is a wonder
I can walk
carrying the weight
of all these
unsaid words

acrobat...

lust to love
  tumbling point
    right on the tip
           of his tongue

since we spoke....

are you finally footloose

and feline free

out of the fish bowl,

behind solid walls where

you can hang your guitars? 

guitars you stroke, caressing

their satiny curves

letting the bitterness seep

out of your joints , wearing that guitarist

 it hurts so good expression

to wring the most from the contact 

the contact that makes us human

re-enforces the certainty that there’s something

bigger; something

to hang on to 

I hope you’ve found that something

in a space molded around you

that’s just for you 

was a shock for me when

my space  evaporated  

when I got unstrung

fell off the edge –

of that looming precipice

that had been hovering over my head 

hanging on by fingertips now,

jammed up inside a too small space

back kinked, heart pinched

so very tired and

no place to stretch out  

packed away--

unhung, unsung

forgotten inside a closed case

no fingers to play me

no hands to caress my satiny curves

no essential contact to vibrate the log jam of pain,

loosen it, let it flow out, low, long and moaning

into the music of the night

 

 

 

 

 

harvest...... flash fiction

I always knew I was different, even as a child. People would look at me and see what they wanted, then take it. I’ve been plucked so many times that you’d think there would only be a hollow shell. Hair and freckles holding the bones together.  

Somehow I always refill.  But it’s gotten harder lately.

Probably because I’ve been doing it for so long.  I’m old, so very old. Pyramid old, horse and buggy old, before the internet old. And I’m tired. It takes a lot more energy, a lot more food to replace what’s taken.  Not sure how the universe balances that on the ledgers. There must be a give and take set of books. Bound in calfskin, the spines embossed with precious metal.

When I was young the give volume was fat and juicy, audibly humming with energy, but now in my mind’s eye it sits cracked and peeling, dry and fragile cowering on a shelf next to the take volume, its pages oozing out of the cover like overfed slugs, excess charge arcing out and grounding willy nilly like lightning on any handy metal surface.

My spark is almost gone. And it’s no wonder.  It’s been ages since I’ve felt the wind on my face, or had the bone melting pleasure of lying on the ground in the sun; the earth thrumming underneath my spine, refilling my well.

When he caught me, he hid me away.

He was a hungry man. Hungrier than most.  Full of ambition. Full of need. I was blind to his plan until it was too late. Millennia of studying human nature and still I was trapped.  Walled up. Sealed in.

I sit in my prison and watch the people below. Cars busily buzzing by, taking their drivers and passengers to who knows where. Purpose driven lives. 

I know he’s coming today. I can already feel the pull. This visit will be the end of me. One last harvest before my fields lay fallow, and dust returns to dust.

I double demon dare you.....

I’m guesting over at the #amwriting hub today with a new fiction piece. Stop over and see me whydon’tcha?

 [Click here to be magically transported]

 

Bonus when you get there: I’ve got a BIG BOWL of caramel corn, and I hear Johanna Harness is giving away unicorns…..