Finding Liveable Accommodation For the Afterlife – for Prompt 73, 6 word stories

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Helen
Image credit: tjbrearton.com

Image credit: tjbrearton.com

This week mindlovemisery’s prompt defies a poetic response, but is still intriguing: http://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/prompt-73-6-words/

So, in the spirit of the challenge, I’d still like to do something slightly different (which is possibly breaking the rules a bit but bear with me)  – a 6 word title, for a series of six word ‘stories’, loosely linked in theme:

Oracle dies from unexpected food poisoning

“Where to live in the afterlife?”

Property listings from beyond the grave:

“In Utopia the rent’s too high”

“Half price sale to enter Heaven”

“Hell renovates; accommodation demand overtakes supply”

(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved

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Slice

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Helen
Image credit: Noite Sinistra

Image credit: Noite Sinistra

We slice your veins
Your human remains
Your white dress textured
By dried blood stains
And from such pleasures
None would refrain
None would refrain

We bind your hands
With intricate plans
Down to your mind’s core
Our savagery spans
And through such terror
Delight expands
Delight expands

Oh little child
Once free and wild
We teach compliance
No mercy mild
And for our purpose
Uniquely styled
Uniquely styled

We feed on pain
Our needs explain
This ruthless beating
Again and again
And from such pleasures
None would refrain
None would refrain

(C) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved

The picture that accompanied the prompt for my poem below (Floating Far Downstream) is the image used for this poem instead, and it inspired a quite different, but equally dark, thought process for me. This time not about the wars of men and country, but the wars of intimate cruelty, selfish indifference and the horror that is mind control technique.

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Floating Far Downstream for Tale-Weaver’s Prompt 26

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Helen

Isolation’s prison here defines
My limitations, all I see
Silence punctuated by
Discordant, harsh cacophony
And sharp, blood soaked imagery
Deep within the soul of me
And feeding on my energy
There’s nothing else, no more for me
No more for me

I live a thousand deaths within
A moment that will stretch to years
This soulless war’s machinery
Is grinding merciless its gears
I counted each and every fear
Within my mind’s cold hemisphere
And this alone, alone is clear
It’s me alone, with no-one near
With no-one near

And oft-repeated is the pain
And what is nightmare, what is dream?
They play me music but I hear
The melody as wretched screams
I cannot move at all it seems
Or tell them of these harsh extremes
Releasing all my might have beens
With Charon I’m floating far downstream
Floating far downstream

(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved

For mindlovemisery’s prompt at : http://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/tale-weavers-prompt-26/

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Broken

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Helen

I am a little broken here inside
I’m not sure when it happened
Or what the shattering implied
I am part pure ambition
And foolish, yearning pride
But I’m also lost and broken
So divided here inside

I am a soul divided in my heart
A mystic that’s deluded
I’m defeated at the start
I am part pure devotion
But I’m wounded and apart
So I cling to failing life now
And my slowly beating heart

I am a little damaged at my core
And was it from my childhood
All these memories I abhor?
I’m one part healthy yearning
But of sickness have my store
I’m just a little broken
Fully damaged at my core

(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved

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Bad For You

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Helen
Image credit: flickr.com

Image credit: flickr.com

You had to go there didn’t you?
You had to see this story through
You had to follow on a glance
And build your world on circumstance

You had to wonder at a smile
You lingered there a little while
You had to risk the greater fall
You thought that you would have it all

You had to linger in the halls
No matter how your fate befalls
You had to whisper of your love
And pray for kinder gods above

You had to follow his dark road
The stranger yet, the more you strode
You followed to the hearth and home
Of one much better left alone

And then to build your foolish pride
You’d court the wolf that lived inside
To prove to others that your faith
Was sure and stable, pure and safe

You had to go there didn’t you
Deny the grey, embrace the blue
And hold to your lost dreams so true
When all of this was bad for you?

