Flash Fic Challenge: Come Play With Me

 Come Play With Me

The hall stands cold and empty now.

The tables all lie bare.

Yet still across the darkness colours flare -

Ghosts of games long gone.

Bright baize faded down to grey.

Glass shards upon the floor.

Yet still, I tell you, there is more -

The cues and clues remain.

The knives that shaped these broken cues

Have crumbled to rust-red grime.

Mould creeps up walls like frosty rime

But the bones of the hall still stand.

For it is with blood and with bone

That all the ghosts now play.

Balls made from blood across the table spray,

Sent flying by cues carved from bone.

(We make our own,

We break our own,

We bind and bleed

And take our own)

The hall stands cold and darkened now.

The tables all lie bare...

Won't you play a game with me?

You, who entered on a dare?

Flash Fic Challenge: Thundering Hooves

 Thundering Hooves

Listen, my darlings, to the overhead roar,

And then listen to me, for I'll tell you more.

There was once a field where fine horses grazed

And along the edges, their riders lazed.

These riders were dining on cheese, fruit, and bread,

And one had a grapefruit as big as his head.

This chap tossed his grapefruit up into the air,

And a foal saw it fall with a bit of a scare.

The foal took off, away back to its mum,

With a sharp turn on speed, like Armageddon had come.

Now horses are twitchy, as I'm sure that you know.

If one horse is spooked, then the feeling will grow.

So the whole herd took off at a thundering run,

Right on the heels of the littlest one.

The riders jumped up, but all far too late,

For all they could do now was stand there and wait.

So when you eat grapefruit, don't toss it about,

Or you will hear thunder, without any doubt.

X Marks the Spot

X Marks the Spot

 

Love, they say, is a treasure

just waiting to be found.

X marks the spot - try here.

And when you try to tell them

your brain works differently?

Why, that's insulting (to them).

Never mind how you actually feel.

I have treasures in hand,

if I want them - in books,

and music, and film.

I gather my friends around me

who take me as I am.

And an ex marks the spot I stopped trying

to make myself something I'm not.

Flash Fic Challenge: Never Underestimate Little Old Dolls

 Never Underestimate Little Old Dolls

Orinda lived in a little ice house,

On its little ice shelf, in a doll's brass bed.

She was a smart little doll

With a thought in her head

And she guarded the place with a will.

So when burglars crept through the frozen door,

Or pirates climbed through the window,

The little old doll raised her little old head

And she smiled at them from her little brass bed

Until every one of them fled!

And still, they say, in a little ice house,

On a little ice shelf, in a doll's brass bed,

Lives a little old doll, whose smile,

Is red.

Flash Fic Challenge: Dog, Dog, Goose

 Dog, Dog, Goose

I'm the top of a pile of books

Sitting on a stall.

Looking for a buyer.

Sitting very tall.

I'm fond of my first owner,

Who read me, through and through,

But now will pass me on,

If they can find-- Hey! Shoo!

A goose has grabbed my cover.

I'm trailing in the dust.

I'll make you let me go!

I'll do whatever I must!

I snap and clap my pages

Until the beak lets go.

And then I get a short reprieve.

It's quiet down-- Oh No!

A dog has caught me by the spine.

It's running through the Fair.

I really want my reader back.

Oh where, oh where, oh where?

A tether reels in the running dog.

I'm back in human hands.

I shudder all my pages

And wonder where I'll land.

Flash Fic Challenge: Balcony Gardening

 Balcony Gardening

Once there was here and yet was not,

A boy whose name, they say, was 'Jack'.

He grew his beans in tiny pots

And never now felt any lack.

Jack was nimble, and Jack was quick.

He lived in a studio flat.

No cow was there, nor magic trick,

Just a single, smiling, city rat,

A cutting brought from his beanstalk,

And a grin both bright and bold

As if to say (if beans could talk)

Now who's the goose? I've got my gold.