This week’s prompt: the crazy wants out!
Give the crazy or silly inside you a voice, this week! Let it see the light of day and go on a rampage. Air those thoughts that make no sense, not even if slightly intoxicated. Those crazy ideas you never told anyone for fear of being labeled.
We cherish the non-sensical, the non-linear, the meandering string of words that go nowhere with purpose.
No one has to read it besides yourself, if you don’t want to.
Happy Writing!
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I wrote this a while ago; is that OK? It fits the prompt so much better than what I usually write so I thought I’d share it. It is almost exactly as it was when I wrote it in one sitting:
Hearing Careful Voices
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag –
It’s so elegant
So intelligent
“What shall I do now? What shall I do?”
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
“With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
“What shall we ever do?”
Thomas Stearns Eliot
The oscillation of reality
was cumbersome, but
not intolerable
at first.
Then ideas streamed into the
mind one by one, yet always
paired, strung, each leading
to the next. Each consciously, methodically
examined and dismissed, and
the next one pops in, like a twelfth
dimension, an ancient Universe,
unmanageable, unstoppable, incorrigible.
Then at about a week, one-fifty, one-seventy
hours, he can’t remember, the new sequence
starts and this time it’s in groups of three.
And this is certain.
Any product of the mind, it is found, can
be broken down into a series of triplets
from the insane to the dull to the inspired
and in between. Not this finding, nor can
this action be explained—it is so distracting—
the subject person plods on as if on drugs,
and addicted to calculations that always
produce the same result. Not mathematically,
mind you, the same, though, and now must
the mental landscape be tested, questioned.
Is there inevitability in this dream?
One plus two is three—pause to analyze, press
on slowly, as if with trepidation, but no adrenaline;
it is calm–then, stop, examine the result, move on.
Sweat. He didn’t know. Eventually move ahead
and another thought emerges. It’s all ones, twos,
and threes—two is the midpoint, everything
relates to twos! Hours are gone!
Thirty-one, thirty-two.
His heart is beating in his ears, his blood
flows like electrical current and his nerves
go watery, rushing fluid power from the
high center of the brain flushing
through the system, ending with the footpads.
They swell. He is aware of every hair he ever
had, through spine, but not through bones.
Instead the current runs down the center cord
and nerves. The stream of the spine is conductive.
The scenes in the mind are conducive of nothing,
but get up, walk to the door, the wind, the wind.
The eyes are dry, pupils dilated, and the mouth is
properly dry. It is tempting to leave things alone,
and go back later but that would only complete
the circle, and if the cycle is broken it means
death. He falls back. The night stand is it the
night stand, is it not upended? In the dream
it was upended; entropy in reverse has occurred.
The Universe is shrinking.
With quivering hands he grasps the water bottle,
emptying it on one draught while acknowledging
the fact of despair, neither suicidal nor homicidal
nor caring in that way, and entrusting God alone.
He closes his eyes and prays in the darkness at
the low center of the soul—just the two again, God
and me—hoping God will smile in a way that
proves himself a God, not alone in the Universe,
if this is it, hoping, the right one, and singularly
caring. The sky, the sky. The door. There is no wind
at bottom, the door is dark and safe. Walking,
it is done. The little castle light is on. How long
will the center hold? Hours or more—it is light.
It is blue-white light, and warm, the yellow dream
behind and gone.
There is no truth, only beauty.
Nature is pure and ephemeral.
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Posted by Cal Nordt | February 20, 2017, 12:52 PMhello
I sent a poem via email attachment last week about books — haven’t heard one way or another
The Bookshop: Chapel Hill
They surround me now and how I adore them. My books, archived over 25 years, my obsession. The thrill of the hunt in a maze of shelves possessed me as if my corporeal Self was inhabited by the spirit of “Bookman” the eternal searcher. In these aisles the history of the world awaits. Without gun or bow I chase down fugitive tomes Armed only with the bones of my tingling fingers Electrified by a rush of anticipation, shooting sparks. What treasures await me in this dust that measures time. Do I want a rhyming dictionary, mystery fiction, poems or plays or literary criticism? What itch will I scratch today? I know! Check my wish list. (I used to tell Bill, the proprietor, that I was a geek bearing lists.) My doctor’s handwriting required decoding. The scratchy scrawls seemed to say: Huxley, Isherwood, Auden, T. Wilder, S.V. Benet, MacLeish, and much more. This beast of a list was worn, wrinkled, fraying, having stayed in my left pocket for months as a map and guide. It steers me to “Authors H” and I play in that aisle like a child in F.A.O. Schwartz with books instead of toys. My nose itches and I sneeze. Did I mention I am allergic to dust? Geez I am an addicted masochist. But I persevere. The thrill of the hunt is a pseudo Benadryl. I run my right index finger along the top shelf and it ploughs the dust into a small hill. Then, lightning strikes: My aforementioned index finger teams with the adjacent thumb to form a pincer animated by an adrenaline surge. I see it—the thin spine with the top and bottom frayed from a history of many hands: In a split second my mind’s eye is filled with the ephemerally fleeting ghosts of owners past. Did they feel once as I do now? Who were they and which one in particular left this treasure here for me to find? The pincer pulls it from its perch: The Crows of Pearblossom, Aldous Huxley’s one and only illustrated story for children: First edition with the original dust jacket having just a few nicks and slightly faded. I don’t care: To me the book is resplendently perfect, blinding me despite the shadowy environs in the deep corners of this dark netherworld— The Bookshop: a cave of dreams.
________________________________
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Posted by davidizzohotmailcom | February 20, 2017, 10:50 AM