Author: Michael

Husband, dad,(ex)programmer, comic collector and proud Yorkshireman. I have no idea why im here or why im writing but i rather enjoy it. no great fan of punctuation;

The In-between – Part 3 of 31

“. As I wander there are colours and flashes of things that I know I recognise and that seem so familiar but yet I struggle to name. “

Okay so I’m doing M’s prompts and going to try and do a full month as one long story with no planning. Today it is ‘Liquid Love.’

The instructions are to simply write for ten minutes or so each day and that’s about it.

Read part 1 here

Read part 2 here

Of late, and I say that with a degree of caution because time does not seem to hold any significance here, I am finding that the longing consumes me less and less and a clarity seems to be returning to my thinking.

Now that is not to say I know what is going on, because I do not, but I have been able to explore this curious existence and am finding that it is not as grey and empty as I once thought.  A world of misty nothing seems to be revealing itself to me piece by piece, and just today I saw a tree.  I don’t know what type of tree it was, perhaps a beech or a birch –  I tend to get them mixed up – but there it was doing precisely nothing just as you would expect from a tree.

It’s gnarled trunk rose above me where sprawling branches were capped with a thick covering of leaves, dappled sunlight flooding through in golden rays from a sunless sky.  Below my feet her roots stretched deep dow into nothing.  There was a also a narrow river, a glittering ribbon of blue and silver meandering slowly through the nothing and into which the tree had dipped a number of her roots.  As she drank I could see the waters glowing as it pulsed and coursed through her limbs.

Beyond the things I know and recognise there are also glimpses and echoes of a world just beyond my grasp, perhaps the one I left or somewhere else, but they are there and at times so very close.  Feint voices call out and have me spinning as if recognising the comforting hello of an old friend.  As I wander there are colours and flashes of things that I know I recognise and that seem so familiar but yet I struggle to name.

And then, as I stood beneath the cool canopy dipping my toes in the trickling water I knew that I was no longer alone.

Read part 4 here

Raw

“She shone bright, a lifetime ago

In joy filled summer days and warm and wanton nights”

 

She shone bright, a lifetime ago

In joy filled summer days and warm and wanton nights

When he was still the man he could have been

And dreamed of more than he would ever have

 

Now fingers pointed voices raised and hearts long lost

to others, cruel words cut deep

To the bone

white flashes in crimson flesh

The In-between – Part 2 of 31

“…The worst thing about dying is not the pain, that passes pretty quickly,”

Okay so I’m doing M’s prompts and going to try and do a full month as one long story with no planning. Today it is ‘Senseless Sacrifices.’

The instructions are to simply write for ten minutes or so each day and that’s about it.

 

Read part 1 here

The worst thing about dying is not the pain, that passes pretty quickly, it’s actually the immense sense of loss you feel afterwards that really gets to you.  Once you realise that there is nowhere left to go, which is bad enough in itself because a lack of destination is something I find wholly unsettling, there is the overwhelming realisation that pretty much everything else is gone.

Beyond the obvious and rather painful longing for the people you have left behind you also find yourself bombarded by a sadness at the loss of things of a far more mundane nature.  Since shuffling off of the mortal coil I have spent entire afternoons pining for my old bicycle, the red one that I should have ridden more but didn’t because it gave me the most terrible chafing.  Whole mornings have been spent dwelling upon missed opportunities to listen to the radio late at night when the signal of far-away stations seemed stronger and I was able to scroll through the bands picking up such strange foreign voices.

So many things taken for granted now seem so precious and a lifetime of missed opportunities weighs heavy on those of us trapped in this nothing of an existence and not a moment passes when I ask myself was what I did worth it…

Part 3 is here

The In-between – Part 1 of 31

Okay so I’m doing M’s prompts and going to try and do a full month as one long story with no planning. The first was titled ‘The Inbetween’ so thats the name of the story. Each prompt is only meant to take a few minutes. Let’s see how it goes.

I’m not sure what I am anymore. I know I’m dead, I remember that all too well, but it was hardly the significant finale I was expecting.

There were no pearly gates or lights to head towards, and neither was there fire nor brimstone nor the anguished gnashing of teeth – something Mrs Henderson next door would most certainly be disappointed about given her insistence that one day my wicked ways would most certainly be repaid in true Old Testament fashion.

The way she always looked at me when she said it I’m pretty sure she meant buggery, she just had that look of a woman who feared buggery above all things. Her husband was a big man, so that may have explained it.

So alas Mrs Henderson I am afraid there is a distinct lack of buggery wherever it is that I am, though there are rather a lot of us here in-between who are somewhat in need of an answer as to just what is going on.

