100WC #44 - Liz

100 Word Challenge #44

Prompt: Write a poem. It doesn’t have to rhyme or be specifically about the Monarch but it should capture the passing of sixty years.

Though union flags are hanging up in windows and from trees,
And remnants of an empire wave them for your jubilee,
That red-white-blue's more likely found in Brits abroad tattoos
(I bet you didn’t foresee this way back in fifty-two).
Today your droit is dieu no more, it is the common man,
And gloria always sic transits, so enjoy it while you can:
One day the world will blink its eye, then what remains of Liz?
A monument, a statue and a question in a quiz.

Apologies to all real poets out there; I hate writing poems, and only wrote one here to keep up my impressive 100% participation record (six out of six, yeah!) in the 100 Word Challenge. 

Restoration Man free for one week

My short story The Restoration Man will be available free, gratis and for nothing on Amazon for one week from Monday. One working week, that is. Five days. So why not download it and read it and etc.

Go on!

100WC #43 - A Child Of Fire

100 Word Challenge #43

Prompt: ...the flame flickered before...

It was the only thing that he truly understood. Something that he had created, that he had brought to life from phosphorous, wax and string. There was a purity and a truth to it.

That’s what he’d say, anyway. To the psychologists.

He’d talk about a need for control. A need to purge, a need to cleanse. He’d tell them about a youth fractured by neglect. And they’d believe him, of course.

The flame flickered before igniting the curtain, and as the tongues of fire lapped upwards his eyes gleamed.

Truth was, he just liked to watch things burn.

100WC #42 - In Absentia

100 Word Challenge #42

Prompt: piece must contain the words 'liberty', 'empire', 'apple', 'yellow' and 'enormous'

I watch the television from the hotel bed, my yellow robe pulled tight. The sun here is tiny, like an apple hanging from a branch. It is a different sun, cold and foreign.

Grainy images flicker on the screen: masked faces, assault rifles, broken statues. Enormous fires. A crying woman demands a trial.

I built them an empire, and they tear it down. For what? They do not remember liberty. Liberty was brutish and cruel, and I saved them from it.

Let them have their hollow trial. Let it illuminate the truth.

Let them know that no-one could have loved them as I did.

Three new Tunbridge Wells Writers

I met three new writers from Tunbridge Wells last night.

Daniel Huckfield is writing a biography of 19th century Tunbridge Wells-based blasphemer, anarchist and gramophone entrepreneur Henry Seymour, and blogging about it as he goes.

Tom Revell writes a very entertaining blog called Without A Corset.

Richard Coleman is a science teacher who writes poetry at Poems From Another World.

Go and look at them.

100WC #41 - What Will Come

100 Word Challenge #41

Prompt: [picture of bones]

Under hedges laid like rope the sleeping giants lie. Washed and buried these ancients wait, silenced by time and lost in stories of the past. Above them blow the sorrowful winds, above them walk the lonely hearts, and the restless men who pull them from the rocks know nothing of their whims. These bones once shook the stars, and in our arrogance we disturb their fragile peace. There are always more monsters than heroes; that is the algebra of myth. When they come – and they will come – we will love them and hate them and fear them.

This story draws on the "King In The Mountain" / "Chained Satan" folklore motif, which I have always found very romantic and highly evocative. You can read about it on Wikipedia (where else?).

100WC #40 - Jack

100 Word Challenge #40

Prompt: Ruby

Jack

So I go to the basement where I know they'll bring you an it’s a filthy Dallas mornin an there’s pills in my belly an the ugly lil .38 snub in my pocket is black an cold as sin an there’s police everywhere so you must be comin an I hate you so goddamn much I feel dizzy an then you’re stood right there an the gun’s in my hand an then wham it’s done an you’re bleedin like a pig an nothin’s changed an the president’s still dead an I hope you burn in hell you goddamn lil communist.