Write the Year 2024—Week 20: Yip. Dusk.

Danger Beagle Walks have been late these last few days. Tonight, there was a coyote. A visual, then sonic encounter. This is a Cinq Trois DecaLa Rhyme.

Title: Dusk. Yip.
WC: 111

The lately undone are yipping tonight, noses to the sky
Lonely once, huddling now—flank to flank—each one swallows a sigh
Underfoot, the ground rises, unexpected and thick with scent
Interlopers—tall, purple, swaying—wonder where the past went.
The half moon looks on, high above. This is none of her concern.
How could it be, with seas to call? All the while fortunes burn.
Mothers lead their kits in song and dance. A little planet’s turn
sets the stage for revelry. Remarkable myths stand by,
murmuring within their ranks: a struggle for what the past meant.
Settle now. Take your rest. How can it matter what the past meant?

Write the Year 2024—Week 19: Castaway

Even less planning than usual this week. A treochair about (as usual) the Danger Beagle woods. Maybe a response to the prompt “Wonder” from Writers Write? (If you squint).

Title: Castaway
WC: 50

Prescribed burn:
No one’s illegible hand
showed the lost any concern

Shrink-wrapped signs,
clinging to their toothpick posts,
nod smugly as the sun shines.

Serene bones
could take or leave this new warmth
lying beyond all time owns.

Plastic grin,
an in-joke oozing sideways.
Whose pocket were you once in?

Write the Year 2024—Week 18: Westerly

Alcohol + exhaustion = random observation of the sky from today’s Danger Beagling. This is an Amphion.

Title: Westerly
WC: 38

Horizons, crayon, stacked in blue
This clover stroll
the evening stole
Its unsung victory from view
You amble on
Oblivion
Still tucked beneath your weary now
One ripple, two
Concentric truth
Set sail, collide with no one’s vow

Write the Year 2024—Week 17: Fingers

Just a weird piece of flash fiction this week. Partly inspired by Danger Beagling (as ever) in pissing-down rain and the DB herself taking us on a very odd route with a few patches of very insistent mud. Also, I suppose, a sort of sideways fulfillment of this Poets & Writers prompt (not poetry, though, obviously).

Title: Fingers
WC: 600

The fingers that wrapped around her ankle were just that: Fingers. Unambiguously. There was no moment of reprieve—not a second where thoughts of buried wires or gnarled tree roots, half-liberated by the heavy rain flitted through her mind as a possible alternative.

Fingers.

They closed tight just above the wide opening of her rain boot, finding flesh despite the sodden fabric of her jeans dragging ever downward. She couldn’t remember when last she had shaved. That thought would flit, of course, striking fear into heart that the fingers closed around her ankle might encounter unfeminine stubble.

She went down. Hard, her mind was eager to add, but it wasn’t so. Her arms shot out, ready to break a fall that never came. She went straight down.The sensation of earth—mud, really—pressing in on her was, at first, a kind of odd relief from the constant ping of rain against her skin.She felt her glasses slide away, tugged upward and off her ears.

The pull of her jacket at the armpits as she traveled one way and the fabric traveled the other jolted her out of whatever strange complacency had settled in her mind, in the moment.. Her own fingers thought at last to claw at the sky—at where the sky should be. There was only grey–black now, of course, only the clogging scent of rotting green.

Help, she thought, more out of the sense that it was the thing to do than any belief that help would come. She was going down, still. Two sets of fingers now, one around each ankle as every inch of exposed skin—hands, throat, chest, midriff, embarrassingly exposed—grew slick, easing the way.

Things were going faster now. Or she was going faster. Who was slithering rapidly past what was a question for the surface—for the rainy day and the cemetery fence and the huge yellow earth mover not quite hidden behind the black mountain of its own making. Things were going and so was she.

Her feet emerged. There was some kind of dramatic pause as they broke through the last of the heavy, sopping mud into whatever lay below. She found herself suspended, hands overhead, chin tipped upward and her feet dangling free. Not quite free. There were, of course, the fingers.

They tugged just then—the fingers—as though to underscore the unambiguous fact of their existence. She slid free, the rest of her body, undulating slightly along an S-curve as the earth found of her the path of least resistance.

She landed. Hard, her mind supplied, not so wrong this time. Some kind of natural slab floor made itself known to the soles of her feet through the shitty rain boots. It made itself known to legs, knees, thighs, hips, spine, and she went down, her hands shooting out behind her this time, jarred by abrasions and expected cold.

The space was dim. Not the black of the journey downward, but a place that light must have visited before.Light every now and then. Light from time to time. Not now, though, not especially. She looked around, or tried to. She scrabbled backward in the way of horror movie idiots, but nothing grabbed her from behind.

