The Sniper

A nine line story. We know how these things go because the media and entertainment industries give us accurate infotainment. I received US Army basic training and I too could be a government trained sniper. I rated sharpshooter but just missed expert rating on the M-14. A little practice with the right long range and short range weapons and I could be the shooter. I am confident of it. To be on the other end of the shot of course requires no training at all.



The Sniper

All the points you made
fall away like over cooked
leaves of artichoke.
They're the same drab green
too as the shot rings out close
and the glass explodes.

Then I, smashed back past
my breath, feel the red flower
grow on my torn breast.

August 6, 2010 4:28 PM

Prometheus Chained - 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 3 Word Wednesday writing group *click here*
This week's words:

Badge; Darken; Liability.



Prometheus Chained

The badge you gave me,
I have worn it constantly,
watched my uniform
fade around it, the cloth
beneath darken accordingly.

I must of need shed it all,
all to my last breaking bone.

Liability
hovers over me
like a vulture might, seeking
my liver before
it putrefies, swells
in alcoholic sway, becomes
dangerous to eat.

May 29, 2013 9:58 AM

The Coming Of That Good Night

Yesterday, I was gifted with a couple phrases from a poem I read. Today I am replying to a comment on yesterday's poem, but also to Dylan Thomas' poem where he exhorts us to "rage, rage against the dying of the light."

The Coming Of That Good Night

Quiet pondering
could be the thing I try thus
if only I could
shut me the hell up.

I stand in tall grassy light
at the end of my
energy, trying
to make sense or at least smile
as the sun goes down.

May 28, 2013 9:17 AM

How Some Evenings Go

The world shrugs - see ya -
and throws the sun down the slope
so surely I can't
complain about twilight
though I soon must light the lamp.
What is with the world
is what I now muse
as if the world might reason
with me in the dark.
I snuffle around
like a wild dog might, refuse
to settle - not now.

May 27, 2013 7:29 PM

Passion - A Magpie Tale

Ponytail by Last Exit
offered by Tess Kincaid as a prompt for Mag 170

Passion

Just how bad I want
to kiss you right now
could turn into a movie
starring Paul Newman
or Robert Redford,
someone like that or I reach
out my hand and stroke
your hair, gliding down
its sweep of silk, its auburn
a swirl of dream smoke,
a complete surprise,
world creation, utter truth.

May, 26, 2013 8:03 AM

To join this week's The Mag creative writing group *click here*

The Kiss Of The Fin-footed Mammal - 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 3 Word Wednesday writing group *click here*
This week's words:

Clever; Finish; Silky.



The Kiss Of The Fin-footed Mammal

There's a fishy smell
and the slurp of the waves kiss
my ears - have you felt
the wash of seal's tongue?
A clever moment, that's sure.
The joy of the chase -
Remember sinking
to the finish of all things
and then with a flick
darting off after
schools of silky silver prey?

May 22, 2013 7:07 AM

An Ordinary Man

Just ordinary,
I choose to sit near the sun,
near the edge of all
the planetary
fields of force and the gas clouds
that fluoresce neon
out beyond late light.
Just ordinary, I've done
the work and I'm here
because I'm not all
there.

May 20, 2013 2:38 PM

Landscape - A Magpie Tale

Jamie Wyeth, Lighthouse Dandelions, suggested by Tess Kincaid but found *here*

Jamie Wyeth is a third generation member of a family of artists, all in the Contemporary Realism school. His grandfather: N.C. Wyeth. His father: Andrew Wyeth. He was raised to be the artist he is, basically home schooled in all things and especially in his art by his family.

Landscape

The rolling lemon
hillside of my inner peace
has a high holy
house of light and shade
erected here on the land
of my natural
legacy.

My ache
over the strange wash of light
I find in this scene
is barely matched by
the palette of squishy stuff
I now have at hand.

Gossamer weeds bend
my heart. I sway in the wind
that comes from the sea.

May 19, 2013 9:13 AM

To join this week's The Mag creative writing group *click here*

Listing To The Left

Too bad you're not what
the doctor's ordered lately.
I would have been good
to go at this time
otherwise.

You show up in
these moments driven
by the wrath of God
to roil in the weather eye
leaving me to stand
at a cant to life,
not that level anyhow
even if I do
stay dry.

