On Sunday, 14 June 2015, I launched my Project 365.
You can see all the images as they are posted, each day, to the mobile | mono | square album on my flickr account.
You can also browse all of my weekly updates ,which are posted each Sunday, here .
just an empty impression
in the bed where you used to be
– empty sky, springsteen
this post is for those with an empty place at their table
those with an empty sky
and yet, this bloody world turns, the sun will rise
tomorrow
and today
well, I guess
today, we will bloody well just do
what we have
to
do,
again
for wordpress weekly photo challenge – gathering
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 | thirtyone
He placed the painting face down on the desk. Slowly, and with care.
He could not bear to see that triangular face gazing back at him. Not any more. A child’s rough depiction of a demon, or worse, some desperate child’s scribbled self portrait, a glimpse into a reality he could not countenance.
Either way, it was too much. Now.
The pain in his arm was worse. Tendrils of fire snaking along the inside of his arm towards his shoulder. His head was pounding, his chest tight and aching.
He turned and stood, shards of the shattered glass, pointing to his earlier rage, sliced into the soft underside of his bare soles as he did so. Opened a cabinet, grabbed an open packet, pulled out one of the shiny foil trays inside and clumsily, his finger shaking, pushed out one of the small white tablets, dry gulped it down, his throat dilating in disgusted disapproval. He staggered to the sink, turned the tap, leaned over, his head beneath the spluttering siphon, and allowed the water, water he normally refused to drink, to drain into his throat. He squeezed out two more of the waiting white pills, swallowed both. Sat down at the desk, his clammy forehead hard pressed on the smooth laminated wooden surface.
His eyes closed. He felt his limbs begin to separate, finger tips and toes began to tingle, sensation fading, fast. A tightening tunnel threatened to envelop him, swallow him, digest, dismember, dissemble him. The antithesis of birth. Dark thoughts gurgled through his fragmenting mind.
He drifted. Into deepening darkness. The last sound he could hear, the insistent whirling of the fan inside his Mac. How pointless all that seemed now. Then the fan faded as the last lingering light abruptly left.
The strident screech of the ululating siren shattered his shutdown consciousness.
Cracks appearing on the surface of a long forsaken frozen lake.
As those cracks enlarged, forked and multiplied, so his mind grasped for the edge, anything on which to hold.
He was pinned down. He knew that. If little else. His mind was grisly grey swirling slurry, his limbs heavy and immobile, his mouth dry and foul tasting. He felt bitter bile rising in his throat. Panic. His head aching and burning. His lips spewing foam as his head shook from side to side.
The sirens continued to clear the road ahead. He was flat on his back. Blue and red spinning lights, flashed and flickered, insane, fake, circus lightning. He tried to lift his left arm, it was heavy, his fingers, dim, long forgotten, body parts he could barely feel, let alone move. No longer his. No longer his parts. His left arm locked down tight. His other arm, and his legs, the same.
As the red and blue lights continued to splat and sizzle, as the sirens soared and screamed, the fissure in his mind ruptured.
She placed her cool hand on his burning forehead.
Turning her head, she smiled, and laughed.
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.
thirtyone | fiftytwo
On Sunday, 14 June 2015, I launched my Project 365.
You can see all the images as they are posted, each day, to the mobile | mono | square album on my flickr account.
You can also browse all of my weekly updates ,which are posted each Sunday, here .
fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes
you are free
― jim morrison
freedom
in whose name?
freedom
to maim and shame?
freedom
in whose name?
freedom
to put to the flame?
freedom
in whose name?
freedom
it’s a crying shame
to know what we do in ‘their’
name
.
writing 101 | poetry | five | freedom | prompt by impossiblebebong
“the text has disappeared under the interpretation”
― friedrich nietzsche, beyond good and evil
Stormtrooper One: the force is strong in this one
Stormtrooper Two: there must be some mistake, we can’t delay, it’s all going wrong
Stormtrooper One: no need t’rush, the one in black will go down first
Stormtrooper Two: but the one in black has C & (i) d’A, the wrong way round
Stormtrooper One: och aye, I canna stan’ t any more
Exit stage left
a tongue in cheek 😉 post for weekly photo challenge – oops!
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 | thirty
He turned away, from the dark, rain lashed window.
Walked across his cold, empty, single room. Taking care not to trip on the cable that snaked across the perfectly laid out grey stone tiles. Selected a sparkling shot glass from the shelf of the kitchen cabinet, laid it on the pristine work surface. He opened the fridge door, it creaked, he knew, he needed to get it fixed. Took out the bottle, that still, after all this time, lay waiting in the shelf tucked inside the door, flipped the metal clasp that held it closed, poured the clear, slick, liquid into the shot glass. To the brim.
Taking the glass in his left hand, he walked back past the glowing screen, back to the window. He looked up at the towering chimney in the dark night, lifted the glass to his mouth, closed his eyes, the liquid slid down his throat, warming, burning. And as it did, he remembered, although, he knew, it was pointless to do so.
He turned, and, in a rage, hurled the shot glass savagely across the room. It stopped, when it hit the wall, at the back of the kitchen area, shattering and smothering the floor with sharp shards that would, he knew, slice into his bare feet.
Ignoring the fallout from his senseless rage, for now, he returned to his desk, turned to the low cabinet that contained what little possessions he had. Kneeling down, he opened the door, took out a large white envelope. Placing it on his desk, he took another shot glass, feeling the shards, that covered the floor, press into the naked soles of his feet, he tipped what remained in the open bottle into the shot glass, drained it in one long swallow, sat down at his desk once more, and opened the envelope.
He reached inside, and took out four sheets of paper, papers folded, and long ago abandoned.
He pushed his Mac out of the way. Spread the papers on the desk.
Each one was a painting, crude, simple, and yet powerful. Each one told a story, a piece of the puzzle, concealed in watercolours, created, he was sure, with passion, and then forsaken. But, he had not forgotten them. He remembered, the moment he had been given them, the artist, perhaps uncaring in the moment, had handed them over, not caring, unwitting, what might be their fate.
Fruit trees lining the banks of a patch of water; a bridge crossing untroubled blue waters; a ballerina in a bright blue dress, arms akimbo leaping against a yellow background. And last, that face, the face that had started it all.
It’s face.
A shiver ran slowly down his spine as that rendering stared back at him. He took the envelope and stuffed the paintings back inside, except that which bore the face. The pain seared again, shooting pains up his arm, into his shoulder.
Gasping for breath, he reached out for the painting that bore that terrible face.
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.
thirty | fiftytwo
Faces gone, black eyes burnin’ bright
– The Rising.The Boss. Springsteen. Who else.
Rear view mirror.
Mirror, mirror what do you see?
What you wanted to see?
What you wanted to be?
Who you wanted?
Look back in anger, at the smoke, the terror, the closed doors, the falling buildings, the smell, the screams, the end?
Look back.
Reflect.
Then, stop looking, at the reflections.
Smash the mirror, and to hell
with, seven years of bad luck.
There, is after all, only the road.
Always, the road.
writing 101 | poetry | two | reflections | prompt by Melinda Kucsera
On Sunday, 14 June 2015, I launched my Project 365.
You can see all the images as they are posted to the mobile | mono | square album on my flickr account.
My plan, let’s see if I can stick to this, is to post a weekly update here each Sunday.
andy townend 