Wordgrove Post & Review

Quoted in the Grove:
Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
~H Jackson Brown Jr

We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize we only have one.
~Tom Hiddleston (after Confucius)

You know my old saying: live it up, the meter’s running. I’ve always said that if you don’t have fun while you’re here, then it’s your fault. You only get to do this once.
~Harry Caray

EndQuote:
Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes. It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. Wheresoever you go, go with all you heart.
~Confucius

 ~~

Posted from the Grove:
It’s now the summer doldrums when the wind goes out of Wordgrove sails. The woody smell of moss and lichen and leaves on the forest floor give way to the smell of roasted roots and game on the grill. That was yesteryear. The seasons haven’t changed much since pioneer days, except now it’s the meat that’s farmed and harvested.

The result of this seasonal change is that the Post & Review will be shorter, perhaps even absent some weeks. Summer in the past has always been a vacation for this editor, but the updated format for the newsletter makes it easier to publish while leaving time for fun.

This would be a good time for those who would like to see their work in print to stop by Writers Platform and drop a favorite piece that wants sharing.

~

Prewritten for Thurs (05/14) @6pm PT/9 ET is: profane, beseech

~~

@Writers Platform
Glass Table:

~Piffin:
“Kitsch Memorabilia”

Money is power
A pen and a sword
Elitist addiction
If you can afford it
Birth equals death
With some shit in between
History goose-stepping
Up on the screen
I smell revolution
While clocking your legs
A strong Constitution
A few broken eggs
It’s mayhem in motion
These kids on the street
I catch the commotion
While clocking your feet
This kitsch memorabilia
Republican youth
I’m sifting through ashes
Looking for truth
These freelance bonfires
Are at it again
Every book
Every book
Every book
The End

~

“Us to We”

Opium smoke
A ship for your breath
Ghostly main
Tendril jib
Moonlight anchor
Its cargo, a confidence
Warm in my ear
Rebellion
Sans pique
Devoid rancor
An oath set to flesh
A pledge, hand to breast
Yours to mine
Mine to yours
Soft confederacy
Two souls in cahoots
Lipstick lips
Boudoir boots
Apostasy
Heresy
Intimacy
Yours to mine
Mine to yours
Us to we

~

Prewritten: winsome, tablet

~Greymane: Comfort When He Slept

She danced alone beneath the moon
A winsome work of art
He watched her hidden
Love forbidden
Cold within his heart
Her passions wrapped around the flames
Like silk upon her skin
The warm untainted
Embers painted
All that she had been
He climbed aboard her sympathy
but paid for her caress
He chased addiction
To affliction
he could not possess
The mask he wore of whispered lies
Fell broken when he smiled
She saw her shattered
Torn and tattered
innocence defiled
She punished him with moments lost
she held against his pain
Adept precision
Deep incision
Straight into his vein
The song within his injured soul
grew silent as he wept
He drifted distant
nonexistent
comfort when he slept

~

~Piffin:  “Knights and Weekends”

It’s a genuine affliction
This addiction to the dark
Picked up like bad reception
In the schoolyard and the park
From the bully boys I wrestled
And the trestle girls I spooned
It’s a fatal misconception
Time can heal your every wound
Though my soul might be neglected
I’ve perfected my disguise
With my winsome smile
And my lose some eyes

Solitude, my birthright
Through my midnight mass it stalks
I’d love to get in front of it
But like the way it walks
I cruise the local racket
In my straight jacket and tie
My body takes the brunt of it
But dreams, they never die
I’ve got it down to science
My reliance on goodbyes
With my winsome smile
And my lose some eyes

I put candles in the windows
When the wind blows through the house
One, if on the wings of faerie
Two, if in the breath of mouse
I joust with spectral friends
And the amends I never made
And sing like a canary
To my mirror self, my shade
This bottle lends support
When I resort to selling lies
With my winsome smile
And my lose some eyes

~

~BarTalk:  bet the vortex to win

 

~

Impromptu: lily, dictator

~Greymane: Dead Lily

There once was a man who ruled all of the land
Commanding the kingdom by fist
They all came for miles to witness firsthand
what happened when he would get pissed
Years under tyranny weary from woe
The people came up with a plan
Enlisting a jester to put on a show,
A hysterical renaissance man
A dastardly master of evil intrigue
Who never had once cracked a smile
The dictator laughed ’til he died from fatigue
Dethroned by his own fiendish style
The people rejoiced with ecstatic delight
No longer would darkness enslave
They buried him deep in the dark of the night
a dead lily marking his grave

