The Smile of the Unvanquished

surprised by a sea haar rolling inland, he pricked up his ears for the call of the foghorn. sidling through a wicker work of bracken and nettles, sliding and tripping over slimy rocks, he crawled towards his refuge: this stalwart pillar of his yearnings - a light tower. icy talons sank into his bowed skull, accosted as he was by a blustering gale - sputum of foam and brine hissing and roaring from the bottomless crevasses of the ocean. frozen on a rickety spot, nerves stretches to a strain, he howled a shriek of despair against the hungry beast. a mouth bloated with a legion of slithering tongues gobbled him up; down a torrential maelstrom he went, spiralling towards the womb of that gargantuan dread.

along the jaded cliffs of absurd wretchedness .. I lay myself down on the edge of industrial fossils; their perdurable embers cradle a whist interlude at the beck and call of the illustrious conductor. The briny sough from clamoring waters eases the woes of this callous funereal bride, whose bunions are grazed by fusty sea weed and its yield of decaying effluents. Wilted vanity coughs out sneers at the millenial clichés wrought to forge hermetic design where only bland erosion shines. Unfathomable: a depth so tight in circumscription and yet cramped by mammoth dread gazing half-wittedly at you. The overlook of an endless plain of frosted ashes that intones a crunchy polyphony in which I discern my half-caste name. I do not belong here, but already that epiphany of lucid insanity crawls away from me. Anchored on this spot, I lapidify into the scenery - a wart grows on the temple of the sandstone empress.

In an dreamless dream, I am awakened in the centre of a triptych, an opaque and leaden warped counter-reality of our concrete pedestrian world. Logic and purpose follows the school of Escher; sequences ascent and trip up in staggering staircases without landings. The linear perspective mellows away, colours and playful contrasts of shadow and light sink in latrinary ooze. I leaf through an almanac drenched in sepia that poorly attemps to hide the icy slate grey of yesteryears ensconced in perpetual dusk. I register no words, only their beclouded silhouettes in wasted away ink. I listen to epics in categorically unredeemable trifling matter. Relinquishing all apprehension, I infuse the exiled soul in a concatenation of rhythmic murmurs between the amative sea and my vexed blood. I walk in desolation; my surroundings are soaked in bitter-sweet melancholy cowled over the pox marks of congenital grief. Lofty prospects and bloated fervor run on high heels...

Laag hangt de zon rood aan de kim, terwijl de hemel zich geleidelijk een purper gewaad aanmeet. Een frisse wind komt aanrukken, doortrokken van zenuwachtige oprispingen, die wijzen op naderende spanningen in de nadagen van het jaar. In de woeste aarde zoek ik koortsachtig naar het verspilde zaad van verleden jaar, een ijdele ontginning tussen kiezel en zand, in een roesachtige stemming vol wilde verwachtingen en noodlottige angstgevoelens. Beide ingevreten door spataders van razernij. Mijn lichaam waadt zich door het slijk van aangeboren onbehagen. Zwiepende struiken, stekelig en bruin, en ritselende bladeren heffen een koorzang van smaad op,dat me tot grotere ijver noopt, terwijl mijn geest allerlei voorwendselen oproept voor een stille, maar kordate aftocht. Mijn vingers graaien verder in de aarde; in mij ontspint het idee om mijn vermoeid hart te begraven onder een tumulus. Gauw ontzenuw ik deze zoveelste plundertocht in de begraafplaats der verbeelding. Pure dadendrang versto...

in the slant of Moonlight, homeless motes loiter as starving maggots; once earthbound, now stymied from life's trickeries, they're the spoils that danced with insolent glee to the riffs of many an insincere Eulogy. my weary Eyes gaze blankly into the Night, redolent of cinereal gloom; ripened of too many a fruitless Journey, I recover down below the taste for its sallow harvest and stagger on in my omen-laden Pilgrimage. as the hour struggles lamely to its exit, hell looms into our pygmy World. palid cataracts pelt down in a barrage of torrential fire, a rancid Banshee cures the frosty air with thundering songs of laminated Anxiety. braides of lightning run like shrieking veines across the dreary billows, slays the viscose and stifling air, for too long enriched by Gaunts calling my Name, to avail myself for a drink from their mulched bosoms. sworn Fealty to the imperative instinct of survival, I dash for an escape. no bearings nor Lodestar to suit my personal ...

