Tag Creative Writing

Weaponised

freyathewriter 12 Comments

Image – author’s own

bitter you are, with your lemon sharp teeth,
spouting cruel words from far beneath 
the rasp of your tongue and the knife of your smile,
you may possess beauty, but your character is vile,
your acidic ways are a corrosive salt crown,
your thorns drawing blood from the hearts that you’ve found
and cast aside, they’re so obsolete 
watching you fall from your high horse is delectably sweet 

attack you I must for your arrogant ways,
your character is rotting, there is a malaise
in the depths of your soul (if you have one left),
you may be quite empty, utterly bereft
of love, life and laughter, of joy and delight,
I see there is nothing, something’s not right, 
the source of your venom is just a pretence
it’s a shield, not a sword – it’s all a defence 

*****

Through taking part in the dVerse Open Link Night, I discovered a new-to-me poetry prompt – W3. Organised by David over at The Skeptic’s Kaddish, each week a different poet is Poet of the Week, who’s poem each participant reads before submitting their poem in response to the prompt. The poems are then read by the Poet of the Week who selects the next week’s Poet of the Week.

W3 Prompt #85: Wea’ve Written Weekly’s poet of the week, ladysighs, has prompted us to compose two verses according to the following specifications:

  • “Opposites”:The first and last word of each stanza must be opposites of one another;
    • The two stanzas must use different opposites.
  • No restrictions on form, length, meter, or rhyme;
  • Thematic: Write about emotions, attitudes, and/or moods;

This was fun! I hope you enjoy reading this poem – do hop on over to the link above on The Skeptic’s Kaddish blog to read more of the wonderful poems. You could even take part yourself!

Luft

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They burned books in the hallways. I could smell it, the pain, the anger, the protest as the words scurried out of the open windows, sucked out into the great, black yonder by the treacherous summer wind.

I had expected more of Nature. After all, She had suffered enough over the millennia, as Man chewed Her up and spat Her out. But no, here She was, aiding the destroyers of the only beautiful thing that we had managed to create without destroying Her.

But. Maybe that was the point.

Helping Man wreak his own destruction.

Checkmate.

 

Steak Out

freyathewriter 2 Comments

My grandfather lied to my grandmother. I guess it runs in the family.

We are, all of us, habitual liers. It’s not because we actually want to deceive one another, but mostly because we want to protect our nearest and dearest from the painful truth. My mum, God bless her, didn’t tell my dad that she was suffering from skin cancer whilst she was pregnant with me, because she knew how desperately he longed for a child. The doctors had told her that it was either chemotherapy to save her, or have the baby. She chose the baby, waited until after I was born and then embarked on her too-late treatment, which she took in secret whilst he was away on the oil rigs. The thing is, he would much rather have had her alive than be left on his own at the age of 28 with a 2 month old daughter and no wife. I don’t take it personally. Why would I? He had no idea how to look after me and was forced to rely on my aunty for childcare whilst he was working away. She hated him for it, resented me and was only looking after me out of a sense of duty to a dead sister who she knew had been adopted. My mum didn’t know about that. Yes, you guessed it, my aunty kept it secret because she wanted to save her sister from pain.

On Tuesday, she asked me the most peculiar question. “Lily, do you know who I am?”

Of course, I gave the obvious answer. “You’re Aunty Jean, my mum’s sister.”

“In a manner of speaking,” she had said. “You know me as Aunty Jean, but I’m not actually your aunty.”

To be honest with you, I felt a little bit relieved that there was at las tsome honesty going on. She had kept many secrets over the years, but had never failed to hide the fact that having to look after me had ruined her life, or what she had imagined her life would be. Widowed at a very young age (a car accident perhaps, if the stories could be believed), she had intended to make something of herself, have a career, be an independent woman – and then I had been foisted off on her. Dreams ended.

“Oh?” I had said mildly, hoping that she would leave it there.

It wasn’t to be.

“I’m actually your grandmother.”

Oh. Oh damnation. I didn’t need to know this, the sheer seeming impossibility of it all tying knots in my thoughts.

“Yes,” she continued, taking my silence as a yearning to hear more. “The way Herb – your grandfather – defrosted the refrigerator used to drive me mad. He’d just turn it off, leave the door open and leave me to deal with the food. Who defrosts a refrigerator without running the food stocks down first? God, it was infuriating!”

“Okaay…”

“So I hit him over the head with the griddle pan. Damn well killed him I did. Of course, the police turned up eventually, but I really, really didn’t want to go to jail so I ‘became’ your Aunty Jean. We let it be known that ‘Granny’ had run away with the family savings and… voila! Here I am.”

I should mention, we were in the kitchen at the time, and she was at the stove, frying steaks. On the griddle.

But then, we are all of us habitual liers. Go figure.