Yes, I do stay dry.

May 17, 2013 2:33 PM

I would like to be at perfect peace and ease and I know already that this entails vacating my attitudes and fears, my wants and yearnings, and coming to know that all nearby is as it is because that is required to balance all the rest as it is. Since I cannot yet accomplish this balance, I make delicate love somewhere in my life, with you, on the keyboards producing music or poetry, with my cat making him crosseyed with the pleasure of a great head massage, or in service in some other small way.

But I avoid the hard stuff if I can. That's probably a shortcoming.

Who The Hell Is Joe? - 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 3 Word Wednesday writing group *click here*
This week's words:

Helpless; Trample; Vigilant.



Who The Hell Is Joe?

I am not helpless,
or I don't think I am, not
like I was that day
in the elephant
herd, under the trample stomp
of big fat gray feet.
I must keep alert
though, the vigilant posture
is mine, sayeth Joe.
You never know where
the pachyderms lurk, heavy
in my scheme of things.

May 15, 2013 10:32 AM

Summer Storms

Something happened. This was back in 2010, nearly three years ago. I don't know now what it was happened and if it happened to me. I guess it mattered then. Or maybe I told a story, made the whole thing up.

Summer Storms

The impact spreads me
in a crystalline design
on the concrete strip
of my barren life.

I am willing to receive
the fat drops of rain
that are forecast soon.

I want thunder, lightning, hail,
an inundation
to drown my splintered
wooden heart in summer storms
and send it to sea.

August 6, 2010 3:55 PM

The Quiet Unmarked Path

The Quiet Unmarked Path

Here's a true silence
Drifting down like fine snowflakes
Collecting around
My tree, cooling me
As I perch on this lowest
Limb trying to see
The lines of all things.

Among things I hope I see,
Footprints may appear,
May lead me further
On this quiet unmarked path.
In the drifting snow.

Written January 18, 2009 9:23 AM
First Posted June 21, 2009

In The Station - A Magpie Tale

The old man in the photo got away briefly from his wife and told me some stories while chain smoking cigarettes. He has promised to quit smoking, he confessed to me, and it has only led him to more sneaking around. Then he led me back to where his wife was waiting and handed me his camera preset to sepia. He asked me please to take this portrait before they embarked. I do not question why a guy who looks like him is actually American. But then I don't know how to question what we were doing in an Albanian train station either. Stuff like this always happens to me.

He sent the picture to my Google Email Account the other day. I don't know how Tess got it for The Mag. Oh by the way, to the left the communication icons say, NO SMOKING and also NO CAMERAS. And why does the wife want him to quit when she smokes too? Will she quit smoking as well?

And if there is no smoking there, why do they provide an ash receptacle?

As best I remember, here is what he said at one point in his phlegm filled voice. I have taken out the coughing.

This Argument Started
In Third Grade

I can't ever see
why a self respecting place
calls itself Turkey.
Togan and Şahan
are lads from a large dumb bird
and I like roast beef
for my Thanksgiving
dinner anyway, brother.
I have not resolved
this childhood tangle
in my full grown ear and brain.
It still makes my head
rattle and wobble,
though nowadays I try to
deny it, be cool.

May 12, 2013 10:25 AM

Togan Gökbakar and his older brother Şahan Gökbakar as he told me are indeed from Turkey and are young filmmakers.

To check out and read or join this week's Mag Creative Writing Group *click here*

Absence

The via negativa...

Via negativa or Via negationis (Lat., ‘way of negation’). Realization that since God is not a universe or an object in a universe, ‘he’ is not open to observation or description. It follows that God can only be spoken of analogically or poetically; and that it is easier to say ‘what God is not’ rather than what God is. This awareness occurs, in different forms, in all theistic religions, e.g. in ein-sof, bilā kaifa, neti neti, nirguṇa-brahman. This is apophatic, as opposed to kataphatic theology.

Absence

Today, I'm absent.
I do not sit in this seat.
I deny presence.
I have no purpose
For being gone, but gone I am.
I would be here now
If I was but, no,
I am not here, not waiting
And not writing this.

