Flash Friday 55 Halloween Edition 2020

 

 

 Welcome all, to the All Hallows' edition of the Friday 55. In a year where almost every day has felt like Halloween, it may be hard to get into the spirit of this ancient celebration of the thinning of the veil between the quick and the dead. It may be too tragic to think of all those who were here and now are gone in this year of plague rampant and its utter chaos, with a dubious future ahead.

 

Nonetheless, this exercise continues, and let the 55 chips fall where they may, as we remember happier if not scarier times, and the originator of this meme, Galen Hayes, by attempting to have a writer's kickass weekend to a radioactive Jack-O-Lantern's glow.

 

The rules remain the same. Write a poem, piece of prose poetry or flash fiction in exactly 55 words, no more, no less, and post your link in the comments below. I will be by to read whatever has haunted you this week.

The meme will be live from Thursday at the Witching Hour til Sunday at 4 pm.

 

 

~ * ~

 

Here is my 55. We have had a historic and crippling ice storm here, and the ghosts of my trees are with me in this piece.

 

 

 

 

 Icestorm

 

 

 

 

 I woke in the dryads' dying hours

to the champagne-crack of their maple towers

falling; ice-winds honed a banshee tune,

a butcher's knife to carve the pumpkin moon. 

1000 suns of supple leaf expire

when winter kicks down summer's flimsy door;

a protean shift from sheeted ice to fire

to dryads' ash on Halloween's dancing-floor.

 

 

 

October 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Images: The Woodland Dryad, © Jesse T. Banfield, 1913 via wikimedia commons Fair Use

Redbud ruins, October 2020 ice storm, © joyannjones

The Gold Afterburn

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Gold Afterburn

 

 

 

Salvadore, Frida 

and Vincent

go into a bar.

This is America. 

They're promptly 

asked

to leave.

 

The car was as full

of prayer and profanity

as Texas sky is full

of planets and stars

floating in smoke

and blue

bloody tears.

 

Cigarettes, flaming giraffes

and your buzzsaw breath

tipped the lightning jug

over all our

constellations.

The story dissolved

the map; no surprise

everyone got lost.

 

A wheel or two

may have fallen off

in the gold

 afterburn,

and the halos,

 

but all you need to

roll on that road 

is an engine that burns

the laughter
of

the mad.

 

 

October 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Flames, They Call  © Salvadore Dali, 1942   Fair Use

Image via internet, author and title unknown     Fair Use

Surrender

 

Surrender

"...this is the way the world ends/not with a bang but a whimper." ~T.S.Elliot

 

 

You've come a long way

to see me slip my skin

across the star-burrowed sky

past Cassiopeia's iron chair

past the spear of Orion

to the killing floor.

 

You've come for the show

that must always go on

to see my hair burning trees

on my lips the black hole

night for my breath

dripping acid rain.

 

A big bang for your buck

now the requisite whimper

that comes in the dark

with the last surrender.

I wanted to stay just

a little bit longer

 

but everything wavers

when fate breaks her lamp.

October 2020

posted for 

The Sunday Muse

Images: California Wildfires From Space © NASA Scott Kelly Fair Use

Title unknown © Mathew Brohder via Internet Fair Use

A Delirium Of Butterflies

 

~SCROLL DOWN FOR THE 55~

 

 

 A Delirium Of Butterflies

 

 

There will be

a delirium

of butterflies

after the fever wins,

when the sterile step is taken

under the star-masked void,

when the bounce hits dust a thousand years

unstirred by wind or small-handed rain,

 

then

 

in freefall

instead of white detritus

butterflies stagger up

owners of the impossible

hitting your protective suit

like a trauma of cotton candy

 

then

 

you have crossed the threshold

of sweetness, otherness

 

then

 

 what you call

your life

will lose its casing

will become

a fluttering

an awe

a delirium

of 

butterflies.

 

 October 2020

posted for 

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

Images: So Long As You Wish it, © Liz Houston Fair Use

Unknown title, unknown author, via Sunday Muse  Fair Use

Belated Friday Flash 55 for September 2020

 

 

 

Welcome, all, if somewhat belatedly, to the Friday 55 for September, 2020. Apologies for the late post, but since last week, things at my place have been disrupted by plumbing emergencies, brick masons and the unpleasant necessity of allowing workmen into my home when my state is 5th in the nation for COVID positivity, creating a very expensive and stressful chaos to match the larger chaos around us. But the 55 must go on, and I know everyone has a great deal on his or her plate right now, what with the fiasco of a debate, the rise of an old/new racist fascism and various other things, like the plague mounting to over 200,000 deaths in the U.S, and our West Coast burning to a cinder. I hope as writers we can use this exercise to some purpose, either to exorcise, excoriate, or escape. 

That said, the rules remain the same. Write a poem, piece of prose poetry or flash fiction on any topic, so long as it is in 55 words, no more, no less, and post a link in the comments below. The meme will be live from Thursday at midnight to Sunday at 4 pm CST.

 

~*~

 

Once again, I've chosen to escape to the world of dreams in my 55.

 

 

Green Snake

 

Spirits reach for me

but no owls come,

only the smallest snake

curled as a vine tendril,

the jade of an early apple,

sleeping on my pillow.

 

You 

send your fetch

to curse my hearth

ashen grey with death

but the snake slithers me 

to cover where

morning kisses water,

where you have

no power. 

October 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Bullsnake,  author unknown, Fair Use

Viking Cemetery, Färjas, Sweden   author unknown, Fair Use