Doug

OUTSTANDING!!! Noone interupted my one-man-show. Here is my final story as sleep is needed. Goodnight.

I’m cloistered in a cocoon of comforters, my head rests uneasily on an egg crate pillow. My furries adorn the corners like sentries ready to drive away the boogey man. Our girl Harley pitter patters in her sleep her paws racing to catch the beetle she spied on the deck today. Mallow with outstretched paws sleeps upside down whiskers twitch to the touch of the breeze from the ceiling fan. Oreo, after partaking of some liquid refreshment, leaps on my head probably the exact spot he had planned to pounce. But now he is still, he silver flecks in his fur show his age but he’s still spry for an old Tom. My belly grumbles, still digesting the kit-kat from the lost and found bin of the buffet table.

129 words…may have missed a word from the list. This will be my goodnight hug to everybody.

Doug

mum23 and five I promise I'll get to your great efforts next time.

five

LadyH Nice contrast between the violent fluttering at the beginning and the serene girl at the end.

Mum, Incidental Victims: You have a knack for verse. We're left to wonder what motivated her.

Mum, Growing Up: Again, that knack for verse.... so sweet.

Doug, Spellbound: I got a little lost; this is a elegant phrase --"Time...never enough, often lost, but never wasted..."

Doug, no title: Makes me curious for more. Not quite sure what is going on.

Doug, no title (2): That's definitely cats: you captured the different personalities well. Buffet tables have lost and found bins? Or is the speaker another cat?

five

Catch A Beetle in A Jar
(139 words)

Backyards are fenced in typical tourist towns
Little girls, there you lie in a quiet cloister
soaking in the light and morning dew. Moisture
seeps from sprouting seeds into summer gowns.

After one of you caught a beetle in a jar,
you peered through convex glass. You would lose
the magnified crawler should she choose
to let go the glass. Oh, do go on as you are.

Exactly as you are. Her legs outstretched,
she set her knee beside the jar and tipped
it. Out the beetle crawled. She squealed and flipped
the bug to her foot. A friend would have fetched

the garden hose and poured liquid on her toes
to drive away the critter. Instead, you only giggled.
Memory is but a digest; you laughed as she wriggled.
You remember being spry, as the tall grass grows.

giraffe

5, Starting with the word "backyards" is great. Soaks you right in. It reminded me of a Dylan Thomas poem.

giraffe

Very short. I'm still trying to figure out writing song lyrics. Bear with me. You could maybe even hum along with this one. I hate the ending.

NO TITLE

I'm lost. I cloistered my dreams
in the little girl I wanted to be.
Spry young gal whose life, it seems
will never go to war like me.

Images of blood and grit,
people tryin' to kill you.
For a child to digest and get,
it drives a hole right through you.

Knowing your expectation is
to battle with the strangers.
Fight on to your own death or his
It multiplies our angers.

Little girl I wanted to be,
you still live inside of me.
Now that I'm a grandpappy
Greet me with your eyes that see

intentions.
No more of this beetle dung.
Reflections.
Exactly who we live among.

You're gonna drive me crazy. (with a little bump).
after my outstretched arm (has a liquid jump).

Little girl.

Little girl.

giraffe

OK. Exchange the last verse with

You're gonna' drive me crazy (with a little help)
after my outsretched arms can I feel you?
You are such a Muse in my mind (with a little help)
After the strengths are due oo-oo

Little girl I wanted to be (just a little, little, little girl,
just a little, little, little girl, just a little, little, little girl)

I'm a soldier now.

morshy

33 words (not including title). All used.

A Life Lived

Spry girl of liquid drive,
Hand outstretched just to survive,
Needled vein in cloistered mass,
Waiting for lost hours to pass,
Until, interred, the earth digests,
A beetle journey: at last at rest.

bhughes

Please excuse the morbid subject. I certainly do not want to offend anyone, nor am I reflecting any of my own suicidal thoughts...

A spry girl
Lost her drive
An exact path
The poison liquid
Body outstretched
While cloistered
Beetles digest

Doug

Bravo bhughes! I applaud the morbid diatribe. SO so succint and pointed. Love it!! (Yeah, you can all say it now)

Doug

morshy: Great, great, great. Almost sounds like a poem you would read to a child, but not of course. It has that rythmic quality of sing song.

