Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion

Her sad, smoky voice
restrung the Spanish guitar
he’d lost in a fire.

The song he knows by
heart though she is anything
but a distant past.

Sea wind moves her hair
in smeared bars of minor chords
her lips won’t resolve.

her dominant fifth
played with subtle vibrato
trills on his heart strings

The glint of anger
in her voice causes a storm
of off-key music

The keyed up player
feels herself become uptight
and loses her key.

Black keys, white keys play
Sharps, flats, octave reaches and
Fermata to hold

the not notes not named


To pause between flats,
and to breathe sharply and fall
between the grey tones;
to sound what's heard by an ear
keyed to music that is not.

She waves a glass of
Chianti to the beat of
a low-key music.
With eyes closed, she moves with ease
and grace like she's on a stage.

not as it seams


The slow rhythmic chant
Urged from her heart a lost truth,
Spoke of memories
The old actress had thought lost
In the seems of frail costumes.

That's lovely, Guy :)

Thank you.

LoL! I read it to my wife. She thinks it's 'really weird'. 'How so?' 'It's just weird.'

Lol! That's weird :P

She rarely expresses interest in my writing because she says that it is too dark.

I think, spouses aren't meant to express interest in what we write :D Whenever I ask my husband to read something I've written, he thinks it's a chore.

LOL! Yup. Curious, isn't it? Have a good day. I'm ready to crash for the night.

Good night, Guy!

at her vanity
she combs regret from grey locks,
humming to Piaf

Great imagery Ryan. Very nice.

Hello, Guy, and thanks! It was a very nice thread to follow. Wonderful writing from you, Leslie, Lillian and M :)

Thank you, Ryan! Very nice writing in #5654. Not too long ago, I watched part of a movie called La Vie en Rose, about Piaf.

Thanks, M. I've been meaning to watch that movie. What were your thoughts on it? I have a CD of hers that is getting a bit scratchy from overuse.

What I saw of it seemed well done, but it wasn’t my kind of movie. If you like Piaf, I’d be curious to know what you’d think of Mireille Mathieu, particularly “Les Yeux de l’amour” and “Un Monde avec toi.” She recorded these in 1967.

I just had a listen on YouTube-she's wonderful. A more refined version of Piaf. I still prefer Edith's hoarse, huskiness, but MM is magic. Thanks for the heads up. She was stunning in 1967-looks like 99 on Get Smart :)

I feel I must explain the relation between Ryan's haiku and my own. Regret alongside grey hair made me think of lonliness, which in came to this.

Crayola Craft of Fate.
You:
lone white crayon
in throngs of group colored wax.
Me:
black paper prince.

the lines starting with "lone" and "black" are suppose to be indented, but Goodreads seems to despise such specifics.

Very nice, Felix. I like it a lot.

the black prince topples,
his sandcastle defeated
by a young boy's boot

he dreams of building
skyscrapers through sand that can
withstand waves and time

Beautiful, Leslie. I like your new picture, too.

Thank you, Ryan :) I was trying to keep up with Felix's and yours.

I like the images in these!

Hi, M! You inspired me to attempt a rhyming poem for this week's competition...

I read it just a few minutes ago. I think it’s exceedingly well done!


Extrusions corrode.
Plate glass mirrors noon’s shimmer,
stirrings of palm fronds.

Thanks, M. What a wonderful haiku-image!

Excellent, M! :)

Thank you, Ryan and Leslie! In my mind I could see the corroding aluminum extrusions on a storefront or on the curtain walls of a highrise, the reflection of the beachfront in the glass, but seventeen syllables wasn’t quite enough emulsion for me to capture the image on.

I think you captured it beautifully, M.

beachfront reflections
warp in a breathless swelter
- Indian Summer

That's lovely, Ryan and thank you! lol, I didn't know how to follow M's, his haiku has given me a headache (just kidding, M) smile :D

What an image: “beachfront reflections / warp in a breathless swelter . . .” Really nice, Ryan!

Sigh. My haiku give people headaches. Poor Leslie!

What apology
can I make? Put on the shoes
you love to loaf in.

Warm your favorite
broth, and take a couple of
haikubuprofen.

HAHAHA!! I just choked on my coffee ;)

It took me a few minutes to come up with something that would rhyme with “profen.”

Lol! Your humor will do, M and coffee too :P

This will not do...

A warm bowl of broth
left in the shore, hoping for
a chance of rainfall.

Just by happenstance
the first of many crawl from
The primordial soup

very nice, Zack! :)

Bit rusty, been awhile, thanks, Leslie.

These will be fun to follow! I realize that coelecanths are still around, but that line seemed just right for them.

They slitherbugged through
Carboniferous nights, through
dawns Devonian,

well-oiled coelecanths,
suave trilobites, their last gig
the Smithsonian.

Bravo, M! :) I had to use Google to know what Coelecanths are :D

Good morning!

Good morning, Leslie!

When I was a kid, I’d come home from school and watch B movies. One of them was about a scientist who turns into a werewolf after cutting himself accidentally on a coelecanth that has come in as a specimen. I think it was in the late 1930’s that the scientific community learned coelecanths weren’t extinct.

Lol, so that's where werewolves come from. Nice M.