April PAD Challenge Day 2

April PAD Challenge, Day 2

Prompt: a voyage poem

***

POEMING

I open
my mind into the depth of whiteness,
I linger
at every point and every line,
wary to cross;
my fingers
hover over the letter 'why',
hope and
imbue all the tumbled dashes with nothing
short of luminous.

April PAD Challenge Day 1

Poetic Asides' April challenge is on in full swing. Between the musing struggles and triumphant scribblings, I've found a moment to post the long-labored poems here. 

April PAD Challenge, Day 1

Prompt: a beginning/ending poem

***

30

Beginning to feel old,

letting yourself go

while holding on to life,

feeling an urge to sew (sow?),

shunning the drafts and cold,

searching for things to die for,

desperately, in frenzy,

coining new words like 'friendsy',

talking to your TV,

scarfing the letter 'V',

stacking up things to mend,

rolling your eyes at clocks,

buying a larger box,

thinking, this is the end.

But it's not.

Zelder winter stories: The Life of mine

Zelder winter stories...
***

The Life of Mine

This winter seems never-ending. A short spell of vernal snowless weather feels like a cruel joke now. I roam the streets on foot, because I'm too lazy and bitter to join the others on the roof. I'm always bitter in March, because I hate uncertainty and indecisiveness. If only I could reach the sun and tell it to make its damn mind.

"What's up, Grump." That's my friend. He calls me Grump because I am. I call him Pirate because his one eye is missing and he likes telling everyone how he once traveled on a ship. The hell he did. The only ship he ever traveled on had double 'e' in the middle.

"Food anywhere?" I ask him, and he shakes his head.

"Streets are swept clean."

"The ravens?"

"Them, bastards. Told ya we should of stashed some."

I mix snow and mud under my foot and draw circles in the slush. "We'll be fine."

"Where did you catch the optimism virus? Does the winter start to mess with you brain?"

"Get out of here." Laughing hurts - I mistook a stone for a nut yesterday and scratched my throat badly - but I laugh anyway. Pirate rubs his missing eye on his shoulder and whistles a tune. He doesn't hit a single note right, yet I feel better. If Pirate starts singing - the spring is near. He never believes me when I say so and when spring does settle in a couple of days he always waves me off, his chest slightly protruded and a smile fighting its way into the light. Dogs trod by, throwing hungry stares our way. We stay put - the dogs know they don't stand a chance with us.

My stomach rumbles and I raise my head searching the trees for any berries left over from the fall and not yet snatched away. My eyes drift over the tree tops and stop on the roof. Dolly is sitting on the edge and Buck is cooing into her ear. My feathers are ruffled in spite of me.

"Come, we'll try the roof," I say to Pirate.

"Yeah, right. They'd rather bite my head off than share food with me. I was stealing from them the whole summer."

"Your head is more than they can chew, buddy. Let's stretch our wings."

Pirate sighs and grunts at the same time, but takes off after me. There we go, a pigeon and a one-eyed sparrow, soaring into the sky, restlessly seeking to outfly the misery of our lives. 

The spring will come, it always does. We'll be fine.

Foggy winter

Zelder winter stories
***

I woke up this morning to the sound of utter silence. My window looked at me with its nebula eye and I startled, thinking I wasn't yet awake. The cold floor sending prickles up my bare feet told me otherwise. I moved across my dim-lit room towards the motionless curtains and dived under them to have a better view of the outside. The eerie mist clouding my window was fog, very real chilling winter fog. Somewhere at the back of my stomach crouched a ridiculous feeling of apocalypse, which I laughed away.

While washing my face, brushing my teeth and drinking lukewarm coffee and milk, I wondered why there would be fog in winter - it was absolutely illogical. Almost as illogical as me clinging to the job I hated.

I got into my car and moved slowly through the milky air. I felt like the cloudy sky had caved in on us and now there was no inbetween. By the time I got to work I'd been so scared that the inside of my normally hateful Squirrel costume seemed like a safe haven. I hurried to slide inside the outfit and with a feeling of security stuffed my messenger bag with flyers. 

