A Weed on The Curb

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #195 . Come and share! When it blew out the candle, It began to speak, voice low,  eyes dimmer than flame. Jenn believed, once upon a childhood (she's still there... but it's waning), it inhaled fire. Spines, tonight. Gears ladder bones and metal and plastic, all that lived, rungs to heaven. Heaven is a level of space where you can't breathe  so they used to send the dead. When the flame goes, it takes our memories with it. But not bot files. Maybe it believes  she'll sleep easier if bots go breathless, too. It continues murmuring and she pretends she's hearing a confession in a box Like the song her mother plays when the dark stretches  between signals We can handle shocks. She can handle the dark, the small  not-flame of its eyes. It's finally winter!! Which means bitmapped frost on the roofs, cold mornings, and a table full of succulents that are pretty much glaring at me because the kitchen window isn't the same as full su...

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse  for Muse # 194 -- almost 200!!! Yea!!! If I took off the years or the books,  the drought at the root of the skin; If I took off the film of sunscreen or the earrings by their hooks-- Could we dive into the rain? Short poem this week--I had my booster shot a few days ago and, pretty much unlike everyone else I know, it has made it difficult for me to sleep. I'm sort of living on coffee and irritation. It's great. :) Whenever I wake up, Arthur makes sure to get back on the bed and curl up next to me, as if reminding me I should be sleeping. I know, fuzzbutt, I know.  What's your damage, Lurlene? -- chrissa

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse , for #193. Turn away, like the moon, listening... Listening to the planet that rumbles with a hundred million slaps. All the feet, all the rockets, all the  pistons in the cars on the asphalt over the chasm where the veins run deep, blue in sunlight, black at night. Running over the chasm.  Once or twice they ran to you. Once or twice they ran by. Greetings and salutations. The sky is an entertaining shade of concrete yellow as the rain promised earlier in the week makes good on its arrival. It's a disturbing bright sallow sky, the kind of sky that puts you in mind of old movies and degraded film stock and the pops and crackles incidental to the main story.  Several years ago I made a resolution to journal more and last year I came across a video that suggested I actually re-read those journals, at least those of the previous year, at the beginning of each new year. Technically, I have kept the journal resolution, making daily notes in...

  There are no resolutions for 2022. Instead, there's just beginning again, on top of a pile of half-done or barely begun drafts, with the idea that some things should be finished. This is the "new normal" after the pause.   Normally, I'm ready to take down the decorations the day after New Year's and start that list of projects that I will definitely  find a way to finish this year. I'd stack myself a TBR full of books that I've been meaning to read ever since I encountered them but before I actually started to read them. This year...this year I've spent the past several days compiling a list of all the pieces of writing I actually completed in 2021. Blog posts. Instagram poetry. Monthly bulletin boards. Zines.  What if I'm not a finished kind of person? What if I'm the kind of person who enjoys hole-punching blog posts and treating them like a school project? Why haven't I been doing this for the past couple of years, tracking the shift a...

Thanks to Shay for the suggested wordlist prompts (visit her page is here ).  There is no cleaning out. Weariness in change is the gear At the factory's heart; it's oil and dust turned attar of clocks. The landlord leaves it unlocked in case of fate needing space to continue weaving. -- Chrissa

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #192 . Where will I go? Along the road.  There are entire industries surrounding me Old filmstrips of steel and rubber Men in showers of sparks Like the fountains you used to find At a mall. Only malls, like filmstrips, Are dying like the great animals  Outside these windows. Where will I go? Along the road. Hope everyone had a cozy beginning to the 2022! We made gingerbread people & cuddled Arthur (who doesn't like loud, random noise) and then everyone had popcorn, which turned out to be the only snack we could all share. Arthur may or may not have developed superpowers. Merlin's superpower remains insta-sleep to insta-snack readiness. And fuzziness.  Happy New Year!!!! -- chrissa