be the young boy
-a woman
-a stranger
-a retarded child
-someone that always finds
-someone always waiting

It is a reminder that everything we do is important
and matters

My sister in law passed away last Monday and was buried this Monday. Once again the sisters in law from Arizona came in. But this time they stayed at the other sister in law....did I tell you my husband came from a family of 10? Ten little kids that were poorly cared for....and most of them have lives that reveal this awful hole in them that cannot seem to be filled. Buckets with holes...no matter how much goes in .... My husband had his way with dealing with his terrible childhood. He stayed away from it all as soon as he was old enough. He built a life of his own with me....a nice Lutheran girl who didn't know her way around the block and whose mom and dad were always there as I grew up....to care for me ...feed me, clothe me, love me....things that he didn't have...things he deserved to have.
He became a very successful businessman...wanting for nothing.....raising 3 wonderful children that make us proud. He was the parent he always wanted. So this past month with his family brought together again because of this illness and now death I am reminded of that bucket with a hole.
Somewhere along the way he was open to love...to be loved...a hard thing for a child not loved. But there were people who came into his life that touched his life just at the right time..made a difference to him .... showed him how to be a decent person...and somewhere inside of him was a survivor.....this I think was a gift from God. He tells our kids that Ward Cleaver was his dad...and John Wayne...you get the picture.
The funeral was memorable and painful,stirring everyone up to the old wounds and hurts. But it is over and all have gone back to their lives of their choosing.
My husband and I back to our lives lived joyfully and with love.
All we could do was hold up a lantern

Life in red shoes

http://lifeinredshoes.blogspot.com/

This blogger friend of mine deserves her own recognition

I don't remember how I found her, but I'm sure I was drawn to her

sharp wit and complete honesty about what is going on in her world

sometimes uplifting sometimes heartbreaking sometimes hilarious

but always engaging

Like her....I go for red shoes..now that I think about it

that is what drew me to her blog....red shoes

it takes courage and guts to wear red

I wore red only after I changed my life

and began being honest with myself about what I wanted in life

and honest about expressing it

which included red...shoes..dresses....red...

Her name is Bridgette, but I like to call her RED

'cause she is red personified

vulnerabilites and all

And I like the way she razzes me like a sister

so Red, I award you the first RED SHOE AWARD

for being you.....and that is a hard act to follow

..so there.

Since I have been blogging,almost a year now, I have met some of the most wonderful people. People who connect with that part of me that I expose on my blogs through my postings,parts of myself that I feel comfortable exposing to those of like mind who have found me. Parts of myself even my family doesn't know or get. Was that a mouthfull or what? Anyway, can one say you love people you haven't met? Love them in that human connection kind of way that is hard to explain to someone who doesn't blog, to someone who doesn't take the risk of exposure and self examination? I think it is hard for the non bloggers to understand.

Cory, at http://pinkdogwoodblossom.blogspot.com/ has given me the Kreativ blogger award....funny.. why is it called an award, it rather, I think is a heads up to fellow bloggers..."HEY..take a look over here at this blog...you may like it..I do...award"  Thanks Cory....I love you too and all the connection I have with you.

Now she wants me to expose myself even more to the blogworld by telling you 7 things about myself you might find interesting....

I don't find myself interesting is #1

 I do runes..#2

I love potatoes..cooked anyway..and I don't eat them because they are too high in carbs.. #3

The snake is my totem.....#4

I love mint tea..#5

I am very intuitive..#6

I am writing a book...#7

Now that that is over...without revealing too much....I want to share a few blogs I find interesting and read evertime they post. There are some incredible writers and artists out there who share that certain vulnerability of self that I love.

Elizabeth at http://thelastdoordownthehall.blogspot.com/

a most generous artist

Relyn athttp://comesitbymyfire.blogspot.com/

a truly honest woman who is all about love

Dar athttp://darsstuffings.blogspot.com/

a woman I wish lived next door to me

Costas at http://naturedigital.blogspot.com/ 

an incredibly talented generous and compassionate photographer

who is love with life

Susannah at http://mynameiszing.blogspot.com/

She is a true soulmate for me...a lover of poetry, quotes

and an inner thinker and lover of light,and shadows

Rick at http://efficientagony.blogspot.com/

He is poet.

He has the ability to make me feel

what he feels in the fewest of words.

His poet observations on life are incredible.

Stacy at http://goldenbirdknits.blogspot.com/

I love Stacy's blog because she has taken the risk to be open

she is a wonderful ATC artist and an excited knitter. 

