(for mara’s poetry 101 rehab – away)
*written on macbook air using iawriter pro, screen shot using skitch, image processed in analog efex pro 2, no camera involved, so fly me away*
poetry 101 rehab: away
photography
space | animal(s)
“in the space between chaos and shape there was another chance” ― jeanette winterson
space
not that much to ask is it
space to run
space to hunt and tear and devour
not that much to ask is it
space to leap
space to howl and eat red meat
not that much to ask is it
space
not this pink collar
not this cold kennel
not this,
space
(for tech of the month: focus on animals from lucile and perelincolors)
(also for laura’s literary lion. space.)
*shot with nikon d700, and nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens at ISO200, 1/400s at f/10, edited in lightroom cc and analog efex pro, claws and pink collar optional*
vivid
"all the robots descend from the bus" - daft punk is playing in my house, lcd soundsystem
(city of london, window dressing)
(for wordpress weekly photo challenge – vivid)
*shot with nikon d700, nikkor 70-200mm f/4 lens at 200mm, ISO450, 1/125s and f/4, edited in lightroom cc and color efex pro 4, who’s playing in your house?*
vivid on belgianstreets
dark | side | thursday | three
Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge? Are you open to sharing your dark side? Then read on.
Do you have a dark side?
Or, think you may have one. Or indeed worry that you might have one. Or, for that matter, worry that you don’t and would like one? If so, join me here each week for dark | side | thursday.
Over a period of 52 weeks, I am writing a story. A dark story that will unfold as the weeks pass. Each Thursday, at 13:00 UTC, I will post a new chapter. Each chapter will be exactly 500 words long, and will be accompanied by a photograph. You can catch up on the story so far by clicking here on dark | side | thursday
Share your dark side?
I invite you to join me either by writing your own dark story, week by week, or, if that is too much, by dropping by, now and then, perhaps when the mood suits you or, perhaps, when it doesn’t, and by sharing a photograph, poem or a suitably dark piece of prose. To cross over to dark | side | thursday create your post, tag it dark side thursday and link to it by clicking on the dark | side | thursday badge below, where you can also find all the contributions so far. Or you can simply share your link in the comments section of my weekly post. And, should the mood take you, you can add the badge to your post.
dark | side | thursday | three
He opened the box.
Again, as he always did when the time was right. Since he had first found it.
Pressing the concealed button, he slid open the lid with care, darkness seeming to slither out of the box.
He stood, walked to the window.
The rain continued to sluice down, the window smeared. His bones ached. His heart too. He sighed. He turned back to the box.
He took it out.
The key.
The key he had first found in the box, in the hole in the ground. He had crouched down at the edge of that hole, gazing into the darkness. Feeling, as he did again now, the cold, the uneasy shifting sensation deep inside. The fear, yes, always that fear.
He had spotted the simple wooden box, sitting in a niche in the dark walls of that terrible hole in the ground. A black painted wooden box. A box lined with smooth black metal, a box that seemed to reject the very idea of light. And, the box that contained the key.
The key, which, on that uncommonly warm spring evening so long ago, as their fingers touched, they had found on the grass as they sat there on the side of that path. And so it had begun.
And they had felt the cold, the same bone chilling cold he felt now.
How things might have been had they left that key lost amongst the grasses of that path.
He picked up the key.
A simple, not ornate, key. Black. Like his heavy heart. He turned it again in his fingers.
He held the key as he looked into the rain, the dark clouds. Thinking, again, of them. Of it. Always of it.
He turned back to his desk, placed the key back in the box, slid the lid closed tight. For now.
He sat again. Picked up once more the pen and continued to write.
They stood, she took the key from his hands, she intended to keep it safe. It was, they were not. The sun, that had warmed them as they walked had abandoned them.
They walked on. Still not wanting the moment to end. Even though the evening had grown cold. Had they looked back, would they have seen? Their fingers entwined, they looked up. The stars seemed different tonight. Shivering, she turned to him.
His hand aching, he stopped to write for a moment. His mind drifting back, to the moment he had decided. Decided to reach down into that terrible hole, to reach for that box.
He had lain on the dusty bricks, his face pressed against the filth at the edge of that terrible hole. Stretching he had been able to grasp the box. And he brought it out. Into the light.
At that moment, the air had grown chill. And, he felt it. For the first time. Its presence.
As she had felt it when, holding the key in her fingers, she looked into his eyes.
And saw.
The portal to dark | side | thursday opened on the twenty first day of may in the year twenty hundred and fifteen and will remain open for fifty two weeks.
three | fiftytwo
perspective
“windows are the eyes of the soulless” ― thomas ligotti, the nightmare factory
how big was your bonus?
could you afford this week’s groceries?
on whom is the onus?
to ease,
their miseries?
