Leave a comment Posted on Non-fiction

Jack of All Trades

 

For Laurence

By: Iqra and Nicole 

I don’t remember much, he said that the most.

His eyes distant as he recalls faded memories lost to time.

 

My children? Their names, still here in my thoughts

Anna, Tracy, Betty, Ron, their names remain.

Ron the independent one

Jack of all trades as I once was

Once upon a time  

I don’t remember much,

 

Time has whisked my memories away.

I can still feel though, the biting cold of Edmonton,

Not colder than Saskatchewan.

 

The jack of all trades

Blessed me with a crown of fleeting deals,

Crafting the homes of many

Laying bricks made of labors for someone to call home

 

But alas the crown is taken by the gates of my last and final home.

I have no stories, my tales have gone,

But I believe my legacy will carry on

Even if I may not remember.

 

Time catches up to us all

One day, it’ll creep up to your soul

One day it’ll be there standing by your shoulders

As you look down upon the young

Nostalgia will creep up and everything will be okay.

 

Hands taken with age, wrinkled with time

Shaking hands with friends

They helped me the most.

 

Voice fading yet all meaning stays.

My voice might be fading

but my words won’t go unheard.

Even if I don’t have a story to tell,

I’ll say the tale of my legacy

They’re still there

 

Anna, Tracy, Betty, Ron, their names remain

And they will have stories to tell,

My legacy remains.

 

Life catches up to everyone

And I remember little, but being

so very good at this,

At kids and jobs

At people that needed help.

A wife, no, not so much

Not anymore

But once,

 

Once upon a time  


Kids, kids I can keep up with

I can follow and I can guide

They grow you know

They grow to be better

They grow to be independent with families of their own

 

And here you are, wanting to know

Was it all worth it?

I don’t know, do you?

Does anyone, truly?

 

Possibilities come forth

As here come the youth

Sitting before me

They ask,

“Tell us a story”

A tale for the ages, that was what they wanted.

 

Well

Once Upon A Time

There was a Jack of all Trades…

Leave a comment Posted on Non-fiction

Have Some Fantasy

Nonsense just doesn’t work with reality. With the constructs we have created and the workings we have not yet destroyed. Reality is written and documented regularly and religiously, argued and worked and never something that is set in stone. Yet nonsense does not work with reality. Magic doesn’t work with the world we have created, make-belief doesn’t work with reality, we can’t become great heros and we can’t save worlds. Yet Dr. Seuss said “I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” Reality doesn’t work with fantasy, but that doesn’t mean it has to be like that in books.

That doesn’t mean that we have to conform to the constraints of reality by ignoring the magic we can create. By exploring our imagination and stretching our reality to its limits we could have the freedom to do what we wish. We could create the gateway to wonders and stories just beyond the narrow conventions of this world. We could redefine the boundaries, have a much needed escape and explore the expressions of what we find beyond the veil, beyond our imagination and into worlds of magic.

We redefine reality because we hunger for more, new skills, new places, new things to see, we’re still growing, and we won’t stop, not for a long shot. This outward exploration, this hope beyond the boundary creates an expectation that we can see human change, we can hope that one day we cure cancer, and walk on the rings of Saturn, that we see human change.

But we cannot ignore reality entirely, and writers would find it more than hard to do so. We have lived here our entire lives and no amount of reading has truly taken us away. We can see all around us the reality we live in; with war, hunger, strife, and so many more terrible things that can be a lot closer to home than we realize. That is mirrored in writing and we cannot truly escape, but we can find a way to bring a new parallel into it, a new perspective, a new way of looking through the telescope.

We can reexamine our limitations and find a way to push through. Deconstruct our stereotypes, expectations and terrible connotations to create new things, to go past our prejudice. Fantasy allows us to go down to our base, to our very bare foundations and examine what we truly made, what have we done, what is wrong with this world? And there- then and there we can see the problem and we can see how we can finally fix something like this.

That’s why writers write what they write, we write to freshen our perspective, to gain the creativity we wouldn’t have otherwise, after all, “fantasy is hardly an escape from reality, its a way of understanding it” Lloyd Alexander.

Leave a comment Posted on Poetry

White Flag

http://the-great-dreamer.blogspot.ca/2013_07_01_archive.html

I cry to.

I wanted to yell it to the golden havens,

I cry to.

They do not see me stop,

they do not see me bleed.

 

Another war cry and an,

army spills before me.

Like the blood they spill,

they stay in shallow graves.

 

I cry to,

but they do not see.

