Deadlines

She sits very still as the words and pictures swirl around her. Both are elusive. Oh, yes, third picture from the left. No, wait. The fourth one, too. Together in the same block, or separately in descending blocks? She'll let those spin for a while. Goes back to the words, plucks a few more out of the vortex. Line those up just here. Box a couple up there. Oh, right there. That's where that picture goes. Does there need to be more? Let it spin. Crack the whip with words and pictures: she's the center that holds it all together.

(I'm about 20 words over--my machete needs sharpening, the weedwhacker needs new string.)

Twenty levels down and it was stronger--thrumming on her skin, shimmering in her blood. Her nape and arm hair stirred. Three past twenty and it began to wane, so back up again, one level, two. Ceiling light corruscated, seen from her eye corners; the effect intensified as she went. The way ended in a door--unlocked. She swung it open and her breath caught--there was no floor beyond, only a narrow catwalk that circled a vast open well, door after door opening onto it above and below, to her left and her right.

Ahead, suspended of its own energy, a sphere, soft yet brilliant, invisible threads reaching from it out, out, up, down, around, over, under, all.

(See Beverly use up all the prepositions!)

OK, so a teenage me wrote this in 1991 after the death of my 90 year old grandpa, father of 6, the last of that generation, watching his kids interact. I don't attempt poetry any more, but I've got a collection from that time. But the "center" thing got me. So I'll abase myself:

The ties are broken
Center of the wheel
Unbolted.
The spokes should
Fly out.
Yet they don't.
Love binds them
Pain's grasp seizes them.
All together they withstand
They cannot be apart.
They will not forget.

sarameg, that is really beautiful. Thanks for sharing it.

Careful, you don't want me to inflict the rest of the 20 or 30 (I've not counted) poems from that era;) It was 15-19 or so.

Actually, it occurs to me I should start airing them for critique. I was so self conscious then, I shared them with no one. My parents read them, but they are biased.

I'm curious. We'll see, I probably haven't read them in a decade.

I like that, sarameg.

And a character piece, exploring one of my protagonists:

The general still rides as hard as any man in the army, but it’s been a year since he beat Jack at sword practice. Today he’s forty, the son of a father who never saw fifty. He has no house, no wife, no sons, nothing a man of his years should have--only an army that would fall apart without him.

He doesn’t lack for companionship. He has Jack for conversation, Margaret in his bed, though not as often as he’d like, and an army that marches at his whim. But he is alone. The center is a solitary point.

We're rocking the new thread! Awesome.

I have poetry like that, sarameg. It's handwritten in a folder somewhere (I think) and there are only two that I don't cringe to think about. I love poetry, but it's not my, uh, medium.

Post them, though! I love to read poetry.

How deeply amused am I that with the one thread we could kill with haiku and be on topic, we didn't? Deeply amused.

Great drabbles, though, all.

You should definitely post them, sarameg. I've got volumes and volumes from that age, probably quite horrid. But I always think one should share. Writing wants to be free!