Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion

Wow, those are wonderful haiku's M and Guy! Enjoyed them both!

Another attempt at this form:


Dark seas dip heaves
fluid brush strokes of tersely
whimsical free fountains

lathering white shampoo
to cleanse red haired mermaids
who smile like babies.

Yes, indeed! I’m just now reading #2438. I’d better dive in and give some of those red-headed mermaids a helping hand!

Thank you Alex, M! Yes, they wouldn't mind a helping hand.

Thank you Al and Ajay. Ajay, very expressive and imaginative. I particularly like ... lathering white shampoo / to cleanse red haired mermaids.... It would seem we have simpatico between us because I used s similar kind of imagery once a very long time ago:

The strand of her hair
was coiled stark red in the dawn's
new bar of white soap.

LoL.

But, enough of living in the red-haired past. What to write right now, while the hair is red and the iron hot? LoL.


She felt her dark eyes,
the corners, where the tears were
waiting for M's touch.

Of joy or sorrow
the tears remained oddly mute,
beneath the sea's waves,

Dependent on time
and the whimsy of red hairs
sniggling M and Ms.

OOPS! I was in the middle of posting this while you were posting yours! Hi Alex! Your haiku were fun, and made me laugh! A brilliant pun!

[Odd little fushigi. As I was editing the above Haiku, by random chance the soundtrack to Blade Runner came on. I was distracted by the spoken word it contains, and so turned to it to flip past it, only to see that the last song was 'Tears in Rain.']

Hello!

Thank you Al. How are you feeling today? What, with NaNo stuff, birthdays, colds, etc? Did the cheesecake get made, and served with a bit of merman beef-cake? LoL.

Overall, I am well. I woke in a foul mood, however. Very grumpy and easy to find offence in the smallest vagaries of being alive.

Reading these delightful Haiku from Ajay and you have restored hope to my spirit.

Thank you! They're helping more than I can say. I love cheesecake! Have a piece for me, with a glass of Ryan's red wine. It sounds odd, I know, but I love red wine with cheesecake maybe even more than coffee and cheesecake, and that's saying alot.

What's your novel about? I got from one of the other threads it's getting random, but where are you hoping to take it?

Have a great evening. Good luck with NaNo and the sitting. Eat drink and be merry. I am heading off to blog another fushigi, although I have a couple of book reviews to write, too.

That’s the way I am when I’m in the grip of my anima, which is frequently.

Great haiku, Alex and Guy! Hmm. What to do about the mermaids . . .

“Thar she blows!” came the
crows-nest yell as the mermaids
frolicked, Rubenesque,

in glistening foam
of the ocean’s swell. Kyra
commented, “(headdesk).”

Edward grabbed an old
harpoon as M came
running, tripped, and fell.

The crew stared in the
light of the moon, and Cheyenne
rang the big bronze bell.

Wonderful set of Haiku's Alex, Guy and M!

Alex, your's was funny, made me laugh out loud. Would Frank approve of that!? Lol. I think I might have woken up the neighbors! Btw, I watched 'An Affair to Remember' today and loved it! I fell in love with Deborah Kerr. Cary Grant was his usual charming self, a fine performance.

Guy, loved it! The concept of simpatico has always fascinated me. But your's is perfect and spot on.

M, that was excellent! Please continue on. I want to see what happens next! I don't want to spoil the flow.

Thank you Ajay.
I was just re-reading them, and CJ slipped a nice little one in! Nice CJ.

Ajay, the flow is what ever you make. Your writing is so good that you don't need to feel you have to defer writing.

Of course, M's are always a challenge to follow. Let's see what I can do.

*


For M the bell tolled
the presence of red-haired maids
rubenesque and wet

their fishnet stockings
accenting their graceful fins
while catching their lunch.

'What shall we eat first?'
Ajay asked the rag-tag tars
Before Kat could nap.

CJ took the foredeck
harpoon charged and fire cock set
to score before lunch.

'Have yea no respect?!'
Al cried from the captain's chair,
'I need the mermen.'

Hi Al!

“Ask not for M the bell tolls.
It tolls for Ralph the cat.”
--John Undonne

CJ lowered the
ship’s rowboat, but nobody
rushed to man the oars.

No sooner was the
craft afloat, but it pitched and
left him on all fours

in the bottom, the
harpoon over the side, the
mermaids’ mad jeering

orchestrating his
wild ride while, from the ship’s rail,
the crew was cheering,

except for Kat, who
was snoozing on the cushions
of a long deck chair,

and Stephanie, who
was perusing a textbook
and combing her hair.

Wow, Guy and M! These are perfect! I am cheering from here too.