 

I cry to,

Holding the dead tight,

My shoulders ache,

My colors blur with theirs and-

I cannot let go-

no matter how my hands,

calloused and blistered,

hold the shovel tight,

and dig my own grave,

six feet deep,

and filled with the blood of my enemies.

 

I see their blackened flags.

They soar in the wind,

and my heart roars,

and dies,

and tremors.

 

They don’t see me cry.

They hear the horns on the wind,

my war cry calling out.

 

Fear the golden havens.

 

I glitter in the sun,

but its their blinding convictions-

that make me falter-

I don’t stop.

 

I falter and stumble,

falling and dying.

 

But the dead hold on,

and I can’t stop-

Their swords of ivory,

raised in triumph.

 

I can’t break free,

the chains of a burden-

burned into my skin.

 

The golden havens are no more.

My skin burns.

My hands ache.

My eyes see no more.

 

I follow the black sky,

the red hearts,

the dark farther,

the tightening noose,

I can’t let go.

 

They are before me-

 

Let my arrow fly true.

Let them heed my call.

Let the dead rest true.

 

Gone is the forth wind,

Gone is the wild,

Gone are the clever hands,

 

Rise the dark dawn,

 

The army will not back down,

they stand and fall as I once have.

The wrath of the gods,

Golden and pure,

Red and gone,

no ash left,

there is nothing to stand in my way.

 

Hell begs to have me.

They cannot keep me.

 

I am of the disgraced,

my holy grail,

shattered underfoot,

the coffin of pine wood,

lighter than my body.

 

My armour rent with blows,

My shields lost to the tide,

My sword lost in the night.

 

Paths of dust and rain.

Oath’s lost.

I walk, chasing a shadow.

Never look back.

 

The disgraced don’t go back,

They drink to an early grave.

A shallow grave.

 

To hell’s fire,

and the fire of the night.

To the dawn of golden stars,

and destroyed loyalty.

 

Shot from the heavens,

Gone in the west wind,

No longer a friend.

 

The storm swallows

and dries the crops.

Parched are the needy,

they beg for a sip.

But gone is the giver,

gone is the disgraced,

 

An army fallen-

out of grace-

and out of favor-

out of luck-

and out of gold-

out of love,

 

They fall and burn.

The bold wails of the night-

don’t stop.

 

The disgraced broke.

 

They don’t stop for love and laughter,

stop for the dead,

stop for loyalty.

 

No one stops them,

they shatter and shatter.

The sound of laughter to loud,

To harsh,

to unforgiving,

they need the mercy of death.

 

Perhaps its time.

An ocean burns,

and the tides turn.

The sun’s dying rays,

set into a bottle and-

drunken at sundown.

 

Ready for battle,

ready for fire.

To let out a cacophony of sound-

twist and fall,

let the arrow fly,

did it land?

 

Only the gods know,

But the golden havens are gone.

 

The arrow flies,

the blessings of many cry-

don’t die,

don’t die.

A red dawn,

blood is spilt tonight.

 

Feathers blacken in the wind,

the hate glides right through.

Gone are the golden havens,

right the wrong that never was.

 

 

None can find the spinning dancers,

lips like gold and

dresses spun of moonlight-

and secrecy.

 

They are burdened,

their chains burn,

they feast tonight,

with the kings of old.

With the soldiers of iron,

and the men made of bones.

The women of shrunken colors,

and bright dresses.

Plastered faces

and arrow wounds.

 

Hey, there’s a hole in your chest.

 

The heart beats on,

into the night,

out of the light,

beyond the river,

over the mountains,

 

It beats-

the drums of war-

It calls-

the horns of death-

It beckons-

toward a death of glory-

 

of light,

to a red dawn,

to silver scales,

and angel wings,

 

Victory do right by us

and righteousness be gone.

Let the dead drown,

let their sins drag them down.

 

Gone is the love.

Gone is the light.

All but a candle flame,

waiting to be extinguished.

Distinguished from its brethren.

They glitter and shine.

 

An disgraced,

graces the empty bottle,

with its presence.

 

The dead are carried,

by the shoulders of the wounded,

they do not make it.

 

Another day another night.

Another death another life.

 

The beauty of the war-

is not lost,

by the makers,

by the generals,

by the newly hardened.

 

New weapons.

New shields.

New armor.

 

The disgraced don’t look back.

They do not come back.

 

Let them lie-

a bed of fire,

a shallow gave,

a haunting spirit.

 

They laugh,

and burn.

 

But hell cannot hold them.

 

They thrive

They survive

They live

 

And gone are the red army’s of the dawn,

gone is the laughter.

