Good morning fair readers.  The day is grim outside and I’ve caught myself a virus of some kind, so I write from a cocoon of blankets as I peer out from puffy eyes.  It’s a sucky Tuesday in my neighborhood.   Last night I saw Eddie Izzard at the Orpheum, and that was fantastic fun even though I started to feel the tiredness from impending illness towards the end of the show, and certainly on the long ride home.  I’ll write more about that later.  Eddie Izzard that is, not my sickness.  Why make you suffer too?

Last week’s 100 Word challenge was “Hooked”.  Let me take a moment to direct new readers (and hopefully new playas) to the 100 Word Challenge Rules, such as they are.  The first 100 words is a reflection of one of the things that comes to my mind when I hear the word hooked.

Heroine hooked him with promises of bliss.  She became his lover, his friend, his steady companion, his home, and his escape.  She needled her way deep and deeper into his flesh, his brain, his soul, then she methodically took him down until he didn’t know how he ever lived without her, or ever would.  She turned on him, turned him inside out and he loved every minute of it, even when the bliss was punctuated through with searing longing, even when the lies stacked upon lies; those she told him, those he told others, and worse, those he told himself.

None of us are entirely sure about what happened to Secret Agent Mama this week when her 100 words turned out to be about Hidden, yet at the same time about Hooked. This can always be expressed in a literature review.  Truth is, doesn’t matter.  SAM always delights me with whatever she writes, and with her photography.  Did I mention she has a new website just for her fantastic photos?   Damn I miss my camera!

I can’t

I won’t

It’s sad

It hurts

The pain

The lies

The cost

The loss

My heart

It broke

The past

Long gone

And still

I sit

I wonder

I balk

I question

How come

And why

Just some

Too much

Or maybe

Just maybe

The pain

Is deep

And maybe

Just maybe

Evil creeps

Sadness looms

Happiness doomed

Squinted eye

Furrowed brow

Underneath it

Somewhere somehow

Truth sprouts

Good grown

Paths chosen

Evil dethroned

I can

I will

I’m happy

You know

My slate

Is clean

My heart

Is well

You’ll see

You will

What’s hidden

Must stay

LouCeel, in addition to coming back again and again with clever and thoughtful 100 Word submissions, also always has a unique descriptive word to describe me.  This week I was “diabolical”, which of course means incredibly evil.  Of course he meant it playfully.  I mean, I’m not really evil.  Hehe.  I digress.  LouCeel uses 100 words to describe his love and passion for art and being an emerging artist.

The names come to me in my sleep. Unbidden. Relentless. Remorseless. And the visions the names conjur up are all the things the names imply – romantic, intimidating, eloquent, frightening, terrible, bloody, angelic, pastoral and religious. To give a name to but a few of the things they imply. The names are old. So very dead. But they have a life of their own. Something that I would wish for myself if I had but one wish to claim. The talent to live among the names. For their names are ART. And I have found their Art. And I am hooked.

I was thrilled to see Sassy Mama Bear back for this week.  Her poem evokes peaceful and gentle energy.  I feel like I could know this man.

Sitting upon the park bench,

the wind whistling through the trees

He sat and watched the water flowing past.

With fingers gnarled by years gone by,

He gently wound the line

A twist a turn, a knot deftly tied.

A flick of the wrist, and a tip of his hat

He sat, watched and waited.

The sun warming his weathered skin.

A gentle tug, just a simple sign

Slowly, with skill learned over time

He wound the strand around his hand.

Dangling at the very end flopping fiercely

Hung his dinner, trying hard to break free

a beautiful perch, hooked.

~ Penelope Anne Bartotto

April 25, 2008

So that wraps up the Hidden 100 Word challenge.  I’ve got a book laying here that I’m not actually currently reading.  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  An old fraying paperback with an orange cover that I picked up at a tag sale because it looked interesting.  From its yellowed and aged pages, I give you:

Fringe

“Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe” ~Theodore Roosevelt

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