~

~Piffin: “Generic Brands”

Tiger lily orange punk rock coif at the bar
Doc Martens and suspenders
Faded jeans, black bra
Half-assed kitchen tattoo of a Flying V guitar
Skull rings on the fingers of her hands
She said, “Hello, my name is…”
I said, “I don’t care”
She said, “I have no money”
I bought a drink to share
She lived third floor, around the corner
So she took me there
It was midnight and I had no other plans
We watched The Great Dictator
While we fucked on the floor
Andrea True Connection
Singing “More, More, More”
Running low on smoke and booze
We ambled barefoot to the store
I bought cigarettes and beer
Generic brands
I Don’t Care was sound asleep
When I got dressed and left
Felt a little bit like romance
And a lot like theft
Sort of weighty in my conscience
But I liked the heft
And her taste on my lips
Unplanned
Wrote my number
Dropped it in her garbage can

~

~BarTalk: would you

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~.~.~

Quoted in the Grove:

Green was the silence, wet was the light; the month of June trembled like a butterfly.  ~ Pablo Neruda

Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair… ~ Susan Polis Schutz

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. ~ Russell Baker

~.~.~

Announcements:

The words for this week’s Prewritten Exercise are: winsome; affliction.

The Wordgrove Wordgames Group will next meet on Thursday, June 25 at 9:00 PM Eastern/6:00 PM Pacific at the Wordgrove Writers’ Platform for writing, chat, and general debauchery. We hope to see you there.

~.~.~

Prewritten (June 18): tablet; maverick.



BarTalk:

“Found Fragment”

Found and translated, the following engraved stone from a burial crypt: … swallow the tablet of public opinion or be maverick, the creator in rebellion …

The rest was lost, but it gave resonance to my dilemma first, then to my decision. I put a bullet in the back of my dating life and admitted that sex … meh, not so much



Greymane:

“Hero”

Just another hero on the way to save the day

He wears a faded cape of pain beneath his loose toupee

He faces foes invincible against oppressive odds

The outcome carved illegibly on tablets of the gods

He holds the fate of all the world tight in shaking hands

While bravely facing villainy he never understands

Alone yet fighting fearless like a maverick running free

He’d rather do his nine to five without a referee

A heavy, desperate, thankless job that never seems to end

A slave to all the clueless souls he suffers to defend

With wicked beaten back again the world fades to grey

He slips into his pale disguise and goes about his day



Piffin:

haiku ~

Maverick scribe

Writing tablet subway ride

Souls pressed to paper

~.~.~

~.~.~

Impromptu (June 18): windswept; preacher.



Bartalk:

haiku ~

‘lo the tropic isle

innocent windswept and free

a preacher intones



Greymane:

“Their Own God”

There was a poor preacher who fumbled his words

He lost his whole flock to the migrating herds

He pleaded in whispers that echoed with fear

And buried his faith in forsaken frontier

They found their own God on the plains of despair

And begged for redemption in each feeble prayer

Windswept and scorched by the hot desert sun

They wrangled religion by way of the gun

Their empty devotion lies cold in the ground

Somewhere south of Hell where the chapel bells sound



Piffin:

“Go” (For Anne and Cassidy)

Anne

Daughter of a preacher’s son

Disarrayed hair golden spun

Shining in the morning sunshine

Like dew on a rose

Cass

Windswept topless tapster wench

Demon with a monkey wrench

Laughing as she wipes the powder

Off of her nose

Match made up of maybes

Reckless rolling dice

Hot as backseat babies

Cool as lemon ice

The world looked on

And frowned

And told them no

So they gave it a go

Cass

Tattoo after two months time

Gothic hearts and Latin rhyme

Setting out the wine and candles

Paint on her smock

Anne

Apple from the teacher’s pet

Chalk dust from the alphabet

Juggles in the door with flowers

At seven o’clock

Boots off by the bookcase

Sweater left unhung

Silhouettes in embrace

Talking tongue to tongue

Bright eyes

Whisper softly

In television glow

What they both know

Barefoot rug

To couch

To settle in for a show

With no place better to go

~.~.~

~.~.~

Glass Table:

Poems About Tinfoil Hats and Bubble Bath Tiaras



Greymane:

“Summer”

