And one more Bowie drabble.

Young Americans

She picked him up just after sunset, near the backstage door of Madison Square Garden.

He was a fox, in a heroin-chic, underfed way; skinny, muscled, all black leather and bleached hair. His name, he said, was Spike; he was on the guest list. Did she want to hang out backstage, and watch Ziggy Stardust? Oh hell yes, she did. She took his arm, oddly cold, and went inside.

The Spiders from Mars burned, and nearly everyone staggered out into the chilly Manhattan dawn. They found her under the stage the next morning, but by then, everyone had moved on.

You are on a roll!

Kaiser?

Sorry.

Kaiser?

Dutch Crunch.

I'm proud of this drabble even though it's not from any Jossverse, and in fact was just intended to be...fanfiction methadone, if you will. [link] (Thought somebody might miss my Munchkin...I do, but then love is hopeless, isn't it?) Even though it's off-length, I think it is the best fanfic drabble I've written. Which in some circles is like the prettiest skin infection, but I know y'all understand.

erika, I damn near swooned over that. Comment in your lj.

This week's open on sunday challenge is poetry (I did that last week, damnit!)

First one, to Michael Drayton's "Since There's No Help". THe episode ref should be pretty obvious.

Since There's No Help

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part

For a day, just a day, he was human again. He could laugh, weep, love. He could eat ice cream, shivering, warm blood expanding his veins as she licked a drop from his nipple.

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me

The Powers allowed him humanity. But it made him weak, no help to her. Now, wisdom triumphing over love, he's renounced it.

"When?" She clings hard, her face wet.

Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows.

"Now," he tells her, and watches her kiss memory goodbye.

The weird part is, Deb, me too. Right in the middle of kvetching about "Who writes these challenges? I bet it's the psycho who writes those 'L&O attorneys as babies' stories(I shit you not) And, damn, something kind of spoke through me in it.

Mmmm, baked apples.....

Second poetry challenge.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends

They go down together, down the shadow-haunted hallways, down into the bowels of the earth where the darkness comes from. There are others, weapons ready, lives in abeyence. But first there are these two.

It will not last the night

From above, they look down. Below is a seething pit of danger, Turok-hans, teeth, power, death waiting to happen.

But ah my foes, and oh, my friends-

Their eyes meet: golden Buffy, night-dark Faith. Together, they turn.

It gives a lovely light!

"Go," Buffy says calmly, and the firestorm, slayers against First Evil, begins.

I liked that...you kind of had me going, I thought it would be 'shippy. I know very little poetry that's not lyrics or jingles, unfortunately. It's sad, but it's probably why I've not written any in a long time.

Nic's missing the poetry gene. I have it, enough for a few people.

Here's another, one of my favourites. The poem first:

Walking away by Cecil Day Lewis

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day -
A sunny day with the leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-rules - since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature's give-and-take - the small, scorching
Ordeals which fire one's irresolute clay.
I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show -
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

and then the drabble, Angel's POV obviously:

Walking Away

I remember you.

I remember pain, ironic humour, on your mother's face. I remember her, saying tell this child he was the only good thing we ever did, tell him…

I can't tell you. I have no right. I gave it away.

I remember you, infant noise, thin scratchy wailing; I made you laugh by showing you the physical manifestation of my ugliest side. I remember the taste of you, my drink laced with your blood. I remember you, taken from me, gone from me.

I gave up your memories to give you peace. I have no right to you.