Fingers.

Nothing was grabbing her. She reached down and snatched at the hem of her jeans. Stupid, really. What was she hoping to see?

Fingers.

They emerged from the dimness. Skeletal, their nails ringed with ancient filth. They came together, tip to tip, steepled and inquisitive, followed by nothing except a voice.

“So. What brings you here?”

Write the Year 2024—Week 09: Locale

Not sure how I have never written a Haiku Sonnet before. This was kind of fun. Danger Beagle Walk sights, as usual.

Title: Locale
WC: 52

Forest lemons hide
Like tourists in local leaves
Yearning to be found

A single crutch leans
Rakishly against the light
Its tilt ironic

Front yard bowling ball
A landscaping oddity
Or wild night remnant?

The Virgin Mary,
Her back to the railroad tracks
The neighborhood watch

I capture these sights
Captivating me

Write the Year 2024—Week 03: Orchid Lightning

Partly a prompt from Writers Write. Partly a song I’ve been banging my head against this week, which was first inspired by the image below

Title: Orchid Lightning
WC: 750

It was an ordinary winter Thursday. The sky was just burning off the tail end of daylight. A block this way and that way, rush hour traffic was creeping its loud, profane way onward. Here, though, the ground beyond the chain link fence descended, an angular wedge someone had carved out for some reason.Within it, the deep drifts of snow drank the noise right down. Here, it was something close to quiet. Ren wondered if that’s why he’d chosen this spot. Or she. Or they.

The artist, she said to herself. The solution pleased her well enough that she said it again, this time spending a tiny parchment-colored cloud of breath on it—the artist. A gritty gust of wind roared down the train tracks just then, taking the moment’s pleasure with it and calling her out as a fool.

The quiet must be an occasional byproduct, at best. In the heat of summer, everything would carry. Horns and children shouting as they stretched out their games of Ghost in the Graveyard. The seclusion and the vast concrete face of the man-made canyon’s north wall. That must surely be the draw. Or must surely have been, maybe.

She curled her fingers tighter in the rusted-out diamonds of the fence and brought her face close enough to the dirty thing that could almost taste the ochre stains on the tip of her tongue. She scanned the white expanse of the drifts for interruptions—footprints, wheel tracks, any sign of the artist, but there was nothing. She allowed herself a sidelong, half-lidded glance at the thing itself.

The work, she called it the confines of her own mind on the days she forced herself, without turning, past the street at the west end of the fence. The creation. That’s what she called it here. Like this, when the vivid shades and haunting figures called the blood to the surface of her skin and forced her gaze downward.

Last week—another ordinary winter Thursday—she’d convinced herself with a half dozen stolen glimpses that it had grown, shifted, morphed somehow. A new flash of mad orchid lighting hidden in one of the eyes that danced through a streamer of clouds, or maybe a new hint of brilliance in the gem that rested on the forehead of the largest, most arresting of the faces.

But today, time had folded back on itself like a bird with its head under one wing. Today, she had come and she had to admit it to herself: Tte work was unaltered. The creation had been . . . created. And there was no reason in the world to think there would be more, or that one day there’d be an awkward, one-sided encounter: the artist working, Ren holding her breath and looking on from afar.

She took a step back from the fence, one set of fingers still tangled in it, reluctant to let go. There was no trace of the sun any more. It was beyond stupid to be standing here alone, staring into the blackness. With an effort, she pulled free and turned to go.

Just then, there was a hum, all the molecules of air for what felt like miles vibrating. The area inside the fence was flooded with punishing blue-white light. Ren’s first instinct snapped her chin upward. She scoured the night sky looking for . . . what? Little green men? A clanging down in the canyon shook her out of it. She stared in astonishment as figures appeared at the base of the work—the creation. Men. Two ordinary men, though in that first instant they seemed minuscule under the looming figures. But their dark, filthy coveralls snapped perspective into place. Men.

They’d come through a door she’d never noticed before. A dark oblong in what she’d always thought was an unbroken stretch of concrete grey. They were struggling with some kind of equipment. Long, heavy hoses that snaked back through the door they’d emerged from and wands that seemed to be as long as they were tall. Ren’s fingers found their way back through the rusted diamonds of the fence.

What? The wind carried the question away, a plume of breath this time.

The noise answered it, an awful, mechanical racket as water blasted against the concrete. The silver eyes wept. They dissolved, leaving nothing. It occurred to her suddenly that she’d never looked at it straight on before—the creation.

Ren’s fingers loosened their hold on the fence. Her shoulders slumped and she looked away.