I love the way she faints over yarn,like an artist at Dick Blicks

She loves animals and Pride and Predjudice...need I say more

Thank you Cory for always supporting my rantings and angst

and also my love of animals and grandkids

So maybe hop over and give my favs a visit

maybe you'll find a connection

  

somedays...actually more and more days than I care to count...I feel like the lilly that couldn't weather the storm and just gave up and bent..submitted to what was..is...was.....
No matter how beautiful
no matter how many potential buds to open
no matter that this too will pass
no matter that I did everything I was supposed to do
the storm came
and I yielded...

but I did not break
I'm flexible

Magpie tale #19

                                 Willow at http://magpietales.blogspot.com/ hosts a weekly writing prompt
                                             Using the below photo write a vignette or poem

I feel as though I am prostrate

on a knife blade,balanced

over cold sharpened steel.

If I breathe too hard or move

at all.

I will be sliced in half.

The weight of it.

If I do nothing

I still bleed

still suffer.

Which is worse?

The oak grip

of indecision.

Microfiction Monday #36

Susan at http://www.stonyriver.ie/ hosts a weekly writing prompt

Using the below photo as a prompt

write using 140 character

Be careful the road and the exits you take

they may just become your life.

-74-

Finn's a Hawk

Before I tuck myself in for the night, I remembered that I hadn't even mentioned that the Blackhawks #1 fan
brought them good luck with his lucky jersey........Stanley Cup Winners!

Magpie Tale # 18

                        Willow,at http://magpietales.blogspot.com/ hosts a weekly writing prompt.

                                            From the below photo, write a vignette or poem

Sharpened pencils stashed in a souvenier cup of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth was as far as she had gotten.

"Write about a childhood fear,"easy assignment, she thought at first. But that night after class her mind kept rolodexing the multitude of choices. So she began sharpening pencil after pencil, picking one up and touching it to paper, but nothing would release itself: not the time she got lost in the woods, not the time her mother lost her at Sears, not even the time the paper man scared her with his toothless grin. No, nothing wanted out. Maybe she could make one up. So she began writing about an imaginery time when their neighbor killed a baby bird right in front of her with a knife....oh,was this true, it felt so real to her. Try again.

 And as she began writing a tale about seeing a bank robber at the local gas station, she began to shudder. Gas station...blue shirt...name on the pocket.....She put down her pencil as her breathing became deep and fast....Mr. Ferguson...her deepest childhood fear. NO! she said out loud ...GO AWAY!...I will not write of you. But everytime she sat down to write she saw his wicked smile and felt his hot breath on her neck.

And she began:

Every childhood has one, doesn't it?....say it does. A person that still haunts the occasional adult dream. I had one. His name was Mr. Ferguson. He was a short lean man with stubble on his face. His pants bunched up in the back and he looped his long, worn, tan belt in front, until it hung like a snake, flapping in front of his zipper. The pants were gas station attendant blue and they matched the shirt which bore his name in embroidered script just above his left pocket-GEORGE. In his right shirt pocket were camel cigarettes and a lighter that he flicked...open/closed..open/closed...while watching us play on the sidewalk. His front pant pocket held a knife; I know,because he used to pull it out and say he was going to cut our ears off.

Mr. Ferguson would sit on his porch in an old rusty red chair tipped backwards, his left shoe perched up on the porch railing,smoking a Camel,listening to a little white transistor radio,cruddy with his hand prints from years of dirt,sweat and oil. When the Cub game was on he would yell at us. Our gangway went right past his porch and he became angry if we made too much noise.

Once in a while he would sneak up behind me and whisper into my ear,"I like you," his breath was hot and smelled of beer, and his hair, combed over the top of his head in thin, greasy, gray clumps.

I ran into the house and told grandpa about Mr. Ferguson talking to me. All I remember him saying was,"Stay away from Mr. Ferguson."

In the city the houses were close together, only a narrow gangway between them. That meant that the windows of the houses were very close,too. Mr. Ferguson used to stand at his back bedroom window and watch me walk down the back stairs, and when no one else was around, he would hold up his shiny knife, flick it open and gesture-slitting a throat.

Last night in my occasional adult dream, Mr. Ferguson smiled as he gestured with the knife and pointed at me.

Childhood fear, I have one, and it never leaves, not even after writing about it.

Micro fiction Monday #35

Susan,at http://www.stonyriver.ie/ hosts a weekly writing prompt

Using the below picture write something

using 140 characters

This week's prompt was difficult for me, one because I'm so tired,

but two, because there is so much going on in that picture,

and to write only 140 characters was a challenge.

Can't wait to read the others

She watched as Zoe slipped away

to the dark continent of lonliness,

ignoring the toy sent by her father

from his trip to Africa.

-138-

Mr. Darcy is eating pretty well, but still seeks his mother in my fingers.
His ears are up and his eyes are clear. But he was patient as I watched a
whole day of America's Next Top Model.....even my husband won't do that.
I am very tired and constantly washing dishes, bottles or towels and blankets
and feeding and cleaning this little one
not much time for much else...very needy little one.
Hope soon to really write something that someone might really want to read.

