wb :

Hey guys, Ryan here. I know I haven't actually been writing here, but I wanted to give you guys a little heads up about a new project of mine before I start send out e-mails.

A friend and I (Matthew Reuben, for those who know him) are working on a new collection of local writing. It's going to be fresh, exciting, and it's going to be published in print (read: on paper, in an actual book). We're looking for sponsorship from NAC and everything, so it's pretty exciting.

Of course, first we need pieces, and that's where you come in. I'm sure all of us here have stories floating around in our heads waiting to be pinned unto paper. Well, this is your chance.

is not yesterday's
orange julius and caesar
salad. it might be the cold gulf
or this post-war depression

it is the absence
of cats basking in sunshine; the
lack of umbrellas on a very
rainy day. it is the unseen

puddles that ruined the best
pair of jeans you owned; natural
disasters, storms and water-bombs.
don't bother cleaning up;

life is just another infectious
disease; you climb great walls
and soldier on. tomorrow may not
see you over the moon, but

you might see some stars soon.

you're full of hot air;
flying high above
many parties,
above oceans
of hair

just be careful of
the mountain-peaks
of the rigs of ships
of the passing
of weeks

remember to check
the weather, mate
for when pressure
increases, or there's
too much

on one's plate
one tends to deflate

greenly glisten in the sunlight;
boldbeaks wing-tucked, beadeyes sleep-struck.
like beached scallops in the seabright
are these senseless, careless ditchducks.

they snooze from dawn till afternoon
and still, their languid sleepwakes’s late.
more endless dreamdoze follows soon;
these birds shall grace my dinner plate!

Based on Malory's Morte Arthur. I wanted to have a go at the Anglo Saxon style, heavy on alliteration and compound words. Blogger didn't allow spacing hence the cut-&-paste. Click to enlarge.

spring came again
with rain in your hair;
tulipped bedsheets on chairs
drying in the sun. without
the life-support of heaters,
the freezer froze over.
little snowmen live now
amongst the fish and the
fowl. they have carrots
for noses; snowfights by
the dim rim of the
kitchen light, cheered
on by birthday cakes
and leftover mold.
i open the door,
but no sign of life
just plastic wrapped
hunks of meat
and their rapidly approaching
expiry dates.

i woke up to a world
in black and white;
knew exactly what
to do. the only shade
in between was chocolate
so i had some of that too.
i could catch words
before they flew out
lighted up like fireflies
stop phrases from
whizzing down waterslides.
i could do anything;
eat fire, change the
seasons, or bring on
the ice age - still the
zebras would always elude me.

as we walked through the jardins des tulleries
spying on lovers kissing, trying to imagine
streetlights and moon as fountains and sun
and children sailing paper boats -


i did not think of the oily fool
twisting things like spaghetti round his fork
and spoon. i did not think of the many-hued
statues filling up the museum behind us


stuck in eternal bliss, or famous paintings
i completely missed; only amazed at the
dinner of internal organs playing their
strange symphony to accompany beliefs


i'd never allowed myself to believe in, fitting
perfectly into the hollows
of the gardens, the morose shapes of trees, the
flowers we can't see because it's the wrong season.

To Alcohol!- the cause of, and solution
To all my tears and laughter on this night,
To all life's problems, and their resolutions!

You ask, my friend, what caused my grim submission
To whims of fate?- Why only my delight
Is Alcohol? Well. The cause of, and solution

To young boys' woes is purposeful distraction,
And that was she! Oh, such a pretty sight
To end life's problems! So my resolutions

Were broken, and I drank intoxication,
I gasped her scent, I called her name at night
O'er alcohol, the cause of, and solution-

Aflame, it came, enraged- our dissolution,
And where she stood, just wind, and winter night,
And one life's problems, and no resolutions.

So drink with me! O, drink to this rambunction!
No better time to glory in our plight!-
To Alcohol! that cause, that fierce solution
To all life's problems, and their resolutions!

O Sun! What wakes your eye each day anew
And turns it over every sleeping stone,
Each lake, each tree, each blade of grass you grew?
What calls you to your fief when winds have flown,
When shadows cross your barony have blown?
What greatnesses your gaze had turned to scry?
What sights might waver your immortal eye?

