The Acid Acts Up - A Magpie Tale

Between Heaven and Hell - Jacek Yerka - 1989

offered by Tess Kincaid as a writing prompt on The Mag: Mag 162

To join and view this week's The Mag Creative Writing Group, *click here*

The Acid Acts Up
On Easter Day

I have come in from
the fields to find the cat's been
named trusty in charge
and just look at it!
Nowhere to sleep for me now.
I don't trust this house
and even the land
has changed now that I'm inside.
I guess I can't get
back up the old path
either. It could be flashbacks
or too many fumes.

March 31, 2013 9:57 AM

The Moment

Some days it just doesn't pay to gnaw through a leathery shell.

A Man Of Few Words - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To join this week's Three Word Wednesday writing group *click here*

This week's words:

Cooperate; Lame; Terse.

A Man Of Few Words

Oh that dog won't hunt.
He's gone all lame. I won't hunt
either. No, I won't.
Please cooperate,
that's what you said. Terse you are.
Me too. I'm done now.

‎March ‎27, ‎2013 4:12 PM

The Bird Sanctuary - Reprise

A Mycteria Ibis image from Wikimedia Commons

The Yellow-billed Stork (Mycteria ibis) is a large wading bird in the stork family Ciconiidae. It occurs in Africa south of the Sahara and in Madagascar. Its a medium-sized stork. Length: 97 cm; average body weight for males: 2.3 kg; for females: 1.9 kg. Plumage mainly pinkish-white with black wings and tail; bill yellow, blunt, and decurved at tip. Immature birds are greyish brown with dull greyish brown bill, dull orange face and brownish legs. The similar Painted Stork (Mycteria leucocephala) is an Asian bird.

The Yellow-billed Stork is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.

The Bird Sanctuary

You guys keep watching
And I do my best, ignore
Your constant invasions.
I high step shallows,
Fishing for my next feeding
And you guys disturb
All the little ones.

They rush from me as if it
Was all my own fault.

Can't you mind your own business?

Written November 18,2008
First posted February 14, 2009
Image added March 26, 2013

The Foreigner - A Magpie Tale

Not to be Reproduced, 1937 by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte

offered by Tess Kincaid as a writing prompt on The Mag: Mag 161

To join and view this week's The Mag Creative Writing Group, *click here*

The Foreigner

Then we murdered him
and his official faceless
condition was cause
enough. Prison showed
up in his past. His tattoos
were initially
covered by long sleeves.
We struck him from close behind
just as he had led
with his soul into
the mirror, a startling skill
in one we found so
nondescript, even
so freaking anonymous.
I've these bad goose bumps
and hope you will rid
us of all those brass horned geese
making so much noise.

What the hell is that
book he left behind?
I tried to make it out...can't.
Where's the translator?

March 24, 2013 9:32 AM

Adam's Sacrifice - Reprise

Expulsion From The Garden of Eden - Thomas Cole

b. 1801 - d. 1848

Oil on canvas 54.5"x39.75"

Painted 1828

Adam's Sacrifice

That you should require
My separation from you
Is what baffles me.
It feels bleak and hard
That I must walk out your door.

I know I started
This situation in truth
By my argument
And I think I'm right
But still, what a steep deep price.

And on top of it,
At the high capstone,
You want me to do this thing
As if willingly.

Written January 7, 2009 11:51 AM
First Posted May 28, 2009
Modification, changed one word March 23, 2013

Getting My Feet Wet

Getting My Feet Wet

Yes, I am talking,
talking to you but it's hard
when you squat on stones
in the midst of things
and turn away as you do.
It is distracting,
the view you give me
and I think of other things
I could be doing
but don't want wet feet.

July 27, 2010 9:15 PM

The Sidekick - A Magpie Tale

Created by Pablo Picasso, 1936, and identified as
"Faun, Horse and Bird",

Offered as a writing prompt by Tess Kincaid on The Mag 160

Join The Mag Creative Writing Group *Click Here*

The Sidekick

Stand in the Spanish
sun without your dark dark shades
this time, and without
guile please while you work
your wishful wiles on us all
and I will sing your
draft into being once
again despite all civil
wars fought over what
is true and or right,
what to do with the public
purse, in the public
eye.

March 17, 2013 9:15 AM

Doing It To Myself - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To join this week's Three Word Wednesday writing group *click here*

This week's words:

Careful; Hug; Mistake.



