The Smile of the Unvanquished

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...