Written, January 18, 2009 9:08 AM
First Posted, June 21, 2009

To introduce this poem and one other in the original post, I wrote in part:

A man I love gave a talk one time and he pointed out that when my distress is mainly mental, or even when it is physical at least the mental component can be dealt with by focusing the time frame. He said that there is really nothing wrong right now. He said whenever there is mental distress it is either coming from the future or the past and if I narrow my time frame to right now my pain will be already over or not yet here. In other words it is so often true that there is nothing wrong right now.

Gutter Games

The cosmic nature
of a slip of cut paper
cut to fit the word
and laid down neatly
in a leafy pose, two leaves
and this otherwise
clean gutter, the thumb
sticking out, the word almost
like a severed thumb
pointing to something -
we probably need to take
this as just for us.
Tell no one! she said.

August 5, 2010 4:38 PM

A Hard Moment - 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 3 Word Wednesday writing group *click here*
This week's words:

Destruction; Lanky; Ultimatum.



A Hard Moment

Destruction derby:
because I need it, oh God
help me, oh lanky
God screeching "No, no!"-
your ultimatum my last
stand among ruin
I richly deserve.
I've so earned my destiny
at the gun tables
(tea dregs on the floor)
while you douse me with urine
to hunt the king's deer.

May 8, 2013 6:16 AM

Where The Road Goes

I found you among
the canes, gorging as you do
on raspberry life,
crushing joy on your
sweet sweet tongue. I have tasted
you before, now this
day in summer's long
sun bright light. This road will go
to our doom, our doom.

August 5, 2010 9:36 AM
Modified May 7, 2013 4:09 PM

Woe Is Me

Lactose intolerance
troubles me, not that I have
anything against
milk but seven years
is a long time to curdle.
And I thought I would
make some money here.
I have no luck with the cows
and the green has fled.
That leaves me sitting
like a forlorn lost gopher
searching for his hole.

May 6, 2013 10:11 AM

The Gift - A Magpie Tale

"Young Woman Picking The Fruit Of Knowledge",
Mary Cassatt, 1892
Offered by Tess Kincaid on Mag 167
To view and join the Mag creative writing group, *click here*

The Gift

Do you know comfort
as you give it to me, love?
Look at you among
the trees, the spring green
trees, the snowing cottonwoods
that frame you so well
and frame your secrets
that light your face - how you shine.
You call me your dad,
your adopted dad,
me that old these days, and you
not so young either
but still at the river
at the edge, damp shoes and all
and love, you give love.

May 5, 2013 9:22 AM

The Next Comet

If the comet came
to us this morning, headed
straight into the sea,
but exploding first
into flame out fragments flashing
on the fast way down,
I would shake apart
and cringe. I would not stand up
and cry out like Lear
in the coming storm.
I would lose the world like Mom
lost her son only
she could save her son
and I would not possibly
in the remotest
chance be able to
save the world.

May 4, 2013 8:37 AM

Are We On Land Or Sea

Blue ice occurs when snow falls on a glacier, is compressed, and becomes part of a glacier that winds its way toward a body of water (river, lake, ocean, etc.). During its travels, air bubbles that are trapped in the ice are squeezed out, and the size of the ice crystals increases, making it clear.

Are We On Land Or Sea

The edge of the world
forms in the glacial ice found
in our far places
seldom seen, not
even by the whales and krill.
But that's where I find
you stand, in our cracks,
in our blue lit deep caverns.
I would say silent
but really beneath
all that silence the ice creaks
and cracks and still groans.

May 3, 2013 9:25 AM

I Shall Take Steps

I Shall Take Steps

On the sweeter sea
phosphorescent curling shape
bursts into the air
and flits, then rains down
upon us, the crew
standing on the edge
at the rail, so to now speak
or perhaps one is
on the plank waiting
that command to walk further,
one step further than
all the edges here.

May 2, 2013 10:02 AM

The Tribute

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 3 Word Wednesday writing group *click here*
This week's words:

Believe; Penitent; Tribute.

Picasso's Don Quixote
I have a print of this on hung on my living room wall.

The Tribute

The knight of the realm
dismounted. His horse failed to
believe in the grail.
He turned aside, went back
home to his wife, penitent
her abandonment.

In tribute he bowed
and offered to do the dishes
for seven full years.

May 1, 2013 10:31 AM