Those acherontic hours in close rapport to my gibbous and waning friend. At last reprieved from a scorching day-time heat that cracked the whip on my rattling bones. Still the fiend granted me more mercy than the blue funk simmering between the walls of my skull - imagine yourself entombed, in a tight coffin, and your breath goes a-go-go, while writhing pale forms crawl in and out your decomposing husk to the melody of an atrocious waltz - Suddenly I snap out of that torpid mood, shiver in expectancy as Brother Jazz preaches me his gospel. And I get his hint, follow it through, still lathered in cold sweet, every next step a torment. Not quite aware of my own action, I enter into the night air. A cool breeze washes over me:the velvet cloak of midnight, Lady Nicotine wraps her filigree arm around mine. Together we're marooned in mystic silence. My rhythmic gait devours distances, while I flick on a wry smile that sets the world on fire.

We give children the spark of life, but at long last they lead their own life - and it's no different to art that involves words. In other instances, we try to keep up with a boss who's pacing back and forth - fast and unpredictable - and suffer the more for it as we risk to trip over our own feet and fall or worse: we retrieve the gist, bereft however of essence and sink to our knees in a daunting and angst-ridden state, brewing with frustration and doubt. Maybe this in part explains the sensitivity of the artist to critics and the argumentative reaction that ensues: a legacy shared to the world is shot down, and a piece of your soul dies with it - no one wants to die, after long suffering and a lifetime in hardship, in dishonour, let alone see their children pass away before your own departure from life on this earth. Traditional poetry was very much the product of a craft, hence the coinage 'wordsmith', that involved a set of rules and techniques, to hone skills ...

the shadows of time disperse, as the gibbous moon spills its crisp silvery blood into the crevices of slumbering gambol-worn  provinces and enriches the veins of  downtrodden souls, thirsty for that spark of energy that sears away the putrescence clinging on their abraded hides of  chastity.

O dweller of wuthering aeons and blood-encrusted steel, silhouette forged from smokeless fire: stand tall amidst the bustling writhering of sleek parasites carving evermore grim runes on the slopes of arid and rugose bosoms festooned by the comatose dregs of the world; horizons are cluttered, the wind directions in disarray like corpses hanging about galeblown gallows: steer clear from their bacchanales, take no heart of distant shorelines - the eye of the storm is one and ubiquitous, once the rage wavers and fades into oblivion.

daylight dims,  a ripe orange glow the oil lamp emits, logs and peat crackle in the fireplace,  ember sparks cheer,  multicolour garlands of leaves cradle in the numbing wind,  a single auburn leaf dances past the window,  a scuttling dream grafts melancholic notes to the mirror of my soul.

wheels grind to a halt, seasons are in disarray, bodies shed skin and hair - chaos rages in the heart, as the ghost of the past eats its way in to plummet the soul into burning nighmares anchored in the false notion of its insignificance - but cowardice and compliance, slick parasites with a thousand goose stepping feet, have no hold on you, as you walk talk through undergrowth and creepers of these parced, sickening days - you push forward, primordial commandment ingrained in the matrix of your presence, ordained to reach out beyond the taints, the necrotic banner of futility and the hollow promises of verbal bacchanales - to reach out beyond the moon and the stars, where no definition holds sway nor bounds keep you down.

And night turns to day, day smothered in the fiery brass and billowed narcose of dusk, while night, starlit, clefted by the horn of the moon, suddenly smiles like a naieve child in glittering ecstasy, as nirvana struck its blue majesty's stem. Truly, now mauled by hound and wolf, the day as it was, slain, grows cold and fades to grey. Dumped into oblivion.

crumbling lichen, the sullen paleness of concrete, the impaled sea bursting into anemic spumes, while the galeblown cliffs of the wilted land stand their sepuchre of defiant contempt. nothing is strange to him, his path is marked with smiles of waxing mercy. about the windless night gads a surpressed scream, high in acidity this dysphoric brew, distilled in the primeval undergrowth of prideful avatars, where crouching spiders lurk with drooling fangs for shallow-boned preys. a procession of snapshots, frocked in corinthian-styled finery, withers behind the next episode of corrosive reverie; across the sweltering void monologues stifle in a ubiquitous gut-wrenching groan... oh, veteran shorn of brood and a heirloom, stand eye to eye to the cataract of glaring woes and rejoice: unbutton the illegible parchment of your masquerade, seek up the wuthering thermals of your unquenchable thirst, and rise!

't zachte mos, de aalwarige vaalheid van het beton, de gespietste zee wier schuimend bloed en smeekbedes de klippen van 't verslapen land onberoerd laten; niets is hem vreemd, steeds onthaald met een meewarrige glimlach in zijn doortocht. een stille schreeuw waart rond in onrust and wanhoop over de blinde nacht, waarin een dichtbevolkt oerwoud van schimmen en vleesgeworden hoogmoed schuilhoudt als een driftige spin kwijlend voor prooi. een processie van momentopnames, fraai getooid in korinthische opsmuk, verwelkt achter de zoveelste winding van het corrosief gemijmer; over een blakerende leegte ontspint het testament van zijn voldongen zuchten een holle monoloog. veteraan zonder nageslacht en zonder nalatenschap, oog in oog met het cataract van een eclatante treurnis: losgerukt van het eigen kadaver, volgt hij als een havik de thermiek van zijn unvermurwbare hunkering.

