Collins Writing Conference: Poem - That Baby Crying...

 

Note: This is another poem that I generated during Collins Writing Conference poetry workshop. The prompt was to write a five-line poem where each line could be a separate poem. The five lines also should represent the world, or your world, or both. So, of course, I included a musical reference. The rest was just stuff that came off the top of my head. 

This is what I wrote in class. 

That baby crying will never stop.
Perhaps the tree heard its friend fall.
When was the last time I did something for the first time?
Paul Simon sang about the moon rising over an empty field.
It is quiet here.

Since then, I have added three more stanzas found below. 

That baby crying will never stop.
Perhaps the wind has no answers.
When was the first time I did something for the last time?
Neil Young sang give me things that don’t get lost.
It is loud here.

That baby crying will never stop.
Perhaps the sun doesn’t care to rise.
How many more times will I have to do this?
James Taylor sang about sunny days that he thought would never end. 
It is hot here.

That baby crying will never stop.
Perhaps the bird sings for no one.
How much time do I have left?
Bob Dylan sang behind every beautiful thing there’s some kind of pain.
It is cold here.

Collins Writing Conference: Short Fiction - Scope of Work

 Note: The short fiction workshop at the Collins Writing Conference was focused on stories that pretend to be other things. This is where the writer utilizes some sort of format like a list or calendar or a How-To Guide to tell a story. We studied examples of this and then prepared one of our own to be workshopped. My story is told using the scope-of-work format I use in my day job as a proposal writer. Basically, this is the outline we create stating what we are going to do on a job. Instead of writing a proposal for surveying or engineering job, this is a scope of work for a first date. I think it almost turned into a choose your own adventure type of story. The formatting what a bit of a challenge in the blog text box, so hopefully you get the idea. 

Scope of Work

Project name: Anderson-Lamb First Date                          Date: June 28, 2024

Project Number: 24002                                                       Revised Date:

Project Description: Mr. Anderson and Ms. Lamb agree to an evening that includes moderately priced cuisine and beverages, a mutually agreed upon public activity, and a concluding moment that may include one or all of the following: ice cream, walking next to a body of water, and/or limited consensual physical contact in a well-lit exterior location within earshot of other humans.

Project Location: Downtown Jordan, within walking distance of the community theater, bowling alley, and three dining locations meeting the couples’ economic requirements.

Project Limits: One evening, an evening consisting of the time between 7 P.M. and midnight. Any activities beyond that will require additional scope and budget.

Proposal Assumptions

1. Attire is assumed to be casual, although, Mr. Anderson will insist on tucking in his shirt and wearing dark socks with his sandals, and Ms. Lamb will spend more money on a summer dress that she’ll never wear again than Mr. Anderson will on the meal.
2. Mr. Anderson will arrive at Ms. Lamb’s apartment at 7 PM, and they will walk three blocks to the downtown area.
3. Mr. Anderson will buy a single carnation at the local grocer and not formally give it to Ms. Lamb until it’s too late for her leave it at her place, forcing her to carry it the entire night.
4. Mr. Anderson will say nothing remotely funny, but Ms. Lamb will laugh thirty-two times.
5. Ms. Lamb will go into great detail on her Schnauzer’s inflamed anal glands.
6. Mr. Anderson will return Ms. Lamb to her apartment door.