 

A child cries

 

A golden light

pierces the haven.

A war cry

the living are burdened.

 

Heavy

and gone

 

A war cry

 

The dead are many, varied,

and too much, to bury.

 

Runes and dust,

they cry

they scream

they die

 

Gone is the the graced

 

Here they fear,

they tremble,

and they know,

the disgraced won’t.

 

They won’t,

not ever

not for the dead,

not for broken loyalty,

not for golden glory,

or dying flame,

hell could not hold them.

 

The dead have been reborn

and they

Won’t wave a white flag

This is an emulation from the song White Flag by Bishop Brigs you can find the song here

I’m a mostly happy with this poem, though i didn’t have any plans nor did I know where it would go when I started writing it, but it turned out mostly how I expected it to. The warrior in the poem, was inspired a bit by how even if one goes down a white flag still doesn’t have to come up. The warrior is a better fighter than everyone around them and so as their friends die they choose to carry them around with them.

2 Comments Posted on Uncategorized

A-Z

V is for vast open spaces: Go out into nature. A forest, the woods, the veld, your local park. Anywhere where there is grass and shrubs will do. The painter David Hockney said: “To get something fresh you have to go back to nature . . . You can’t be tired of nature. It is just our way of looking at it that we are tired of. So get a new way of looking at it.” Write and meditate until you get a new way of looking at nature. If you’ve never hugged a tree, now’s the time.

It was blindingly cold and almost deathly silent. I’d never seen it before but it could kill, it has killed, hasn’t it?

There was nowhere to go, no heat to find, nothing to help me out of the hell I decided was now my own. It seemed this was the way to go, the way I leave this, all this space. The cold grasping at my skin, searing itself into my veins. I needed to find the warmth of summer once more but it seemed so very far, so very out of my reach.

I ran in this tundra cold I needed shelter I needed to run, the cold had grasped me and I was going to die because it never let go, that was what it did when the summer love was gone.

The only thing left was the cold.

Emerit had yet to come back, the desolate wasteland out there wasn’t for exploring but Emerit could just never sit still, resembling a fairy she continued to run around and peak out windows, peak the door open to pear outside, collect (hoard) more supplies than she knew how to organize and lit for fires than she had water to put out with. She decided to use snow instead, the idiot.

The cold didn’t just strip the flesh from peoples skin and decide to leave their bones for the next poor scavengers to collect. It crept into your skin no matter how insulated you were if you spent enough time with the wind and the radioactive snow it would kill you.

Emerit had time frames where she was allowed outside, before the snow sneaked up on her and murdered her insulation, before she noticed she was cold enough to start finding shelter she was supposed to be inside.

This didn’t always happen though, Emerit was Emerit the usually annoying fairy that tried to hard to never let anything bother her. She worried everyone in the small shielded communities. They whispered of her behind her back, like the wind it all passed through one ear and out the other, he mind, Eileen thought was as vast and empty as the plains outside.

She snorted into the her and gazed out the window again looking for a sign of her charge out in the vast wilderness beyond the shield borders. She didn’t find her and just sighed looking back at her cup, maybe in a bit she would go out, for now the wind didn’t need her attention and she could enjoy a tiny taste of summers love for a bit more.

 

N is for nursery: Choose a plant and write about it. Write about where it sits and what’s next
to it. Write about this plant as you would about a new pet you’re about to take home. Ask yourself: What will it be like when it grows? How well will you take care of it? Who else will care for it?
Take it home and keep a regular diary about its development.

Everything around me took no notice from me, I wasn’t interested in things that I couldn’t have, well more like I chose to ignore them. But wandering around was getting to be more than a little boring, my brain needed to do something more than look at different leaves and beautifully crafted plants so I decided to pick one. I might just buy, something small, easy to pick up, or maybe the one that really catch’s my eye.

I stepped toward the bursts of color around the far side of the nursery  perhaps there I might find something but even there everything looked like something that wouldn’t last long in my room or anywhere in my house.

I knew I would claim to look after it, saying its mine, I bought it. I would claim to look after it when really my mother would take it and care for it. She was the one with the green thumb after all.

But I had decided this would be a new plant of mine after all.

It honestly didn’t live long, I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought it, a week in and the leaves start to droop, two weeks and the cat pees in the dirt, we decided to just throw it out after that, I was thinking of selling the cat after that.

My mom had ended up taking care of the little thing and I didn’t really forget about it, I think that was the problem really, It was very over watered and sometimes I left the window open and the poor thing would fall over from the wind and I’d have to clean up dirt off my carpet.

