fantasy

Hope Grows in Beneficence

lillian18 Comments

Violet was born after a spring storm. She emerged from between the rainbow’s green and blue arcs. I am a centenarian angel, called to witness her birth. I’d been handmaiden to Death through all my years, grief skewing my existence. I was granted this new assignment, my aging wish. To assist non-humans within a species immersed in flights of fancy and joy.

I nudged Violet’s tiny fairy wings, guiding her through the sun’s rays toward the Land of Beneficence. Here she would learn to interact with the young offspring of humans when she journeyed to their earth. To spark their imaginations before ideas of difference and negativity took root. The hope of humankind lies within Violet and all her pixie kin, born every time a rainbow appears. My task, your very livelihood, is within the rainbow. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

Today we are to include the line “Everything I do is stitched with its color” in a piece of flash fiction, composed of 144 words, sans title. The required line is from a poem written by William Stanley Merwin, 17th Poet Laureate of the United States.

Image from Pixabay.com

Go Forth, Multiply – Mandate of the Deities

lillian33 Comments

She was born in the fortieth century. Her lineage could be traced to earth, before it succumbed to supreme neglect. It is her wedding day. Carrying a bouquet of hybrid plumeria fertilized by star dust and carnage from deteriorated communication satellites, she slides between Ursa and its latest shard, to meet her chosen mate.

“Where is the payment I required for my body to wed your being?”

Handing her a package vibrating with energy he mouths “It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. As you mandated.”

Once unwrapped, it floats toward her three breasts illuminating them, and then seemingly melts into her circuitry. She smiles, knowing she is now impregnated. Her kind will continue. No longer needing this other being, her eyes turn iridescent green and devour him. She fades into the celestial skies, content to know she will multiply.

Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Bjorn is tending the pub and asks us to include the line “It is a moon wrapped in brown paper” in a piece of fiction that is 144 words or less, sans title. The line is from the poem Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy, a Scottish Poet who was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 2009-2019.

Prosery: a form created by dVerse. A line from a poem is given for the prompt. Writers must include the line exactly word for word (punctuation may be changed) within a piece of prose (not poetry) that is 144 words or less, sans title.

Image from Pixabay.com

Shhhhh, she’s hiding . . .

lillian20 Comments

buttercup crown
under stocking cap of ivy vine.
Rose petal leggings, freesia shawl,
lily-of-the-valley boots. Winter clad,
she joins thousands of fairies
gathered on mountainsides,
hidden by evergreen fronds.
Spirits bright, they wait for spring,
their fairy lights aglow.
Winter’s secret no one knows.

De is hosting Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. She asks us to include the word “crown” or a form of the word (not a synonym of the word) in a poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us!
Image from Pixabay.com

The Return

lillian24 Comments

Namrah soared high. Twenty years after the Peabody children wished him live, he decided to return. Would they want to travel on his golden wings again? He’d taken so many children across the globe on secret midnight rides. Sometimes circling the full moon, chasing shooting stars across the skies. He’d not been above American shores in all these years. Would Allen and Susan consider themselves too old to climb aboard his teal feathered back?

Closer to their city now, but why so dark? Hovering over their yard, he stared in disbelief. Piles of bricks, uprooted trees, scattered roof tiles, shattered glass. Fear seized his heart. What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this rubbish? A solitary tear escaped one azure sequined eye. Has time destroyed the home, the town of his origins? Are Allen and Susan alive?

Written for prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Mish is pub tender and asks us to include the line “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this rubbish?” from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land in our flash fiction of 144 words or less, sans title. I’ve written of imaginary friend Namrah in years past. Here we visit him twenty years after he was wished alive.

Prosery is a genre created by dVerse. Pub tenders choose one line of poetry and writers must use that exact line (only the punctuation may be changed; word order must be the same) in a piece of prose, 144 words or less in length, sans title.

Willow’s Tale

lillian11 Comments

“I am the bud and the blossom, I am the late-falling leaf.”
from Paul Dunbar’s The Paradox

Led down the primrose path
they succumbed to The Flatterer’s guile,
followed him to their death.
All but her,
the youngest one.