Proposed Tasks

1. Greeting
1. “Hello” is customary.
2. Mr. Anderson will say “How’s it going?”
3. Ms. Lamb won’t actually answer, but murmur “Cool” and then giggle for an awkward period of time. 
2. Dinner
1. Options:
1. Mama’s Pizzeria – third-generation family-owned restaurant known for greasy pizza and a broken ice machine.
2. Salamanders – authentic Mexican cuisine with the average dining experience of 17 minutes.
3. Duffy’s Bar & Grill – there’s no gum on your shoe, but still, it sticks to the floor.
4. Mr. Anderson will order a gigantic-portioned entrée which he will eat entirely thinking it will impress Ms. Lamb.
5. Ms. Lamb will spill a dark-colored salad dressing, enchilada red sauce or ketchup down the front of her dress that she’ll always see no matter the stain-fighting precautions she takes.
3. Post-Dinner Activity
1. Options:
1. Lucky Strikes Bowling Alley – half the lanes will be occupied by the Friday night’s lady bowling league.
1. The ball will stick on Mr. Anderson’s thumb on his first throw, causing the blue orb to glide majestically through the air and thud dramatically on the oiled lane. All the ladies in the league will stop and frown at him.
2. Ms. Lamb carries a 230 average and will beat Mr. Anderson’s score by at least a hundred pins. She’ll be asked to join three teams before they leave.
2. The Bard’s Barn – local community theater currently performing their modern take on Hamlet set on a rural Nebraska farm. Rather than concluding with the death of the main character and many others, it ends with Hamlet and Ophelia winning a square-dancing competition.
3. Forgo the above for walking the town square since it’s such a nice evening
1. The town square takes approximately 12 minutes to walk. Mr. Anderson and Ms. Lamb will traverse the distance 23 times.
2. The sensitive skin of Mr. Anderson’s heels will blister in four places. 
4. Concluding Moment
1. Options:
1. Ice Cream at the Dairy Mart.
1. Mr. Anderson orders a banana split that he offers to share.
2. Ms. Lamb doesn’t like bananas.
2. Walking next to a body of water
1. The nearest body of water is the ravine that runs along sixth street. It smells like rotting fish despite the absence of marine life.
3. Consensual physical contact in exterior location within earshot of other humans.
1. A sturdy handshake at Ms. Lamb’s door where Mr. Anderson squeezes too hard to compensate for his bowling loss.
2. A friendly hug where Mr. Anderson hopes that whatever Ms. Lamb spilled on her dress doesn’t transfer to his shirt.
3. A brief kiss, lips closed, eyes open, with each wondering if the other will propose a second project.

Deliverables

1. One wilting pink carnation
2. One stained summer dress
3. Four blisters on heels.
4. One bruised ego from being defeated at bowling by 100 pins.
5. The hope of happily-ever-after balanced by the despair of nevermore with the statistically probable outcome of something in between.

Collins Writing Conference: Poem - A Star in Hiding

 Note: I'm apologize for being gone for so long. The reasons are many, but most of the reasons aren't that interesting or unique, so I won't bore you with them. It's time to get back on the horse. A while back I won free registration to the Collins Writing Conference in Rock Island, hosted by the Midwest Writing Center. Last week, I attended that conference, which among other things, consisted of 3 days workshops. There were four workshops each day, each covering a different genre (short fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and novel editing). I took all four. I thought I'd share some of the work I generated in the workshop here. 

This first piece was generated in the Poetry workshop: Obscured Environments with the instructor Sara Lupita Olivares. The prompt for this piece was to pick one of two pieces of art shown (or you could relate to both, but I only picked one). The poem was to focus on what we thought was the center (metaphorical more so than physical center) of the painting. We were to avoid using the word "I" until the last line (or not at all, as I did). We were to start the poem with the phrase, "It wasn't that..." and the last line with "Underneath,"

The painting I chose is "Thistles" by John Singer Sargent. An image of that is below. My eyes focused on the bright spot near the middle in the bottom third of the painting. Below the image is the poem I generated. 

 A Star in Hiding

It wasn’t that the star was dying in the thicket
It was simply hiding
Tired of the soundless ether
It tucked into the tangled bramble,
Scared not of sharp fingers or dark corners, but
Glad for the respite from the exposed scrutiny of space.
Here things blew and howled.
Here things shivered and cowered.
Here things are and were.
Underneath the thicket, this star is dying.

Write-On Prompt: The Boy Behind the Fence

 

Note: Last night was prompt night at Write On. The prompt I chose was to write a spooky story to tell around a campfire. I was a bit low on inspiration and built off a scene painted on the wall at Harvest Time. The scene is shown in the picture. Thanks for reading.  

 

Mia’s steps fell in an even pattern that made it feel like her journey had backing percussion complete with the consistent shake of maracas with the way the gravel crunched under her Nikes. She hummed Taylor Swift songs and daydreamed about Justin Bieber. A truck passed, an old Dodge, probably from the 40s, so small that Mia thought the monster-sized extended-cab Ford that her dad drove probably could eat it. She imagined a huge mouth opening in the grill of her dad’s truck between the headlights with long shiny chrome teeth pointed razor sharp and dripping with motor oil gnashing down on the little old Dodge, the metal twisting and glass shattering like a scream. 

