Another Random Zoom
If anyone wants to join. The writing prompt is based on three visual prompts and the theme is pariedolia.
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81012121645?pwd=ipp7PHjkODek28dYusS4HQgftGM4kD.1
Understood and Heard
I have always been told to listen,
not to make things about me.
So I dig deeper into people,
ask questions to truly get to know them.
But I sometimes crave
reciprocity.
For someone to ask the questions I pose back.
To have someone want to get to the core of me
and see all the things that have gone undiscovered by so many others.
You asked for it, Buddy
They watched him walk out of the Kroger with an unpaid for loaf of bread and a can of baked beans. He crossed the parking lot, where the perspective of him changed as he was picked up by the camera at The Bank of America on the corner of Fitzhugh and Timmons Pike. A traffic light camera found him next, and then a security camera at the Quick Mart on Timmons and Canary, where he lit up a cigarette and turned into the Riverbirch residential neighborhood. His progress was followed from there through a series of Ring doorbell footages as he made his way towards the aging, lower income Banbury apartment complex where recently installed motion-sensing cameras mounted to the parking lot lighting caught him entering building 206. Finally, the building’s stairwell security watched him crushing out the cigarette butt with the toe of his boot before lumbering up the two flights of stairs and entering unit 3C.
Five minutes later the black and white parking lot cameras revealed the bright white flashes of approaching police cars.
Fortunately, the shootout was quick and painless… for the officers.
Death Becomes Me
The night was sultry...like a sweaty hooker. I peeled off my t-shirt, dangled it from my back pocket, and skittered across the street bathed in amber from the tired lights I tried to avoid. But those amber lights did not bend the corner that I did; they shrank away as I ducked into that narrow alley, and the darkness stretched out like a river of ink... flowing like a current to my salvation...to justice.
As I moved through the pitch, the building came into focus and I could see a dancing wick in the attic. I could feel the sweat rolling down my back, and I could hear every pebble under foot. I scanned the edges of the darkness for movement, but I sensed no threats...only prey.
By the time I reached the top of the fire escape I could hear something. A rhythmic squeak that was hard to place. I leaned closer trying to make it out, and the rhythm picked up in speed and intensity. I crawled through the hall window and toed my way up the stairs, skipping every other one, until I could see him. He was rocking, in an old wooden chair, mumbling feverishly.
I crept up behind him, and time slowed down; the only thing that existed was her. I could see her again, clear as day...but his rocking pulled my focus back...cut through the red.
I was over his shoulder now, and he was oblivious. I could see that he was reading a Bible, but all the pages had been replaced... replaced with pictures... And as he read deeper, and deeper into his book, he rocked harder, and faster.
His mumbling grew to a growl and he flipped the pages more and more violently, as if he were looking for something. I slowly leaned down and stretched my hand to my boot when all of his emotional motion came to a complete halt. I froze for a moment as he peered at his book. He began rocking back and forth in his seat like a mental patient and I slowly rose to my full form... then I saw her there. A page in his book.
Everything was tinted red again and my razor bristled with anticipation. That man bore witness, as his world transformed into a Jackson Pollack splatter, of his own body matter...and after it all, I waited. I hid and I waited; because I knew that another little maggot would come creeping out.
I had lost count of the hours and the days, when the first maggot appeared. In spite of the display of art, this maggot began rooting through the carnage in search...when he found the "Bible" he tucked it into his jacket and scurried away...but not away from me. No he merely lead me to the viper's den.
I would spend many dark nights painting the walls with these men, and in every piece of art, I saw her.
I once was lost, but then I was found... found by a man with a thorny crown who asked me to show the world the art of war again...war against the evil of men.
Genesis of Imagination
Waterfalls of acrylic pain shower brown roads
And the cellophane palette dissipates slowly
Into a shower of multicolored tinsel and gems.
The family steps out, curious of the new world.
The mother, with blue hair down to her butt.
Held her child in one arm and her husband's
Callused, ogre-like hand in the other.
Cautiously, they explore, following the river
Of parafilm that once kept them in reality
Down a precipice towards the forest that awaits.
The forest to soon become a home for them,
The unwanted thoughts and ideas of the world,
Where they would rule and decide what goes.
They lived long enough to create the laws,
Fusing chaos and wonderous intrusive thought
Into magical creatures and crazy scenarios
Their son watched and admired, growing older,
And more fascinated with what the world refused.
Winged horses, horned rabbits, wide violet grasses,
Lilac-scaled lions with translucent skin and flowers
Made of greyscale wax with purple stems and thorns.
No law in the land went unchallenged or overturned
Except that the imaginary and the real must stay
Separate by all means, even during war and famine,
Even when those with imagination die and leave
Abandoning what they created into this microcosm.
The parents broke one rule, one fatal rule, and left
Their son in charge to never make the same mistake
And make no exception for any dreamer or wonderer
No matter what the situation was. Distraught and lost,
The despot ruled from his childhood home, the large
Marble castle overlooking the rainbow waterfall
The family once followed to create the world known
As Makk Bellif, a refuge for those imagined, created
From theory to imagination to arbitrary thoughts
That plague every human, young and old, in their sleep
And sit on their chests, suffocating them during the day.
Watching them, coming and going like waves of emotion,
The despot tries to ensure their safety and keep them
From disappearing forever like his parents.
Inside the Tragic Mind of a Serial Addict
Who was there
as life tried to erase me
when the lights went dim,
I wasn’t.
Cultivating years of excess
stimulates a flow of
verbal diarrhea
and mental excrement
to be smeared
upon the walls.
I feel desperation
from being locked
inside this reality
that refutes my existence.
Lost in a mental labyrinth
trying to escape
the redundancy of
this manic continuity.
I’m suffocating
on my twisted thoughts
in this sea of chaos.
My life is a tragedy
wrapped in
yesterday’s trauma.