Saturday Pomes & Words, 24/05/2025
More microfiction/fragments
For the previous pomes & words, from 19/04/2025, which is also some microfiction/fragments, click there.
I have a little confession to make, which is that I am having to postpone the next Katrina episode until next week. This is due to 1/ discovering I need to write an extra scene to be inserted into the next instalment, 2/ being preoccupied with something small & scary, 3/ procrastination, and 4/ alcohol.
Told you it was a confession.
Anyway, what it does mean though is that I can get up to date with the batches of microfiction/fragments, prompted by the mischievous
and his . Likewise his recent well-earned holiday has bought us a little time. I say up to date, but there are a few I haven’t included because they’re not as good as I would like.The following six, though, I do like.
I also found some more of my juvenilia buried in my documents folder earlier today, some of which isn’t half bad, so I shall be musing on that in the interim for future consideration.
Here, then, is our old friend the Great Image Generator to get us going.
[25-03-10; 100mg of Willow; it’s 100 exactly!]
Willow wept and remembered her death. Government men, with their monstrous machines and their screeching chainsaws.
They never heard her screams, even were they capable of hearing. In ancient times, humans would’ve heard, though such violations would never have been countenanced.
But not today.
Three days and nights, leaving her half-mutilated and wailing into the witching hours.
Until the end came at last.
She awoke to find herself once more in a beautiful glade, with others like her, life-wounded. Elder and birch, oak and hazel.
Swishing in gentle winds besides an iridescent stream, safe as faeries, here in the afterlife.
[25-03-13; 50mg of WAR; 54 words; the original was indeed exactly 50 but I added four new words (‘can’t get no peace’)]
Parallel World Tolstoy can’t get no peace. Scratches his scalp in exasperation and glances yet again at his notes.
‘Right, so there’s this war, there’s Tchaikovsky’s Overture, and, erm. Fuck! Fucking writer’s block!’
Snaps another pen and smashes the vial of ink with his fist.
‘Fuck! Fuck!’
And then surrenders. To vodka.
The end.
[25-03-18; 80mg of Soul - this one is more of a poem, it turns out; again, I got it spot on with the 80 words]
Tell me where she’s gone.
I can’t think of anything today.
Can’t feel, can’t dream, can’t hum a perfect song.
See that crimson horizon? She’s not there,
She’s beneath our keep.
You know where’s she from? No,
She’s between the sheets and behind shut eyes
And she rustles me alone on nights like these.
She’s not in sky when it howls and weeps
She’s inside.
She is my life, and now she’s flown.
Said the poet, who lost his soul…
[25-03-24; 70mg of Lazy Day; 96 words]
It was all set. Leap year day when all those girls prepared to pop the question.
But it didn’t happen.
It wasn’t the sun’s fault.
It wasn’t the moon’s fault.
The morning after the night before simply never happened.
Night continued.
Vampires celebrated.
Night owls finished their novels.
Darkness, did not end.
See all those girls now, twiddling their thumbs and considering the nunnery.
On enquiry, God said, ‘Don’t blame me. It was a lazy Day. It decided to, you know, leap over it for once. Day simply couldn’t be fucking bothered…’
So much for feminism.
[25-04-19; 60mg of an Academy; woefully over par at 198 words]
Eschewing hemlock, the storied philosopher Johnny Plato (also fabled for his Greek washing up liquid), to the befuddlement of his fellow wisdom-lovers, suddenly decided to take a final, permanent retirement and withdrew to a life of hermetic cave-dwelling isolation.
Although generations of philosophers since have puzzled over this odd decision, the recent discovery of a lost papyrus fragment from the ill-fated city of Pompeii sheds some light on the matter.
This fragment purports to contain Plato’s last words, as he disappeared into that cave for good. After muttering something about how despite the original members of his elite Academy being indeed possessed of uncommon intelligence, and a delight to debate, in recent years the new intake had been decidedly less than satisfactory, being composed mainly of the stupid offspring of the richer class of Athenian aristocracy. We then read the first ever use of the term ‘dumbing down’.
Plato, clearly, was disgusted with this ignorance.
Thus he designed to retire.
Taking one final glance back at his former friends, he is said to have uttered the following, before returning to His Cave. “Let it not be said,” he intoned, “that I ever lacked for a sense of irony.”
[25-04-20; 140mg of Bots; 140 words exactly!]
If you want to know what truly drove Lady Macbeth into utter derangement, it was social media.
It wasn’t her husband, easily manipulated fool though he was.
Nor was it any particular haunting.
Likewise, the castle she found appealing to the extent of fondness even in winter. She got to wear expensive furs, after all, and sit quaffing mead by the warm hearth, kept burning by very Obedient servants.
And it was certainly not witches.
No, it was fucking social media.
After taking the cook’s sharpest blade to her laptop and slashing the bloody machine into pieces she’d reckoned herself rid of the wicked thing.
But no. Just as she turned to walk triumphantly away something beeped behind her. Lights returned on the screen.
Oh you should have seen her fearsome visage. And oh that curse!
“Out! Out! Damn Bots!”
There’s another one on similar lines about her dog. And you know what the dog was called, don’t you, darlings…?
Well, there we go for another batch.
If you like my offbeat stuff and wish to support me you can go for a paid subscription if you like, and now you can even buy me a coffee if that’s your thing.
If not, there is always that lonely like button down there.
I am sure there shall be more pomes & words at some point. When here shall a link be also.
Until then, have a lovely day and be excellent to each other!
A whole lot of wonderful! I especially liked your takes on Tolstoy and Plato. And that writing desk... writer's heaven indeed!