Doing It To Myself

Mom admonished me
that I be careful and then
she would hug me tight.
I would pull away,
anxious to get out the door,
make no mistake about that.
The next thing I knew
would be some trouble
brewing, me heedless and rash -
all expectation.

That's how I hung my own self
from the tree I scaled
on that fateful day.

March 13, 2013 10:05 AM

This is actually a memory, although it is not quite how it happened. It was another kid and the tree was a purple leafed cherry plum tree up the block from my house. There were three or four of us in the tree and when the kid caught his necklace on a stub sticking up above the branch, he was panicked immediately. From my adult eyes looking back I don't think he was in much real danger but no one in the tree knew what to do for a short while. He got more and more panicked hanging there. He had both hands on the branch above but not enough energy or thought to pull himself up. I was closest and just lifted the chain off the stub. It was my first experience of "saving" someone. I was in second grade.

The cherry plum trees were fairly common in Berkeley, California in the early fifties. They were known in my house as Chinese Cherries. That's the wrong name it turns out after a little research. While chiefly ornamental in Berkeley, the fruit is edible but quite sour, looking far more like a cherry than a plum.

It's Better Now - A Magpie Tale

Meal Beach, Burra Isles, Shetland by Robin Gosnall

courtesy Tess Kincaid, The Mag 159

Join The Mag creative writing group *click here*

It's Better Now

It's not like it was.
Look at the lines we can see
and sense the others
with your hidden ways.
Emptiness calls to us in
the odd growing light
and the shock of cold
green salt waves, life's somnolence.
But it's not like then,
like the beginning,
all flame and noxious gassy
hits, impacts and shards.

March 10, 2013 11:38 AM

Breathing Sand

I'm actually a serious poet. I mean it. There are other people who hang out in the worlds I write about. For example, see this guy. *Sand Fish*

Breathing Sand

I am sinking in.
This process includes growing
gills which will take sand
and bring the good air
into me. Can I say how
weird this is to me?
Maybe to you too.
I heard about the sand fish
before, who live deep
beneath the deserts
but I never expected
I'd be one myself.

Just goes to show you
shit always happens to me.
Sand bubbles do itch.

Marching Orders - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To join this week's Three Word Wednesday writing group *click here*

This week's words:

Brutal; Grope; Transfer.

Credit: Fanpop

Marching Orders

You will not be so,
nor I, not brutal - today
you will not be crude.
We shall grope our way
into the pure whiter light,
deathless and filmy,
diaphanous wings
and a transfer of halos
leading the last lost
sad souls into truth
and the American Way
just like that brave lad
from midwest Smallville
the alien boy wonder
and his crystal clarity,
his purest of hearts.

March 6, 2013 6:29 AM

The State Of Things

The State Of Things

It's so damn absurd,
what's going on around here.

If I tried to show
you just how it is
the times would fall prey to sin,
to it's confession.
Seconds dribble out
the corners of the clockwork
imposing on us.

Sure, we'll traverse
the plank that we've placed across
wall to wall above
last week's disaster
and crossing we'll hang our signs
as future warnings.

March 5, 2013 4:45 PM

In A Snit

In A Snit

We must know it for damn sure
that's what I want said
as we roll along.
That's the way I roll, you said
pointing to my right
eye and winking too.

I would give my life for you
I gushed, coloring
outside the pale lines
you left for me to use up
on my faltering
steps along the way.

If it was raven eyeballs
I plucked out at last
then I should rat grin
don't you think? I mean really?
But you turned away
and I spit thumb tacks.

Under Duress - A Magpie Tale

Image by The Fox and The Raven, courtesy Tess Kincaid

Image also found under Kaia Pieters' creative commons site

Join The Mag creative writing group

Under Duress

Waterboarding is
a nasty technique even
when you get rests in
between the sessions.

Look at you reaching for breath,
all you care about
right now, sweetheart. Bad
girls soften up quick.

I remember what
that feels like. They did
me twenty seven times once
before I opened
my back files, told them
all everything, even truth
to get them to stop.

March 3, 2013 12:36 PM

Maybe It Was That Fever

Maybe It Was That Fever

I have never known
why I can't make sense of what
I hear so often.
This frustrates deeply.
It seems that others have less
trouble, like when they
use industrial
radios and I cannot.

People hear sense. Me,
I hear mostly noise.
I could pontificate this,
make some clever point
if only my brain
worked better so I could make
more sense of it all.

You guys hear the song.
I hear the music fine - just
not the fricken voids.