Tag: Poets and Storytellers United

A Simple Secret

Ruby waited by the railings, her heart a bobbing balloon inflated with the scent of sizzling onions and candy floss, beating to the fairground music. She had been looking forward to meeting her friends at the fair. There would be no holding back from the big rides. She was going to try them all. Ruby […]

On First Encountering a Stallion

In a dust-clouded paddock, a summer stallion,Not midnight black but deepest brown,Rolled one eye, expressive and defiant,Cautiously curious and determined to be dominant.Tendering my trembling fingers, openPalm of one hand in silent supplication,I kept the other in my jacket,Shuffling cubes of sugar in a pocket,Relishing the sweet sting of anticipation.Startled and skittering from a sudden […]

November Monday

Monday is the colour of sky,the first day of the weekas fresh as washing on a line. This November Monday,there’s a musty yellow scent,an ochre aroma of decay, like a pumpkin or a melon,overripe and mushy mellow,not citrus-sharp like lemons. This Monday’s weatheris washed into a muddy green,sun and wind and rain together, mixed up […]

A Time of Ghosts

In the shadows of change, of life and thought,they anchored the past to their unsettled present.Obligations did not cease with death. Ghosts were obvious and continued to be potentimages of past sins, promises and regrets,seeping from the jet-black trappings, guilt-laden luxury and ornate statuary in graveyard and cemetery.The pleasurable shudder between living and deadhaunted Victorians […]

Autumn’s Folly

She paints the landscape red and gold,cossets fruit, more than we can hold, silvers webs and tinkers with the lightonly to plunge us into wintry night. Her leafy folly flutters and decays,the fruits of her labour last but days, winter haunts her with ghostly mistand bids her goodbye with an icy kiss. Kim M. Russell, […]

Medusa’s Demise

The metallic stench of blood slicks the rockand tickles the throat. No wonder snakes suffocate the silence with their incessant hiss.Some break away, alarmed by the cold kiss of death; some curl and spiral, others loopand tie themselves in knots. Spattered drupes of carmine, like red snakes’ eyes, gleam –Medusa no longer has the power […]

Prayers of Bone

Beware this Halloweenand the days in between, when knuckles crackbehind the back, of the flesh-eating ghoulthat sips your soul, carves telling stonesfrom finger bones, Our Fathers and Hail Marysstrung on calcified rosaries. Fingers that once folded in prayer,this Halloween beware! Kim M. Russell, 21st October 2020 My response to Poets and Storytellers United Weekly Scribblings […]

Bursting

Earth has birthed an abundance of fruit:tawny acorn knots rain hard from oak trees;hollies burn brightly with a blood-red flame;magenta spindles split open orange hearts.A young boy kicks spiky shells with his boot,searching for chestnuts in a sea of sunset leaves –it’s conker time, and children play the game,knocking hardened seeds until they burst apart. […]

Grammar of Happiness

I remember you remember me remember when I lost my mind I remember it well making music making bread making money making my way downtown and then what and then the sun rave song and then we danced and then he kissed me poet for our times poet for hire poet for love poet wife […]