Monday 25 April 2016

A Poem a Day (56): Too slow to flow

Another one for JD Mader's #2minutesgo Friday challenge. Cheers.




Stream effect
 
It’s too slow to flow
Far too fast to fly
Never saying goodbye
Dreading to stand still

Pictures pass in flashes
Faces never held too long
Sentences always broken
Paths never taken to the end

It’s too complicated
To stop, and think and feel
Decide what now to do
When tomorrow blinds

To pause means to die
Preferring the haze I flow
As liquid trickles its way
This hand will never stay

Don’t try to catch this
The movement I create
The substance I escape
In this mood ethereal

I am this echo of breath
A warmth upon the mirror
Disappearing upon the air
Lost on the ocean’s wave.

copyright Vickie Johnstone, 22 April, 2016

Friday 22 April 2016

A Poem a Day (55): Time


Another one for JD Mader's #2minutesgo writing exercise on his website, Unemployed Imagination - check it out :) 
 

Time

I count the minutes, not the hours,
Then the hours, not the days,
Just the days, never the weeks,
And you can forget about the years.

I take the train, forget the bus,
Prefer to walk when I could run,
Spare my blushes for the sun
When the rain throws me a smile.

I am the morning, not the night,
The stars that shine and never blight,
I know your pain, your every fear,
The memory of you sleeping here.

I know the year will always end,
But on this trick I can depend –
To think of it as a zillion seconds,
And there my eternity beckons.

copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 22, 2016

Flash fiction 15: Girl #2minutesgo

Today, JD Mader is inviting everyone to visit his website, Unemployed Imagination - www.jdmader.com/2015/06/2-minutes-go, and write anything for 2 minutes - just go for it, without looking back and editing. It got me writing today. Have a great weekend! :) 


Girl 



“I came to investigate your smile,” she said, but he knew the girl didn’t mean a word of it. He scowled beneath his black, woolly hat, flicking the dying ash from the end of his cigarette. Some lines worked; hers didn’t. Some girls intrigued him; her face didn’t even stir the corner of his mind. 



He trailed a steady fingertip along his lip, perused and paused, glancing at her sideways until it turned into a stare, penetrating. It was a look he’d fashioned so long, practised even, and he almost felt that lazy smile scurry its way across. Almost. 



Boredom fogged his concentration, evaporation needed no time to glue itself inside of him. The ash flicked again. She hadn’t moved. It was as if she expected something. So he would give it to her. And she wouldn’t even want to remember him tomorrow. 



In the morning she would want to bury him in a hole. And he would regain his soiled smile, inhaling the smoke that turned his breath stale. Like his reflection. Always a sidelong glance.



copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 22, 2016