Poetry

Micropoetry: 3 Elfchen Poems

| marandarussell

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Recently I discovered Elfchen poems, which are 5-line poems that follow this pattern:
Line 1 – 1 word
Line 2 – 2 words
Line 3 – 3 words
Line 4 – 4 words
Line 5 – 1 word (different than the first line word)

It is also common to take the last word of someone else’s Elfchen poem to start off your own new one.

Here are several of my first tries with this poetic genre:

1.
Always
means never
when you live
in an unstable world,
alone.

2.
Stronger
and yet
weakness creeps in
settles on the edge,
waiting.

3.
Unsaid
the words
lie firmly under
your tongue in cheek,
bitter.

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Twittering Tales #123 – Valentine’s Candy

| marandarussell

Today was a rather stressful day since I had an appointment with my lawyer for my SSDI hearing next week, so I didn’t have time to plan a full post, but I did want to participate again in the Twittering Tales picture prompt by Kat Myrman. As I explained last week, this writing challenge is to simply write a short story, or poem, or whatever you want as long as it is under 280 characters (the length of a tweet).

Here is this week’s picture prompt and my entry for this week below (photo from Pixabay):

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My mother considered naming me Candy, but worried that if I turned out to be fat, it would be more ammunition for the bullies to use against me.

I didn’t turn out to be fat, but I did turn out to love candy – except for those little Valentine’s hearts.

All sugar, no substance.

Twittering Tales Fun

| marandarussell

I came across these “Twittering Tales” writing prompts yesterday and thought it looked like a lot of fun. The challenge is to take a photo prompt and write a short story, poem, or whatever comes to mind, but you have to keep it under 280 characters, just like a tweet on Twitter. I decided to go ahead and write a twittering tale for last week’s prompt as well as this week’s prompt.

Here is the one I came up with for last week’s prompt (photo from Pixabay):

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Hearts and stars. Hearts and stars. Simple shapes that any preschool child could identify, but symbolic of so much more.

The heart…love, obsession, passion, heartwarming, heartbreaking, blood pumping.
The star…cosmic, mysticism, alchemy, popularity, holidays, holy days.

And here is the second prompt (photo also from Pixabay). This one took a bit of a dark turn, but it was what came to mind for some reason:

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It starts with one word:

Helium. A harmless word? Parties. Balloons floating around the room. Rough, gruff voices becoming chipmunk squeaks.

Or do you picture tragedy? Helium tanks hooked up to hoses. Bodies lying still with bags over their heads. Voluntary euthanasia. The end.

Let me know if you guys enjoyed these. Maybe I’ll do more!

Poetry – Malice

| marandarussell

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This little poem was inspired by a middle grade book series called “Malice” by Chris Wooding. I liked the world that was created, and decided to capture just a bit of it in poetry (my favorite line is the “mushroom lamps” one):

Malice
By: Maranda Russell

Take the evening train
into the cavernous abyss.
Light up the darkness
with your mushroom lamps
and a fist full
of round trip tickets.