Trifecta 33 Word Challenge

No periods for me!
There is no better way to express my glee!
In faceless communication,
I express feelings with punctuation,
And I’ll shake up the joint
With overuse of the exclamation point!

This is my response to Trifecta’s 33 word writing challenge on the much abused and overused exclamation point.

I put this up on Friday then after rereading the rules of the challenge I took it down. It seemed to me that the challenge was asking for a story with an exclamation point that was justified and not used in dialogue. My little poem seemed not to conform. However, after reading several of the responses on the Trifecta site, I decided to put it back up. Conformity be damned!

Trifecta Writing Challenge – They Live Among Us

They live among us.
Someone’s brother
huddled in a doorway.
Someone’s  son asleep on a bench.
Someone’s daughter
standing on a corner
hand outstretched
looking for change.
They forage through dumpsters
seeking scraps of food.

They live among us.
We walk past them
avoiding contact with
those hollow eyes
that  lost hope in humanity.
We want to believe
we would never find
ourselves in that dark place.
We would never let
the world crush our spirits.

They live among us.
They are the ghosts
bereft of the promise
that the best is yet to come.
But what haunts us
is the glimpse
of the singular truth
of their wretched existence.
They are surrounded by people,
yet utterly alone.

This was my response to Trifecta’s “wretched” challenge.

 

Good News, Bad News

By happenstance I discovered a writing challenge on the Trifecta blog. Of course, By happenstance, I mean Edward Hotspur. John at Trask Avenue also met the challenge. This is the challenge as described by Trifecta. My poetic response is written beneath it.

I am happy for you, yet sad for me.
Your good news is my bad news.
But I can’t let you see that.
Instead, I sit here holding a skull in my hands.

Christmas

Softly
it came
stealing slowly across the lawn
on whispers of wind

Slowly
it fell
floating gently down to rest
in a blanket of white

and there it now lies
in the dawn
in peace
in silence
in complete innocence and beauty

Softly
like new fallen snow
he came

Photograph by Frank Frambach

Eternity

I know
what eternity sounds like
It is the sound
without a beginning
It is the sound
that has no end
It is the sound
of forever
It is a sound
that soothes my soul
A sound
that calms my heart
It is the sound of waves
One and then another
Never ending
Rolling into the shore