Write the Year 2023—Week 47: Action

Another week, another strike poem. I am pretty demoralized and this is, unsurprisingly, pretty terrible. It’s a RemyLa Rhyme

Title: Action
WC: 125

Red boots. I cannot wait for dawn.
Head down. Meet the wind, foot after foot.
Plastic portraits swing, back to back, and bump my hip
Lone hill. Where has autumn’s gold gone?

Gone, where? The orange dog stalking birds
Brisk wave. October’s runners missing, too.
I ask the time right out loud. The absence answers.
Sharp turn. I have no need for words.

Words fail. No one knows how this ends.
Green tint. Distant, whisking mountains of clouds.
My gaze, anchored yet unfixed cannot seem to see.
Bell tolls. I arrive without friends.

Friends fade. Strangers’ smiles loom instead
Lock step. A circuit made with voices raised.
I am the word for a single drop of the sea
Streets seethe. We all follow the read.

Write the Year 2022—Week 39 (Belated): Path

No prompt, just free-form musings.

Title: Path
WC: 1000

The Beagsset has discovered the Dan Ryan Woods recently. We’ve been kind of skirting the south edge of them for a while, literally where the sidewalks end and the big houses begin, set at odd angles and irregular intervals on their huge lots. We walk up that way and do a route I call Danger Beagling. It’s more literal than I’d like, but she loves it.

There’s kind of a path, but not really a path. There’s at least one dangerously narrow point where tall bushes really close in, and all summer long, bugs would swarm and feast on me as she rushed forward, nose to the ground and I flailed through trying to keep my sunglasses on my face, my earbuds in my ears, and most of my skin unraked by thorns and razor-sharp leaves. Oh, and there was a time in the spring when a giant tree came crashing down and for a while, I thought, It’s not safe. It’s not entirely safe, hence the Danger Beagle woods.

But that path cuts north and East through an area that isn’t (as far as I know) formally part of the Woods. Lately, she’s been pulling West, and that way lies this flagstone path that runs along this three-foot-wide channel or something that sits about four-feet below the path. It’s brick-lined with a concrete bottom and every once in a while, there are little wooden bridges that cross over to a flag-stone path on the other side, like there used to be water in it or something. It all has a vibe that strangely resonates with my seven-year-old love for Harriet the Spy.

There are flagstone staircases, too—a couple of them. I think at least one would come out at the top of a hill right behind some of the big houses that are in the part of the neighborhood with no sidewalks and wide, curving streets that lead into the Danger Beagle woods. Another one, we’ve just discovered in the last few days. Leads up into the woods at the north end of one of the groves. There’s a big, fallen over tree across the not-really-a-path that leads to the top of the steps. She can trot right under, and I slowly, creakily, stoop down and awkwardly crab-walk underneath it without hitting my head. So far, anyway.

But if we just follow the path to its end, it comes out in a keyhole-shaped sunken court. The Beagsett jumps down from one level to the next with the greatest of ease. The leash cuts into my hand as she tugs impatiently while I try to make my way down without breaking anything. And then she zigzags endlessly through the wide-open space, her nose to the ground like a cartoon dog while my black Grandma Frankenstein Hokas pick up all the bursa in the Midwest. She has endless enthusiasm for this and somehow she never finds the holes hidden by over-long grass that’s decided to lie down for the winter. My feet always do, and sooner or later, my osteological luck is bound to run out.

Last weekend she dragged me hither and yon for better than six miles while I listened to the Blue Jays ultimately fall to the Mariners. There’s a stone wall with a ramp leading down that she finally noticed. It’s a tunnel that leads under 87th street and into the next set of groves with a sledding hill and even more wide-open fields. Today she ran me that way again, and she sniffed her way around the curving, woody perimeter, heading north, north, north until she turned suddenly back south.

She wanted to take the stairs, not the hill on the way up. There was a fat squirrel on the slope to the east that she couldn’t get at because there’s a rickety wire-and-slat fence flanking that set of stairs for some reason. She wanted to dive into the immense, thorny bush after said fat squirrel, but I eventually convinced her to head back for the tunnel, back for the fallen-over tree and the set of flagstone stairs leading down. Back through the Danger Beagle woods, where a new choke point with branches of something on its last legs have sagged their way into the not-quite path. This leaves dozens of little dagger-like leaves stuck into the sleeves of my coat. I pick them out as we trot along. She decides whether we’ll take the low path that curves north and east, or if we’ll stick to the higher one with irregular, log-framed “steps” leading up. She decides whether we’ll walk through the flat area of the preserve or we’ll head up the steep hill back into the woods for the final leg, then come out at the abrupt concrete steps just northwest of the park.