I went outside to the central park and froze at the sight of it. The fog had lifted and the sun had sneaked out from behind the grumpy clouds giving the picture before my eyes the perfect lighting. I realized the fog hadn't actually lifted - it had settled everywhere, on every inch of every tree and bench, and fence. Painted golden by the morning sun, the park turned into a mesmerizing sparkling garden as if out of a dream. 

I wonder if people stared at the enormous fluffy squirrel who was standing in the middle of the central park, her huge head in her hands, gaping at the trees. Maybe they did, but the squirrel didn't care. The squirrel didn't see anyone, she admired the most genius artwork she'd ever seen in her life.

WorK

WorK

From under the crumpled bed-sheets
stick out a toe and pull it back
into the warmth of slumber
and your accusatory body.

Into the twilight of outside

stare without thinking,
listening to your breathing
on my unhallowed skin.

Then in the phone of missed calls
type with my guilty fingers:
“Don’t wait for me today, hun.
Working late.” Sigh and send.

Zelder winter stories
***

Do Care

Today the Olympic torch relay passed through my city. Everybody was so crazy about it that it was beyond my comfort zone to show any interest in the event. Traffic was closed at about 3 p.m. when I was dozing over my keyboard and typing unintentional letters in the middle of my report. I left work half an hour earlier than usual (because everybody wanted to see the torch and I didn't want to stay in the office alone) and at 5:30 I walked home through empty streets. It was eerily carless and humanless.

I couldn't lose the creepy feeling of being in a Walking Dead episode until I saw a crowd of people evenly (as on cue) distributed along the central road in my district. Music played in the distance and it was so freezing I wondered if the torch was going to hold any fire at all. I didn't want to think of the torch or join the craziness of people jumping from foot to foot from cold and anticipation. I walked along the road behind the crowd pulling the most emotionless face I could manage with some contempt thrown in. What's wrong with you people? - my face seemed to say - Don't you have anywhere warmer to be? Don't you already know that we have a Coca-cola factory and a Gazprom subsidiary in the city? Because I do and I really couldn't care less.

When I reached my corner several cars passed by (the coke truck was no doubt among them) and before I could turn the corner to go home I heard people shout that the torch was coming. I stopped and stared. 

The torch was carried right in front of me and handed over to the next runner. I didn't feel like shouting or clapping, I just felt that something important had just happened, was happening in the world at that moment and I couldn't experience that 'something' properly, but it was in the air. I wonder if it was the ghosts of the past bringing the unique sense of peace and unity with them that had entered my heart uninvited through the back door.

Zelder Stories

The winter series of Zelder Stories has started...

***

When it started snowing, it got warmer and there were more people outside. A little boy waddled like an oversized duckling across a playground that was piled with snow. He stopped at a swing and blinked melted snowflakes off his lashes. An old man went by, snorted and wrapped his old scarf tighter around his neck. The boy's eyebrows made a puzzled twitch.

"Go home," the old man shouted to him over the shoulder, "no one plays here in winter."

The boy pushed the seesaw with his mittened hand and the metal bars screeched.

"It's frozen," a woman said. The boy turned to the voice and the woman brushed some snow off her long red coat and the wide brim of her black hat. "You can't play here, it's winter," she said with a smile and walked on. The boy looked up to the sky blinking and caught some snowflakes with his open mouth.

A young couple went by and laughed, whispering something to each other.

The boy caught some snowflakes on his mitten, puffed a warm breath on them and watched them melt. Then he caught some more, puffed again and watched. He stood there for hours watching snowflakes turn to water beads. He could have thought it was fascinating, had he known the word. He was simply happy.

***

There was an old half-deteriorated factory at the far end of the city. The building loomed against the snowless ground and bare trees. Two boys ran across the road towards it leaving deep footprints in the drowsy grass soaked in slush. Soon after the boys disappeared inside the building, the sound of broken glass echoed across the woods. 
I am a very curious person, so I followed the boys to see what they were doing. I found them on the second floor smashing bottles against the walls. I leaped to the side to avoid a glass shard that bounced off the wall just behind me.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked the boys. They froze terrified, though only for a moment. Regaining the juvenile sense of safety and carelessness, one of the boys said: " 'is just fun, lady."
 
Everyone was very optimistic in December and hoped for a White Christmas. Sometimes hopes are there to be shattered.