Part 2 is here

Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday: SING and CELEBRATE

Tank you very much

Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday

I don’t take many things seriously as you probably know but I am going to make a concerted effort to do Colleen’s challenges properly when I do them. I have scant regard for the correct use of haiku and tanka and often do such beastly things to them but I think it is also important to show appreciation for the little blighters because they are so fabulous when done right.

This week the challenge was to use synonyms for SING and CELEBRATE.  I used CROON and TOAST.

 

 

Lights dimmed, spotlight’s glare

Croon to number forty two

a toast at night’s end

In his head a superstar

the lord of karaoke

 

https://colleenchesebro.com/2018/05/01/colleens-2018-weekly-tanka-tuesday-poetry-challenge-no-82-the-may-day-edition-sing-celebrate-synonymsonly/

 

Up yours Alanis Morisette

In 1995 Alanis Morisette went on and on about things that aren’t ironic being very much so. 

In 1995 Alanis Morisette went on and on about things that aren’t ironic being very much so.  All that nonsense about rain on your wedding day and a free ride when you’ve already paid.  That’s not ironic, it’s just poor weather – something she could quite well have foreseen by checking a weather forecast and bad timing.  I actually don’t think the woman has a clue what irony actually is.

I will tell you what irony is though shall I.  Irony is when you write a post about backing up and then install a WordPress widget as part of the process and that widget causes a major issue with your WordPress site which in due course necessitates the use of that back up to fix the issues the back up process caused.

It even caused my blog to lose the ability to have people follow it which the WordPress folk explained was should have been expected when installing a widget or downloading a non WordPress theme on my plan and they also very kindly acknowledged that yes, they probably ought to point this out.  Good of them I thought.

5 days later, a reset of my site to the 9th of April and an ongoing hassle with trying to get things back to normal and hopefully I will soon be able to get back to some writing again.  Lessons learned I guess…Not really sure what they are yet though maybe Alanis has a song about it.

What do you see?

A moment of your time please…

I seem to be having a few problems with WordPress at the moment. Just yesterday I was told that I no longer had a follow button on my website because I had chosen to add a widget. What sort of world is it where you would have a Blog but not have the option for somebody to follow it? Honest. Today though I’m just wondering whether you would mind leaving me a comment if you read this post as to what you saw when you were trying to get to it. Is it like everybody elses blog where you see a link in the reader and you click on it and you’re taken to the piece that I have written? Or, more annoyingly, do you see a link similar to the one in the header and below which asks you to follow a link to view the post.

A seemingly unnecessary second click to get to the peace that I have written. If you wouldn’t mind just letting me know what you saw and maybe whether you were in the reader or finding my post another way say perhaps through an email . It would be most appreciated because the WordPress happiness engineers seem to be really struggling to help me with this.

Catastrophic Calamaties – Room 101

Clarella folder her arms and turned to look out of the window of the ship.  There was nothing in particular to look at, a few stars blinked and twinkled in the inky blackness of space, but that aside it was simply preferable to looking at his face.

These things tend to be short pieces that may or may not be the beginning of something else. They are, this month at least, just 101 words only (apart from this one). They dont always finish, I just like to try and evoke a certain feeling or scene. I also decided to combine this with M’s prompts. Today it was ‘Catastrophic Calamities’.

Clarella folder her arms and turned to look out of the window of the ship.  There was nothing in particular to look at, a few stars blinked and twinkled in the inky blackness of space, but that aside it was simply preferable to looking at his face.

“You must have pressed it” Gard insisted.  “I certainly didn’t, I would never do something like that by mistake.”

Clarella’s jaw tightened and she remained defiantly quiet.

“It’s okay” Gard continued placing a hand on her shoulder.  “It’s done now, it can’t be helped.”

She shrugged and brushed his hand away continuing to stare blankly out into the darkness.  The silence was making Gard wholly uncomfortable.

“Look…just…” He started but then stopped as Clarella turned towards him.  Her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared.

“Do you really think I pressed it?” she asked, her head tilting menacingly to one side.  Gard couldn’t decide if she was going to gouge his eyes out or savage his throat.

“It..I just…” his voice trailed away as she turned again to look out of the window.

“you know what this is like don’t you?” she asked.

Gard mumbled a response that she really was not interested in hearing.

“This is just like that time at your mothers.”

Gard’s already cool reptilian blood ran colder still. “Babe please.” He pleaded but she was not one for listening once it got to this point.

“You know quite well that I was not at fault then but you chose to side with her.”

“Clar please” he said leaning in to try and let her see how very sorry he was.

The ship shuddered, tilted to starboard and then righted itself again as a large piece of planet collided with her hull.