(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Bring On the Night – for Prompt 72 Sister Awake

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Helen
Image credit: foike@DeviantArt

Image credit: foike@DeviantArt

The year they dared to capture
this fallen angel, they tore her wings
and mounted them upon the wall, her
limbs secured by steel tipped strings
The men that gathered there to see
this unholy but sacred sight
blinked, dazed with wonder and
with dread in the yellow, fading light
And then it was night

She was crucified within his soul
Hermaphrodite siblings born of old
The cameras there popping a dull flashlight
And then it was night

That year all that was prayed for
fell like coppery fiery, floating dust
Was this form or song so wicked
to inspire such forsaken lust?
The men still lingered in the darkness
counting their nickels for her plight
‘Pull the strings now little puppet
Sing godly songs all clothed in white’
And then it was night

A true pantomime of heaven’s fall
held the key above this greying pall
Entertainment for the most jaded delight
And then it was night

‘Shoot your arrow flaming into the light
And bring on the night!’

(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved

For mindlovemisery’s prompt at: http://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2014/09/14/prompt-72-sister-awake/

Amazing prompt this week based on the spooky, hypnotic film clip and music for the Tea Party’s song Sister Awake…wonderful choice for inspiring something weird and other-worldly!

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Regret

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Helen
Image credit: dreamstime.com

Image credit: dreamstime.com

Within our town the shutters drawn
Tell tales without our words
No prescience could yet have barred
Such crimes as here occurred
Where once mere kindness might have lived
Companion to our hearts
Here now the winter’s deeper chill
Ensures such warmth departs
And had you loved and had I felt
An echo of such joy
We could have healed our age-old rift
With greater arts employed
We could at last have stilled the sound
Betrayal’s bitter cry
And in redemption yet have found
New rules we could live by
But anger seethes behind the eyes
Of all who pass this way
And where such sunlight might yet fall
All’s desolate and grey
We might have made a bargain yet
And salvaged here some truth
But wars within are never clear
No victory for proof
These are such things as we surmise
Ere long lest we forget
All our cold black knowledge rising
That is nothing but regret

(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved

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Ghosts

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Helen
Image credit: wallsave.com

Image credit: wallsave.com

These ghosts tell lies
They wander hallways
With dull abandon
Secrets glittering in their eyes
We bid them speak
Sepulchral colours
Stars just dying
Flickering and so, so weak
We mourn our lost
But they are wavering
In and out of sight
To bid us pay the cost

These ghosts tell lies
The darkness laughs
And drinks a toast to you
While all the others cry
They haunt these halls
Like memories so distant
Desperately sought for
But never yet recalled
So there’s no surprise
There may be nothing
That a ghost may know
Except how to die

(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Poetry | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Need To Know

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Helen

What do you need to know
What kingdoms yet
To overthrow?
And why such speed?
The world is slow
It’s all you need to know

How can you start to care?
Your followers are
Waiting there
Can you save hope
Or quell despair
If you just start to care?

What do you need to change?
All of our dreams
Are re-arranged
And we get nothing
In exchange
Just only what can change

What do you need to know?
Belief is just
A body blow
But out of rain
The flowers grow
It’s all you need to know

(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Bloomed – for Prompt 71 – Why Me?

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Helen

I bloomed late
And rather disconsolate
Not inclined
To intimacy or to
Co-habitate
But in those brittle years
At any rate
I rose my eyes above
My fear and gazed

I lived apart
An owner of a fractured heart
Too loathe it seems
To make a moment
Or a start
And there you were
A serpent’s dart
I let my soul believe
And softly prayed

A victim’s space
On a plain and lost girl’s face
Your mercy gone
No barest sign
Or coldest trace
I’m chattel to your
Ego’s solemn race
So little here could yet
Be truly saved

And too soon
I’m hostage to the harvest moon
You’ve parted
Like a ghost I lost
To tears and ruin
It was your eyes and all
The songs you’d croon
But all that’s left is just
Bleak, cold dismay

(c) Helen Valentina 2014, All Rights Reserved

For mindlovemisery’s prompt at:  http://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2014/09/07/prompt-71why-me/

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments