Welcome once again to the 55, all. It has been an eventful month, and also a month mired in chaos and distemper. This weekend we get together to add our words to the ongoing pile of all our laments and celebrations, in the form of 55 words, no more, no less. We also do it to remember Galen Hayes, the originator of this meme, as we continue to miss his ever-humorous and supportive presence, as we do all the kickass weekends that seem so long ago.
The rules are unchanged--set down your thoughts in a poem, piece of flash fiction or prose poetry on any subject, in exactly 55 words.
Post the url of the result in the comments below and I will be by to read the result.For those to whom words are coming with difficulty, your absence is forgiven from the heart.
The 55 begins at Thursday midnight and will last til Sunday at 4:00 PM CST.
~*~
Here is my own effort
July in America
The tune that plays tonight
I cannot carry.
Voice
cracks while sirens
robot-howl it
clearer, louder:
the ape-rebooted's song
of darkness
coming.
July's made
of screams
and broken light, of
cloudy poison rising, eyes
shucked oysters
poached in acid tides.
Stars fall dim,
rimmed
with bleeding innocence;
this copper-salt rain
will never wash
us clean.
July 2020
Images: Tear Gas in Portland, Oregon Getty Images Fair Use
Untitled , © Zdzisław Beksiński Fair Use
"...things fall apart; the centre cannot hold / mere anarchy is loosed upon the world / the blood-dimmed tide is loosed..."
ReplyDeleteLet alone Yeats, I think Swift and Bosch would have made hay with the toadstool-in- chief's incoherent rants and bellicose raves, and his unseen minions who've gutted the agencies founded to help conserve (imagine, conservatives who conserved) this once promising land, that unleashed the acid rain and federal brown shirts.
And yet - f those f'n f'ers.
Will be back later with mine ~
https://grapeling.wordpress.com/2020/07/31/split-ends/
DeleteHere's mine. I hope you have a kick-ass weekend.
Thanks, M. Yours took me back to a painful place in my own life. Thinking of you. ((()))
DeleteI love "ape-booted". Perfect description. It is hard to imagine this time we are living through. It almost seems like a dystopian movie of some sort, but when we see moms and vets and college kids being beaten, gassed, and carried away by the modern gestapo, it's almost too real to bear, night after night, day after day, the lies never ending. And all of it while 150,000 Americans die of disease and whiny-baby stupidity and entitlement by not taking the simplest of precautions. My head spins as my heart sinks.
ReplyDeleteMy 55:
ReplyDeletehttps://fireblossom-wordgarden.blogspot.com/2020/07/apes-in-coffee.html
Thanks for this--it's amazing and powerful and as always, leaves me grateful to be in the same poetic room where I can read it. Have a kickass weekend, dear BFF.
Deletehttp://woonietest.blogspot.com/2020/07/55.html
ReplyDeleteI am having a difficult time carrying that tune as well, pitch is off, lyrics make absolutely no sense. Happy 55 Friday!
ReplyDeleteYep. And I hate the chorus. Thanks for your own 55, Helen. It made my morning.
DeleteMary Bach has also posted a 55 here:
ReplyDeletehttps://othermary.wordpress.com/2020/07/31/just-for-today/https://othermary.wordpress.com/2020/07/31/just-for-today/
Thanks, Mary!
July is made of screams indeed Joy. You have captured the anguish so perfectly in these lines. What a crazy time we live in. I could never have imagined it, but yet here it is right before us. Thank you for giving us an outlet for creativity Joy.
ReplyDeleteHere is mine:
https://thewordwhisperer2.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-graceful-arrangement.html
Thank you Carrie, for the kind words,and for being here, as well as your own support for writers at the Muse. Have a kickass weekend!
DeleteJuly, 2020..I'll never forget it. "the ape-rebooted's song of darkness coming" That is a powerful line. The whole piece is poetic photograph of what we just lived through. Powerful, exquisite writing as always!
ReplyDeleteHere is my contribution. My muse also went to the July we just survived.
https://thesoundofink.blogspot.com/2020/08/knee-on-neck-of-democracy.html
Thanks, Susie. And the same back to you. Writing like yours helps staunch some of the bleeding, anyway.
DeleteJuly is the savage abortion of summers lost, who knows what furor stampedes behind it. All we know is that it is coming. I'm with FB on this, head spinning & heart sinking. Poets are now tasked to do this, discern the spirits, read the blood on the wind and taste the copper in the spillage and fire. At least there's a Devil's Bookstore where the apt words may be found ... Brendan
ReplyDeleteYes, though I can't help feeling the shelves are getting pretty bare...horror upon horror, and the worst them all the horror of what is inside people you assumed were rational and caring instead of mad monsters. Thanks for reading, B.
DeleteYes, I wonder what it will take to make life and people clean, good and trusting again. I know people as young as five and nine who have anxiety over both the virus and trump's America. That makes me so sad.
ReplyDeleteYes, me too. Thanks for reading, dear Sherry.
Delete