Sunday, April 29, 2012

3WW: The Assistant


The Assistant

Kinks from life’s blood, this mortal coil. I roll my shoulders, crack my neck.
Ponder on life’s blood . . .
Pulsing
Racing
What was
--- A minute ago merely in slumber
Minutes from now safely ensconced.

From Tender Moments
We live Life’s kinkiest plans.
I pause and consider these things:
Pink swirls disappearing,
Twinkles down the blade flashing in the moonlight from the window.
The water races down, pushing pink swirls toward the drain
A trace of what was
An image of life going on into the sea of contentedness beyond that which we mortals endure
A jealousy that I can only imagine
--Can merely assist--
In providing others that walk through the door
 
Beyond a glimpse
Beyond a glimmer
A final immersion in the sea of tranquility.

Based on 3WW's weekly three words kinky, bloody, and tender, this poem brings a little insight into the mind of The Assistant.  Perhaps one day we'll get to see more of his work. 

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Safe Words


“One!” --“Ow!”
“Two!” --“Owww! That hurt.”
“Three!!” --“Buttercup!”
“Wimp.” But he stopped.

Two safe words.That’s the rule.
Buttercup for the first, Strawberries for the second.
Grateful he’s in a loving mood, I rub my sore rump and
Sit back, smile up at him.

“C’mere.” And my knees cross the floor.

Yes, I’m a kept woman.
My dependence on his love, His dependence on my love
All contrived like words in a poem
We flit like butterflies thru well-defined roles
I wear my punishment like a well-rumpled suit
It comforts. It defines
The lines between Safety
And the Outside World.

Today's three words (dependence, kept, rumple) from 3WW tie to the new hype generated by Fifty shades of Gray. Having just read a post that discussed how this fan-fiction has created its own fans and then considered how lines from Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and Jane Austen's own books might have used such scenes to good effect, I had to go ahead and use them in this context.  Yet I wonder if the editors who chose today's three words had the same in mind as well. I didn't make them up - they did! I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into the relationship between a master and a sub.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

As Ye Sew, So Shall Ye Rip

Each week, 3WW posts three words on Wednesday;  our mission:  create something written using those three words.  This week:  draft, locate, serenity.  Here's my vision: 


The Battlefield

As I scratch-scritch-scratch, the paper – my draft  -

Takes on the scene of a battlefield:  a word bombed there,

A whole sentence taken out there.  My scratches get deeper

and broader and pierce the paper at times.

I mumble to myself, pull my hair, slake my thirst,

Drag the pencil across my teeth, and rant at the scene before me.

Out, out – no, that’s good, stay stay. 

If at the end, I can locate my sanity,

It would have been worth the battle.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Caught


Caught


It was a cold Virginia day.  Early in the rainy season.  The reason we were all standing here.  The wash down from West Virginia had stirred up a corpse.  Darrell Sheffield.  At least that’s what we were all hoping.

Sheffield’d been missing since last October.  Right after his wife left him.  Went on a bender and never came back.  Still, his son was a star football player for the Westerville High Panthers.  Sheffield never missed a game. 

Not that we wished him dead.  We only wished closure for his son.  Mom left. Dad disappeared. His senior year.  A cold way to start adulthood.  Thinking his Dad had left too might have been too much.  Not that Dakota thought that.  Still, everything looked like Darrell’d split.  Gotten drunk in a bar.  Bought another bottle at Tooley’s drive-through, and that was the last anyone seen of him til now. 

“You think it’s him?” grunted Slater coming up on my elbow. 

I grunted back.

“Got the perimeter all put up.  Thompson and Brooks got the lookie-loos back up on the road.  You want us to do a grid search, Chief?” 

 Shadows moved around near the trees on the river’s edge, higher now with the spring thaw.  The ground was marshy underneath;  it squished when I shifted my weight and narrowed my glance.

 “You think I should do it, Slater?”  My growl was worse than my bite, but Slater was just green enough not to know that.  He turned three shades of red before stopping at heart-attack.  I softened my voice, made it low, “Round up Smith and Lopez.  Then get Thompson to help.  Brooks can hold the perimeter. …and, Slater –“ I paused to be sure I had his attention.  “Pick up everything.  And use gloves.” 

I’d already made them all put rubber bands on their shoes – a trick I picked up from some CSI tech I’d dated a while back.  Best part of living in Virginia was the access to good labs, and seminars where you could learn a thing or two, and maybe even get laid, all on the man’s dime.  Pay as a cop, even a Chief, was piss-poor unless you worked in a burg of any size, and I was done with burgs.  Thank you, but your t-shirt no longer fits me and my tired-ass attitude.  Nice and quiet.  That’s what I thought I’d find out here in the po-dunk western hills of Virginia.  But truth doesn’t always meet its hype.

I expected a little drunkenness, a little hell-raising, not the good ol’ boys gone bad with meth labs and such.   So, quiet it wasn’t, and occasionally we had pieces of meth lab geniuses to be scraped together and sent to the labs for unscrambling, but nothing sinister.  Nothing evil.  Nothing that made you suspicious of your neighbor.  

The body wagon finally showed up, and our prize for the day was hauled up the hill for its ride to the funeral home, where Westerville used space for its morgue.  Identity would come later.

I nodded to the boys as they passed, feeling like I had to justify my presence.  Not that it needed justifying, I was the Chief of Westerville Police.  But, then again, not everyone in town knew that me and Jennifer Sheffield had had a thing for a while, but enough knew.  If she hadn’t run off from her old man and slipped into my house, this wouldn’t have been a problem.  As it was, I probably shouldn’t have been there.  Then again, I felt I owed the kid.

Inspired by 3WW's Three-word Wednesdays and the words Growl, Justify, and Hype.  Check out this link to read more of the works inspired by these three words.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Spring Tidings

Spending time with my sons, hearing their laughter - those are the most joyous things in the world to me.  This weekend I got to spend time with both.

Guitar lessons for the 15 year old who's also learning to drive, grabbed breakfast on the run, but with a few minutes to spare, we ate in the car and talked.

Then, I took my recently-turned 18 year old son out to find a tux for not one but two proms he's attending with his girlfriend - his and hers.  We ended up buying a tux, getting a suit thrown in (now he's ready for job interviews, too, now and throughout his college years), and it was so much fun helping him pick ties and shirts and suits and tuxes and just so thrilling that he's actually excited now to go to prom. Twenty of his friends are all sitting down in the same restaurant, all dressed up, and he can't wait.  Be still, my beating Momma's heart!

I'm still writing, still working on the innertube of fat I wrapped around my waist.  We almost went bicycling too but spent time checking out potential places of employment instead.  These are the joys of my life, and before I had my children, as most of you who've been through that change know, I never would have wished for the lack of time, the extra weight, the extra cost, the changes to my own lifestyle, but once I saw those baby eyes peering into mine, I was hooked and I'd give everything I own away to be there with them always. 

This is how my Spring tides are washing against the shore of my life.  It's a nice feeling this weekend.  I'm still working on my Three Words Wednesday (3WW) prompts, reviewing six other authors' works, finished a book query and sent it to an agent, and feeling a wee bit more positive about the world and my place in it.  How about you?  How's you Easter/Passover/March-to-April going so far?  Is there a breeze of hope out there that you can feel against your skirt?  If so, let's try to let it lift us up a little bit higher, try a little bit more in whatever goals we set for ourselves.  Come along, I could use the company.

Here's to Spring!