Thank you, Guy! :)

All the very best with NaNo, Frank and Alex! :)

Thank you, Ajay! Jump right in with more verses.

Hi Al! Just popped in to read for a minute; now off to do more housework.

I like the popcorn too. It is getting time to write some more. So many words, so little time. Last night I finished another of my weird fushigi blogs. It was quite long and fairly intricate. And completely trivial, too. LoL. I have no idea why I find them so fascinating, although I think maybe M has helped me to come to a maybe answer.

Sure, M. I'l jump right in.

Hi, Alex! (Belated)

One mermaid grabbed the
rowboat’s painter. Another
seized the starboard oar.

A third, showing none
of the restraint her kind were
never noted for,

swam up, put her hands
on the transom. It seemed the
boat would overturn.

She smiled at CJ:
“Hi, there, handsome--” How her tail
made the water churn!

He wondered if he
were asleep. He waved at the
crew and hollered, “Help!”

He didn’t want to
live in the deep, a mermaid’s
catch, and eat boiled kelp.

Somebody rescue him!

Tough luck, CJ! Just fight ’em off the best you can.

Oh no! Help me from the trio of mermaids! Well actually that's not too bad. And eatin' kelp is probably better than fast-food! :P

CJ, surrounded
by beautiful creatures with
witching eyes and long

reddish-brown hair and
lovely fingers and other
features, as they smiled

at him in the moon-
infused air, seemed to welcome
his fate, offered no

refusal. Out of
the sky and not a moment
too late, there appeared . . .

Miss Hanzle Woozle!
“It’s a bird!” said the mermaids.
“Or is it a plane?”

Okay, finally had enough energy to finish my efforts.


The unconcerned maids
bobbed without any fear
of the motley crew.

"What are they doing?"
the youngest one asked out loud.
Not one of them knew.

"Be quiet! was heard
by all on and in the sea,
from the ship's captain.

The crew ceased talking,
except for CJ, who said,
"Hey, what about me?"

"Yes, what about you!"
the Queen of the mermaids said,
and flipped him a bird.

Hanzle didn't care
what the mermaids were doing
because she saw Frank.

With a hardened eye
and clear vision she took aim
and CJ bombed him.

The resourceful Frank
leapt clear of the human bomb
into strong white arms

and the rubeous
smiles of red-haired maids aching
to be manly made.

Frank wanted to leap
for joy, but also for fear
of the Captain's wrath.

As the lithe mermaids
embraced him in every way
he saw Ajay's smile.

"I won't be second!"
he called out in shocked surprise
and cried 'Oh Captain!

Captain, where are you?"
But all he heard was the song
of mermaids laughing.

XD Oh, this is great XD

Wonderful M, Alex and Guy! I just felt like watching a highly entertaining, visually alluring movie.

Kat, Ajay, Al, glad you enjoyed this doggeral. It's always a challenge and a great deal of fun to follow M's creative imagination so amusingly expressed.

Thin plots are highly underrated.

M wrote: "Thin plots are highly underrated."

That is a great opening line for a short story. Okay if I steal it?

You’re welcome to it.

OOoh sounds great ;D

Seriously. I agree with Al.

TY, M. Looking forward to it, Al.

Yikes! Such pressure! What am I going to do? :(

LoL. I thought I would be setting myself up, but now I'll come up with something.

Maybe.

>:|

Ahaha, I'm not XD

Well, I managed to by the thinnest of margins, smallest of frog's hairs, to get a story in! Oh frabjous day, callooh, callay! And Tim liked it, which has taken me aback because I didn't think it was that good: way too much pressure for me to feel comfortable with my creativity.

I am very much a Cat person, and so she doesn't frighten me in the least. A little scratching behind the ears and a tummy rub and she'll be purring in no time.

I hope the boredom has passed.

I didn't get any writing or reading done last night - got hooked on watching Homeland, season 2 from the beginning. It is very good.

Not stress free, but not overly stressed. I'm about to be dragged to one of our biggest nastiest malls by my wife. I'm not complaining, she's not a mall shopper at all. But about twice a year, usually as Christmas is approaching, she gets me to drive her there. So, again, not stress free, but a kind of routine stress. She wants to find me some nice shoes because my old beaten up running shoes are looking old and beaten up.


The old running shoes,
once a best friend are now done:
worn out, foul and spent.

New shoes, a new man.
If vigor could only be
so easily got.

Shed my old clothes. Now
I'm a new man! I know strength
God gives, only can.

In madness’ throes, she
stripped off her clothes, danced on the
floes, and nearly froze.

Oh dear XD

And they came to blows
While he was stripping her hose
But shunning her throes.

She alone knows the
floes’ echoes, the wordless woes
of the Arctic snows.