Day 6: Healing of the Years

Photo Courtesy: thewallpaper.co.uk

It has taken me years

But I’ve been afforded ample time

To measure the weight of those tears.

The clarity shone like litmus dipped in lime.

I’ve cast my net into strange waters,

Trussed the tug of the undercurrent.

I’ve thrown wide open my mind’s shutters

And got sucked then tossed by the torrent.

I have breached the end of everything;

And tasted the fullness of nothing.

The burden I bore; the yoke I wore,

Like ice exposed to sunlight has thawed.

Aloneness ate up loneliness,

My feelings grew their own sentience.

I almost gave it all up.

But something wouldn’t give me up

For the world, so I dried my tears,

And healing gushed in riding the years.

Akpan

IntShoWriMo 2014: Day 6

Day 6: Capacity for Violence

Today’s Prompt: A basket floats down a stream, lodging on a rock in front of a child who runs crying to his parents about the contents.

— Courtesy: Writing.Com

Word Count: 1,171

Phillip and Marge Udra were puzzled by the single content of the picnic basket.

            “There’s gotta be some sort of explanation for this,” Phillip said.

            “I think it’s the kids upstream playing dirty pranks,” Marge said.

            “Don’t they know better than to mess with a child’s mindset?”

            “I say we ought to call the cops.”

And that’s what they did. The cops came, sirens blaring. When they arrived they combed the entire area for the pranksters but found none. The police car driver recalled seeing some kids running off into the distance as they turned into the park area.

            “That must have been our boys said the detective. Well, Ma’am, sir, you got nothing to worry about. I’m sure those troublemakers won’t make anymore trouble today, at least.”

            “Thanks, officer. I feel this was all for nothing. Sorry I brought you all the way down here for nothing.”

            “Any time. It’s my job, too.”

The officers left and the family was on their own again.

            “Why would anybody place such a grotesque object inside a picnic basket?” Marge asked.

I’ve lost my appetite, was all the reply Phillip gave.

The content of the basket had been handed over to the cops who recorded it as evidence. They took it away with them to Marge’s relief. She couldn’t shake the feeling there was more to the whole ordeal than kids playing pranks. Read more here: IntShoWriMo 2014

Eneh Akpan

June 6th, 2014

Day 6: Conundrum

Photo: Caras Ionut
Inscription is mine

Time stands at a halt

In the weighty silence of the crypt.

A lifetime of ingenuity is flung

At the intrusion of random privacies.

Legend is blasphemed

By otiose vocalizing.

In dark places

Glorified evil lounges;

Moans of societal slaved ignorant

Are multiplied and comparatively arrant.

Desolate hopes

Tinged with a bitter-sweetness, evoke

In finely-crafted language, the throes

That, like slavery's coffles restrain men's souls.

Window blinds of reality is six-foot thick.

And the darkness is deeper than it seems.

Truth stumbles in there.

Vision trips in its snare.

Yet the secrets of lives are laid bare

In the ominous wake of creative despair.

Purpose is a mechanism of circumstance;

It dangles disconnected and out of balance

Like the critical play out of a gross penance.

Akpan

Related articles

• The First Draft Conundrum
• The Condiment Conundrum: 5 Tasty Condiments for the Health Conscious
• Jennifer Golbeck: The curly fry conundrum: Why social media "likes" say more than you might think
• One Thing You Can't Live Without as an Engineer
• Break Time and Time Travel Conundrums
• Tuesday Conundrum 1 April

IntShoWriMo 2013: DAY 6

Courtesy: punchng.com

Today’s Prompt:

Take two people who dislike each other and stick them in the backseat of a cab. What happens?

Courtesy: creativewritingprompts.com

Link for Day 6: DAY 6: Icebox Word Count: 2,206

An artist and an advocate, next-door-neighbors cum sworn enemies, are constrained by a sudden cloudburst to take refuge in the backseat of the same cab. They’re barely aware of each other until they’re both seated and try to say Hi. The mismatched company is like the weather in The Odyssey. It’s only a matter of time before the cab is transformed into an icebox.

The question which stayed on my mind through the crafting of this story was, is this going to come out as the funnies or is it going to end up being a Tai fu/taekwondo treat? The cabbie really adds the twist to the story. He, it was who got me decided and takes the helm in steering the plot through the fun part.

Fasten your seat belts, you are about to take a ride on the mobile court of law.

Read the full story here, DAY 6: Icebox

Keep your pen bleeding.

Akpan