Willow, he assumed, was gullible too.
Small in stature, she wisely hung back.
Saw angry rolling brine ahead
slipped into a shrub and hid,
covering herself with leafy fronds.

Her sisters sang as they followed him,
not seeing Willow’s gesticulations.
She waved desperately to alert them,
but they walked on under his spell
eyes only on him.

Surely his scepter, his magical skills,
would keep them afloat they thought.
They danced o’er waves. Waded deeper still.
Alas, only a devastating result,
one by one they disappeared.

He counted each beautiful head
swallowed by guzzling salty foam.
“One is missing!” he screamed.
Looking backward toward land
he saw nothing, heard nothing.

Diving deep, he swam to his maidens
now ashen, sinking dead weight.
Tying their hair together, he took the eldest’s hand,
pulled them to his kingdom,
far from shore.

Willow wept silently,
her small feet cold in tear stained soil.
Long curls hung wet round her cheeks.
“Help me oh Lord,” she pleaded.
“I am but the last alive of them.”

She cried in torrents
until a rogue cold breeze
whipped round her face.
Tears suspended in air,
her lean lithe body, solid froze.

Now something she was not before,
Yet she prospered over many years.
Pure happiness, mythologists would say.
Yet still she wept and weeps today,
especially amongst her kind.

Children play hide and seek,
joyfully tug those leafy fronds.
Sisters long gone, yet she has borne many.
Weeping Willow trees o’er the land,
her legacy to all.

Written for dVerse where today we’re asked to consider the element of paradox within our poetry and be inspired by one of several lines provided for the prompt. Line I’ve used is at the top of the poem as an epigraph. Photo from pixabay.com.

Wish Upon a Mermaid

lillian34 Comments

Merm me –
shiny gleaming teal and aqua blue
magically beautiful and intelligent,
free to explore and dare.

Merm me –
flow, glide, glissade
braided seaweed round my wrists
necklaced in seashells and coral bright.

Would that I could . . .
dive deeply
escape earth’s rancor
and rollick in rolling waves.

Of what good are legs
and human lungs
when hell
is inhumanity on earth?

What if only life within the sea
in and of the sea,
can live and love
within the lunar tides?

mermaid-2456981_1920

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets, where today De asks us to write a poem that is somehow related to mermaids. Image from pixabay.com  I must admit, I have always been smitten with the idea of mermaids!

Biding Her Time . . .

lillian8 Comments

She sang sprightly tunes
skipping lightly across mushroom caps,
a spring in her step.

She wandered beneath dripping canopy,
rain drenched leaves
above her head.

Fairy wings at the ready
waiting . . . waiting . . .
for the sun to reappear.

IMG_2188

Day 19: National Poetry Writing Month where the challenge is to write a poem every day in April. Today Toads asks us to write a poem of less than 100 words, that includes one list of four words given within the prompt. We have five lists to choose from.  I chose the list that included CANOPY, WANDER, LIGHTLY, and SPRING. 
Photo taken a number of years ago on our trip to Alaska. 

Maiden by the Sea

lillian26 Comments

She was but a young sweet maiden,
smitten by the power of a gifted book.
Mesmerized by words, her only escape,
imprisoned alone on distant shore.
Her appetite for love, like thunder,
battered her soul like a storm at sea.

She met her swashbuckling pirate at sea
in chapter two’s final scene. “My, maiden!
I proclaim my love for thee,” he thundered.
Eyes smoldering, as described in the book,
he appraised his lover, as if a shore,
seeking soft inlets for future escape.

His character so real, she craved to escape,
clambered from tower, ran to the sea.
Consumed by lust, she scanned the shore.
I know you are real and I am your maiden!
I long for your lips, and not from a book!
Words so loud, they rose above thunder.

Where are you? Emotions roared over thunder.
Reality struck hard. There was no escape.
The man she adored, merely words in a book.
Irrational now, seeking her pirate by sea,
into the water she strode. Love struck maiden,
seeking Neptune’s comfort far from shore.

