A hundred thousand years ago I
wished to fall in love completely,
threw my heart up in the air and
promised that whoever caught it
I would love forever more.
More rhythm and
Posted in Poetry
Tagged meter, poem, poetry, rhythm, trochaic tetrameter, verse, writing
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Rhythm and
The bow and scrape of a sycophant’s kiss
The rend and tear of a psychopath’s hiss
The hum and whine of a masochist’s bliss
There cannot be anything better than this.
* * *
Joyful, joyful, burning heart
sets this world and that apart
demons, demons, waking up
over flow the loving cup
* * *
Achingly she lifted up her
hopeful visage, glancing skyward,
wishing once for his bright, shining
eyes to fall upon her clasping
hands that as she raised them higher
reached to show him what she’d done and
how she’d carved his named upon them–
verily she’d writ his name there,
just his name in blood upon her,
his own name in blood upon her,
there she’d carved it for his pleasure.
* * *
Experimenting in rhythms. Anyone else as fascinated by meter as I am? One of my absolute favorite works is Carroll’s “Hiawatha’s Photographing” — it, (and its introduction, in point of fact) are done entirely in trochaic tetrameter, and once you get into it, you find yourself reading it almost with a grin. If you haven’t ever read it before, here it is, just for fun:
Posted in Poetry
Tagged foot, Hiawatha's Photographing, Lewis Carroll, meter, pieces, poem, poems, poetry, rhythm, trochaic tetrameter, writing
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DeathWatch No. 0 – A Beginning
This is Issue #0 of DeathWatch, an ongoing Serial.
This tiny short is just the beginning — or a beginning. (You could go back, and back, and back, and back, into the history of the world, to learn where everyone came from, and how wars come to be, and how nations are built, but instead, you can just start here.)
Happy Reading!
* * *
“Look out!”
The blur of metal and glass came too close; Kieron could hardly breath, and whatever he managed was noxious, choking. He doubled over to cough, reaching gloved hands to cover his mouth, his eyes stinging.
Someone else shouted again, but as he straightened up, there was a world-shattering impact. Everything in his body screamed. While he was weightless, his mind on fire, the whole world spun.
He could hear the ocean, somehow, and then the spinning world was red.
And then it was dark.
* * *
When he woke, he could taste blood. He still couldn’t breathe.
The world was out of focus.
His stomach lurched.
“Don’t try to move.” The voice tried to sound comforting, but instead, it only sounded familiar.
No.
It felt familiar.
Up and down finally made sense of themselves, and Kieron realized realized he was lying on the ground, in the middle of a street, in the slush. In the distance, sirens wailed, high and lonely. He knew they wouldn’t get close enough in time. People were shouting, crowding around.
Above him, a woman’s silhouette leaned over, haloed by a fierce winter’s sun, the grey of the world dominating everything above him.
“Hold still,” the silhouette said. “Hold still, Fallon. They’re coming. You’ll be okay.”
He tried to tell her his name wasn’t Fallon, but the only words he knew were full of blood.
They ran over his lips, and then the world was red.
And then it was dark.
* * *
Posted in Deathwatch, Fiction, Serial
Tagged death, deathwatch, Fallon, fiction, Kieron, life, serial, winter, writing
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Glittering
Falling in love with you
was like falling into
a glittering snowbank:
dazzling and bright
and overwhelming,
but then it left me
cold and wet and sick,
feeling like I’d never be able
to be warm again.
Never Warm Enough
His name is Jerony. He is tall and gangly for a nine-year old, and does not know what to do with himself.
He is never warm enough, no matter how many blankets his father gives him. No matter how big the fire in the main room. No matter the temperature outside.
When he sleeps, he feels suffocated, as though the night could drown him, as though it were an ocean to fill him up with dark, pressing to his nose and mouth as much as it presses to his eyes. Every evening, he settles uneasily to bed, shivering under a dozen blankets, staring at the light under the door that’s kept on in the hallway outside. Every morning, he claws his way to waking, gasping and gagging, certain he was mere moments from being drowned in the dark, and turns on all the lights, no matter how high the sun is, outside.
He does not know the reason he has been cold his whole life is because his dead mother’s hand is firmly curled around his heart, and has been since the day his father cut him from her belly.
Posted in Fiction, Flash
Tagged character study, fiction, flash, flash fiction, Jerony, pieces, writing
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