I was reading another piece from Stella in which she describes (eloquently) her unrequited love for a poet. I thought it appropriate (though maybe it wasn’t) to deliver her a response by way of a warning.

This is what it looked like.

****

Beware the man with velvet tongue

Resist the love song that he’s sung

Ignore his deftly crafted lies

Repel his lips. Avoid his eyes

Look instead into his soul

Into the void. The deep black hole

He waits. He preys upon the meek

He hungers. Feeds upon the weak

 

Beware the poet, weary friend

Defy the trickster with the pen

Don’t touch his words,  don’t read his mind

It is a mask he hides behind

Don’t let the juggler near your heart

Don’t give the sorcerer a start

Don’t let the fraudster near your bed

Find a novelist instead

***

 

I wrote something last night in response to something much better from Stella but decided to give it a little life of its own for no better reason than to show you kind people that I am still here (or that some of me is) and to acknowledge the reality that one day I won’t be.

At an intersection

On the highway

My reflection

In the mirror

Not unfamiliar

Similar

To something weird

I feared

In my dreams

But could not understand

Because nothing is planned

Or foretold

Of getting old

This consequence

Of being born

Suddenly torn

Between turning the page

Acting my age

Or pretending

It’s not ending

And driving on

Through red lights

And dark nights

To find at last

My own past

Coming back

To greet me

June 20, 2019, prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story about having to wait. Who is waiting and what for? Think about how the wait impacts the character or the story. Go where the prompt leads!

(It doesn’t lead far, in my case. But how far can one be led in 99 words?)

She waited.

It had been three hours since she had hurriedly torn a sheet of paper from her dairy and scribbled her number upon it. And when, reaching out awkwardly and thrusting it into his hand, she had felt an electricity passing between them, as though they were exchanging atoms.

And now she imagined him sitting in a café somewhere carefully examining each digit as though it were part of a secret code. She pictured him carefully transferring that code to his phone and pausing to allow himself a moment to dream of a future.

For which she waited.

Written for: https://carrotranch.com/2019/06/21/june-20-flash-fiction-challenge/

I was reading a few things from Linda’s one liner Wednesday and wondering if I could come up with something clever that someone had said recently to contribute. I couldn’t.

But I was reminded of something I heard John Safron say (John is an Australian documentary maker) about a time that he was covering some extremist gatherings that were happening in Melbourne.

He was seated in a cafe across the road from parliament (those of you from Australia probably know exactly the spot I mean) having a coffee. The waitress was rearranging the tables in preparation for the lunchtime rush and he asked her,

“When does the race war start?”

She looked up from her work, thought about the question for a moment, and answered casually,

“Oh, sometime around midday, I guess.”

For anybody interested, here’s a short piece that he wrote about it.

Fear and Loathing in Suburban Melbourne