Tag: wordpress prompt

Posted in stream of consciousness

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Posted on by Kelley Farrell

I haven’t done this in a week or two and I need some help getting things stirred around again so here we go.

Prompt: Narcissism *of course it is*

Music: Ghostpoet – Dark Days + Canapés (very much recommend him)

Alright, 10 minutes on narcissism – here we go ….

You like guns, weapons of mass destruction
Requirements in a world
You see.
Blow down walls,
Abstract pieces of death
For everything
You never knew you could be.
Shreds of humanity
Staring back at you
From garbage bag souls.
Gaping mouths
Of back alley way holes,
Well, well little girl
How’d you end up here?
Masks are the one thing
You ever truly taught me.
Paint them, wear them
Paste that smile,
Statesman handshake
With a flick of the wrist
And darling doe eyes
Bait for the next fight.
Perfection in reality,
Matching clothes and
Cringes at your words,
Smooth as silk,
Like slime sliding
Down sewer walls
Called home.
Bruises you can see
Complemented by deadly cuts
Beneath.
Worthless unless you find value
In our innocence,
Value in our ignorance.
Cut down inch by inch,
Your guns, weapons of mass destruction
Leave nothing but
Rubble in their wake.

Posted in stream of consciousness

Golden Light

Posted on by Kelley Farrell

Sunday thing.

Bubble

Music – The Echelon Effect on Spotify shuffle (I do this a lot you see)

We blow bubbles into the golden sunset,
Memories trapped in worlds we struggle to relive,
Reflecting rainbows, shimmering golds
We whisper our secrets into bubbles
And send them off to shrouds of secrecy
Beyond prying eyes and probing fingers
With promises of happily ever after
If we ever make it down from there.
We were but kids, young and in false belief
There will always be more to dream
Bubbles float beyond our clouds, grey skies from there on out
We always knew they would pop
Our precious memories would come tumbling down
Held in such high regard, we would learn to see
Truths about what we’ve done
As our pristine bubble memories rain down sharp fears
We were but kids, in the golden light, wondering what we’ve done

Posted in flash fiction

Loose Window Cranks

Posted on by Kelley Farrell

These old windows, operated by worn cranks, filter the world through a permanent haze. Worn paint peels off by the inch revealing layer upon layer of stained pasts. The floor creaks where I stand though I don’t so much as sway. Perhaps it’s the teenage angst they claim should be boiling within my viens. The walls give nothing away, not a blink nor a smirk and I wonder again and again if they could just absorb me, make me disappear without a trace, what history would this old room show?

Greta had the room before me, so they say. Before that a man with barely a face and no name. Before them? Those people are long gone. Victims of loose window cranks.

The world through that window haze looks so serene, a universe unlike my own. It must be so divine, to float away in that daze.

My mind begins to drift, the very thing that spurred my interment here. I’m drifting away, from this room, from the world at large. There are creatures beyond the window, in the blurry starlight of the world at night. Some are big, they fly far above me to places yet unknown. Some are small, confined to the land below. They nip the seams of my tattered jeans, wishing to bring me low. It’s their cries, shrill and unending, that pierce the silence.

Detached from myself, I pull the crank and feel my soul drop thousands of feet in seconds; right back to the creaking floor of this room. The years have rusted this portal shut.

Somewhere, in the back of my rational mind, I hear the nurses say “take the medicine dear, it’ll keep the monsters at bay.”

Crank

Posted in stream of consciousness

Material Sounds

Posted on by Kelley Farrell

Prompt – Song

Music – If These Trees Could Talk – Above the Earth, Below the Sky

In my dreams you’re always singing the song

The music is always right there,

In my bedroom, in my bed, lying next to me it seems

And your voice lays over it, so serene.

Sometimes you don’t sing,

It’s only music then

And we float away to another land.

We can dance the night away,

From the kitchen to the clouds.

We exist above material sounds.

In those moments

I can feel it in my soul,

The music makes me complete

In your arms and your eyes

I get lost every time.

The music tells me it’s ok,

Your song tells me you’re ok,

Whether we’re together in these dreams

Forever or never.

Sometimes I wish I knew the song was for me.

Sweet as it may be,

These aren’t reality after all.

And my mind starts working,

Over thinking,

The way it does,

And we fall.

Just like our song.

Falling, falling.

What will happen when we hit the ground?

Posted in stream of consciousness

Spin Me Away

Posted on by Kelley Farrell

Sunday! Again and again.

I didn’t do this last Sunday because of family issues (and Easter, we can say Easter) so WordPress is obviously making me pay because …

Prompt – Thwart

Music – Fantastic Negrito – Shuffling on Spotify (seriously, just shuffle, he’s amazing)

Ok, 10 minutes on thwart … here we go …

You thwart me

At every turn, every spin

We practiced this dance

Night on night

But now that we’re here

You look away

Into the eyes of another

Does she feel like me?