“No Gard” she replied.  Her scales flushed and shimmered a light blue indicating her heightened emotional state.  “It’s always the same with you isn’t it.  You never believe me one.  If it was your mother I am sure you’d believe her.”

Gard checked the console.  Damage was minimal, the bulk of the impact absorbed by the vessels shields.

“Babe” he replied desperately, his attention again focussed on Clarella.  “I’m sorry okay, it must have been me.  I must have done it.  Let’s just get back en route, they’re waiting for us.”

“What?  You really think I’m going there with you after how you’ve treatd me?”  She shouted flashing him a vicious look.  “Just take me home I am going nowhere with you.”

Gard winced.  He knew she was not for changing her mind.

He brought up the control holo panel and reaching up punched in the coordinates for home.

“Clar, are you sure we…” he started but she cut him short.

“Just take me home” she said, her voice now quiet yet still quite menacing.  “You can tell them I have a really bad headache, which incidentally I now do so thank you for that also.”

Gard fired up the light drives and confirmed the coordinates, the Aspartila turning slowly on her axis as the navcomp plotted the best route home.

“Course confirmed” the ship’s navcomp said as she began to move slowly through the belt of debris that surrounded her.  “Once we have cleared the remains of the planet the estimated journey time at warp 3 will be in the region of 3 quintells.”

Clarella pulled on her safety harness and refolded her arms.

Straightening his seat Gard pulled on his own harness saying nothing.  He was still pretty sure she had hit the button and accidentally discharged the ship’s ion cannon and vaporised the planet but it really wasn’t worth getting into an even bigger fight over.

It’s wasn’t as if Earth mattered really.

 

 

 

Downtown – Part 1 of 6 – Room 101

Entering my office the first thing I noticed was her legs were as long as the days were hot.

These things tend to be short pieces that may or may not be the beginning of something else. They are, this month at least, just 101 words only. They dont always finish, I just like to try and evoke a certain feeling or scene. I also decided to combine this with M’s prompts. Today it was ‘Jet Lagged and Jilted’. I am going to try tell a short tale in 6 one hundred and one word pieces.  To be honest this was rather rushed and it might end at 1 of 6.  Just trying something different.

Entering my office the first thing I noticed was her legs were as long as the days were hot.  Or was it that she was as hot as the days were long?  Either way I knew she was going to be trouble.

I watched as she lit a cigarette and used my favourite cup as an ashtray.  She smiled in a way that told me that this was going to be cost me no matter what I charged her, and as smoke curled from her dark red lips she spoke, her voice like syrup.

“I need you to find my husband”

Bed time

Words strung together to try and create a thought or a feeling. Nothing more…

Perchance to dream, thoughts dark and cold

and wintry chill pervades and bright

light dims and so to slumber slips

where true desire from dark earth duly crawls

 

White bones through fingers poke and claw

and lips oaths break and smile then whisper sweet

white lies, half truths, deceit most syrupy

and from his mouth and breast he feeds

 

Hungry mouth suckles and feeds on lies most warm

yet cold on the tongue, belly bloated he rises

and wiping his mouth, eyes ringed and tooth blackened smile

fed on desires yet hunger raging wild

 

Into the night, soft screams and tears make pulses race

and twisted he submits to need

and when dawn comes, and waking guilt subsides

he smiles, rolls over, smiling hungry still

 

Worse things happen at sea

I’m just kidding. Honest.

There’s a saying that runs in our family, coming from fishing stock as I do, and it goes something along the lines of “Worse things happen at sea.”  It’s pretty patronising and somewhat dismissive and gets trotted out most often when you bemoan a situation that the other person couldn’t give a monkey’s chuff about.

“Mom I’ve banged my knee…”

“Oh it’s just a scratch, worse things happen at sea son.”

with me?

 

Thing is there comes a point though when through indifference and old age I am finding it becoming my standard response to even more serious situations and it has me thinking that perhaps things really were quite terrible at sea and granddad was a quiet man not because of all the time he spent out on the water but because of all the awful things that must have befallen him.

Should my kids want sympathy then you know, I want to see a leg dangling limp with bone sticking through the skin because I am pretty sure something worse happened to granddad Tom at sea and it probably involved biting down hard on something and crying for his dead mother.

Should they be feeling a little blue then I find myself resisting a fatherly hug but instead insisting that it is considerably more taxing out on the waves and that they should pull themselves together, pack their bags and stop crying over being put up for adoption because it is just a waste of good tears and they should keep them for the orphanage because they’re going to need them.

I know it may seem harsh but I tell you, they just don’t make them like those salty sea dogs do they.