She decides whether it’s a day to sniff her way across the baseball diamond or if she wants to try to coax me east across the train tracks. There’s more wide open space there, but I usually tell her we don’t have time. It’s been miles and miles already. We don’t have time, except we do, and she knows that.

She’ll pull me down the hill of our park sometimes. Lots of times lately, because the squirrels are fat, villainous, and everywhere. She’ll pull me across what’s a football field for now—the open space between our two baseball diamonds. But she knows to cut back to 97th Street and head west for home. She always knows, because we have to see if Winnie, the Bernese Mountain Dog, is out on her elevated deck, waiting to do a little dance and get some pets.

It’s been a little more than a year but no matter how many miles we go, no matter how many new paths we uncover, she knows the way, and she knows there’s time.

Write the Year 2022—Week 20: Byways

Sort of this prompt from Poets & Writers.

Title: Byways
WC: 600

Chicago, IL—May 10, 2022

I noticed the first a year ago, maybe two. Who knows how many times I’d walked past it before then—two houses in from the corner, a concrete cube right up against a chain-link fence looking out into the alley. The face jutting out at the bottom is what caught my attention all of a sudden—hinges for eyes and a sloped metal profile ending in a vertical underbite. It jogged memory that day, who knows why, but I knew I’d seen hundreds of them. I’d walked by them, squatting out there next to gate after gate, who knows how many times. That day, I snapped a picture. I called on my Chicago people and had an answer in minutes. It’s an incinerator, one that, for some reason, hadn’t been hauled away with the rest long ago. I remembered my grandfather burning garbage, years after he should have been, behind the big yellow house on Campbell in the Gage Park neighborhood.

It’s not just the one. There are a handful, maybe a dozen. Who knows how many times I’ve walked by each one before I notice. Before it reveals itself to me. This week’s says:

Star Box
One
Piece

Chicago, IL—May 10, 2022

I swear I saw the first phone weeks ago. The dog has developed a thing for alleys, and if it’s still light out, I’ll usually indulge her for at least part of the walk. This one’s not paved. It’s a pain in the ass that gets more and more clogged with weeds with every rainfall, but she trots down one side of the wheel ruts and I stick to the other. The leash, stretched out taut between the two of us, mows down knee-high dandelions as we move along, more or less in step. I swear I saw the first phone on the green rise right down the middle, its screen cracked, and I wondered if that was a before or after thing. I wondered what wheels slowly crunching through the irregular gravel might have had to do with any of it.

I don’t know which of these is the first phone. I don’t know if it’s either one of them, but the sight of the two of them nestled up and out of the way, set with care on the wooden edge of some kind of raised bed made me think: Romeo and Juliet. It never gets old.

Chicago, IL—May 13, 2022

It looked like the future the way only things from the past ever do. The shiny chrome brackets caught the baking hot sun. The honeycomb of diamonds and the twin rows of vents made me want to run the backs of my nails over the metal. I snapped the pictures quickly, awkwardly. There was someone in the alley and I suppose I didn’t want him thinking I might start rooting through the mismatched pile of things. I was annoyed right away with the fact that I’d gotten it off-center and at an odd angle. With the sun beating down I couldn’t tell if I’d gotten anything like a clear picture of the old-fashioned dial. I did, as it turned out. Two shots, more than clear enough to see the word:

Titan

For just an instant the fantasy held. Titan—a name worthy of a 1950s spaceship, touching down at the end of its journey from the far edge of the solar system in the distant future of 1985. But the picture was too clear, really. With its plastic knob missing, the everydayness of the object was revealed. This Titan had arrived from nowhere more exotic than Sedalia, Missouri.

Write the Year 2022—Week 19: Decimal

Chicago, March 31, 2022

Many thanks to noted Piece of Shit, WordPress, for eating this post entirely? I had nothing that was moving me, so this is an image-based reverse ripple.

Title: Decimal
WC: 128

At first, I counted ten
The skulls of tiny men
At rest since God knows when.
But was it ten? Were they at rest?
With twine-strung jaws, could they protest?
Scuttling silence from the west
Such losses rattle absent chests.
A march, a dance, an ivory grim cascade
A bed of brown, the waft of mould, such shade
as keeps the string, now lax, now taut, arrayed
in cursive, languid loops, each unafraid
to lie at rest (or not) until all fades.
I count, and yet . . . I count and still
The tree bark tally columns fill
Twined teeth rattle, as twined teeth will
Their drumbeat far from summer’s spill.
Not ten, no—not so few
Not men, not one I knew
Who else? Who lies here, too?