You spin me away

Thwarted again.

I can feel the steady heat

Climbing from across the room

Dancers unaware

Of this crumbling routine.

I find the hands of others

But none move just like yours.

Round and round

The circle we go.

Til at last

At each other’s throats we go.

You spin me away

Thwarted again.

I pull strangers close

But their fingers won’t wander

Just like yours.

Slow and steady

Down my back and over my thighs.

I can feel the steady jealousy

Seething from across the room.

Round and round

The circle we go

Til at last …

Bow and begin again.

Posted in stream of consciousness

Bitter Pills

Posted on by Kelley Farrell

Yet another Sunday, it’s the end of March. What the hell?

Prompt- Swallow

Music: Wooden Shjips – Back To Land

Swallow your pride, it’s a bitter pill but it’s better this way.
Say the things you know will sting, slaps against the grain.
Anything to make you walk away.
Swallow arsenic words, poisonous to all around us.
Implode.
Anything to protect you from the mess I’ve become.
He was right you know,
Selfishness choked me on the way down
And I never deserved you.
Spin me into sweet melodies,
They slide down easier than reality.
Anything to hide the truth of what we’ve done.
Once I tried to take a handful of bitter pills
To forget your name, forget your face,
Forget the way I had you stamped in that place.
I fell down, busted my brain instead.
Now my thoughts leak and blend fact with fiction,
I can’t tell anymore what was real and what was just part of the mission.
All because we tried to swallow little bitter pills,
Is it better this way?
I hear they have a pill to answer
To straighten out our brains.
I don’t know, what do you think?
Maybe seeing stars isn’t a bad thing
If the answer is swallowing our pride
And staying side by side.

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Posted in stream of consciousness

Patience Is a Virtue Dear

Posted on by Kelley Farrell

Sunday, every week ….

Prompt: Patience

Music: I couldn’t settle on one thing today so I picked a playlist on Spotify called Brain Food, it says it’s hypnotic electronic.

Patience

I’m drowning beneath the fluctuating, undulating, slowly rolling
Crushing weight of this water.

It holds me hostage, tied down by sunlight streaming, reflecting, breaking
Against the seams of who I am.

It strangles me with icy grips, threatening to rip me apart;
Pieces of paper against the downpour, soaked and floating.

Be patient is what they say, what’s meant to be …
May never have been meant for me.

But my mom taught me well,
Patience is a virtue, that’s the story they tell.

So sit with your drowning, collapsing fears.
Hold tight to your scrambling, screaming soul.

After all, patience is a virtue dear
And rescue is never near.

We grasp the daydreams
So that we become the reality.

What’s meant to be speeds overhead
Never realizing, missing, the last bubbling stand.

Sit tight with that patience there.
Help, well help is over there.

Not watching for your drowning hand,
Or your fleeting splashes.

Everything that’s meant to be
Is tied by seaweed,

Held strong to the collapsing floor;
The thin barrier between always there and nothing more.

10 minutes done.

Posted in stream of consciousness

Aqui.

Posted on by Kelley Farrell

It’s that time again!

Prompt – Present

Music – Pete Rock – Petestrumentals

Are you present?

Aqui.

Are we ever really?

This week has me wondering when the last time I really sat down and chose to be present in the moment was.

And what did it teach me?

Have you ever tried it?

Through meditation?

The hardest thing about meditation for me at first was clearing my mind.

It’s amazing how hard that can be.

We all have moments where we zone out and I guess sometimes we like to think of that as clearing the mind but it’s not really is it?

In my case I’m zoning out because there’s something very much there, standing heavy on my mind.

Definitely not clear.

I remember one of the techniques I learned was to think in images, not words, then clear those images away.

Put them away into boxes or whatever so that you can clear that space in your mind.

Do you know how hard it is to make a conscious effort to think without words?

It’s harder than you’d imagine it’d be.

Once you get better at it you’re supposed to be able to take this practice into daily life.

You can meditate while doing the most under appreciated things like walking or eating …

Concentrate on your step, how your foot hits the ground and moves you forward.

Do you really want to move forward?

What are you walking away from?

Towards?

What about your food, what does it taste like?

Hopefully not cheap corrugated plastic.

Do you remember the eyes of the person you love?

The exact way the colors of their iris flow into each other?

Or the way their eyes squint and the skin creases at the corners when they laugh.

How about their smile?

When they’re staring off into space, zoned out, and smiling to themselves,

Do you remember the way their lips curve?

How about the feel of their hand in yours?

Or their arms around you?

Do you remember the way their hair smells when you have them pulled close?

