No need to worry

NaPoWriMo Day 14: Write entries for an imaginary dream dictionary, and what it means to dream those things.
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- Spiders

Dreaming of spiders 

is an attempt by your brain

to reconcile

how creepy spiders are, 

despite knowing they

are also necessary. 

- A rainbow 

This is significant. 

Your life is headed

in new and interesting 

directions, rife with possibility. 

But be warned: 

Directions are often wrong. 

- Dinosaurs 

Any variety of extinct animal

would fall into this category. 

Essentially, you are panicking

about the trajectory of your life, 

fearful of irrelevance. 

Nothing to do with asteroids. 

- A parade

You are desperate for love, 

for something to celebrate, 

for the connection

you've been missing - 

just a taste would be nice. 

Just even the briefest morsel. 

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Playing on my Spotify at this very moment:
Kendrick Lamar, A.D.H.D.

On all sides

National Poetry Writing Month Day 4

Write a poem that is about something abstract but discusses or describes that abstraction in concrete nouns.
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There is a storm in here -
vicious, gray clouds billow and
blur the once-blue sky.
Jagged ribbons of lightning
dance and rip the air to pieces.
I doubt I'd even notice
if one touched down and
turned the still-dead bark
of early spring to puffing tinder.
My whole brain is on fire.

Here is a boat cast out to sea,
rudderless, as the cliches go,
upturned by a skyscraping wave.
The epic horns of inspiration
cry out like wounded pets,
bloody and alone in the wild,
but still no oar floats to my fingers.
My hands bob with the current,
palms cupped and pleading
for the grace to douse this blaze.
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Playing on my Spotify at this very moment:
The Police, Roxanne

Never to return

The cover of darkness
proves a poor insulator -
the stiff cold of winter amplified
over the steady buzz of silence.
A train pulls from the station, resistant,
until the tether snaps. Freedom.

And at each stop on the line,
the world has been asleep
just a little while longer -
a string of infinitesimal time zones,
the difference of a few minutes
as precious as true love.
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Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
Audioslave, Like a Stone

Flash Nano 2017

Trying to stimulate the creative part of my brain again - as you can see in the blog archive it's been a long while since it was productive. Flash Nano is essentially the short story version of National Poetry Writing Month. I'll be attempting to write one flash story (<1000 words) every day for the month of November. Here goes nothing.

November 1st - Write a story that takes place on a school bus.
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From the second he climbed aboard, he was almost positive that this was the same bus he'd taken to school eleven years ago. It still had the same scent, like the years of delinquency it had beheld were baked into the vinyl seats over too many stale summers.

Blinking off this wave of nostalgia, he began his inspection. Row by row, he made sure the recently departed passengers hadn't left anything behind. Of course there were always a few personal effects lingering - he remembered that he couldn't seem to keep track of his own possessions at their age. Where he had left a GI Joe stuck halfway into the seat crack there was now the LEGO version of some new Star Wars character. Where one of his loose trading cards had fluttered into obscurity underneath the seat, there was now a fidget spinner.

He gathered the items and stood to walk farther back into the bus. His hands and pockets full of the misplaced joys of modern youth, he again found himself awash in memory.

Each row of seats held fleeting images of another year of his life. In the front he sat as a kindergartner, bouncing and joyful, eager to spend another day among new friends at school. And in the very back, not so many years later, a jaded teenager, convinced of his own superiority, and that he knew everything there was to know about the world.

He sighed as his vision returned to the present, not so much borne of regret as it was exasperation. He glanced down at the toys in his hands, wondering how many of them would soon be discarded by kids who would paint themselves into their own corners of self-righteousness and incomplete "worldliness." He shrugged and turned to leave. He supposed that they'd learn the same way he did.
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Playing on my iTunes at this very moment:
Oddisee, After Thoughts