 

“You’re twisted,” Mia’s friend Kate would have said if she heard Mia’s thoughts. 

 

Mia wished Kate were with her, heck she wished anyone was with her, even her little brother Tommy. This long walk through the country had been a challenge placed in front of her by her mother. 

 

“You sit around too much staring at some screen with those damn things in your ears,” her mother said just an hour earlier. “Go for a walk, it’s a nice day.” 

 

“Fine,” Mia decided to shut her mother up and walked right out of the house. Her family lived miles from anything remotely considered a town, so even after an hour, she was still definitely in the middle of nowhere. She had turned right on her road at the end of their lane, then cut across Mr. Stern’s pasture, stopping to pet his gelding, something she did on a daily basis anyways. Then she discovered a winding dirt path that cut between a thicket of trees before finding this long gravel road. To be truthful, she wasn’t entirely sure where she was. She thought she could turn around and find her way home, but something kept her feet moving forward. Yes, it would be nice to have someone beside her saying, “Hey, let’s go back.” 

 

Ahead she could see that that the road came to a dead end at a white fence. In the middle was a gate, and beside the gate was a lamp post. 

 

“That’s weird,” she said aloud just to hear a voice, even if it was her own. “You don’t see a lot of lampposts in the middle of the country.”

 

Hanging from the lamp post was a sign, on it in plain black letters was 623 Roman Road. Beyond the fence there was nothing. Not a house. Or a Trailer. The only signs of life were an old red bike leaning against the fence with flat tires and a cardinal sitting atop one of the posts. Everything about the scene was so still that if she were in a museum, she would have thought it a painting with purple and red wildflowers growing over the bottom cross beam of the fence for a splash of color. 

 

“Kind of a stupid place for such a nice fence,” she said. She looked beyond and she could make out fields and trees, but it all appeared a little distorted, kind of like when she put on her prescription glasses on while already wearing her contacts. 

 

“HELLO!” She called, hearing the echo that came from the other side. 

 

She touched the gate’s handle, but couldn’t muster the courage to open it. It’d be trespassing, after all. She wasn’t a goodie, goodie, but she knew better than to just waltz onto someone else’s property. Country folk owned guns and they know how to use them. That was her dad’s voice in her head. Barf. 

 

“This is silly.” She spun around, took two steps then nearly jumped out of her skin when the voice called from behind.

 

“Hello.”  

 

It was a boy, maybe a year or two older than her, wearing bibs and a straw hat. The skin below the denim was tanned a golden brown, his eyes were the same color, and his lips had just the right amount mischief in their curl. She felt herself blush even as she registered that something about him wasn’t right. 

 

“Hi.” She responded trying to pinpoint what it was about him. 

 

“I’m Puck,” he said. “Like in the Shakespeare play.” 

 

She had no idea what he was talking about, but the teenage girl in her couldn’t believe this dreamboat was talking to her. She chased that nonsense out of her head. What was wrong here? 

 

“I’m Mia.” 

 

“I like that name,” he grinned. “You want to come on this side of the fence.” 

 

“What’s on that side?”

 

He grinned wider. 

 

“Well, me, for one.” And as if gravity were contributing to his cause, the strap of his bibs fell down his arm, revealing more of his muscular shoulder. She heard her voice agreeing but her brain was numbed studying his smooth skin. 

 

“All you have to do is open the gate,” he said. 

“Can’t you?”

 

“No, no, you have to open it. That’s the rules.” 

 

“The rules?” her hand was on the cold metal of the gate latch again. “What rules.” 

 

He grinned but didn’t answer. This close to him, she noticed how flat he seemed, like he didn’t have any dimensions. How could that be? She wanted to touch his face, feel his arms, they were like the oil paintings on her parent’s wall. So vibrant, so real, but yet not quite. 

 

She pushed on the gate, her eyes lost in his, but as she did, she felt a tug on her finger tips, like someone was pulling her fingers. A pit fell in her stomach, and she thought about the bike with the flat tires. That had been someone else’s bike, and someone else had found this fence and this gate and was seduced into opening it, and never came out. All that’s left of them is that bike.

 

“No,” she whispered, pulling the gate shut. 