My mother was a much better caretaker, she actually painted the pot that she put it in too, she was very good at that artistic thing as well, many things suited her. The pots for all her plants were painted and sometimes she would sell on eBay or Kijiji and make some extra money off that, my mom was a great plant sitter.

The one thing I do remember happening with my plant was that it never grew any flowers and my sister honestly didn’t like it much, or me, she was always all like “your going the kill it,” “its never going to last,” “why did you even pick it up, just give it to mommy.” Like gee negative Nancy much? She was right in the end and it really inflated her ego but honestly the plant dying was more the cats fault than mine, so there.

 

C is for cinema: Create a map of the cinema as you rush to your seat. Approach it as if it were a town or a village. Explore the past (the dead), the present (nature), and the future (this place in 100 years time). Start with the word “dead” and end your piece with the word “life” (or the opposite way round).

Dead were their eyes, the ones that were already there, they had seen the movie before and are only inside because they snuck in, they couldn’t sneak the money past their parents though.

They watch without seeing. An escape in a theater is just the best part of watching a movie. Its sometimes all the life they have. Sitting here in the farthest back corner, not even in the middle where, like a town square its packed with people.

No the back was a refuge a place for people who needed it. Who were to knew to bare being with others.

This was not a place filled with life.

 

Leave a comment Posted on Free, Random

Free

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Foefire(Here is -> Pt 1 and -> Pt 3)It was only when Elderon had settled for the paths of moonlight, near the graves of Tellurium that the wind changed. A circle of fire appeared before them, halting the War. It was time it seemed for their changed luck to start getting things done.

The fire burned scarlet around Elderon, giving away the skeletons of Nebar. Nebar skeletons were nothing but dastardly beings of servitude. Power was all they served- and unfortunately Demon Blood and Burning Witch conspirators were very powerful, even if they were hard to come by. They were of a corner of the multiverse that was just a pocket of its former size.

Elderon only knew of one conspirator, a powerful sorcerer known as Maine. They were not fond of him. Not all Nebar skeletons were of Maine’s power but Maine and his skeletons was the only one who would show his face in front of Elderon.

“And what might any of you want?” Elderon called out to them, almost bored. A dissociated whisper blew in with the wind, it’s voice not yet taken words. The skeletons looked amongst themselves before one spoke, in a language not commonly heard, giving voice and words to the wind.

“Our majesty sends you a gift, for the one with the Burning Witch Blood, let it protect you.” The skeleton was no more as Elderon’s lips turned downward. In a show of power and a general air of one not to be disturbed they let the wind spark and turn golden, they gave form to the rise within them. The War raised its head from where it was resting on its cloven hooves, the tusks glinting in the scarlet light.

“Tell Maine the next time he calls me Burning Witch Blood I’ll impale him to his throne. I take no gifts or other from Maine, your sire is not one I trust and he knows it, what business has he to send me anything?” The skeletons stilled at Elderon’s words, the whispers in the air coming to a stop. The skeletons had no flight or fight instincts, they barely had any agency at all, nothing but muscle memory was in them, and that was a powerful enough thing for them to get how scared they really should be at that moment.

Elderon was not one to be messed with on a good day but on a day where their luck has changed, well it’s a miracle carnage had not yet occurred. Trying to keep their patience Elderon decided not to disintegrate the rest of the skeletons and instead let them run back to Marine.

“Go, before I make Maine regret living.” The skeletons hesitated, the flames flickered around Elderon and then as one they turned around, back into the scarlet flames of the Nebar skeletons.

The flames disappeared after them and a voice spoke out, once the War had laid its head down again.

“Getting prissy there Ron.” Elderon looked to their left to see Reshim, one of their first friends. One of the first to fall. (Elderon’s cursed nature made sure of such a thing.)

Reshim was a girl like any other. Yet what set her apart was something that was beginning to become more common as days past. More common as more blood is spilt into waiting earth, ready to hold on. More common as wars raged on and Elderon was called upon more and more.

Elderon, the god of dead heroes and quests gone wrong. Elderon, of the disgraced.

Reshim, a hero. One of a failed quest.

“It’s good to see you to Reshim.” Elderon walked over to give them a hug, not minding in the least the burning sensation of holding one of their disgraced; they had gotten used to it.

“I would say it’s good to see you to Ron, but whenever we see each other these days, it seems your luck has changed.” Elderon shrugged at Reshim’s words, hiding their guilty face by turning away to the War.

“That may be, I need your expertise on this one. Free has strangely been holding its breath these days.” The land they were in seemed sentient some days and on others deader than the burning plains. They would never admit it, but sometimes it scared Elderon when Free became too sentient, it made them feel as if they were walking on a knife’s edge, between something beyond the abyss and something best left unsaid.

