A Poem a Day 2015 (47): Down

Today I'm posting a little poem I just wrote for JD Mader's 2-minute writing challenge on Fridays. It's on his blog, Unemployed Imagination, every week if you fancy a go. It's inspiring.

Check it out here - www.jdmader.com/2015/05/2-minutes-go.html. 

Cheers.

Down

It’s the little things

Cocooned in the big

Marooned into a whole

Picked at with knives

In ravaged glee

Eaten upon a spoon

Relished for the pure taste

Of it

Driven into the blinding

For this is the way of things

The eventide we bring

Upon the face of change

The underneath within

Hidden upon a sigh

For into this deft descent

We rise.

copyright Vickie Johnstone

Flash fiction 10: Ocean light

It's all going on over at Unemployed Imagination - JD Mader's challenge to just write your little heart away for 2 minutes. Go guys! jdmader.com/2015/05/2-minutes-go_22.html

Ocean light

This night is one I make, hear, lose. Emptied of my anger, the unsettled ocean carries me far. To play upon a lost star, the dark challenges. It conjured me here in the depths of my despair, oft emptied and stamped upon, until I can almost feel the souring blanket of sand envelop me, dragging me down into this endlessness where I can be nothing.

These waves flicker at the edges of me, peeling back my skin, flaking in the wind blowing so chill, sweeping across my face like a lost bird.

I ache here. My anger long faded, I ache still. The heart knows and my scars feel it. Ahead I can see it all. The dark blazes like the morning shine and so I am no longer lost. I creep inside myself, this knowing in the ending, the spiralling, the trickle of it all. And so I am small. And so I am sublime. In balance it will subside and the ocean will forever turn. In turning, I can too.

copyright Vickie Johnstone

Flash fiction 9: Circles

Another little story, written for the #2minutesgo challenge on JD Mader's website, Unemployed Imagination. If you fancy a go, head over to here on Fridays - www.jdmader.com/2015/05/2-minutes-go.html - cos you'll be welcome :) 

Cheers.

Circles

Shivering slightly, he drew his coat tighter around him.

It came full circle: the end in the beginning; the beginning in the end. Don’t start what you can’t finish, his father always said. Don’t talk with your mouth full. Don’t play with your belly button or it will pop. But Jay Senior did that all the time. And he always started what he never intended to finish, like his engagement.

A nasty piece of work was what Jay was. Not that he cared, or anyone else for that matter. Half his friends were class Bs. It was a word signifying nothing bad nowadays.

Tears fell in the rain.

A memory of his mother in the tumult, barefoot, wearing a thin white dress. Hair drenched, writhing like snakes in the wind. Waiting. She was always waiting, until the day she decided no more. That’s when Jay’s life shifted. The grey city became green fields. He gained a new father. He went to college. The sun shone and the rain evaporated.

Jay Senior talking with his mouth full seemed a lifetime ago, when little Jay stood so high, not even reaching his father’s chest. Today he stood over him, looking down as he threw a handful of dirt into the hole in the ground. 

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 2015

Flash fiction 8: Snare

It's Friday again, which means it's time for the #2minutesgo challenge on JD Mader's website, unemployed Imagination. I wrote this, and others, for it. A friend, Ed, just liked it, so I chose it to post tonight. If you fancy writing, head over to here - www.jdmader.com/2015/05/2-minutes-go.html - cos you'll be welcome :) 

Cheers.

Snare

They hide inside, tucked away from the light. It isn’t to cheat the night or mimic the struck day, or anger the stirrings of the life in between. It’s a way to walk without motion, a means of cheating the time that can never come while the stale taste of life ekes out its path in a wintry hate. A dance upon the ashes of the men who never were. And so they hide.

It’s a chance awakening bringing them here, where the sands have long trickled out their last, lying to the waiting who urge the ending to be final. If time were to bend and hollow out, and repeat itself like a joker’s word, who could stand it? This unravelling would be the final straw, the end cut of film spiralling into flames as the players left the stage. I would hold the lighter and laugh. 

copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 15, 2015

A Poem a Day 2015 (46): Inside

Today I'm posting a little poem I just wrote for JD Mader's 2-minute writing challenge on Friday. It's on his blog, Unemployed Imagination, every Friday if you fancy a go. 

Check it out here - www.jdmader.com/2015/05/2-minutes-go.html. 

Cheers.

Inside

It was the stillness

This quiet

This arch in the noise

Where it lived

Breathed

Bowed to the living

Crawling in its space

Within the cracks

In the walls

Creeping in between

Here it smelled

The people inside

Living outside the walls

Knowing them

Listening to their tales

The secrets

The things never told

It soaked it all up

Like a sponge

An indifferent thing

Yet it was anything but

It kept these things

Hidden inside

Memorised

Treasured

Hugged to the breast

Inhaled into the chest

“My family”

It called them

Where it waited

Patient and undeserving

Breathing inside

The walls

In the home

Of the innocent –

The ones it bewitched

When the time came

In the end.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone

A Poem a Day 2015 (45): Come

Today I'm posting a little poem I just wrote for JD Mader's 2-minute writing challenge. It's on his blog, Unemployed Imagination, every Friday if you fancy a go. Check it out here - www.jdmader.com/2015/05/2-minutes-go.html. 

Go now - run like the wind! Cheers.

Come

Come be with me

She said

As the breeze fell

Upon a blackbird’s word

Chasing shadow play

Up the bark of a tree

Resting my own head

I traced the outline

She chose to show me

Flooding my senses

Renewing my faith

In this thing I used

To know

Come follow me

She said

As my reluctance fell

Upon her guileless word

Chasing shadows away

She led me into the night

Where I could only follow

Not knowing the way

Thus she tricked me astray

To where the world ran dry

Of human screams

Stuck dumb, blind, I felt

I heard singing

Come follow me

She said

As the breeze fell

Upon my untold word.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 8, 2015

 

Flash fiction 7: Lily

Greetings to May! May this month be a good one :)

Today I'm posting a little bit of flash fiction that I just wrote for JD Mader's 2-minute writing challenge. It's on his blog, Unemployed Imagination, every Friday if you fancy a go. Check it out here - http://www.jdmader.com/2015/05/2-minutes-go.html. Cheers.

Lily

It was only one night in a summer. Her night.

A time to seep out of the shadow, taking hold of the form she wore during the dark hours when no one could hear, no one could see and no one would know. The pitch enveloped her and she wore it as a shield. She carried it whenever she could, her protector, while she paced these ways. These idle lanes she’d known since she only so high; too small to climb the fence by the stile.

The stile with the rusted padlock. It never opened. Not when she needed it to, not when she was so high. When she was running. Racing the wind for a chance to meet the sky. And she did. In the glorious heat of a summer day she welcomed the clouds, enwrapping her in their perfect, perpetual slumber when she fell, struggling to climb that wooden fence, fighting to free the stile. Struggling so hard. Never did she struggle now.  

Walking free, she clutched the lily petals lifted fresh from her grave, upon her anniversary. The one her mother never should have known; never should have been fated to witness this and every year. She tilted her head to gaze up at the star-freckled sky, wandering where the night would lead her now while the guilty slept silent in their beds.

copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 1, 2015