Thursday, June 9, 2011

Friday Flash 55 ~ Gluttony




Gluttony


With a mouth of fire, the sun’s too near
blowing his bombast
at earth's adverse ear
in a quarreling blast
all the neighbors can hear.

Pushing out his glutton's tongue,
licking leaves, collar undone,
he laps giraffe-like, drooling heat,
strips the green limb
withers the bloom
without even
the excuse
of
needing to eat.



June 2011
A summer nursery rhyme in 55 words

posted for    Friday Flash 55   at the G-Man's

Image of the sun courtesy National Weather Service Space Weather Prediction Center 






32 comments:

  1. I must be guilty of this sin as your 55 has left me hungry for more of your writing.

    55 Flash Fiction Friday: You Do Know

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  2. You're welcome to fill your plate. There's a whole blog of it to give you indigestion. ;-)

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  3. wow! you really captured the hunger of the heat. i am withering reading this!

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  4. Oh wow! That's good. I love the images your words bring. Wow, a playful, destructive, hungry heat :-) And thank you so much for your kind comment on my first 55 - you made me smile and laugh. I need that!

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  5. Such a happy poem! All seriousness aside, good, enjoyable write. =)

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  6. Sounds intense .. we're still sleeping under down where I live! Nice 55!

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  7. What a great solar flare - so vivid
    Perfectly set against the image

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  8. Oh Hedge....
    The back of my neck feels dirty and gritty.
    I Really liked this Hot 55!!
    Firely Descriptive.
    Thanks for playing, and have a Kick Ass Week-End
    ....Sidewalks Hotter than a match head.

    (I'm hearin The Lovin Spoonfull in the background)

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  9. Beware the wrath of Ra, or whatever it was those wacky Egyptians called the sun god. I expect maybe the sun doesn't NEED an excuse. It just does what it likes.

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  10. Wow, I feel parched. So well done, Hedge.

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  11. You had me at giraffe... love those things!

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  12. That's a nursery rhyme. No wonder kids have nightmares! Great look at gluttony~I can't get enough of your poetry!

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  13. the sun spots are supposed to be pretty bad this summer...think they are aimed at my place...it was 103...wicked flow hedge...gluttony is rather disgusting, your second half made me think of the trees destroyed to build new homes in a repressed economy, when many sit empty...maybe its just me...

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  14. This made me think of so many things - forest fires, droughts, sun spots and all things that are hot and dry and uncontrollable.

    I loved it, hedgewitch!

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  15. No doubt you're one of the hottest bloggers around! LOL

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  16. mm yes Brian, houses eating trees are much on my mind too
    and yes hedgewitch the sun is an awesome force.
    we are flimsy
    there are some spectacular videos on youtube of a hungry sun
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFb7OZx2NYo

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  17. This is excellent! The title made my Catholic upbringing rear its ugly head and I could almost feel the heat as I read this. We're keeping cool with frequent showers here in SF, thanks to climate change.

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  18. Vera good but wish the heat had stayed a day or two longer I wasn't tired of being licked yet. Thought I had my jacket put up for the year. Fooled again. I always for get Townsend's advice...

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  19. !!!

    You knocked this one out, Hedgewitch, that giraffe's tongue image is brilliant.

    But yes, the spring-summer heat is frightening!

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  20. A summer nursery rhyme indeed!
    Greatly done Hedge. I love your imagery, the sun gets a different, longing meaning in your words...

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  21. Some neighbors. Give 'em an inch and they gulp the whole damn ruler. Earth -- with its somewhat-brimming skin of life -- has such a precarious existence, doesn't it, positioned exactly where that margin can simmer without boiling over. So so vulnerable. You could also call this "Usury," financial appetite without receipt; or "Lust," a Weiner dog stretching from sea to shining sea: the growing commonplace of extremity which now seems everywhere at once. Side note, Did you hear about the massive solar flare and coronal spew on June 7? It was said that there wouldn't be much effect when particles from that flare hit the Earth some seven minutes later, but I can't help think that it was the Celestial Spark which goosed the mercury's soar ... How is it that I can write three times as many words in a comment as you hammered so finely into the original? Gluttony, I guess. And hey, be sure to slather on some sunblock when you're out there de-lousing the canna leaves. -- Brendan

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  22. Thanks all. I know it's hotter elsewhere right now, but as I age, and after decades of living in this summer bake, anything over 95 degrees seems like I'm being basted on a revolving rotisserie.

    @Brendan: Yes, that was a cool firework from the sun that seems to be if not causal to the heat, at least a fitting accompaniment--and not to worry, I've learned never to leave the house without slathering on the creme de zinc, or whatever that white mess is. Still, it beats the alternative. Lovin the weiner dog.

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  23. @FB Ra had it made in his chariot, cruising from sunrise to sunset--unlike Osiris, who suffered a fate similar to Anthony Weiner's.

    @Ruth Thank you. Friday is my day to play in the padded word-playpen just for fun.

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  24. The pairing of hunger and heat is stunning, and sunning - hot stuff my friend!

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  25. you paint a powerful reckless picture of the sun with your words...we love the sun so much in spring and even in summer when it's not too hot but forget the destroying power he has as well...a metaphor for many things...can't live without and yet - too much is highly dangerous..

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  26. Sun, o sun, you wonderful one, why have you gone so mean?

    The rivers are dry, the grass sits and cries.

    The dust ran away with the spoon.

    xoxo

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  27. Thanks all, for stopping by and sun-bathing with me. Enjoyed playing this week.

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  28. A wonderful cannibalistic portrait of the sun! Powerful!

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  29. "I've eaten the sun so my tongue has been burned of the taste" - from "Down In A Hole" by Alice In Chains.

    Cool 55!

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"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, out of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry." ~William Butler Yeats

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