Tag Archives: #creativewriting

Whirlwind

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I have not been feeling well, actually thought I may have contracted COVID despite three mRNA jabs but the Rapid Antigen Tests I’ve been doing daily keep showing up negative. Clearly, I have not been posting (or reading) over the last few days but I did dig up something that I wrote a few years ago when I purchased my first Surface Pro. It gave me an opportunity to play with the new stylus pen that came with the tablet.

I’m no artist but I just had to try and this poem is what I came up with. I saw a recent Sunra Rainz post where she had written a poem called The Sands of Time in the shape of an hourglass. It reminded me of this forgotten piece so I retrieved it from my OneDrive archive and dusted it off. The original idea for the poem was a funnel however it morphed into a tornado as I drew the grade one quality artwork. Both are fitting analogies, a funnel with the water representing life dripping out the bottom and a tornado representing the whirlwind that is life. The piece was unnamed at the time but as I put this post together, particularly the sentence before this one, I thought “Whirlwind” fit a pretty good description of life as we move through it much too quickly and so it is now titled.

Hope you enjoy it. I’ll be back soon.

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Like the Stars Miss the Sun

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John Milton the English Poet and intellectual once said, “The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.“ Think of that statement and then think of song lyrics where Milton’s quote rings true. That is Jim at A Unique Name For Me has challenged us with Sunday Song Lyric Sunday. We are to explore the mind for this week’s theme. The songs should be about mind, thoughts and/or the brain.

Think song of bliss, euphoria, depression, suicide and addiction. Examples range from Ozzy Osbourne‘s “Crazy Train“ to George Strait‘s “Nobody In His Right Mind Would Have Left Her“, from girl in red‘s “Serotonin“ to Joy Division‘s “She’s Lost Control“, from Tears for Fears‘ “Mad World“ to Patsy Cline‘s “Crazy“. There is no shortage of material to choose from that references the brain and the working of the mind.

This week I have chosen to highlight Lana Del Rey‘s haunting track “Summertime Sadness“. A song that skillfully weaves a tale of mental illness born from a deep loss. The track explores depression, while intertwining happy memories with thoughts of death and suicide. The accompanying music is eerily layered to evoke the sense of extreme melancholy the protagonist is experiencing.

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Gravity

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When I awoke
Your ghost before me
Laid upon a secret altar
Please, I beg you to explore me

Thunder crashing
A sea of sorrow
Drowning in a raging ocean
No hope for a new tomorrow

Sense the feeling
Surrender to me
I don’t need your words to
Free me
Caught between
Two worlds colliding
To the earth
Your lifeline sliding

For the ones who watch in wait
This time it might just be too late
Standing at the edge of creation
Hoping, praying for salvation

Sense the feeling
Surrender to me
I don’t need your words to
Free me
Caught between
Two worlds colliding
From the beginning
Your lifeline sliding

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Morning Ritual

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“Where’s my textbooks? I have a test today.” Jamie screeched over his sister’s singing while grabbing her left earpiece.

“Wherever you left them, dumbo!” she shot back at a volume meant to compensate for the music in her head; playing so loud that we were all subjected to listen despite her headphones.

“Hey watch your mouth, Jeannie – – Babe, have you seen my bloody keys, I am going to be late!”

God damn it, every day is like groundhog day she thought as she responded on autopilot, “Check your coat, hun.”

When they were all finally gone she lit the spliff she’d rolled the night before and in the new quiet, pull in the same deep smoke filled breath she drew in every morning.

Holding her breath in as a euphoric wave of calm floods into her limbs; finally the world was in harmony with her.

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Into the Sun

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Standing on the precipice,
Gravity pulls, my bones compress,
Wind rising from beneath,
Freedom screaming, “Take a leap.”

A few steps back, then start to run,
Jump off the edge, into the sun,
Hang for a moment, my senses quail,
Before the wind does kiss my sail.

A thermal rush, straight up I rise,
The Earth recedes before my eyes,
Into the blue that fills my mind,
The pull of gravity, long behind.

Turning left, a sweeping lilt,
The ground below a patchwork quilt,
Like majestic Andean condors,
Across the sky, my spirit soars…

A slow descent back to the ground,
Never want to come back down,
Another updraft, catch one last wave,
Before reclaimed as gravity’s slave.

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The Things I’ve Seen

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Down the stairs, truth be told,
In grains of sand, each truth I hold,
The winds of change blowing through,
Where I stand a desert grew.

Long ago, a secret past,
In this cellar, the die was cast,
For trade in skin, bought and sold,
When all used up, left to the cold.

During the times of Jesus Christ,
The pagan north made sacrifice,
Long before the Romans tread,
Countless times, my floor, blood red.

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The Cost of Indifference

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Unrelenting darkness pressed down above the northern city trapped beneath the rubble of an intercontinental war it never asked for. Its only downfall is being landlocked between a wicked aggressor on the eastern front and indifference amongst the free and democratic societies to the west. The democratically elected government had aligned with the Western powers during the peaceful years following the Planetary Armistice of 2740.

The Eastern airforce was engaging in a campaign to carpet the rural grain and sheep farms with clusters of bombs precisely spaced to ensure maximum destruction of the arable countryside. Facing certain starvation, anger grew as it became clear that their allies had abandoned them. Sure, the West was providing stockpiles of old and neglected weaponry to shore up the National Resistance but compared to the weapons of modern warfare they were playing in the technological dark ages.

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The Witch of November

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This week’s theme for Sunday Song Lyric is “Precipitation”. Of course, there are hundreds of songs that reference rain and picking just one was a difficult task.

In the end I chose a track from one of Canada’s most prolific songwriters. It was once said that SOCAN, the Canadian equivalent of ASCAP, maintained the collected works of Canadian artists in the main archive and then maintain a separate room in the archive to hold the collected works of Gordon Lightfoot. Keep in mind this was before the age of electronic storage and likely an old wives’ tale but it speaks to how prolific Lightfoot was as a songwriter.

I can think of several Lightfoot songs referencing rain including such hits as “Rainy Day People” and “Early Morning Rain”. Those are not the songs I have settled on for today’s challenge. The song I have chosen does not explicitly speak of the rain although it does mention ‘freezing rain’ in the lyric. Instead, as you listen to the song you can feel the freezing November rain driving across the deck as Lightfoot skillfully weaves through his tail of mariner woe.

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Deep Below

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Following the loyalist insurrection, many Minos separatists were forced to toil long unforgiving hours serving Earth’s greed-driven interests.

My clan survived the initial onslaught, fleeing to the shelter of the catacombs deep below the settlement. I miss the warmth of the Minoan suns but the long-forgotten passages have proved the perfect refuge for ostracized colonists.

The therapeutic properties of the moon’s super-heated core providing us with everything we need while planning our triumphant return to the surface.

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A Question of Times

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Fandango’s Provocative Question asks us to weigh in on the U. S. Senate decision to do away with the semi-annual time change with the following questions:

Assuming you agree that we should have the same time year-round rather than moving up an hour each spring and back an hour each fall, do you favor going to permanent Daylight Saving Time or permanent Standard Time? Why do you feel that way?

Find my response below…

I must admit I have a love-hate relationship with the semi-annual time change. Love the extra hour of sleep in the fall and hate losing it in the spring. Personally, I prefer the time change but if I had to choose I’d give up the extra evening light and remain on Standard Time year-round.

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