Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion

The black clock clattered
inside my head. I woke from
dreams that I was dead,

only to find, in
the harsh lamplight, that it was
just half past midnight.

And once the shadows
drew into themselves as thin,
sun-weary limbs and

flesh, remaining days
grew full and round with chance tastes
of souls too ripened.

Jessica!


These were amber days
of thin, tempera shadows
and dappled evenings.

Hi, guys! Yes, I'm back.

Another purpled
dusk fades past, leaving us in
arms worth fragile shades.

Hellooooooooo Jessica! We've so missed you!
Hope all is well and what kept you from us was more fun than WSS — although I find that hard to imagine!

Nice Haiku!

Holding long purples,
she made me laugh as she leapt
from a serigraph.

Ok i feel like an idiot but whats a Haiku?

The shadows lengthen,
and my arms tighten in hope
for a sprightly night.

Thank you, Guy. :)

Her nose: terrycloth
While her lips: inked impressions
Mere imprints of flesh

(er, this was in reply to M's--I was too slow!)

Jamie, for the purposes of this thread, haiku is verse that has three lines. The first and third lines have five syllables, and the second line has seven (5/7/5).

No apology necessary, Al.

It just shows how excited we are at having Jessica back. I was just asking about you, Jessica, the other day.

Jamie, Haiku is a Japanese form. In general, it has been translated to mean, in English, a 3 line poem with a 5/7/5 syllabic/foot structure.

If you read through this thread you will see we WSSer play with the form with interlocking rhyming, playing off each others' poems, and in general having a great time with them. And not infrequently, there are even some excellent Haiku that are generated.

Jump in! It is a rather tough form to make work, but a truly creative exercise in making one's words count.

sounds cool and way to complicated for my small mind :P maybe i well write one someday!

Heh, thanks again, Guy; and thanks, Al! I was feeling rather silly when I wrote that one.

Yeah they were funny, prancing around in a graveyard! Some of M's interleaved rhyming ones have been pretty much priceless too!

Guy is an artist
with haiku. For me, almost
any verse will do.

M is the haiku
master, and our most modest
poetical pastor.

Thank you, Guy! You’re too kind.

(Reply to Jessica’s)

Ah, what lips--how pure,
how saintly, although rendered
in lipstick faintly!

All of your poems
inspire within me great joy
and wistful envy.

Jessica, I cannot imagine why you would feel silly. As always your poems are graceful and elegant and moving. This one fits in with that record quite nicely.

Again, it is great to see you back. :-)

M, that is masterfully done. Brilliant!

Jessica, I think your writing is spectacular.

I always feel silly and much too inadequate whenever I write--I don't feel like my poetry's anything special at all! But thank you, Guy. I appreciate your warm welcome. :)

M and Al-thank you, too! Gosh, you people. I don't know what to do with myself.

The pale moon pondered
what to do, so long before
his time to be blue.

Al wrote: "Guy wrote: "M, that is masterfully done. Brilliant!"

Psh, and he says he isn't good at writing."

I agree with Al and Guy.

You were the one who brought up the moon.

Yes, our too modest poetical pastor!


The bright moon laughed
at being made out to be
a pale shade of blue.

That is so untrue!
I blazon the sunlight
Although I am dead.

Oh, no! I’m out of turn.


“All eternity
is in that box,” he said, “but
I must go by clocks.”

LoL! Al, you are so right! You made that association and I didn't even think of it, despite having blogged it.

(Still LoL.)

M. Al's referring to a series of weird blue colour 'encounters' that began with a friend who dreamt of a candle with a blue flame. It lead to a series of very odd blue encounters which I blogged. (They involved Jung and dream interpretation and were just odd.)

A candle with a blue flame. That seems like a clear symbol, if one only had the context of the dreams and the external life to make sense of it.

The candle sputtered.
Its wild, blue flame wordlessly
told his muse’s name.

It involved a scary vampire and a large number of empty votive candle holders in a dark room.

What was found inside
The box was a diminished
eternal tick tock.

And a hungry flame,
Looking to amuse a mage,
Stuttering sans words.

I just went back to previous page, and I see lots of great Haiku I didn't know about! GR wasn't sending me notices. Bad GR. (I wonder why GR started sending the notice again with Jessica?! Oh frabjous day!)

So, a belated great verse, PushingReality34, Violet, Allison. What a weirdly morbid run. Al, did you get your fill? It was great fun to read.

Guy wrote: "(I wonder why GR started sending the notice again with Jessica?! Oh frabjous day!)"

haha how odd

You’re funny. But, anyway . . .

He was soon in a
quandary, a natural
place for him to be.

Good morning, Alex!

He squanders puzzles
The way others eat pizzas —
Drowning them with beer.

His stomach expands
with nightly apologies,
swallows drenched in drink.

Hi, Al, I'm sitting outside on my balcony in sunshine with my iPad. I'm listening to John Lee Hooker, one of my favourite musicians. But writing with it is actually quite hard.

And a haiku will, I am sure, pop into your head and out your fingers.

I've actually started a popcorn thread dialogue! We'll see if it will be good enough to get posted.

The drunken swallow
Flew unsteadily into
The sot's beer belly.

It was a hard act
to follow, they all agreed.
Not to be outdone,

soon another one
dove for the belly button,
his flight blurred with speed.

I wrote a one-good-griefer! That's how I rate e-mail messages my wife reads, by how many times she says, "Oh, good grief!"

I have a feeling your pastor wouldn't appreciate some of the hymns I've rewritten.

He must be wired the way I am. I intensely dislike change. When my point-and-shoot camera wore out, I bought another one like it on eBay rather than have to get used to a new one.

Mine is, too, now.

Yeah, but mine usually goes really slow.

I don't know. I don't thing Guy's ever stops.

Where are you, Guy? I can't reply to my own haiku.

That happened to me, too! If you'll do the plot, I'll do the narration.

Here I am! A busy night. Just finished supper, clean-up and food prep for the next few days.

Hey, Al, when did you put up the caution hyper-text window?! Yikes, that's something new and so I am want to not want it. LoL.

'Good Grief'?! I warranted a 'Good Grief'! Oh frabjous day, callooh callay!

But I'm not sure if my brain goes a mile a minute or not. Sometimes, I guess, but, then, sometimes not. Or maybe yes. Yikes. I've been trying to become more decisive, recently, to put my mind to it so to speak, but I find that I keep thinking about other things.

Like trying to keep up with M's haiku and stories, and Al's dialogues and stories.

Hmmm. What to write?


The impact sounded
Like a hammered tympani
With mild flatulence.

The belly belched
And the drunk birds flew away,
Seeking the circus.

The swallows’ drunk act
couldn’t seem to get off the
ground at the circus,

so they failed to re-
alize their dream of a posh
nest in a Quercus.

Their acrobatics
were complete with a plunge in-
to a milk carton,

but in the end, they
just couldn’t compete with Dean
and Mary Marten.