O Sun! Within your luminous purview,
Out of the clay our shivering limbs have grown;
Those very hands wrought boats from fallen yew,
And where they fell, the seeds of cities sown;
Slaves to your seasons, yet your light disown,
And beauty artificed, as though we shy
What sights might waver your immortal eye!

O Sun! In fear, your symmetry we drew,
But pride our breasts had swelled, and none bemoan
Your blinded back, as all our sins accrue-
The starved and sick upon the altar groan,
While in their palaces, the rest atone;
O judge, accomplice, jury! As we cry-
What sights might waver your immortal eye?

O Sun! Your servants, we, have stared at you,
And seen a haughty king upon his throne!-
And we, conspiring of your power, drew
The fire and the sword you bore alone,
Usurped your crown, your reins!- O, had we known
The vastness that you stared, we would not vie
What sights might waver your immortal eye.

the laptop hums strangely
like a warm disaster
should've known then
that you would
hurtle off-key
once the playlist
shuffles track

count ships. it won't
be easy, for they like
to pass unnoticed
in the night


but they're better
than their woolly-headed,
monosyllabic
counterparts

there are many ways
you could do this


reach out a tentacle
suckered with doubts


release pools of
dark-inked missives


school yourself not
to be so clownfish


clam up and refuse
to shell out anything


or decide it's
too fishy and give up


before you finish
counting


the waves in which
you love him

invisible launchpad
to mars; mornings ascending
with the dark skies.
this isn't rocket science,
they commonly teach.
which would've been better;
space-suits, or fire-proof
pinafores? for

gatherings under the
fluorescent lights; final
checks; what's your take-off
strategy? spacing out,
sitting down suddenly, i miss a few
good-luck hugs. but
they forgive me
and my starry nights

what on earth were we
thinking about, taking those
flights? Probably trying
for pegasus not icarus;
going towards winter
not the eternal summer of the
sun. And as we farewell through
static radio waves, floating we
lose all sense of gravity

A quiet, unassuming man, he had no family- that he would speak to me of, at least- no job, for his retirement was a cosy one, no vices that might barter a year of breath for a night of brazenness, not even a hobby peculiar to men built as him- for he was built right between the jolly, redfaced heftiness of a woodcutter, the wiry, bearded strength of a fisherman, or the stately, supple grace of a watchmaker; as he opened the door that morning, he greeted me with a pensive smile, and took my hand with his own, as wrinkled as the book-spines on his shelf, and callused as the logs that made the walls of his cottage in the mountains.

The only luxury he truly seemed to need, I noticed as I entered, was the camera perched snugly atop the sturdiest shelf nailed into wood perhaps older than either of us, surrounded by ancient books and illegible papers, yellowed as the eyes that read them, strewn across the table, and a tea set which he looked at with that indescribable melange of contrition and nostalgia; and as we had tea, he slowly turned his thoughts to laughter, and our first meeting filled many a mountaintop minute with the heartiness of two with much between them yet, inexplicably, more to share.

Then up on last of the rays of the sun climbed the night, and the sky darkened, and the fire now gave us tea, warmth, and light; and I rose, and smiled, but he smiled and said to me- "no, lassie, let me show you something now- my life's work, if you will", and then the door opened- but it was he who was outside, and I was left a- amazed, perhaps- adrift, now that I think of it- but then again, retrospect never made things clearer.

And so it was that on the first night of our meeting, he took my hand again and brought me to the top of his cottage, and the ancient camera, his singular pride, joy, and love, sat upon a tripod on the roof; then he motioned to the city that lay below us, massive and corpulent, red and radiant in its bloatedness, and he sighed and took pictures of the sky, the stars, and the hills; and though he tried his best, the lights of the city always found their glare into the corners of the lens, like- like some mere tourist gazing the camera, oblivious to the wonders that lay behind them, the light glinting of their teeth like it were some trophy of theirs.

"Behold the works of Man, as many as they are terrible", he said to me, and I could only nod mutely as he sighed once more, and started to take down the tripod; but as he fastened the last leg, there rose a terrible silence in the air, tenuous and tenebrous, and suddenly the light of a million homes went out as surely as the fire below his stove; and all of a sudden, the only lights in the sky were a million patters and a waning moon, and the only gleam that the world returned shone off the burnished silver of his camera.