(for justine’s eclectic corner)
*shot with nikon d700 and nikkor 70-200mm f/4 lens, irony lost*
poetry 101 rehab: rubbish
in rubbish bins
we hide our sins
press down the lid
keep it well hid
oh, what would they say
those silent bins
if they could speak
of
our
sins
(for mara’s poetry 101 rehab – rubbish)
*shot with nikon d700 and nikkor 70-200mm f/4 lens at ISO200, 70mm, 1/125s and f/5.6, no edits, three silent bins*
on the way
"we are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side” ― kahlil gibran
(street art, covered passage off denisova, olomouc)
twists and turns
false paths and blind alleys
fate turns
so, when on the way
there really is just one
way
and it is right in front of
you
(for wordpress weekly photo challenge – on the way)
*shot with nikon d700, nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens at ISO200, 1/60s and f/2.2, edited in lightroom cc, the way is clear”
on the way on belgianstreets
on the way on belgradestreets
dark | side | thursday | two
Do you need, desire or crave a new challenge? Are you open to sharing your dark side? Then read on.
Do you have a dark side?
Or, think you may have one. Or indeed worry that you might have one. Or, for that matter, worry that you don’t and would like one? If so, join me here each week for dark | side | thursday.
Over a period of 52 weeks, I am writing a story. A dark story that will unfold as the weeks pass. Each Thursday, at 13:00 UTC, I will post a new chapter. Each chapter will be exactly 500 words long, and will be accompanied by a photograph. You can catch up on the story so far by clicking here on dark | side | thursday
Share your dark side?
I invite you to join me either by writing your own dark story, week by week, or, if that is too much, by dropping by, now and then, perhaps when the mood suits you or, perhaps, when it doesn’t, and by sharing a photograph, poem or a suitably dark piece of prose. To cross over to dark | side | thursday create your post, tag it dark side thursday and link to it by clicking on the dark | side | thursday badge below, where you can also find all the contributions so far. Or you can simply share your link in the comments section of my weekly post. And, should the mood take you, you can add the badge to your post.
dark | side | thursday | two
The end.
The end, he had encountered in a crudely covered hole in the ground.
The beginning.
The beginning, well, that took place beneath the fading light of a long gone time. Years before he had first opened his eyes.
The light of an unusually warm spring evening. Shadows scored by the setting sun surrounded them. As they walked together. Hope then in their hearts. Still.
Dandelion clocks marked the path like lanterns.
Clocks marking the passage of time as the gentle breeze bent their slender stems and the soft seed heads dispersed. And time was all they had. Nothing more.
That day, they were free. Free from what would come. Free from fear.
Free from it.
Of course, he knew none of this, not then. Not on the day he stumbled across the hole. No, that knowledge would come much later. His discovery of that rudely abandoned hole in the ground. The end of one story, their story, had become the beginning of another story. His story.
Back in the light. In that time of hope. They walked on. Looking around them with joy in their hearts.
And yet.
And yet, in the spaces in between, those spaces where the sun was absent, in those spaces, it stirred. It had not yet taken shape.
At least not its final, terrible, shape.
Would they have seen the way the light seemed to bend, behind them, as they walked along the path. Had they paused, stopped, turned, would it have made any difference? Would they have seen it then? If they had, would they have recognised it for what it was and what it would become? Would their end then have been any different? Would his?
All this he learned later.
When it would also be too late for him. So very late.
He looked across the desk, at the chaotic piles of papers, books, and that box. Always that damned box.
It seemed so long ago now. All of it.
His hand, aching, his fingers bent out of shape, swollen, gently picked up the pen, and he once more began to write. He had to write, tell his story, and theirs. Yes, their story, he must tell it, before it all began again. And it would. It always does.
For them, on that warm spring evening, time had stopped, or so they felt. For them, this moment was all they wanted, for it never to end.
But, of course, it would. It always does.
They had sat down, on the grass to the side of the path. The air heavy with pollen. Their fingers touched.
As he pushed his pen across the paper, he felt the room grow cold. As that evening long ago, they too felt it. The cold. He stood, his back sore and bent, he walked to the window and looked at the dark clouds, large oozing drops of rain smeared against the panes.
And remembered.
How he found that hole in the ground.
And had seen.
The portal to dark | side | thursday opened on the twenty first day of may in the year twenty hundred and fifteen and will remain open for fifty two weeks.
two | fiftytwo
poetry 101 rehab: skin
skin
skin of mine
skin of mine, and his
skin of mine and his, and so now, yours
skin of mine
skin of yours
skin tight
hold tight
to what is, yours
(for mara’s poetry 101 rehab – skin)
andy townend 