Distraught by loss, villagers gathered by shore.
News spread quickly, as hooves thundered,
galloping across the land. Where is our maiden?
they cried in despair. How could she escape?
Bereft of her graces, they prayed by the sea.
Swore at the heavens. Damn ill-fated book!

Town wizards scolded the crowd. Burned the book.
Chanted mantras up and down the shore.
Gone. Their locked away lady-by-the-sea.
She had been theirs. Until words like thunder
roused the rabid escape
of their walled-in maiden.

Book but ashes now, repercussions still thunder.
Guilt forever plagues their shore.  No escape.
She haunts their seas. Storms from a once loved maiden.

My first attempt at a Sestina….the most difficult poetic form I’ve ever tried. Thank you dVerse for the challenge!
Sestina: A 12th century form consisting of 6 stanzas, each having 6 lines; followed by one tercet (3 line stanza).  BUT, that’s not all.
The end-words of the first stanza’s six lines, must appear as end words in each line of the following stanzas, in a particular prescribed order:

Stanza 1: End-words: Line 1 – maiden. Line 2 – book. Line 3 – escape. Line 4 – shore.
Line 5 – thunder, Line 6 – sea.

Remaining 5 stanza’s end-words use end-words from stanza 1 as follows:

Stanza 2:
Line 1 – sea (end word for line 6, stanza 1)
Line 2 – maiden (end word for line 1, stanza 1)
Line 3 – thunder (end word for line 5, stanza 1)
Line 4 – book (end word for line 2, stanza 1)
Line 5 – shore (end word for line 4, stanza 1)
Line 6 – escape (end word for line 3, stanza 1)

Stanzas 3 -6 use the end-words of stanza one’s lines as follows:
Stanza 3:   3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5
Stanza 4:   5, 3, 2, 6, 1, 4
Stanza 5:   4, 5, 1, 3, 6, 2
Stanza 6:   2, 4, 6, 5, 3,
One can use a bit of poetic license and use a form of the word – hence thundered.

Stanza 7:  is DIFFERENT. It is a tercet-only three lines. It must contain all six of the end- words for the lines in Stanza 1 in the following order:
Line 1: book (line 2’s end-word) somewhere in the line; and line 5’s end-word thunder as the last word of the tercet’s line 1
Line 2: shore (line 4’s end-word) somewhere in the line; and line 3’s end-word  escape as the last word of the tercet’s line 2
Line 3: sea (line 6’s end-word) somewhere in the line; and line 1’s end-word maiden as the last word of the tercet’s line 3

Confused? Add to that: somehow the poem must make sense! It’s a poetry sudoku!!
Image from Pixabay.com

Ode to the Sea

lillian18 Comments

My moon-blown dreams flutter flit.
‘Tis but water-spoken words
afloat in tide-looped waves,
gently wending their way
wave-seeping through my synapses.
Meanderments that mesmerize,
a ringed-sea within my mind.

Eyes sea-scape.
Islands seemingly afloat
shimmer on reflection,
my ‘scape
from dews of storm-clad life.
I seem to levitate
hover somewhere, not here.

No sound but water-softness,
lapping as if heaven-circling.
Eyes stair cross waters,
climb surreal to starry scrim.
Leaning against ship’s rail,
all railings retreat to insignificance.
Serenity lives upon the seas.

For April 16 Poetics….hosted by guest Laura Bloomsbury. Motivated by her prompt and our current journey, cruising through Japan, China and South Korea.

Telltale Signs

lillian29 Comments

Dandelion wisps
tangled in hair,
cooing to butterflies
fingers she flutters.
Turning she runs
ready for flight,
clambers on swing
wishing she might.

Higher she shouts
Daddy push higher!
Smiling, he does,
thankful for fairies.
Their magical gift
a changeling,
the child he adores.

girl-838260_1920

It’s Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets, and De asks us to use the word “change” (or a form of the word) within our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Image from Pixabay.com. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us!