Remembering summers of sun beaten days

Of barefoot adventures and cheap matinees

Of journeys forbidden and forts in the trees

Of treasures still hidden and scabby scraped knees

We stole countless bases and broke all our bats

And ventured to places in tinfoil hats

We could navigate space in an old cardboard box

And tame the dark jungles in nothing but socks

Imagined fantastical daydreaming fun

Long days of escapades under the sun

We’d all straggle home when our parents would yell

But never escaped our own dream woven spell

We’d scrub off the grimy while braving the floods

In bubble bath crowns and tiaras of suds



Piffin:

“When I Fall”

Though this kingdom of mine

May seem low from outside

In my tinfoil hat I can fly

These wings on my heels

May seem tattered and torn

But they flex and they flap when I cry

My Jiffy Pop crown

When it catches the moon

Bursts with rainbows to light up my way

I soar over this city

The train tracks, the grave yards

My effort to outrun the day

But it comes

As it will

And the sunrise moves in for the kill

And I fall

Without sound

But I land in your arms

Translucent, transcendent

In wick fire resplendent

The queen of our bathtub, you reign

Champagne, our main course

As we ride our seahorse

And your hands on my back spell my name

In soap bubble tiara

And running mascara

This sponge painting light weaves your gown

On whispers we rise

Into shadow dance skies

Until sure that we’ll never come down

But the bath

Water cools

Leaves us sated and soaking like fools

Then you splash

And I laugh

And fall back in your arms

When I fall

At long last

I land back in your arms





Also ~

Bartalk:

Nexus ~ A Collection (Previously Reviewed)



~.~.~

Walk tall

Or, baby, don’t walk at all…

~.~.~

(Photography by Piffin)

~.~.~

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Quoted in the Grove:
If it’s true, it’s not beautiful, and if it’s beautiful, it’s not true.
~Richard Bach

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
~John Steinbeck

People only see what they are prepared to see.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

~~

Posted from the Grove:

Interested in how someone from The City sees your part of the world? From this cover of The New Yorker, notice that you don’t appear on the map.

~

Prewritten for Thurs (06/18) @6pm PT/9 ET is: tablet, maverick

~~

@Writers Platform

Prewritten: a campfire story

~Greymane: Shadowman
https://greymanex.wordpress.com/the-shadowman/

~

~Piffin: “Campfire Tale”

Gather, children,
’Round this fire
Listen to my tale
Of body lice
Self-sacrifice
And unplanned nights in jail
Parking tickets
Union pickets
Fragile broken bone
Cheating spouses
Body louses
Birthdays spent alone
Huddle, children,
In this darkness
Listen to my yarn
Of unseen forces
Panicked horses
Trapped in flaming barn
Harsh reprimands
Cold one night stands
Head-on collision beer
Red picnic ants
The midnight dance
With your companions, Fear
And Loneliness
Mad Loneliness
The husband of Despair
Your childhood friends
Won’t last a lifetime
Those who do won’t care
For all the hopes
That slip your grasp
The blood and tears you spill
For all the songs
Choked to a gasp
For all the dreams born still
Hunker, children,
In dark forest
Heed ye well my words
Of starving babies
Raccoon rabies
Kittens slaying birds
You enter life
To mother’s scream
A bloody, bestial tune
Yet die in silence
Goals unreached
Alone and all too soon
You’ll die in silence
Breathless
Beached
Alone
And all too soon

~

~BarTalk: The Jumper

~

Impromptu: glove compartment, bedridden

~Greymane: Stolen Moments

A minute at midnight she steals for a smoke
Delight in the moonlight she sold for some coke
Asleep on the floor of an empty apartment
The mask that she wore in a locked glove compartment
The past she kept hidden pretending she’s clean
A mother bedridden from living obscene
Huddled in doorways escaping the rain
The arms of a stranger that comfort her pain
A victim of sanity bought with despair
She sold her last breath for a soft whispered prayer

~

~Piffin: “Saturday Sunlight”

Tangled in damp cotton
Angled to your touch
Shining sweat
Sleepy pet
Gentle stroke and I clutch
I don’t need a lot
But I need it so much
Sprinkled with Saturday sunlight

Hand puppet
Glove compartment
Chinese finger trap
Spoken wordless symphony
Woken from my nap
By your hands
Exploration
Sailing darkly off the map
Floating in Saturday sunlight

Lip locked
Bedridden
Ride, cowgirl, ride
I breathe and I arch
As I slip and I slide
Over pretty French manicure
Diamonds
My bride
Glistening with Saturday sunlight

~

~BarTalk: a coy misunderstanding

~ . ~

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