 

Fire burned behind Puck’s eyes. A brilliant flash, like a supernova. She fell backwards, as his skin melted away revealing a hideous green and purple beast with two heads with forked tongues. She hit the gravel, her head bouncing of the hard stone, and everything went dark. 

 

Something wet crossed her face, and she lunged upward, meeting the eyes of the beast: Mr. Stern’s gelding, its tongue drooping from its mouth. She was beneath a tree in the pasture. Clearly, she had fell asleep instead of walking on. It had all been a dream. When she stood, she thought she saw the white fence in the distance, but she didn’t look twice. Instead, she ran home. Staring at a screen was ten times safer than walking in her neighborhood. 

Write-On Prompt: Just One Ride

 Note: It was prompt night last night at Write On, and we had five options to pick from. Because I never do anything easy, I tried to tackle three. Two of them dealt with conveying emotions through body language and dialogue. Not sure I hit the mark with that, but hoped the slumping and banter conveyed a desire on both sides of the conversation. The third was to write a story with an open ending. That I did. Let me know what you think Mary did after Roger opened the passenger door.

 Up and down Locust Avenue, the street lights blinked to life as the sun fell behind the line of trees to the west. It wasn’t dark enough for the orange glow from the bulbs to be noticeable to anyone other than Roger, and he only noticed because he was slumped against his rusty ’78 Camaro and had nothing better to do than watch lights turn on. The Camaro’s original color had been apple red, until someone, probably in the 1990s had decided to make it silver. Except they clearly hadn’t known how to paint a car, as the silver now was flaking off, revealing the red, and in spots, rusty flesh below. Roger wanted to sand off the silver completely, restore the original sheen, and revel in all its muscle car glory. He wanted to turn the stereo on loud, have the speakers shake in their casings, and listen to Ozzy, or ACDC, or maybe even Motely Crue. He wanted a great many things, instead he was slumped against the passenger’s side door waiting. Always waiting for time to do things like that. For money to upgrade the engine. Most of all, he waited for Mary Scott to come down those porch steps.

His dark bangs fell before his even darker eyes, and he didn’t bother to brush them away. His shirt was cutoff at the shoulder on purpose, the three tears in other places weren’t. His skin was tanned to his rotator cuff, but a creamy white for the rest of his torso, and blotches of grease spotted all of him. Some still wet, other so dried to his skin and clothing that the only way they’d ever be removed was with fire.

“You can stand there all night,” Mary called from the porch, her pale summer dress dancing in an invisible breeze. A radio played somewhere, maybe even a block over. The song was an oldie, one where the guy could smoothly hit the high notes and make you believe in things like love and peace and happy-ever-afters.

“Maybe I will.” Roger shrugged, reached into the car and grabbed a pack of cigarettes and his Zippo.

“My dad will come out and slug you if he hears you been smoking in front of his house.” Mary had her blonde hair tied back with a golden bow. He liked it better when she let her locks spill to her shoulders.

“Then, you just go in and tell him that Roger Hirsh is going to smoke a whole pack of reds at his curb unless his daughter comes down here and gets in the front seat of this mighty fine automobile.”

“It’s an old beater,” She glanced at the screen door behind her. He wondered if she’d ever get the courage to either rat him out to her pa or come scrambling down to him to see what it meant to really let her hair loose.

“It’s a classic.” He lit the cigarette, nodded his head back and let gravity move his bangs from in front of his eyes to their proper place atop his head.

Mary crossed her arms and planted her feet. Since meeting three weeks earlier, they had done this dance almost nightly. He rumbled down her block fifteen minutes after getting off at the garage, parked in front of the house, and waited for her to accept his invitation for a quick ride, just a couple swings around the block was all he was asking, and each night she refused, remaining in purgatory on the porch until Roger’s stomach growled so much that he had to retreat to the nearest fast-food joint.

“Your nothing but a grease monkey,” Mary stuck her tongue out. “I’m going to college in a month.”

He grinned. College girls, always hiding behind their books and their intentions. Just wait ten years doll, when your tire pops on that station wagon, and your preppy frat boy has to call a service to get it fixed, he thought. Roger would have it off and fixed in two shakes while you and frat boy will be sitting beside the road for three hours. Well, he wasn’t going to wait ten years for her to figure it out. He was tired of waiting for the good things to come his way. He didn’t know what it was, but something about this Mary seemed good to him. Real good, and he wasn’t going to give up just because she couldn’t envision the benefits of dating a fella that was good with his hands.