Their friends of the dead kind have probably realized how nervous Elderon gets when the wild magic of the forests become raging hurricanes and the golems of the North become ferocious cat-like demons. They no longer feel anything about such things, all they feel is anything that has to do with their patron god Elderon. And what they feel about them is varied.

“Free tends to do what it wants, we just have to go along with it.” Elderon carefully stroked the War’s fur, not looking anywhere near Reshim’s direction. Their mind seemed to be far from the conversation.

“Why?” They asked.

“Elderon, you ask this every time, yet I give you the same answer.” Reshim sighed, “Such is the way Elderon and you know it.”

Elderon’s frozen features turned downward into a scowl, they wanted to rage to do many things, yet they did nothing, for Reshim was right. Such is the way. No matter if they liked it or not.

“You know you seem to rage more than we do.” A new voice joined the conversation, an elf by the name of Glider. Elderon remembered him (as he remembered them all). He was a friend to her during the short years they were on a quest together. Glider was the one to slay the King Druid and start another cycle of death along with its wake. It was actually one of the more tamer results of one of Elderon’s quests. Usually things didn’t turn out as well as just another cycle of mass killing.

Turing to look at his eldritch features that seemed half in shadows, even in the lighting of the moon and star dust. Elderon sighed at him, at his smile and the memory of his last dying breath resounding in their ears.

“You do not rage because I do not tell you to. You do not rage because you cannot feel things anymore. You do not rage because you’re dead. I rage because you’re dead.”

“Well now you’re just whining Ron.” Reshim, walked forward to take Elderon’s hands in hers and lead them away from the War, farther and farther into the Dawn Army, Elderon’s army of failures.

All these hero’s dead because of- well, what? Elderon? No, such can not be. Then it has to be that just because it’s a quest; and they always go wrong in the most spectacular of ways. Elderon just seemed to be there for the ride.

Yet they didn’t always realize this.

Elderon’s shoulder got patted and they shook hands and traded jokes a few times, secret winks and inside jokes were said and made, handshakes with promises of a rematch of that one battle and for once (more than once, always more than once), they thought that that was it. They were home, weren’t they?

They could just forget what happened in that cave with Luck. Yet they could not and the reason they were there was always by their side, always in front of them, behind them, this is the Dawn Army, Elderon’s reason.

Oh how they wish they had no reason, no rhyme. No symphony to play in the part of things. Let the things fall where they may, they always thought, but it could not happen. It was not the way of things.

They reached a bonfire burning a multicolor mix and throwing light in many different directions. The souls of heroes were congregated around it smoking, playing, drinking, as Elderon finally got near enough they stopped enough to salute them, raising their drinks in the air and saying as one, ”To Elderon of heroes!” They laughed after their toast and Elderon laughed with them, content in their joke, knowing they mean no harm.

Elderon sat and the souls congregated around them, everyone of different races and gender, some had found their way closer to Elderon’s side, others content to stay with their friends. But little by little they quieted down, waiting for their god to speak.

“I don’t know who it will be, and what the quest will be. A prophecy has not yet been issued nor has any old one’s been taken up, yet I met the skeletons of Marine as I came here and Luck told me someone will come to see me, though that could mean they just happen to come by me.” Elderon sighed and shook their head, they conjured a mug of tea, never one to drink ale when they could avoid it.

“Ah mate, you know there’s no use worry’in, tha’s jus’ how things ar’. Gods and monsters ar’ ‘spessaly cryptic when it comes ta this type o’ shit.” Fray was growing out of his accent last Elderon heard them. They were one of the first to die on a quest for the chancellor that had shit information and too high stakes, that had dragons involved and some would even say the fea were as well, (though it is not polite to speak of them). Elderon would say that the quest was doomed from the start for they were there from the start, but others would say it was just fate. When it comes to the Dawn Army, Elderon somehow ends up in conversations like these daily.

“Yeah Fray’s right, gods are cryptic as hell, but at least you’re not.” Alen said, making sure to squeeze Elderon on the shoulder, trying to reassure them. Elderon didn’t know Alen well, he was one of the first to die on his quest and they weren’t all that good friends even before then. Elderon made sure to rectify that after.

“I’m not cryptic because you guys are dead and don’t have to go through hoops for my amusement.” Elderon said to them, cries of mock offense and other jeers rang through the clearing lit by stars and Elderon smiled at them, they were home, they felt, this was home.

The feeling wouldn’t last they knew.