Living Poetry word prompt – Abandon
She thinks black and white
She knows right or wrong
She is refreshing
when she speaks her mind
She is energising
when she speaks your mind
She is beautiful
when she dances with total abandon
She is light
when she faces the sun
singing to the birds
Six Sentence Story prompt word – Space
The sun prints on the floor to give a hint of time.
I have been sitting in the chill for longer than I realise.
The coffee has gone cold, and the froth has gone undone.
People perhaps grow tired of me watching them, they call the bill swiftly.
This table is meant to be bridging our hands together.
But with your absence, the space between us grows apart further and deeper.
I try to look through the foggy glass windowpane to a far away escape.
My agony drown in the absence of tears and apologies.
Questions rushing through my fragile mind.
The endless waiting, the future without our past, the changed heart without warning, the intrusion of our love, all these heartaches I can’t put into words…
Thank you MasticadoresIndia for publishing one of my short writing pieces. And thank you Terveen for the summary notes in the comment section. I am honoured if you would visit, read the full story and explore more good writings on their site.
If you ask me about the splendid of the great wall, I’d be too ashamed to admit that I have any connection to it. I would go so far to even deny that I am Chinese.
In 1997, Beijing’s summer was hot and dry. After an unsatisfactory meal, I was dragged to go along to see the Great Wall. I couldn’t think of anything worse to do. I would have been a lot happier to stay in the cheap hotel and enjoy a mouth watering watermelon in air-con.
The tourist bus took us all the way up to the top. People had already been queueing up to walk the Great Wall. I got off the bus, physically felt sick. My stomach was churning and I was about to throw up. My companions were in a dilemma. I saved their disappointment by excusing myself to the bathroom and asked them to go ahead to climb the Wall without me.
A bit of a breeze cooled my head. My stomach started to settle. I saw loads of people gradually disappearing like a snake crawling along the Great Wall. I sat on a chair in one of the stalls. The owner offered a service to write a poem based on my full name on a banner with a Chinese calligraphy brush. I had some time to myself and was curious to see what he would come up with. In less than two minutes, he skilfully moved his brush and created a four-line poem with seven characters in each line. I was beyond impressed by his talent. His interpretation of my name gave a new meaning with blessings and depth.
I could not help but thought that’s my reward for not offending the ghosts by trampling their grave where the Great Wall laid upon. The Great Wall of China was built on human sweat, blood and lives, a place where the crows kept coming back for carcasses buried long ago.
Need is like a closed window
which makes the air stale.
It’s warm and cosy
in the beginning.
When time goes on,
it becomes suffocating.
You are so far away from me now.
If not for your long shadow, I wouldn’t have remembered us.
All our past was edited into this novel for someone out there to read.
My bookshelves are filled with read books except this one.
The Coke can pull-tab bookmarked the page where he proposed to her with that promise ring.
The innocence of pure love stopped me from reading the rest of the tragedy.
I hold the habour in view
capture the soulless sun
refelcts off the careless blue
Her dreary face
filled with nostalgic remorse
I apply a filter to restore
her black and white heritage
Even a tear soaked face carries beauty
This is written based on Living Poetry word prompt – Race, machine, epigraph
The human race are not machines.
Grease and grime don’t feed us.
Electricity or coal don’t power us.
Carriage or container don’t move us.
We are flesh and blood bear sins.
There was epigraph written long before our birth.
We are of love, power and sound minds.
You touch me with invisible hands
My body moves through the frames without consciousness
You speak to me in an unknown tongue
But I understand in the deepest of my being
You reach out to me like a stranger on the road
I am changed forever by this visual encounter
Writer’s notes: I went to the NSW Art Gallery to see the Archibald exhibition without knowing the Daniel Boyd Treasure Island exhibition was also on. I wandered in and stayed there for a long while. His work touched me and moved me in a complex emotional way. It’s hard to describe. It’s enough for me to share and write a poem about it .
Denise’s Six Sentence Story word prompt – Coffee
We used to think of our future as retirees.
You would be content to tie our boat to the pier at sunset, with or without fish for dinner, while I would dream that you played the harmonica in nostalgic tunes by the sea.
We wanted simple things until we didn’t want them anymore, unintentionally.
There had been this period of vacant time, spinning too fast and too wild.
We lost hold of each other, and we lost our substance as one.
I often imagine, the day I learn to forget the past, and you learn to play the harmonica, we will share coffees together like two perfect strangers who fall in love all over again.
Flicker of Thoughts 