This mama stuff is hard. Too much food, not enough food. Every 2hours now every 4 hours....quiet/cry
rock me..snuggle me....put me in my box with a warm blanket.....up again trying to figure it all out.
Went to the vet today...baby doesn't want the bottle..been using a dropper......my eyeballs are ready to fall out
and I can hardly stay awake
He the vet says to use a syringe and give him baby kitty food every 4 hours....
fine...but now he screams when he's hungry...and wants to crawl up my neck and start sucking on it...
I rock, I caress...I cup his little head in my hands and talk to him...oh yeah, the vet thinks its a boy
Mr. Darcy
but not right now....he's more like bad kitty
But I wouldn't have it any other way
after all he's the one without a mom and has to put up with a dunderhead
shoving food in his mouth......
Good grief makes me shutter to remember how stupid I was when I brought
my first baby home...I knew nothing about babies
trial and error
nothing new under the sun.........
But I take hope in the fact that all my kids turned out wonderful
I think Mr. Darcy will too.

Micro fiction #34

Susan http://www.stonyriver.ie/

hosts a weekly writing prompt

Write using 140 characters

This week's photo prompt:

Really, Millie!

Nobody gives a horse's tail

about your new dye job!

They're here to audition me

for America's Next Top Model!

-129-

anyone want to take the 1:30 am shift? How about th 4:30?

My friend Mary has been a dear and been helping rescue and spay/neuter/release feral cats with kittens in her Townhouse community. It seems that someone dumped a litter of kittens and now they are dealing with the consequences. They thought they had gotten the last of the cats fixed..when low and behold one lone kitten showed up one day. No mom that they knew of was around..the other cat had been fixed already.
 I agreed to take this little one. The vet says it is 3 weeks old. ..So I have been feeding this little cutie every 3 hours.....and I look it!   Life....take it as it comes.....and always with a loving heart.
And bless Mary and her friend Vicki for being such wonderful caring women to care for the least of God's creatures.

Magpie tale 17

Willow at http://magpietales.blogspot.com

hosts a weekly writing prompt

Using the below photo write a vignette or poem.

Here's mine.

Preparing the ground for a vegetable garden my shovel hits upon something large and hard in the soil. I strike it many times trying to move it and when I am unable I drop to my knees and begin scraping away at it with my glove clad hands. I scrape and scrape and the object begins to take on enormous proportions and I wonder in my task what could this be? It has a shape. As I scrape harder and faster I am shaken to see that I have uncovered what seems to be an eye and a nose made out of concrete. My heart begins to beat faster and my hands dig and scrape furiously. I scream when I uncover the other eye, and the matched pair take on the look of fright.

Oh Lord, I call out as I, in a state of shock, unearth the mouth of this concrete being...

a child with a horrifying look on its face, a mouth wide open in terror. My hands shoot back in quick response to the ghastly image before me and I fall backwards onto the earth behind me. Dare I take another look? Could it be a grave marker that I have uncovered or some evil object buried to contain its evil. The smell of burning wood suddenly seems to stick its finger up my nose and I become aware that night is beginning to  fall.  I look around and the woods nearby take on a sinister appearance.

Don't go out into the woods at night!  I suddenly remembered my grandmother's warning. There's wood witches out there at the top of trees waiting to find children out in the woods alone at night.

 Since childhood I have lived with a fear of dark woods and now I find myself paralyzed  unable to move away from the concrete child below me.

My mouth suddenly goes dry as a bone and I know I can hear my heartbeat in my ears... pounding away as the sound of cackling rises out of the woods. I stare down at the terrified face below me and I hear another voice, small and panicking...Wish yourself stone or she'll eat you. It is coming from the hole.

What do mean? I shout out excitedly...what do you mean?

As I lean closer to hear something more, I feel the sharp stabs of something in my back and blackness flows over my eyes in heavy fabric and the sensation of movement unnerves me.

Too late, I hear a haggy voice say, too... late

and I see myself rising above the trees

into the dark woods.

Magpie Tale # 16

Willow, at http://magpietales.blogspot.com/

hosts a weekly writing prompt

Using the below photo

write a vignette or poem

The evening over, her married life begining, I sit in the kitchen to gather my thoughts with a cup of hot tea.
Never again will she enter my home as before. I cast a glance at the pair of brown sling back shoes that she left here after last night's rehearsal dinner at Fortuna's. She never was good at putting her shoes away. But now I am happy to see them laying there, a moment frozen in time,one shoe on top of the other. I can see her using her right foot to slip off the other.
Before she went up the stairs last night she turned to me and started crying and came over to hug me, no words spoken,but we talked with our hearts, as mother's and daughter's can do so easily. Our hug melted into a hold and neither one of us wanted to let go.
I lift the hot cup of tea to my lips and think of her first pair of MaryJanes,then hold the cup to my mouth breathing my breath into it crying softly, letting go.


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