“I tell you what, you ride once around this block, just once, and if you don’t like it, I’ll leave you alone forever.” He said, dropping the stub of his cigarette and grinding it down with the heel of his boot. “Just once.” He held up a single finger.

She snorted. Behind him, the street appeared orange under the lights as the sun dipped lower and the shadows grew longer. A lot of stories – a lot of good stories – have started under such lights with the wind whipping past open windows and music blasting on the stereo.

He opened the passenger door and waved for her to come, hoping that his wait was over.

Write-On Prompt: One Clean Slice

 

Note: Last night was Prompt night at Write On. I turned the prompt into the gruesome little scene below. I did like the character created have started thinking about how this could be tweaked. Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts if you have any. 😊.

 Prompt: Start your story with someone walking into a gas station.

 Syd kicked the doors opens, her black boots smudging the plexiglass as a giant pink bubble inflated between her lips. Behind the counter, Reggie stopped counting coins to give as change to some twelve-year-old who looked to be filling his stash of candy and caffeine. Two tall hombres in cowboy hats and denim tuxedos were standing before the bank of refrigerated doors on the opposite side of the station, likely deciding which case of cheap beer they’d split that night. The modern American saloon was the roadside gas station. The gossip. The games. The fighting. Gone were the sticky wood floors, the dancing girls and the six-shooters replaced by Little Debbie, Big Gulp Soda Machines and the semi-automatic death machines every third idiot thought they needed to riddle deer carcasses with seventy bullets in twenty seconds.

 “Where is she?” Syd announced. Reggie pointed toward the pizza kitchen, he didn’t want any trouble here. The hombres glanced from the wall of beer, wads of tobacco filling their bottom lips. Syd wondered if they knew of her, maybe heard the stories, probably not believing that anyone, especially a woman could be so brutal.

 “Martha Rose, get your ass on out here,” Syd called. A clattering of pizza pans rattled from behind the spinning trolley filled with day-old slices. The sausage on top of one was green, Syd wasn’t sure if that was intended or if mold had started to form. She didn’t much care, she wasn’t there to eat.

 Martha Rose plowed through the bat-wing doors like a linebacker through an offensive line. The woman was in her forties, gray haired, barely five-foot tall and easily two-hundred-and-fifty pounds. Clutched in her sauced stained hands was a pizza cutter, its round blade splattered with melted mozzarella.

 “Don’t you come another step closer, Syd Bannon! I might not be as quick as I once was, but I know right where to cut to make sure you bleed too much before anyone can make you stop bleeding.”

 “Tsk, tsk,” Syd said, walking over to the end cap of the nearest aisle. It was filled with Twinkees and Cupcakes and all sorts of other treats filled with sugar and God knew what else. People thought of Syd as evil, or at least the hand of evil, as she was the one who Luke sent out to collect debts, but she bet that Hostess and Little Debbie killed more folks in a minute than the dangerous Syd Bannon could in ten lifetimes.

 “I mean it, Syd.” Martha Rose waved the pizza cutter around. Syd glanced once at the kid at the counter, sending a clear message. The boy scooped his candy and cola against his chest and pushed through the doors into the night without getting his change. The two hombres in cowboy hats followed without needing any encouragement.

 “Lock that door,” Syd said. Reggie complied, a hurt look crossed Martha Rose’s chubby face. Never had she considered that her co-worker could betray her so. The dumb ox hadn’t learned that everyone around here had debts to Luke.

 “I’ve known you all your life,” Martha Rose said. “Babysat you when you were in diapers.”

 “I remember you doing a whole lot of yelling,” Syd answered. “Funny how uppity some folks get when they have just a glimmer of authority. Like to hit my ass with a belt, too, if I recall right.”

 “Just when you deserved it,” Martha Rose said. “I didn’t like doing it.”

 Syd saw her own face in the security mirror. The bones of her skull seemed to push against her skin like they were horns trying to poke out. Her scar ran from above her right eye down that side of her face and then looped under chin, stopping just above the jugular. She kept her hair trimmed to a stubble, it was dark with a faint cowlick in the back. Her teeth, what she had left of teeth, were yellow. Hygiene wasn’t a necessity in her line of work.