Doug

Please treat this gently or not for I am a story teller and not quite the poet. This is just another one that popped out and wrote itself. (Hey, I heard that!) Enjoy.

Beetle Girl

Beetle girl creeps among us
Only during the darkest hours
Creeping so stealthily
Along the wooden floors

Not to be discovered exactly
One prickly stem at a time
She advances so slowly
As if outstretched on a steep climb

Finally reaching a cloister of linens
All heaped with plenty of cover
The beetle girl traversed my bed sheets
Only inches from my lover

That’s when the spry bug leapt
Straight onto my face
She sunk one claw albeit small
Into my pillow sham lace

I had dodged a bullet
Driven by some unknown alarm
Beetle girl missed her mark
But was moving towards my arm

What came next could be lost forever
It’s impossible to digest it all
With one swift swat of my hand
Beetle girl was a bug on the wall.

Dragon

262 not including title

To Crush a Beetle

Earth sat with her siblings, a stately matron on her chair of granite she would never be called girlish or spry like her sisters Water and Air. Unlike their mercurial brother Fire, she was slow to anger but she’d been driven to a fury now and her eyes, normally a placid igneous-like grey were now the smouldering red of molten magma. She’d called this meeting in the cloistered sea cave ‘neath the volcano where they could all feel comfortable to discuss the creatures that crawled her surface like industrious beetles. Water reclined on her liquid seat languidly, but all could see that she too was furious and Air beside her on a bench of roiling thunderheads had lightening snapping from her outstretched fingertips. Only Fire was unaffected by the doings of the parasites who seemed determined to digest the very planet they called home. Or perhaps he was emboldened by them. He’d always been the black sheep of the family, always trying to become more powerful than his sisters, the fact that they were inherently equal was completely lost on him and Earth would not be surprised if it came out that he’d encouraged what she and her sisters were here to put a stop to. His exact nature was always in flux and she hoped he was in a mood to join them as she finally stood and said,

“The time has finally come, we must crush humanity before it crushes us.”

There was an ominous silence after this statement, but Earth was quite certain which way the vote would go.

Qsilv

(eyes widening... short startled laugh escaping...) WHOA... Dragon, wicked!

Qsilv

pfff... unfair of me to leave this looking like only Dragon's affected me --this odd little word list with the unusual strictures is eliciting really remarkable work from every single one. Rather than do the dissecting myself (well, out loud, that is), I'm sooooo content to let the reliably clear thinking 'five' lay 'em out in summary!

giraffe

Morshy and bhughes. By adding just a few words to the list, you came out with good prose.

Q, i agree. Opening the gates and letting the children play has brought out delightful work.

Doug, poor beetle girl. You're mean. lol

Dragon. Excellent trip through metaphysics to ecology.

Dragon

giraffe I very much liked your poem/song. I did like the revised ending better.

Doug, Beetle girl creeped me out, nicely done.

I too am enjoying all this creativity coming out of this list. I'd comment on them all but I'd be here too long.

five

Glad you all are enjoying the challenge.

One more from me, 74 words, Untitled.

Whittle, beetle
out of wood;
Critter, whittle
what you would.

Do you betray
arms outstretched?
Soft as clay,
hardly sketched.

It’s inexact,
This science,
Meant to distract
Us out of sense.

Meet a beetle
In a cloister;
Smile and wheedle,
What a foister.

Little girl
Bites a squid.
There’s a swirl
of tidal liquid:

Nature’s blues.
Must be spry
Less she lose,
And maybe die.

She ingests
And swallows;
She digests.
So it goes.

giraffe

5, It took quite a few reads of your poem to get something out of it. What I got is probably different from anyone else's interpretation, but it was fun. I got sing-songiness of childhood progressing through adolescence to adulthood and having to face consequences.

Doug

Dragon: "To crush a beetle". Great comentary and currently relevant also. We are all just beetles who need squashed for our wastefulness of our natural resources and our insatiable thirst for more, more, more. I'd better turn off this computer so the "elements" don't get me! lol.