Saturday Pomes & Words, 07/12/2024
Microdosing the Afterlife
For the previous Pomes & Words, which is a little piece of poetry called Fibonacci Five (which, it suddenly strikes me now, sounds like a cool shoegaze song title), click there.
Now, as you know I do love my fragments, although people today call it microfiction. Having recently subscribed to the lovely Miguel’s Fiction Dealer Substack, which is a very cool idea, I am very much enjoying his daily prompts, and it gets my brain working if I’m in the right mood. I haven’t done as many as one would’ve expected, which I put down to having other stuff on my mind.
Still, I have produced a few, which I thought I would share with you now. All of these ones just naturally gravitated towards my ongoing afterlife-themed thing, so these fit nicely into that series.
If you wish to read other related fragments on that theme, you can try Lifer, My Best Wish…, and (the renamed) Posthumous Americana. There is also this previous Pomes & Words from 31/03/2024, which is from my Juvenilia and contains two little fragments/microfiction stories which could perhaps be seen as the beginning and the end of life. So it might be interesting to start there and then move on to the afterlife fragments.
For these ones, I have stuck entirely and precisely to Miguel’s word limit, which is the number of milligrams (for fluids though, like blood, maybe it should be millilitres). Here in Europe, by the way, we have the metric system, so no microdosing those Royales with cheese, please.
I’m not going to introduce any of these, I’m just going to do them, with the ubiquitous assistance of the Great Image Generator.
Although for the last one, this one’s called Holiday, which is the prompt for Miguel’s Christmas sort-of-prompt-competition, which I have not entered by the way - it’s just the prompt ‘Holiday’ obviously fits perfectly with the, well, you’ll see when you get there.
I may do a different Holiday one for the competition. It all depends on my brain, as always.
Anyway, enough burbling from me. Here are some more afterlife fragments for you. Enjoy. Oh - and if you enjoy, how about a like, comment, and share? Everyone loves them, after all, and yours truly is no exception.
50mg of a Drawing (drawing is the prompt, by the way, in case you weren’t familiar with all this. 50 is the word limit)
The Hanged Man
“If you don’t do the drawing, somebody else will…”
In my defence, Hades, there was hesitation before I answered.
“You still took the hook and spliced, didn’t you?”
At least my silence was confession, not denial.
“Seventeen?”
“Yes.”
That’s how many I will endure myself.
Before my purgatory is done.
90mg of an Echo
Orchid Child
I drowned and turned my soul into a seaflower.
I swish and sway and love my snake-bitten self again.
There are echoes beneath the surface, of course, there is resonance.
Resonance and Mnemosyne.
The narcissistic never notice my psychic prowess.
I swish and sway and they, well, they only ever echo their own death-ways.
This is a calmer afterlife, I know. Swish and sway in the firmer scents of some better hope after all the Lethe-faded horror goes.
Let the echoes drift away into distance.
Let resonance die.
Let die.
100mg of an Apparition
After Eurydike
“Of course they’re all wispy, the living. To us, at least. Even the apparitions who float in here requesting the return of lovers.”
“I hear they practice seances now.”
Hades laughs, not the deep, guttural manly laugh you might’ve expected, but a fond, warm laugh, almost like a purr.
“They are inventive, mortals,” he chuckles, “I’ll grant that.”
“But you’d rather meet them in person?”
“Of course, darling Persephone.”
Beat.
“The last one was sweet, wasn’t he?”
“She.”
“Ah, yes. And I know why you granted her request.”
“The music?”
“No. She reminded you of me, in my springtime leaving…”
This one is also 100mg of an Apparition
Dead Madonna
She floats and twirls through the City of the Dead like an apparition. For that is all she is, now.
Immaterial.
She’s forced to wear those pointy tit extensions from the Papa Don’t Preach video.
She’s never permitted to get out of that groove. Never remove those red shoes. Always dance the true blues.
In perfect classical irony, she must sing Material Girl on endless repeat.
She will learn her penitential lesson. All life, really, is fleeting.
Like a prayer, perhaps.
And who alone knows the escape from the Underworld?
Later, she will be told her name is Susan…
This one is the impromptu part 2 of the ongoing saga of Dead Madonna - it’s also 100mg, this time of a Holiday
Dead Madonna, Part II
For just one day out of the afterlife each year, dead Madonna gets a holiday.
“What do you wish for your holiday, dead Madonna?” asks Hades.
“I heard there’s a girl called Susan who knows the way out of hell.”
“Ye may seek her! Until the sands in this 24-hourglass run through.”
Desperately, like a prayer, seeking frantically through the cavernous Underworld.
“Susan! Susan!”
“I’m Susan!”
“You know the way out?”
“Nope. Must be another Susan.”
Keep seeking! “Susan! Susan!”
“I’m Susan!”
Same dialogue.
Sands run out. Groovy red shoes. 364 more days dancing the true blues.
Endlessly.
Happens every year. Same. Forever.
I think I may have to keep going with the Dead Madonna saga.
Anyhow, there were some afterlife fragments for you. I am sure there will be more.
Have a lovely Saturday, and be excellent to each other. Until next time…