Time’s up.

Posted in stream of consciousness

Mnemonic Rhymes With Demonic

Posted on by Kelley Farrell

It’s Sunday again, stream of consciousness … free flow … there’s got to be a better title out there for this.

Prompt – Mnemonic (ok, wordpress. Ok.)

Music – God Is An Astronaut – The End of the Beginning

Mnemonic rhymes with demonic.

In school we went though a period where our teacher would have us memorize things and recite them in front of the class.

The preamble to the constitution.

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe

The Road Not Taken …

Everyone always rolled their eyes and groaned about it but I loved it.

For someone who has a bad memory I was really good at memorizing that stuff.

I didn’t use a mnemonic device so to speak.

Rather I memorized the piece in chunks instead of individual words.

In psychology it’s pretty well known that the human mind can only work with so much information at a time.

To maximize what you can remember you can memorize things in blocks

That’s what I did with poetry.

I would give the poems a rhythm as I read them

Then memorize them in chunks, blocks of words set to that rhythm.

It’s how I write now too,

With a rhythm in my head although I know that doesn’t necessarily translate.

I always found it easier to remember things when I set them to music.

On the off chance that I actually studied for something I had to have music playing

That way I could put the information to the music and words in the background.

When I needed to remember them all I had to do was remember the song that had been playing.

Much easier than trying to remember the periodic table alone.

Ironically when I went through a period of not listening to music I have a lot I don’t remember.

I was also drunk a lot.

Mental manipulation.

Mnemonic rhymes with demonic.

My sense of humor probably is not translating just like my poetry rhythms don’t.

I can’t really remember using mnemonic devices otherwise,

Although I know I was taught a couple.

There’s one about your hands and the days in a month

And ….

Yeah.

That’s all I got on those.

10 minutes up (good timing).

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Posted in flash fiction

Two Bucks at Goodwill

Posted on by Kelley Farrell

“Life’s absurd isn’t it?” Charlie pushed his thick black framed glasses back onto the bridge of his nose before chugging the last of the whiskey.

Greta never drank, she figured liquor wasn’t needed to enhance the crushing silences she felt. She never thought either of them needed liquor or drugs to take them over the threshold to particularly dark places.

“Is life absurd?” Charlie’s lips twitched into the smallest of smiles at Greta’s response.

The ocean below them didn’t seem absurd with the way it moved in and out, crashing onto the rocks.

Neither did the gulls above as they circled for food.

Then again they were only doing what they were meant to do. They were controlled by higher instincts which humans long ago over ruled.

“Is this what we’re going to do?” Charlie’s voice, rough with a whiskey burn, brought Greta’s mind back to the long grass they sat in. For a second she considered the man next to her, slight and lanky in a suit two sizes too big. He’d abandoned the tie when they realized neither knew how to properly tie it. Now it just occasionally writhed in the wind a few feet away. “I do like your dress.” Charlie whispered.

Greta let her fingers slide over the vintage lace. “Two bucks at goodwill. Can you believe that?” She plucked at the oversized straps in some attempt to keep them from slipping off her shoulders again. “I guess for two bucks you can’t have everything you’ve dreamed of.”

The true absurdity of the situation hit Greta like a punch to the chest, stealing her breath away for a second.

“Are you ok?” Charlie moved closer in some attempt to comfort. He laid his hand over hers but pulled it back just as quickly when he noticed the tears on her cheeks. “Are you ready?” His voice was barely audible over the waves below.

Greta’s eyes fell on the glinting metal of the pistol that sat mostly un-noticed between them surrounded by several bottles of whiskey in various states of emptiness.

“This world’s always going to be absurd, whether we’re here or not.” Charlie nodded empathetically but she could see confusion flash in his eyes. “I mean, sitting here, just in it you know …”

Charlie let the grass gently move through his fingers. “Yeah, I mean, I guess.”

“It just seems …” She considered the words carefully. “I mean, what do you say we do something else instead?” The suggestion seemed to put him at ease.

“Like?”

Greta stretched the lace in her skirt between long fingers. “Let’s get married.” He shifted away from her while pulling open another bottle of whiskey. “It’s no more absurd than this.” She waved a hand in the air as if the whole of their lives could be encompassed in a small motion.

Charlie seemed to shrink into himself, quietly staring out into the horizon. For a few moments the sound of crashing waves and screaming gulls drowned out the craziness of the world behind them.

He lifted the bottle to his lips but stopped short. “We don’t have rings and shouldn’t I ask you?”

Greta pointed to her dress, “Did you not hear me earlier? Two bucks at goodwill. I bet there’s a ring or two there. After all, life’s absurd right?”

WordPress Prompt – Insist extra props to the word absurd and this article

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