I Dream a Flower

I dream a flower

Made of water

Full of wonder

I listen to it shine

Upon awakening

I rise to my desk

And transform the dream

With the greatest of ease

Into an object

Made of words

To present

To you

Among the Mirrors

Winter mornings of my childhood

The warmest place in the house

Is my parents’ empty bathroom

The vent beneath the sink there

Roars out hot air

Thawing me from the feet up

Above the sink are three mirrors

Behind them all the products

Which scent the room

The two side-mirrors are on hinges

And can be pulled in

To reflect one another

As I lean in among the mirrors

My bent body echoes into infinity

Like a flesh question mark

Enter my big brother

To snare my ear between thumb and forefinger

Give a tug and say

“Those mirrors will make you blind!”

Enter my mother

To kiss the crown of my head

And with her softness ask

“Do you hear the birds?”

And now I do hear them

Just outside the window’s shades

Interrogating the morning

Symptomatic - a 42-word microstory for yeahwrite.me

“Having any symptoms?” asked the psychiatrist quietly, looking up from the laptop over which her pale hands hovered in the ‘home’ position.

Unlike many doctors, I thought, shrinks needn’t be good with their hands…

(“hands… hands… hands…”)

“Uttley. Having any symptoms lately?” 

wee ditty

a little bit of tapwater in my coffee
little bit of menthol in my smoke
little bit of you to make me feel happy
call me up at midnight, tell me a joke

For Wordless Wednesday...

Well, I am no photographer, so here's a shot I found on pexels.com that I really like.

(click on one of the badges below to go to the Wordless Wednesday hop)

I Am Inspired By Hops, Prompts, and Challenges (Inspire Me Monday #196)

After taking a long hiatus from blogging, I'm back! 

This past week, I have been looking to see which of the hops and prompts I used to enjoy are still running, and seeking out new ones.

I have been delighted to find some of my old favorites still kicking.

Clicking on any of the images below will take you to the hop, writing prompt, or challenge.

Hope to see you there!

And... last but not least...

If you know of another hop, link-up, prompt, or challenge which I might enjoy, I would greatly appreciate it if you would leave a link in a comment here.

Thanks!

My 2015 Discussion Challenge Question: What is it about Augusten Burroughs?

Just happened across this awesome challenge.

I've started a discussion on Goodreads about Augusten Burroughs and his book Possible Side Effects.

I'll go ahead and reiterate my discussion question here, just in case anyone is inclined to respond. 

It is this:

I haven't been reading much, but I have several of Augusten Burroughs' books laying around my apartment, and I open one of them occasionally. So my question is this: why is it that although I don't LIKE this guy, and all of this guy's books are about himself being despicable to some degree... why is it that I still am irresistibly drawn to him and his writing? Does anyone else feel the same?

Talking about authors and books is good, thought-provoking fun. I am looking forward to seeing what people might have to say in response to my discussion question, and to participating in others' discussions.

Thanks for the challenge, guys! I accept!

To What I've Been Up (Joining in on Caffeinated Book Reviewer's "Sunday Post")

So... A little over a week ago, I have one of these thunderclap ideas. You know, the kind that sock you and rock you and positively demand to be brought to fruition. I've just wrapped up a couple of writes, you see, a couple of pieces, works, whatever you call them. And I'm liking these writes. I'm liking them a great deal. So my thought is this: I've got to get some other human beings to look at these writes! And then comes the idea. I'll run a web promo, a rafflecopter for a handful of giftcards (because who can resist gift cards), and but okay so here's the thunderclap - I'll put a write, an original fiction of mine, RIGHT ON THE RAFFLECOPTER!

So I do.

Problem being, though I used to blog quite a bit a couple years ago, I've left the pursuit by the wayside. So here I go, sniffing down my old trail, pinging old contacts, picking up a few old blogs I used to run and revamping and rejuvenating them, and making a few new blogs in the process... getting all these pages and posts interlinked into one big gnarly glorious webby mesh. The undertaking consumes me. I don't sleep. I fall behind in my classes. I miss appointments. I forget to eat.

 But now, at the end of the week, or more like 10 days in, actually, my thunderclap idea is fully realized. The rafflecopter, laden with my manuscript, is aloft. I'm rapidly approaching 1000 entries in the giveaway, with 19 days before the winners are to be chosen.

In the process of realizing my goal of helping my writing find some readers, I have rediscovered the joy of banging around the sweet swinging blogosphere here. It's amazing how time warps as one bounces site to site, taking in all manner of random content, linking up here and there, tooling away at one's own pages and posts... There have been days this week that I got home from work and sat down to the computer for a brief session, only to look up from what I'm busy doing and see that it's time to go back to work again. 

Speaking of work, I've got to get cracking on some number crunching here, so I'll have to be wrapping up this post. If you're at all inclined to see what I mean when I say I've created a webby mesh to support this promotion, just type this into a search engine:

"The Diamond Grenade Blurb Raffle"

Hehe.

Cheers!

Connecting with honestmum's "Brilliant blog posts" hop and the big ol' Small Victories LinkUp

Reading is discovering the world through someone else’s eyes. What if you could see through the eyes of a man capable of murdering his father? Well, you can. Come make love in the river under the moon. It may sound crazy, but fiction is the closest thing to teleportation. Read The Diamond Grenade and teleport yourself to an imaginary land where the descendants of Old Gur the Boatman foment a bloody revolution. While there are many ways to discover events and places, many pieces of fiction to read at any given moment, there is no better way to experience real revolution right now than through reading The Diamond Grenade. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but reading can take you someplace and show you around. Read The Diamond Grenade instead of watching television.

Thankful Thursdays

This Thursday, I am thankful to finally have the blurb raffle up and running.

Creating the maze of web pages to support this promotion has consumed me for over a week!

Hope I Don't Scare People Away

The Three Word Wednesday challenge is to use these words in a post:

Brutal; adjective: Savagely violent; punishingly hard or uncomfortable; direct and lacking any attempt to disguise unpleasantness.

Grope; verb: [No object] feel about or search blindly or uncertainly with the hands; [with object] (informal) feel or fondle (someone) for sexual pleasure, esp. against their will; noun: An act of fondling someone for sexual pleasure.

Transfer; verb: Move from one place to another; move to another group, occupation, or service; change to another place, route, or means of transportation during a journey; make over the possession of (property, a right, or a responsibility) to someone else; noun: An act of moving something or someone to another place. 

"My blog is too plain," I thought with dismay. "I really must do something about it."

I found a few sites offering free designs, but they all seemed frilly to me. Just not my style.

A protracted Google grope later, and after some photo editing, I had a header I liked alright and a background that kind of matched.

Only after I made the transfer of these graphics onto my blog did I realize that they made it look...

Brutal.

Care to see whether you agree? 

The site is www.weaver.uttleystake.com.

  

Graffito Jester with Cheshire Grin

What do you imagine this character might be thinking?