 “Hmm, maybe I did deserve it. Seemed like justice, I suppose. Sooner or later, we all get what we deserve, don’t we, Martha Rose.”

 “Please, Syd.” Martha Rose cried.

 “You’re six months due on a ten-thousand-dollar debt,” Syd said, tired of seeing this woman’s fat tears running down her fat face. “Our patience has run out!”

 “Those games are rigged! You know it’s true, Syd! Luke has ’em set up so we all lose our money in ’em.”

 “If you know that, you’re pretty stupid to play them.”

 A look of defeat came across the woman’s face which was followed instantly by frantic desperation. She charged, the pizza cutter waving in front of her. Syd had time to roll her eyes before adjusting her-own weight, dodging the cutter, and then tripping Martha Rose. The woman fell with a wet smack on the tiled floor. Syd climbed upon her back, and pressed down on the back of Martha’s hand, forcing her to release the cutter. Syd grabbed the cutter, and then yanked Martha Rose’s head back by the hair, revealing the folds of her throat.

 “Goodbye, Martha Rose.” Syd didn’t need more than one cut, even though the cutter’s blade was nearly dull.

 She left Reggie a crumpled hundred on the counter after he unlocked the door. The blood would pool and stain the floor, and he’d have a hell of a time cleaning the station once the police arrived and did their dance. The police would wait a few minutes for Syd to be well clear. Everyone, after all, was in debt to Luke one way or another. They weren’t going to pinch his best henchman, or henchwoman, as it was.

 The night air was heavy with humidity after she kicked the door open. She reached into her denim vest, removed a pocket notebook with a stub of a pencil stuck between the pages. She crossed out Martha Rose’s name. Below it was another name. Burt Logan. She knew she’d find him down at the marina. She revved her motorcycle’s engine once before turning on the highway that led toward the river.

 

Mixtape Challenge: An American Tail – Songs from Bruce Springsteen Over the Last 40 years

 

Link to playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4NNLEXrPXclY1n221y2Q89?si=482fea3e08a3425e

This month’s mixtape challenge for Playlist Pandemonium was to create a mixtape of American songs. As it turns out, the Music Snobs League I am in was also doing a draft of Bruce Springsteen songs. So, since we didn’t have a volunteer for the Mixtape Challenge, I thought I would kill two birds with one stone, sort of. The Mixtape I made has 11 of the 20 songs that I selected that focus on the American Experience.

I think Springsteen has always been a polarizing figure in music. Generally, you like him, or you don’t. In this age of partisan raging, anyone on the conservative right now must hate him because they’ve been programed to hate everything left, just as everyone on the left has been programmed to hate, I don’t know, Kid Rock, I guess.

I am not here to parse politics. Bruce’s politics are clear, but his music has spent the last 40 years capturing the messiness that is America. It drips often with the bittersweet nostalgia that Americans love but balances it with the undertones that much of that nostalgia is fantasy rather than reality. Whether it’s the angst between one generation and the next, the costs of war on citizens, soldiers, and our trust in our government, or the social questions and issues that swing from one extreme to the other, Springsteen usually finds the words and tone to deliver a message.

Here's my Mixtape:

1. The River (Live at LA Coliseum) – 11:38 – I add this because the intro sets the right tone, and when the harmonica kicks in it just rips.
2. The Promised Land – 4:28 – I mean I think this one is self-explanatory.
3. Born in the USA – 4:39 – Still a song most people misunderstand.
4. American Land – 4:25 – The immigrant’s tale with an Irish sound.
5. 4^th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) – 5:35 – Here’s a song dripping with sweetness and nostalgia and Americana.
6. Devils & Dust – 4:59 – A song that asks what happens when you trade in all your values to get what you want.
7. Western Stars – 4:39 – Similar to Devils & Dust, this acoustic song laments the American West.
8. Last to Die – 4:17 – OK, someday we’re going to send soldiers overseas to die in other people’s wars.
9. Death to my Hometown – 3:26 – Ah, yes, how the robber barons have bought up companies and destroyed small town America
10. American Skin (41 Shots) – 7:22 – I think this one is obvious, too.
11. The Rising – 4:47 – Released in the wake of 9/11, this is a song of hope and rebirth.