He was past any conceivable prime. Ensconced in his stuffy shack, which he never left, he lead the life of a hermit; through grimed windows, he enjoyed the seasonal masquerades, but without suffering the world's indiscretions. He felt for his old trusted inveigler in his pockets and found nothing but flakes of rust. The door shut forever, he contemplated death with a smile.

wending your way across the astray spray of galactic aeons, on the wings of love, guided by the mystery of wisdom, musing eyes tear down the gathering night with a yearning fluttering to heights where the blues of asphyxiation powers up to a fuga of excruciating inebriety; as a fiery breeze you take off, answer to a hunger beyond definitions, razing the wicked pretentions of voluptuous mermaids whose ashes now crumble as sluds of gangrene down towards their last resting place in the umbrage of jaded wreckage blossoming the frigid vulva of hell. while mining for gossamer ore, invisible hands push you around funerary inaugurations that stare blind and mute back, and shove you on mossy crossroads into stalemate ends where exorcism nor redemption are meaningless - weaving in boredom the strands of your own hallucinatory journey, lungs with nicotine ectoplasm, too much caffeine in the bloodstream, and bones eager to perform an atrocious waltz, no torpid mood incapicitate...

epigrammic dynamite thrown to the timeless bane that churns out listless fossils slithering through the mud of life to raise cathedrals in perpetual erosion. a drilling stare forged from ice on fire, brimming with the angry wrath of northwa rd seas, climbing the salient jaded cliffs of our civilisation. the dusky horizon slain, spills aortic blood on stark granite walls, while in death throes his bellows render false thrones to shatter.

Another entry that bit the dust... :) 'Darling, have fun..but..you're forgetting something...my kiss...' Her smirk yawned larger than the cleavage of her split skull.  The husband never left. Blocking the door, his mouldy husk was found entwined with a gaunt hag in a  sinuous  embrace. 

In the Grand Central Hall of an unnamed city, writhing throngs of people bolted feverishly towards their waiting train. A few loners obstructed their smooth passage as they gazed lapidified at the billboard of their quotidian musings.  No faction bothered about etiquette; their eyes betrayed pall torpor.  Meanwhile, outside the Hall, the God Plutonium gave the City a nuclear makeover. Their pre-Socratic strife would eventually outlast Armageddon.

Each month the Scottish Book Trust opens a challenge to write in merely fifty words a story for which the Trust provides a 'prompt' on the website; a picture that should help to spark off your imagination and set you work around a flash story. http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/writing/love-to-write/the-50-word-fiction-competition February's prompt was this picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellostanley/4534776744/ Anyway, my story unfortunately was proven unsuccessful (ach well... it was too clever and too allegorical for its kind), but the administrator took nonetheless the opportunity to encourage me to enter again, starting next Monday (March 3rd) with the March competition. Will keep trying, I don't quit easily without hangovers of guilt and besides... I never believed in  the no-win scenario. Here's the story... I might use it eventually as a template for either a post-apocalyptic themed poem or a short story. The 50 words limit doesn't reall...

one flower among many, yet she smiles to the sun, because she's never been forgotten. her fragrance stuns the troubled mind, silk petals sooth wounds, and her courage bears heirs among the vulnerable souls.

through treacherous terrain and the wild endeavour of sprawls to the imperishable archetype - the Self - engaged by willpower - a seething arrow, the conjoined twins, perseverance and patience, for conquest summoned - series of milestones ransacked for booty - constantly venturing beyond the tangible, shattering the limits - obedient to your Essence's Mad Design.

i have no dreams, but find myself suddenly in the middle of the action in some warped counter-reality of our sharply accentuated pedestrian world, where logic follows the school of escher, sequences climb up and tumble down like staircases without landings, the linear perspective is mellowed away, colours and light are sunken in dank latrinary industrial ooze that looks like old sepia photography drenched in an icy slate grey tincture that creates a permanent dusk. i register no words, only their shadow etched in obfuscated ink or pixels. I listen to voices which are not interesting by themselves or what they deem categorically of vital importance, but relinquishing my attention, the concatenation of rhythm, tone and amplitude sounds like the murmur of the sea, the rushing of my blood deeply trenched in my body. i walk in desolation, because everything around me has this bitter-sweet melancholy that cowls over the furrows and potholes of misery ravaging lofty expe...