In that moment, his eyes widened as a child's, and he laughed, and cried, and forgot about me, and in the glorious darkness he worked with the fervor of a man who had seen that he had spent the first three years of his life babbling and wetting himself, and that he very well might spend the last three years the same way; the tripod went up, and then the camera, and in those few minutes, a lifetime's dream came true as he photographed the night in all its unsullied glory, the glory of a million stars, the blackness of the sky, and the shadows of the hills upon a sea that whispered on the breeze; and when he had taken the last picture, he merely smiled, recalled that I was there, and took my hand another time- and he said, "please have them developed for me", and coughed his last laugh into the coldness of a night that was the closest he ever felt to warmth.

-~-
Flash fiction in 6 sentences. Inspired by the view from the mountains at Nagasaki.

the constellations of desk-lights
milky way wrappers,
fallen comets,
multiply like
efficient mathematicians
biologists who
have just discovered the secret
to life.
if you were looking
for evidence of the big bang
it is right here
underneath some bars
of galaxy and inertia
too.
tomorrow's asteroid
comes nearer
like the swimmers in
the slow lane
kicking up water
fuelled by chocolate
trying to fit into
orion's belt.

i need to learn
loneliness
picking blueberries
amidst the Isle of
Langerhans;
digesting


them as i go along.
above are cloud-boats,
menancing like
thundergods.
should i make oars
of prickly, dark-


staining bunches
or wait
til the blues
have been
absorbed into the
lapping waves
like friendly rocks

He had told her to wake him in a thousand years or when it was safe, whichever was later, as he closed his eyes and laid on the white sheets on a steel bed in a cocoon of black; perhaps her aural sensor malfunctioned in that instant, or her processing core misinterpreted his intentions, for when he next opened his eyes, it would have been a million years.

All too quickly passed the first fourteen years, but while the people had long since forgotten the old days of hunting and warring, their governments had not; and so it went that while children played in pristine virtual-reality beaches and their parents enjoyed every conceivable pleasure in the synsation chambers, their leaders rose and fell like the tides of a time when the moon still possessed most of its mass, and their factories sowed the seeds of things only he would come to know of, and only for an instant.

As his shell hummed and whispered, forgotten in the basement of a home ruined by time, his family's rusted bones adorning the stainless pipes, the day arrived where man, blind with pleasure and deaf with ignorance, chose his future for himself, and picked the road paved with thorns leading to perdition; in the wake of the first bombardments, nobody was left standing who remembered who fired first, and as man strode the lands of his dominion and left the smell of regret lingering in the wake of victory, the pride of Mankind was torn as the hair from the few who survived as they beat their chests and wailed in torment.

Then it came that countless years later, as a village was digging for a well in the desert wastes of what remained of Southeast Asia, they struck a coat of ebony that even their strongest warrior could not break though he shattered his prized stone axe, and the medicine woman declared it the Devil and unbuddhist, but the elders called it a relic sent by the gods Elohim and Vishnu, and the tribe venerated the sarcophagus as readily as they held in awe the bones of their ancestors; and as they searched the world and grew stronger, they found more of the sacred relics, and they founded the first of the last civilizations of Man in the wake of what few remembered as the Flood.

One day, in the heat of winter, an archaeologist wiped the sweat off his forehead and adjusted his lead suit, and shouted for his assistants to come, and, awestruck, mouths agape, hearts pounding with sheer incomprehensibility, they beheld the zenith of all the works of Man, and they worshipped it, and they brought it to the Sister City at the other end of the world, declaring it a prize as worthy as the Cocoon of the Maker; the last elder knew what it was, and shouted and coughed his blood up in the comfort of his hospital bed, but the doctor simply shook his head and gave him an injection to put him to his last fitful sleep, and drove his nurses in his car to witness the unveiling of the priceless artifact with markings only two men alive knew how to read, both of whom were asleep, and both of whom never would witness the awakening of the relic whose title its makers bestowed upon it was World-Killer.

And then in the rain of dust and echoes he woke, and he kissed the vacuum, and it took him into its embrace; and that was the end of things for the race of men.

-~-

Flash fiction in 6 sentences, idea stolen from ZH.