Writing Off the Edge: WEP August 2022 Challenge: Moonlight Sonata

Writing Off the Edge: WEP August 2022 Challenge: Moonlight Sonata: It's time once again for another Write...Edit...Publish challenge. This month's musical prompt is Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. ...

Good work incorporating a real situation into the work of fiction. I don't have any school-age kids in my life, so I wasn't aware of the teacher shortage. The cost of living is so high and teacher salaries are, well, not.

The truth is, I wanted to be a professional musician, but as my father informed the psychologist when we went to family counseling, I was the "least musically talented" person in the family. He wanted me to stop pursuing music, and he got his wish. I never played an instrument again after that day, which was some 32 years ago.

Come As You Are Party: Me in 3D with Four Poems

It's all a bit too much, I think. Too much going on, not enough of it good. I don't know if I gave up a long time ago or if it just came to a point where I was so jaded that nothing really mattered. I'm honestly not sure why I bother most of the time, but still I do. I may just be too stupid to have figured out that whatever I may do or not, it makes no difference.

I read a poem that made me think about the days of youth, and this was my reply to it:

It was a simpler time when it was fun to find discarded cans and trade them for a few cents to buy a treat. Today would have been my father's 84th birthday. Sometimes I wish I could go back to one of those moments when he was still here and there were possibilities.

I read another poem with which I resonated, and this was my reply:

I resonate with this. Sadly, I think society has learned nothing from the past six months.

To a poem trying to convince me that I'm a masterpiece (which I most assuredly do not think I am) I had this to say:

I'm generally of the opinion that I'm a mistake that was cobbled together out of spare parts. Still, I don't think this gives anyone the right to treat me or anyone else unkindly just because they don't find us appealing. This is why I'm not nice or compliant and why I bite.

In reply to a poem about the manner in which the British won their conquests in territories such as Malaya and Borneo while the United States lost ours in Vietnam, I had this to say:

I believe that your weapons were much better than ours. As a U.S. citizen, I also feel it is my duty to apologize for the spray-tanned horse's ass that is our so-called leader and I am grateful for those British citizens who fly the tRump baby balloon whenever he pays a visit to your country.

Too deflated to bother being ornery today

Carpe Diem Shikoku Island Pilgrimage: Kanjizai-ji Senryu

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I wonder if you

are there, and can you help me

I am too far gone

~cie~

notes

Kanjizai-Ji is situated in the town called Ainan and is devoted to Yakushi Nyorai or the Buddha of Medicine and Healing. He is still one of the most important Buddhas especially during rituals that are performed at funerals because he is also the Buddha who leads the Buddhists to Nirvana.

Fat Friday: Tone Deaf

Don't you just hate it when you've managed to start pulling yourself out of the psychological sewer of despair and had the personal fortitude to back away from the suicide booth although your body is doing horrible shit up to and including activity which inflicts literal cognitive changes, and it would be easier just to die and get it over with, and along comes a tone-deaf concern troll who proceeds to unleash a coronal mass ejection of NOPE all over your post? I know I do.

Would you, reading this paragraph:

I have to fight all the negative messages about my body several times a day every day and probably will for the rest of my life. Forget "loving" my body. I would be happy to be able to just ACCEPT my damn body and move on. But jerks who begin sentences with "it's okay to love your body, but..." do their level best every day to make sure that I will never even be allowed to just accept mine.

Decide to argue that the most relevant thing the person who wrote that paragraph can do for their health is to fall back into the clutches of diet culture and begin trying to hate themselves thin again. I know I...

MOST CERTAINLY WOULD NOT DO ANYTHING OF THE KIND!

I mean...

What the actual fuck.

Concern trolls always think that the rules don't apply to their sage wisdom.

I don't know, y'all. Sometimes I think I'm just done.

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2019: Day 20: Light Blitz

Image by Johannes Plenio from Pixabay

light the night

light my fire

fire of passion

fire of hell

hell hath no fury

hell hath no remorse

remorse for what's said

remorse for what's done

done to death

done and gone

gone like yesterday

gone in a flash

flash and dash

flash of light

light the way

light the night

night without dreams

night without end

end of the world

end of everything

everything ends

everything dies

dies like your love

dies like my dreams

dreams of yesterday

dreams of tomorrow

tomorrow never comes

tomorrow comes too soon

soon the sun rises

soon the night falls

falls from the heavens

falls to its death

death is the end

death is the beginning

beginning of a new chapter

beginning of a new tale

tale whispered in darkness

tale too ticklish to tell

tell me a lie

tell me the truth

truth is subjective

truth will set you free

free falling

free to run

run from the past

run from the pain

pain holds on forever

pain colors all

forever...

all...

~Cie~

Notes:

Today's November PAD Chapbook Challenge asked for a Light poem. So, I did a Light Blitz. It turned out kind of heavy, though.

Troiku Challenge 2019: Day 13: Fireflies

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steamy night

fireflies

out in the rain

steamy night

near marsh or swamp or wet field

dank, cloying odor

fireflies

once upon a time I thought

they were fairy steeds

out in the rain

sometimes I can remember

belief in magic

Jim & Cie

Notes:

The "sleigh" of this Troiku was created by modern Haiku poet Jim Kacian. The Three Horses of the Apocalypse are to be blamed on me.

I don't believe in magic or much of anything else these days. But sometimes when it rains I can remember how it felt to believe.