Friday 22 August 2008

Fiction Friday--stolen object and OSI--seeds

An acorn I stole.

You can't steal an acorn, I can
hear you say. Oh, but you can, I would
answer. I know.

It belonged to an ancient oak, in the forest
on the mountain of the Sugarloaf. My nan
showed it to me, she said
the forest had once been people,
poeple who grew tired,
tired of the swiftness of life,
busy life no longer worth living. And
so they had stopped.

Stopped to listen to the wind;
stopped to protect their brothers with four legs, their sisters
with wings. They stopped to connect their roots
deep into Mother Earth.

That's what I wanted, to stop.

And so I took an acorn,
to swallow and become one of them.

And be connected.

Thursday 21 August 2008

Haiku for Totally Optional Prompts

calling out
the dead from the grave
hidden heart

Tuesday 19 August 2008





Photos of Sion and his dad.

Read Write Poem--in the moment

softly down
leaves dance in autumn
rain falls.

Sunday 17 August 2008

One Single Impression--prompt 'homecoming'

Haven't tormented anyone with my 'poetry' for a bit, so with little Sion playing with his binky and eyeing me and the cat, I'd thought I'd give it a go with a haiku.



Mated for life
first bud of spring
birds return.

And if I haven't said it yet, thank you to everyone for your words of encouragement. Thanks!

Friday 15 August 2008

Fiction Friday

Prompt is to write about a stolen conversation.



Hi.

Eh...hiya.

Dead air. Then, um...how are you?

The voice on the other line full of indifference when it only says, I'm fine, allowing for more dead air. Painful air. An air so thick that the shy one on the other line can touch it, their child-like crush shattered.

This won't do, Sian thinks. And so, she steals it. This is what she does.

Sian steals words.

Hard words, hateful words, cruel words, abusive words, she steals them all. I hate you. I'm leaving you. You're not good enough. No one likes you, go kill yourself.

All these Sian has taken. Every hurt word, every cruel intention, she stuffs them into her hand bag.

A small whisp of a woman, no one looks twice at her. No one sees her theft. At night, in that hour when everyone last peson is asleep, she takes them home and cooks them over her fire.

There, she leaves them for the day to simmer down, to fall apart, to be transformed.

Wiil you marry me? Let's be friends. We'll love you, no matter what. Let's start a family.

I love you.

These are the words she gives back.

Sian knows every word, even the smallest one, counts. Everyone makes a difference.

Words heal.

Tuesday 5 August 2008

For Weekend Wordsmith

Born curious,
wondering,
touching everything,
tasting, listening, breathing
deeply.
A slave to none.
Society interrupts,
don't, stop,
you can't, you
shouldn't.
Don't touch,
taste, listen inward;
don't think.
Breath shallow.
A slave to all.

Monday 4 August 2008

a day late for Sunday Scribblings and a haiku for One Single Impression

Do I have to? My last words of English.

Do I have to go to bed?

No amount of whinging swayed my mum. Sent to bed for the crime of being a boy. And perhaps for being a bit on the cheeky side.

The first hour I spent reading a Harry Potter book, I forgot which one now. Being high summer, I didn't have to resort to any such methods as using a tourch under the duvet. It wouldn't go completly dark for another hour.

Around 10 I heard my mum go to bed herself. I gave her another half hour. When I was sure she had to be asleep I quietly put my jeans back on, then tip-toed through the house and out the back door, the one that lead through the garden.

The garden.

Perhaps no one but a child knows what dangers lie in the garden. I should have known better.

My mum loved her plants. She filled her garden full of them. Peonies, poppies, roses, sunflowers, all sorts. The foxgloves reached over my head, as did the granny's bonnets.

That's why I didn't see them at first. They weren't much bigger than me. Maybe that's why I thought the first ones were kids, like me.

Hello, the first one said, from her seat under the rose bush. Only that hello wasn't in English.

I know that now.

And I understood her in the way that only a child can understand.

Her voice was soft. I almost mistook it for the wind stirring through the oak tree at the end of the garden. In the blue of twilight she looked like a little girl until I blinked, looked closer. Her skin was brown and rough, sort of like the rose, or the oak's bark. Her hair would have made the buzzard pair in the woods further back proud.

And her eyes. Like wolves' eyes, they were.

Wild.

She grinned, a wolf's grin. And she beconned. Away, further into the garden. A part I'd never seen before.

Then I saw the others. They were like her, some were different. Some were more like the flowers, some like wild things.

I went with them. Why, I'm not sure. Maybe it was becasue they seemed like me. It could have been because under that wild look, there was a gentle way. Maybe it was just because it would be like something Harry Potter would do.

It doesn't matter why, I went with them.

Into their world.


Skipping
wisdom of a child
the Fool.

Friday 1 August 2008

For Fiction friday, 3WW, and Sunday Scribblings

Serena could gamble with the best of them. The ponies were her passion; Saratoga her shrine. Every year she came to upstate New York for the entire six week meet.

Exacta, trifecta, pick 6, daily double, these were music to her ears; the Racing Form a feast for her intellect. Track conditions, Byer speed figures, grade of race, distance; her eyes pored over each minute detail every night back in her hotel room allowing nothing to be omitted.

Every morning she woke at first light, to rub shoulders with jockey agents at the local bagal shop, and then enjoy her breakfast sitting in the hallowed clubhouse seats while the lady at the loudspeaker announced when a famous horse would step onto the track. Serena had seen them all--Ginger Punch, Inside Information, Fourstardave, Easy Goer, Hansel, Alysheba, Lady's Secret.

After, she went back to get ready for the afternoon. A leopard print dress was her favorite outfit, the sleeveless one that cinched at her waist and then flared around her knees.

She was a woman in a man's world. She could wear what she wanted, do her hair as she wished; there were no female eyes to criticize her and how she looked. Here, at Saratoga, she could do what pleased her.

True, this was a temporary world, but this was her world, the time when she came alive.

The time when she became complete.